Oh, Anna

As we were leaving for Awana last night, Anna realized she couldn't find her Awana bag that has her book and vest.  I told her she had a couple minutes to look for it while I got the twins ready, and she got mad, telling me, "I put it in my locker.  I saw it in my locker yesterday."  Kate suggested she check their bedroom, but Anna insisted it was in her locker yesterday.  As the search progressed, Anna started blaming me, telling me I moved her bag, because it was in her locker yesterday.

As we were backing out of the driveway, she was so angry, shouting,  "You lost it, Mom!  It was in my locker yesterday."

When we arrived at Awana, the commander saw Anna coming and reached down under the registration table and pulled up Anna's bag, holding it out to her.

Anna happily skipped over and took her bag, saying, "I thought I might have left it here!"

Oh.  My.  Goodness.

Anna's wedding

As the girls were getting ready for bed the other night, Anna said, "You know, everyone always says Joey and I are going to get married, so I'm just going to show them, and we will get married."

I didn't really see the logic, but I just asked, "Oh?"

"Yeah, Mom, just so you know, we really are going to get married.  We've talked about it."

"Oh, I didn't realize you'd talked about it!" I replied, hiding my amusement.

This morning as I was doing Anna's hair, she told me, "Cheyanne wants to be our 'bridemaid.'"

"Oh, what did you tell her?"

"We said she could be.  Well, I said she could be.  Joey just said, 'Um, okay.'"

That sounded about right for wedding planning.

Later Anna asked Kate if she was going to marry Wesley or Xavier.  Kate, always the pragmatist, said, "I don't know who I'm going to marry.  Mommy didn't meet Dad until college."

I thought this was a very good point, so I told Anna that was true.  Then I continued and told her when I was her age I thought I was going to marry a boy named Aaron, but I was really glad I didn't, and that I was so lucky to find Daddy.

Anna, always the romantic, told me, "I think I'm luckier, because I found Joey in Kindergarten."

Breakfast smoothie

I was upstairs when Kate called me.  I couldn't hear her, so I told her I'd be right down.  When I got downstairs she said, "Just look in the kitchen."

I first noticed the floor.  An entire quarter of the kitchen floor was covered in purple splashes and smudges.  Then I saw the wall, the closet door, and the refrigerator were covered with purple splashes.

Ally's blueberry spinach smoothie.  She must not have finished it... so Finley did.  I was furious.  Blueberries stain.  I was about to grab Finley and drag her to her kennel for a time out to beat all time outs... until I looked up and saw her.  

She was streaked in purple and looked so sorry.  And so sad.  And maybe disappointed that she'd just committed such a crime, and for what?  For some blueberries and spinach?!  

I took a picture of her and then went in the other room and laughed!

Fishy kisses

Ally often asks me to give her "fishy kisses," where I suck in my cheeks like a fish to kiss her.  When she returns my kiss with a fish face of her own, she needs a little assistance from her fingers.

40 degrees

It hit 40 degrees, and after the winter we've had, families were gathering at the park like it was summer.  Kids were playing soccer and riding bikes, dogs were playing, and the grown ups were standing around talking.  We even flew a kite.

Ally loves music

Ally really likes music.  She'll walk around singing.  I'll often hear bits of songs like, "Let it go, Let it go," "Genesis, Exodus, 'Lebiticus',"  "L, M, N, O, P," or "Nationwide is on your side!"

Yes, she loves that Nationwide song.  I'm not sure when she even heard it.  It's not advertised on their kid shows; maybe it was during a ballgame.  But, anyway... she loves it.  And, it cracks me up.

The other day we were pulling into the garage.  I was slowly trying to pull forward to the whiffle ball hanging from the ceiling, so I wouldn't shut the garage door on my trunk (again), but not so far that I ran into the stroller.  As I was concentrating, Ally sang out, "Nationwide is on your side!"  And for a moment, I was pretty sure I was going to get 15 seconds of fame during a commercial break.

Conceal, Don't Feel

Well, Kate and I have reached a new milestone.  I am now officially capable of inadvertantly embarrassing her.

