Halloween

Once again, life has gotten in the way of me blogging as much as I would like. There have been a few major events that are just waiting to be put down. Here we go!

Halloween was a success! I don't sew, I am not particularly crafty or creative, and I am cheap. At the same time it is important to me that my kids feel like they are as pretty, scary, silly, or cool as all the other kids on Halloween. This creates a great deal of anxiety for me. This year we borrowed an Esmeralda costume (Hunchback of Notre Dame) for Rachel, and a bumble bee costume that would have worked for Lilly or Carson from a neighbor. I talked Lilly into being a 50's girl since I already had a poodle skirt, and just assumed Carson would be ok with the bee costume. A couple of nights before Halloween he insisted that he wanted to be a t-rex. He insists on so very few things, and I wanted him to get his way, but there were no dinosaur costumes to be had, and no time or money to hunt one down. I talked him into being a bad guy, a costume that consisted of a brown smock, one of my scarves tied around his waist, a bandanna and some scary make-up. Lilly ended up with the bee costume after she informed me she didn't even know what a 50's girl is. Emmy dressed as a 50's girl, and everyone was happy. I was once again reminded how little my children need to feel satisfied. And the most important part to them was that they got candy anyway!

Emmy walking

Emmy finally took her first real steps on Halloween, which makes her my second child to do this (Lilly being the first). This would be more impressive if she weren't almost 16 months old. She still prefers crawling to walking. She does do this funny thing while I am exercising. She crawls over to me, stands up, and tries to mimic what I do. So, my baby won't walk, but she can do squats and burpees!

Rachel opening presents

Rachel had a birthday. My baby is seven years-old now! She asked for a Power Rangers cake which my neighbor was nice enough to make. For months she has been saying that for her birthday she wants to go to Big Al's Arcade with her dad. We let her choose two friends to go with her. She picked Livvy and her cousin Brady. I think it was a success since she was all-smiles when she came back. They decided to watch The Princess Bride after the Big Al's adventure. Lilly watched too, and all was fine until the scene where Buttercup and Wesley are attacked by the rodent of unusual size. When Wesley kills the giant, disgusting, man-eating rat, Lilly refused to watch another second of the movie, out of concern for animals everywhere. So they all made up a play for me instead. Rachel has learned from me. She spent the entire month leading up to her birthday using the "it's almost my birthday"card. "Mom, can I stay up since it's almost my birthday?" "Can I have the biggest pancake since it's almost my birthday?" "Can someone spend the night since it's almost my birthday?" The day after her birthday she asked if she could stay up late since "it was just my birthday?" That one got a roar of a laugh from me, and put an end to the month of entitlement.

Lilly's best friend got a new bike for her birthday. Lilly was bitterly jealous, which is uncharacteristic of her. She wept and cried because she doesn't have such a cool bike. I understood her disappointment, but I was not very accommodating to the huge fit she was throwing. It seemed ungrateful. Ok, I am warning you that what I am about to tell you does not show me in my best light, and was admittedly a mother-fail on my part. I told Lilly there are children in the world who don't even get to eat, let alone have a bike. And since she has both food and a bike she should stop complaining. She did not believe that there were really children in the world with no food, so I pulled up some images of starving children in Africa. It turns out a white child in America cannot relate at any level to the images I showed her. To her, these children did not look like children, they just looked scary. She wept even harder as she asked me the following three questions "Why did you show me those?" "Why are their bones sticking out of their skin?" and "Why are they green?" It was a devastating hour for both of us.

My kids playing outside AND getting along. My two favorite things! By the way, they are pretending they are in jail, and I put them there.

So we have been working with Carson on saying words right. He gets lazy and starts every word with an "h" sound. So "fire" is "hire" and "sandwich" is "hamwich". He has gotten much better about enunciating. His new thing is that the lines on the laminate floor in the kitchen are fire. So anytime I am cooking or doing dishes he comes in and articulates very slowly and firmly "I said to you this is FIRE!" I tried telling him that I am wearing fire-proof shoes, but he always says "no" in a tone that is similar to "duh". Aside from the fire thing, nothing really gets him riled up. Rachel karate kicked him the other day because he distracted her while she was playing an electronic game. Consequently, we took away her little game thing for a while. She was devastated. Even though Carson was the victim, he hugged her and patted her on the back to try and comfort her. He is such a nice, easy-going kid. I like him so much!