What's In A Name?

Alex at Aunt Melissa's Wedding. (The hairline gives it away. It's sure to recede again when he's older.)

After I pick Alex up from preschool in the afternoons we have to drive straight to Mary's school to pick her up. During that trip a few days ago Alex asked me, "Is my last name Zander?" While I was pretty sure we'd explained that Alexander was his full name and that we called him Alex for short and that his real last name was Chapman, clearly his 5-year-old brain had not fully processed that info or maybe I need to work on my explanation skills.

When I picked him up the next day his teacher said, "Alexander, your mom is here." Apparently he told them they need to call him Alexander because that's his name. He did say it was OK if I "messed up" and still call him Alex though. PHEW!

This conversation made me start thinking about names.

I come across TONS of names in the process of transcribing medical reports. I typed at least 40 yesterday, and that's not including all the doctors' names I came across.

The following are guidelines for you to think about when naming your children:

• Don't give your boys girlie sounding names like Iris. (I'm sorry if you didn't get the girl you wanted, but naming your son Rose won't change that.)
• It's also confusing when you give your daughter a traditional boy name like Randy or Jimmy.
• Don't name your kid after your favorite band. (Van Halen only works for a band, not a kid.)
• It's OK if you don't want to name your son after your husband's favorite football player even if not many people remember him years later i.e. Rulon Jones. Yes, I do happen to remember Rulon Jones playing for the Broncos, but I still don't like the name.
• If you last  name is Richardson do NOT name your son Richard... Let's be just a tad more creative, shall we?
• Remember that your 4 to 5-year-old will have to learn how to spell their name. If you can't remember how to spell it, neither can they. (As a side note, when they go to the doctor and that doctor dictates a report he'll most likely spell out Smith or Jones but not Jehosaphat or Jmarion. Someone has to figure out how to type that.)
• Naming your kid Princess or King (or Prince Michael II) isn't as cute as you think it is.
• Maybe it's not a good idea to give your two boys names that start with the same letter. It's hard enough to remember their names... Trust me. I speak from experience.
• It's confusing for everyone if you name your twins Anaya and Zanaya. (And under no circumstances name your triplets Caleb, Caden, and Calen.)
• Sometimes you just have to go with the only name you and your spouse agree on, like Alexander.
• Sometimes you just can't decide on the correct name until you're filling out the paperwork at the hospital. (Your husband will like the name Adam better after you've gone through several hours of labor.)

I'm sure I've angered everyone who names their kids Prince Jehosaphat Rulon Jones, but I have to call it as I see it.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!!

Adam's Favorite Colors

Adam recently figured out a few colors. The first one he picked up was orange. Seems like a mouthful when he could have easily gone with red or green or something with one syllable. I'm sure he chose orange because he loves me and I love orange. (Really, I do.)

A couple days later he picked up another color. It was blue.

I find it very interesting that his two favorite colors are Denver Broncos colors. It must be a sign that we're finally raising a real fan! The other two do think that every other football team that plays (college, high school, NFL) is the Broncos, but I'm not sure they are true fans just yet.

So to go along with my post I thought I'd find a picture of Adam wearing his Bronco attire. Unfortunately, the closest thing I could come up with was this.

I'd just take another picture, but again we have no camera except Doug's phone and I never get anything uploaded off of that.

I did notice that we seemed to have TONS of pictures of Mary wearing Bronco clothes. I thought about photoshopping out the poorly done ponytails (my work, unfortunately) and just telling you it was Adam, but something didn't quite feel right about that. If you ditch the hair she and Adam do look quite similar.

They're so cute I decided to post them anyway.

I suppose I could have said this was Adam, but it is still Mary.

In honor of Doug... Happy Draft Weekend!

I hope all you Bronco fans are now Tim Tebow fans (Doug is not...).

The Maid

A few weeks ago Mary informed me that I needed to stop treating her like a baby.

So in an attempt to do just that I came up with a new idea to try to solve all the stress involved with trying to get them to pick up toys. Let's just say sometimes our "heaven on earth" disappears when it's time to clean up all the toys, shoes, books, etc.

I told Mary and Alex that I would give them some time to pick up and then if they didn't pick them up the "maid" could come and pick them up. However, the kicker was that maids get PAID to work. Whatever the maid picked up they would have to buy back.

Seems like a brilliant plan, right???

That remains to be seen.

Alex has never met money that he wasn't just dying to spend. So he'd rather just sit around and let me do the work and then get his bank out and buy it back. Maybe he'll learn his lesson when he's out of money. He'll run out of coins eventually.

Mary is a bit miserly at times and doesn't want to just shell out cash for no good reason. So this was pretty good motivation for her at first. Last Saturday afternoon I gave her 30 minutes to clean up the basement. She spent the whole time crying and sobbing about how she hated the maid game. She did manage to save some toys, but quite a few are sitting in the store room right now because she doesn't want to buy them back. Maybe I'll just donate them to Good Will soon. She was not thrilled when she had to buy back her jacket so she could wear it to school.

They did do better yesterday when I had them get started first thing in the morning BEFORE they were worn out from playing all day. While they picked up they were even singing, "It doesn't matter who it is." (I'm pretty sure they meant it doesn't matter "whose" toy it was as they picked up and didn't worry whether or not it was their own toy or someone else's.)

