He Got the Job!

I was sitting here working at my desk when I overheard Mary and Alex playing just outside my office door.

Mary was giving Ironhide (transformer) a job interview. Her ponies needed protection from a dinosaur. She asked him questions like, "You only attack dinosaurs, right? Not ponies?"

Boy toys and girl toys can mix...

Of course before I could finish typing this a disagreement popped up once again.

Good times, huh?

Kiddie Lit

I've always enjoyed reading to little kids, even when I was a teenager and got to read to my little sister Dani.

We do quite a lot of reading at our house, and now Mary even gets to share a lot of the load. (She even makes up her own voices for different characters.)

Reading can even feel like a sport...

Once Mary got to school I started learning more about kid books, especially chapter books. I've discovered that there are REALLY, REALLY good kid books, like Junie B. Jones (that girl is hilarious).

There are some so, so kids books that don't bother me if they keep Mary excited about reading. Like a whole bunch of books about girls who  help fairies when Jack Frost causes trouble. (The author is Daisy Meadows... sounds made up, doesn't it?)

Whoopi Goldberg even wrote a few books about a girl whose mother insists she takes ballet even though she wants to be a speed skater and wear funky clothes that her mother designed. I was pleasantly surprised!

Then there are fairly obnoxious kids books like the Pony Pals... They get all preachy about animals and almost make you want to be in favor of trapping animals because they are so soap boxish against it. (I'm certainly not an animal trapper, though I wouldn't have complained if someone had trapped the large fox that came traipsing across our front lawn the other day while I was outside scraping paint off the house.) Doug absolutely LOVES (or not) reading those books. Fortunately, the author wrote about 50 gazillion different books about these girls. (Beware... don't call their ponies "horses." Apparently that's a major faux pas.)

I do enjoy going to the library with the kids though... I've discovered some really great books just waltzing around the kids section. Mary's a tad too young for some of them still, but I've enjoyed them.

One of my recent discoveries in the past few years is this:

The books have wonderful names like "The Wrath of Ezra." By the way... Ezra is a toothpick!!

The last book in the series (5) came out last fall. I was fortunate to find a fabulous sale on the first 3 at Deseret Book a couple years ago so I own those ones. Someday I'll get the last two. They're definitely worth reading more than once. If you like kiddie lit at all you'll enjoy this book. It's a similar reading level to Harry Potter so if you have kids that age go check them out (or just read them yourselves).

Anyway...

Happy Reading!!!

Is it too mean...

to give away all my children's toys or sell them on ebay or craigslist??? Part of me is willing to just trash them, but that seems a bit rash if someone else could actually enjoy them. (Or some other parent can deal with them.)

I confess the maid experiment has not been as effective as I'd hoped. I'm tired of getting paid chump change to pick up after my children. A real maid would get paid way more! (They still wouldn't be paid what they were worth probably, but still way more than I'm getting at a nickle a toy.)

And there are still toys EVERYWHERE!!!!

If anyone has any other brilliant strategies to transform my kids into toy picking up fanatics, please feel free to share them.

I Did It For Cindy!

Cindy is one of the 15-20 or so women I work with, though I've never actually met her. We all live scattered throughout the country and do everything over the internet. So we just chat through instant messenger and e-mail. While we haven't had time to get to know each other well in person, it's always nice to know I have a friend who is typing about bladder repairs or brain surgery or disc herniations at the same time I am.

For the past several months Cindy's been struggling with cancer. Through it all she still has time to think of others. She even sent us a card when my father-in-law passed away even though she was just getting done with surgery and starting to plan for chemo and all that not so fun stuff we all hope we never have to go through.

There's not too much I can do for her except type some of her reports when she's getting chemo or gets major vertigo and can't sit and type very well.

However, a few weeks ago I realized it was high time to cut my hair. I hadn't cut it in ages and I knew it was too long and hot to survive through the summer. (Hopefully summer will actually come to Colorado. We had snow again last week for crying out loud.)

Pantene works with the American Cancer Society to make wigs for women who lose their hair during chemotherapy. You can read more about it here... Beautiful Lengths

They require at least 8 inches, and fortunately I had 9 I could donate.

So in honor of Cindy (who already has a wig from others who have donated) I will be sending a 9 inch ponytail to Beautiful Lengths to help someone else who is struggling with cancer.

Mary told me I look like Elastigirl. Too bad I don't get to be super stretchy and bendy to go along with the haircut. She did later tell me that only my HAIR looked like Elastigirl so I guess that's why I didn't get the super powers and the fact that I'm not a cartoon.

Anyway... If you feel like letting your hair grow out or you've already let your hair grow out and now want it cut... send it on over to Beautiful Lengths. Or even if you don't have that much hair, I've heard hair is great for cleaning up oil spills so you can send it to the Gulf.

Cindy... You're always in our thoughts and prayers!

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.)