A few weeks ago, we were going to see Frozen. She'd seen it with Dave, but it was going to be my first time seeing it.  I'd heard the soundtrack countless times and knew enough of the storyline to know there was a part that would make me sad.

Kate had recently told me  I was "so sensitive" when I cried during a book we were reading, so I informed her that I might cry during the movie.  She begged me not to.  I laughed and told her I probably would, and she kept asking me not to.  I finally told her it would be dark and no one would see me.  But, when the part came, and tears were in my eyes, she was horrified.

Dave bought the movie this week and we were watching it downstairs yesterday.  I again cried at the part and Kate looked at me and said, "Mo-om!"

I told her, quoting the movie, "Kate, in order not to cry, I'd have to 'conceal, don't feel, don't let them know'."

She responded, "Cool.  Do that."

"I love you."

Say what you want about gender equality, but I hold that even young boys and girls are different.  As I've said before, I gave my girls toy cars, and they had them talk to each other and Kate put them to bed next to her in her crib, as if they were dolls.  And, since I've had a boy, I've found he is slightly more obsessed with his genitalia then any of my girls.

Luke was sitting on the toilet and I was sitting on the stool next to him waiting for him to finish.

He said, "I love you."
"I love you more," I replied.
Then he tooted.
I asked, "Ooh, what was that?"

"A toot!" he proudly replied.

"I think that was your bottom saying I love you," I told him.

Then, in a high pitched voice, he said, "I love you," and explained,  "That's what my penis said."

On papier mâché and televisions

I love to do crafts with my kids.  Sometimes I think this makes other mothers feel just a twinge of inadequacy.  But, if I'm completely honest, I do it because I like it.  Truthfully, I don't really like playing dolls.  And, you know what else?  I really don't like playing games with my kids.  I find a game of Sorry to be tedious, Candyland excruciating, and Chutes and Ladders a kin to torture.  So, if we have an afternoon to pass in the house, I whip out the crafts.  Not because I'm a good mom, but to fend off the bored games... Fruedian slip?  I mean board games.

The crafting has always worked well for me.  Kate loves doing crafts and now comes up with her own to do with the twins.  Anna is really artistic and she'll start out doing what I'm doing and then take it in her own creative direction.  It worked out perfectly until yesterday.

There's a sculpture of Noah's Ark in the entrance of the JCC.  Whenever the twins and I walk past it, they both yell in unison, "Noah's Ark!"

Yesterday, after their exclamation, I had an idea, "You know, guys...  We could make our own Noah's Ark at our house."  Excited, I continued, "We could use cardboard and papier mâché.  It could be nice and big, and you two can make a bunch of animals to go in it!  What do you think?"

Ally smiled a little, so I looked at Luke.  He wouldn't make eye contact.  He just let out an exasperated sigh, "Ugh!  Can I just watch TV?"

Last night, I told Dave what Luke said, and Dave started laughing.  "I blame you," I sulked, "He's definitely your son."

Dave laughed harder and proudly agreed, "Yes, yes he is."

Hair cut choices

I took the kids to get their hair cut last week.

A bleach blonde woman asked Ally, "Do you want to sit in this seat or in the car seat, Darling?'

Ally replied, "In the car-seat-darling, please."

Three-year-olds

I've been the lead teacher for the three and four-year-olds at Awana (our Wednesday night program at church) because the teacher I usually help lost her husband last week.

Teaching is normally easy for me.  I've taught something or another my entire adult life: fifth grade, sixth grade, other teachers, third/fourth grade, Sunday school, Children's Church for Kindergarten through sixth grade, groups of parents...

But I've learned something about my capacity as a teacher.  I don't do three-year-olds.

Not only am I dealing with a pair of three-year-olds all day (and night) every day, so I've kind of had enough of them, but I there's something about a herd of 15 three-year-olds that kind of scares me.  I can't really reason with a group of them, and I'm too much of a control freak to just go with their flow.  I get anxious when I'm helping out every Wednesday, but at least then I'm just kind reigning them in.  When it came time to teach them, it was obvious I just don't get them.                                                  

Here's a funny story from this week.  The lesson was David and Goliath.  In order to help the kids visualize how huge Goliath was, I drew a 9' 9" Goliath on a roll of paper.  My plan was for the kids to color him in while we waited for everyone to arrive.

