November 30, 2010

Rachel has been cutting her own pancakes for months. At first she was really proud of herself, but as time has gone by, she has begun to see it as a chore. She fights me on it every time we have pancakes. She begs and pleads with me to cut them "just one more time." I always refuse. The other morning we were going through our usual pancake routine and finally, thinking I could reason with her I said "Rachel, do you know why I won't cut your pancakes for you? Because it is my job as a mother to make sure you grow up to be a strong, capable, responsible..." this is where she stops me and says "No mom, I am going to be a super hero!" I am pretty sure she saw her mistake the same moment I did. "Fine Rachel! Do you think superheroes need their moms to cut their pancakes for them?" She cut her pancake without another word.

I loaded the kids in the car yesterday and went in to grab something. When I came back out I could here Rachel screaming for help. She sits between Lilly and Carson. As soon as I had put them in, Lilly totally clobbered Rachel. According to Rachel, Lilly hit her in the face "a lot of times" and then pinched her. Rachel had the marks to prove it. This is not the first time this has happened. We had a similar situation 2 days ago, except this time Carson and Lilly tag teamed her. I came out and Carson had a hold of her hair and Lilly was kicking her. Of course the mother in me scolded the little stinkers, but as soon as my face was hidden I couldn't stop smiling. I am sure Lilly sees it as her only opportunity to have a physical advantage over Rachel.

We had Thanksgiving at Sarah's house this year. My girls both thought marshmallows were their favorite part of the meal. Funny they failed to mention the sweet potatoes the marshmallows went on top of. Even though Carson can't speak, I am pretty sure marshmallows were his favorite as well. My family always does a great Thanksgiving meal, and an abnormal amount of pie. We had 12 pies, which worked out to about 1/2 a pie per person, and that is quite a bit less than last year. Of course we hardly put a dent in them, but we love to have the options. We had 2 pumpkin, 2 apple, 2 dark chocolate cream, 2 berry pies, banana cream, lemon meringue, peach, and pecan.

November 23, 2010

Lilly was a dog this morning. She yelped her way to where I was sitting and gave me a big slobbery dog kiss on the arm. Why is it that a dog can lick his butt, then lick a person and it is OK, but when a 3-year-old who brushes her teeth every day licks you it is disgusting? Lilly is an excellent pretender, and as such she did not see the problem with licking me as long as she was a dog at the time. Understand when Lilly is a dog, she is 100% a dog.



Dressing up for Trick or Treating mid-summer with Ian



Rachel is having a play date with Sarah Winger today. I use both her first and last name when discussing her with Rachel so she doesn't get confused between Sarah Winger and Aunt Sarah. Now every time she says anything to Sarah Winger she calls her by her full name. Sarah is a very sweet girl, but she is the youngest of 6 kids by quite a bit, and they very obviously adore her. I am not sure how she will handle having the noise, drama and teasing of 2 younger siblings around. Her family seems so peaceful!

Carson has a new word, one that I am sure he picked up from his sisters. Everything is "mine!" at the very least, and usually "Mine! Mine!Mine!..." I knew this day would come, but it is so annoying! The problem is it usually works to get him what he wants, thanks to Mother #2 and Mother #3 (Rachel and Lilly).

Since there is not much going on in our lives worthy of blogging about, here are some words before I forget:

Rachel calls bananas "blanas," piano is "plano" and for a while, yellow was "lellow". Shelby taught her to yell the first part to get it right, so now yellow is "YELL-ow!" Lying is not called lying, it is called "doing a lie" and instead of saying "are we" she says "is it we are". For example "is it we are going to swim lessons today?" Oh, another great one. She calls sweaty "slobbery," as in "my body is all slobbery."



Fun with Dad



Lilly calls seagulls "skeetos" (short for mosquitoes), computer is "peeter" (this is Rachel's as well), and my all time favorite, together is "togwether" as in "let's do it togwether".  With Lilly we are never going to the store, we are always going "out the store". And stop lights are "stop lions". When we are stopped at one Lilly says its eyes are closed. And if you try to tell her the right way to say it, I must warn you, you will lose.