Don't Let The Innocent Face Fool You

The other day when I got out of the shower I heard one of the boys crying a bit. It sounded more like an argument over Hot Wheels so I didn't worry too much about it.

I went back into the bathroom for a minute and when I came out I heard the crying again. This time it sounded a little more serious and I was pretty sure it was Alex.

But the sound was a little muffled.

Then I heard Alex screaming, "I'm outside. I'm outside."

He had gone outside for a few minutes in his pajamas with snow boots (really stylin') and Adam had somehow managed to lock the door. Not the deadbolt, just the regular lock on the knob.

I immediately opened the door. His hands were really cold. Fortunately, it was a spring day and was only about 30-40 degrees outside instead of some middle of the winter day that was 2 degrees. So he got bundled up in my bed to warm up and was good as new.

I know some of you may be thinking that I need to rearrange my showering schedule because Adam seems to do all his dirty work while I'm in the shower, but since that's about the only time I have unless I want to get up at 5:30 a.m. (no thanks!) we'll just have to survive this and HOPE he grows out of it.

Bad Marketing Strategy

So yesteryday Mary and I took a quick trip to Walmart. (Yes, I know I'm helping bring about world chaos, but it's affordable.) Mary really needs new school shoes. Of course she's still at the age when she wants Tinkerbell shoes or Princess shoes or something like that. Unfortunately, her feet are older than her mind so they don't tend to make those in her size anymore... We've been to Payless and Target already and can't find anything. We struck out again at Walmart.

However, Walmart had put a lot of things on clearance like snow boots and clothes and stuff. I found myself this cute little pair of capri type pants for $5. And lo and behold they actually had a pair that was the same size as the pair of pants I wore to Walmart (which are actually slightly loose). I had to get home quickly because Doug had to go to work so I just grabbed them and ran.

I brought them home and tried to try them on... I barely managed to get them pulled up, but there was NO WAY ON EARTH I was going to get them zipped and buttoned. They were at least two sizes to small.

Doug started chuckling as he watched this go on. He attempted to save himself by claiming that he was only laughing because it looked like I was trying to put on little girl pants.

So now I realize that if I actually wanted to buy a pair of those pants to wear any time soon I'd have to actually buy a pair that was labeled to be at least two sizes larger than any of my other pants. How clueless are they??? What woman in her right mind would want to buy pants that make her feel fatter than she already feels. I'm not exactly thrilled about the size I am right now. (I'm not sharing that secret, but I'm not a size 1.)

Now I know why so many pairs were on clearance at Walmart for $5. Not exactly a great way to make money unless of course they only paid 50 cents to some sweatshop worker in Bangladesh...

Go Duke!

I had the great wisdom and insight to pick Duke to win the NCAA tournament (OK, it was just a lucky guess) and am now the caretaker of the family trophy for the next year. (Well, first I'll have to get it from Stephanie's family in July when we are at my mom's house. We're all generally too cheap to actually pay to ship the trophy around.)

Ordinarily I wouldn't have necessarily cheered for Duke per se. I would have chosen to cheer for Butler, the underdog. However, I chose to cheer for Duke since I picked them to win it all when I filled out my bracket at the beginning of the tournament. And I needed the 32 points I'd get if they won in order to beat Randy who did such an excellent job of picking all the early round upsets.

Hope You Had a Great Easter!

As I may have mentioned before... Our digital camera grew weary of the abuse and died. Yes, sometimes Alex played with it, and sometimes I even knew about it and didn't stop it. When he plays with the camera this is the kind of thing you find later...

So I have no pictures of this Easter. So I decided to put up pictures of last Easter because I didn't have a blog then. The kids and I spent Easter at my parents house. We mostly went for a party for my grandpa's 90th birthday. It was also nice to be there for Easter too. My sister Stephanie and her kids made it down also. I somehow missed getting pictures of all 8 kids (well maybe 7 as we probably didn't let Adam do it) dying their Easter eggs, but it was fun.

These are the kids getting ready to go do their egg hunt that Matthew helped me put together for the younger kids. (Apparently being 11 means you're too old for egg hunts. Of course we snuck plenty of candy while we were putting the eggs together.)

Here's Alex out hunting around for eggs. (Yes, his shirt is on backwards.) I don't remember how big his "take" was on the hunt last year, but this year he managed to find more eggs than Mary. She celebrated too much after finding each egg I believe.

Anorther egg hunt picture.

Here are the pretty girl cousins in their cute Easter dresses.

And here's the silliness that arises when you add the boy cousins into the mix. (Aaron, did you teach Josh that pose?)

A good time was had by all. In addition to celebrating Grandpa's 90th birthday we got to celebrate my Dad's 64th birthday. (They have the same birthday.)

This Easter we didn't do anything too exciting. We stayed home and had an egg hunt in the basement. The Easter Bunny also brought bubble blowing stuff and sidewalk chalk. Adam really loves his "colors." Unfortunately, he never remembers to pick them up and bring them back inside so they are now covered in a few inches of snow. Apparently the bipolar nature of March's weather has carried into April. It's supposed to be 70 degrees on Friday.