Before they came, I was asking my helper, "His clothes were made of leather, right?  So those would be a dark brown?  What about his chest shield?  It must have been metal.  Was that bronze?  Should it be light brown?"

When the first kids arrived, I explained that this was a picture of a real person who lived in the time of the Bible.  And he was really this big.  Then I had a discussion about how he needed to be colored in, even his skin.  It wasn't white like the paper, so we had to color it.  In fact, I explained, it was probably darker than ours, since he was a Philistine.

So, I began handing out crayons.

I soon realized I needn't have worried the shade of his skin or whether his shield was bronze.

They're THREE.  What about this do I not understand?  Apparently just about everything.

Clutter

I was feeling like I spent most of my days cleaning up after the kids or making them clean up.  I was getting increasingly frustrated. 

If I'd broach the topic, many of my friends confessed to feeling the same way.  Older women would me to let the house be and enjoy my kids, but I worried if I let the house be, there might not be room to walk, much less enjoy my kids.

One day it finally dawned on me.  The problem was we had too much stuff!  The next afternoon, I packed up six paper bags of toys to donate, and nervously waited for the older kids to come home from school.  Anna had always panicked at the thought of giving up any toys.  The kid has even shed tears over us recycling empty food containers or tissue boxes.  I braced myself for their reactions, but, shockingly, no one even noticed.  

I couldn’t believe they hadn’t noticed until I realized I’d only given away about 10% of the toys.  Then I reasoned that translated to just 10% less cleaning time, and I decided that wasn't good enough.  It also occurred to me that everything was neatly packed on shelves.  Neatly packed.  And it dawned on me how hard it must be for my kids to put things away on those shelves, like a complicated puzzle.   

So, I was determined to make some changes.  The next day, I packed up another 3 paper bags of toys to donate.  Then I got stuck, because I didn't feel like I could give away more of their toys.  So I began packing things up in big storage tubs and putting them in our crawl space.  

There were things that I had a hard time packing up.  I would look at the puzzles and think, I can't pack these; they’re educational.  But then I reminded myself that they hadn't done puzzles in a year.  I packed up most of them, leaving just a few out.  I was momentarily worried the twins would be found “deficient in animal recognition” when they started school if I packed up the toy zoo, until I told myself having a mom interact with them more (rather than running around cleaning up) would teach them way more than toy animals collecting dust on a shelf.

That afternoon, I packed up three big tubs.  This time the kids noticed, but no one complained.

The next day I watched my kids go to play after breakfast, all four of them sprawled out in the now roomy playroom. I noticed how quickly they chose something to play with and then they all began playing together.

And I realized that my kids had previously been overwhelmed by the sheer number of toys.  I’d assumed they were attached to their toys, but they actually prefer having space and a reasonable amount of choices to choose from.  Kids don't need tons of toys, they need room to play.

That morning, as my kids made a town from Duplo blocks, they didn’t waste time searching through loads of toys to find plastic Little People houses, they built their own houses out of books. And they used wooden blocks to make roads.

And I thought of how an over abundance of toys stifles creativity.  When we give our kids toys with every possible accessory, they never have to use their imagination or make their own.  

The next day, I packed up two more tubs right in front of them.  Anna did ask about it, but I explained, "I'm just putting these in the crawl space so we have more room to play.  Let me know if you want something back."  It's been over a month, and there are seven tubs in the crawl space, and they have only asked for one thing.

And something amazing happened.  About a week after I’d packed up a third of their toys, Anna who we had termed “our little hoarder” actually wanted to give something away. It seemed like a miracle, but it's more likely she liked the freedom from clutter and she realized she didn't need all the things she thought she did.  I feel the same way.

France

Anna expressed an interest to visit France.  I was impressed with her desire for culture, even if she did refer to it as "that island where they speak French," until she explained that she wanted to go there so she could eat a lot of French fries.