Carson's word for everything is "uh!"

November 18th, 2010

Yesterday morning Rachel and Lilly got in a heated argument about which one of them was going to marry Carson. They brought their argument to me and I told them neither one of them can marry Carson because you cannot marry family members. Rachel looked disheartened. "Well can I marry Brady?" "No, because Brady is in your big family, since he is your cousin." She then put her head in her hands and asked "Who will be my husband?" "Someone you probably don't know yet" I answered. Then a very concerned, dramatic "how will I find a man?"

Rachel decided a few weeks back that she doesn't want to do karate lessons anymore because she "knows everything". This is also her justification by the way for not wanting to go to church. Lilly still loves karate, so she has continued on. Her class is in the evening now, so I leave the other kids at home and just take Lilly. It has been delightful to spend some one-on-one time with her. The first day while we were driving I was half listening to her and half listening to NPR. A few minutes into the drive I turned the radio off because Lilly was much more entertaining. I can't put it into words exactly, she just cracks me up.

Lyn (Shelby's step-dad) is coming to visit this weekend. This will be his first visit to our house. The kids have only met him a couple of times, but they are still excited. Mostly this is because they sincerely love the people in their world, but it doesn't hurt that he has agreed to teach them how to make candy while he is here. Rachel keeps asking how many sleeps until he comes. This is the way she counts her days.

November 16th, 2010

Our Internet went out today. The cable guy who came to look at it was very nice, and my kids talked his ear off. Rachel was asking questions about what he was doing and with each response given she retorted with "why?" Not to be ignored, Lilly chimed in with "I want to show him my owie." I asked the cable guy if that was alright, forgetting that Lilly's owie is located directly on the back of her middle finger. Essentially she flipped him off when she showed him. I have never seen a cable guy laugh so hard. He obviously also has children of his own.

I adore my children. Maybe I have a blind eye, but I am outrageously proud of the little people they are. Today at swim lessons, Rachel stood on the bottom of the pool for seven whole seconds! A class record. Lilly made it three seconds, and considering her age and size I think that is pretty darn good. I know these are little things, but I was beaming when they got out of the pool. I wanted to tell the other mothers "those are my kids!"

Lilly and Rachel at the FarmMan. Rachel is not amused!

Lilly and Rachel are really into playing make believe right now. Almost every aspect of their day includes imagining things differently. They want me to participate, but I am horribly adult about it. My imagination is seriously lacking from years of neglect. They are re-teaching me, but in the mean time they are scripting my part for me. With Lilly, it goes something like this: "And pretend I was the mom and you was the kid. And pretend I was leaving. OK sweetie, I will see you later. And then you says 'I love you mom'. And pretend you was scared so I got you a blankie. And then you says

(insert high pitched baby voice) 'oh no mom the monsters are going to get us!' and pretend I died." See, I hardly have to do a thing.

November 14th, 2010

Our computer crashed. We thought we had lost everything. All our pictures, my journal, and the journals I have been keeping for my kids. My awesome brother-in-law (shout out to Cody) fixed it for us and was able to restore everything. But, I have been without a computer for about a week, so no blog. Everything is back now, and here we go again.

We have been trying to get Lilly to stop sucking her thumb for months now, with no success. She just loves it so much. A couple of days ago I had the idea to bribe her with a treat of her choice if she could go all day without sucking her thumb. She did great! I did not see her suck her thumb once that whole day, and in the end, she chose ice cream for her treat. I was patting myself on the back for such an ingenious plan, and we were both excited to try it again the next day. I hadn't seen her suck her thumb yet the second day when I passed out the last of our Halloween candy. Lilly disappeared with her blue sucker and showed up a few minutes later with a blue tongue and two blue thumbs. She swears up and down that she did not suck her thumb, but the evidence was incriminating enough. It turns out all my plan did was teach her how to suck her thumb in secret.

Rachel and Lilly's new favorite game is "Restaurant". They usually coerce me to play it at meal times. In this game, I serve them everything they ask for (within reason). No wonder they like it so much! The plot of the game is always the same. Rachel and Lilly pretend their parents are dead, and they are the sole caretakers of their baby brother (played by Carson, but usually going by some other name). I am a kindly old British woman, who speaks in a sing-song voice and was never able to have children of her own. In the end, I offer to let them live with me. I can even get away with getting them to happily do their chores as long as I keep the British accent. The mastermind behind this game of course is Rachel.

November 4th, 2010

Rachel is officially 5 now. Yesterday was her birthday. She came up the stairs and the first thing she said was "is it I am 5 now?" Birthdays at our house are a big deal. Rachel got to pick whatever breakfast she wanted, and she settled on French toast, her new favorite. She did not have to perform her usual chores. I didn't even make her get dressed until we actually left the house (2-ish). After breakfast she watched How to Train Your Dragon, her new favorite movie. It was a day of "yes". I let her have candy whenever she wanted, watch whatever she wanted, go wherever she wanted. After she was done playing at home, she wanted to go to the park. Then it was off to the store to buy her presents. She played at the Fred Meyer play area while I shopped. We had dinner at Chuck-a-Rama, because there, she could eat whatever she wanted. She made a modest choice of one chicken leg and some macaroni and cheese. Then ice cream with M&Ms for dessert. After dinner we met uncle Cody at the Discovery Center. It was Rachel's first time there and she loved it!

All of this birthday stuff was hard on Lilly, even though she benefited greatly from the festivities. She ate candy when Rachel did, got to watch movies, got to play at the park, and got to eat what she wanted at Chuck-a-Rama. Unlike Rachel, she took advantage of the buffet, trying pretty much anything that looked good to her. Still, the attention was all focused on Rachel. As a result, Lilly had a few breakdowns. At one point, she was downstairs crying because she was all alone. I told her to come upstairs, and through her hysterical cries she said "are you going to spank me?" "Of course not," I answered, a little surprised. "Then what are you going to do to me?" Trying to be reassuring I said "I just want to talk to you." Well, this was not reassuring to her. "No!" she screamed "it will hurt my ears!" It was obvious there was going to be no appeasing her at this point. We decided to pretend it was her birthday too, but just for pretend. That seemed to help a little.

Overall, I think it was a successful day. The problem with having a birthday so great is the next day can be sort of a let down. Rachel had a hard time adjusting this morning when she learned that we were having eggs for breakfast, and that she was once again responsible for getting dressed and cleaning her room.

November 3, 2010

This is the first post in days. The reason for the gap in recent posts was the 400 pounds of apples in my garage that needed processing (no exaggeration). About a million quarts of applesauce, apple pie filling, and apple butter later, I am almost done with canning for the year. I am pickling beets tonight and then I am putting away my water bath.

In the mean time, much has happened here. Rachel had a family birthday at our house on Sunday. All of her most important little people were there. Namely all of her cousins. At one point she came inside quite indignant, and had this to say. "Sam is not being very nice! He is pushing Brady down and NOT ME!" What she meant was that Sam was pushing Brady down the slide. She was disappointed that instead of sympathy from us all she got was a big laugh. Speaking of big laughs, Lilly was the hit of the party. She was doing her best to get a rise out of everyone, and she did well. Lilly has so much personality. Everywhere we go, she makes people smile.

Carson is such a boy. His new way of showing affection to anything male is to tackle, hit, kick, or punch it. So if you run into him on the street and he attacks you, just know it is out of love. He thinks his boy cousins are the coolest. While Asher was giving the blessing on the food, Carson marched up to him, jumped on him, and pushed him down. We had to start the prayer over.

Yesterday Shelby took the kids with him to vote. He asked Rachel before they left if she wanted to go voting. On the way there she asked "what do you need to take on a boat?" Shelby told her she would need a life jacket and a swimsuit. She responded "Dad! I forgot my swimsuit!" She thought he had asked her if she wanted to go boating. Today I asked her how she liked voting and she said "there wasn't any water."

OK, really quickly. For Halloween Rachel was a princess for the 3rd year in a row, Lilly was a ladybug, and Carson was a lion. We did trunk-or-treating at the church Saturday night, and then we carved jack-o-lanterns at home. Lilly's was FREAKY!