Ladies man

Today the kids, Judit, & I had coffee with our good friend Patrice before she leaves us to go teach in China.

During the course of the conversation Patrice told us a hilarious anecdote about one of her children when he was Bubby's age. In response to said anecdote (about who children imagine marrying when they're three), Griffin said the following:

"I'm going to marry Patrice! I'm going to marry ALL the ladies! I'm going to marry Sissy, I'm going to marry Patrice, I'm going to marry Judit, I'm going to marry mama. ALL these ladies."

Never go to Costco with your children

At least, never go ALONE with your kids.

The other day I decided that I lived in Bizzaro-World where I was an octopus woman with 8 arms and thus could totally handle taking my children on a trip to Costco, Office Depot, and the gas station all by myself. At snack time.

This was my dialogue with the children every 5-ish minutes.

"Griffin, we are inside, indoor voice please."
"Penelope, please stop walking backwards, you're running into people and it's rude."
"Griffin please get up off the floor."
"Penelope, while I appreciate your desire to help and push the cart, it weighs 6x as much as you do and you keep running into things. Please let mommy push."
"Griffin, my darling, get off the floor. Now."
"Penny, my sweet love, I think your song is beautiful, but we are inside and you need to lower your voice."
"Griffin. Off. Floor. Now. 1... 2..."
"Sissy, Costco is not an appropriate place to play hug-tag"
"Bubs, please walk on the side of the cart, not in front of the cart."
"Pen, please watch where you are twirling, you almost ran into that person"
"For the love of Zeus, Griffin Walter Rodgers, my sweet boy child GET OFF THE FLOOR."
"Yes Sis, that's a lovely pas de cheval, but the people behind you are trying to get to the giant tubs of mayonnaise, please move."
"Griffin, if you're going to attempt to slide on the floors then you're bound to get hurt. Get up and walk it off dude."
"Delpi, now is not the appropriate venue to race your brother."

Now, repeat.

At Office Depot I was having the "indoor voice" conversation for the 1,000th time when an older lady in front of me turned around and smiled at the kids and said.

"Wow, I wish that trick worked for my grandkids. They haven't gotten the hang of indoor voice yet."

I smiled, because neither have mine. The reminder works for 30 seconds until their brains reset and then I have to remind my son yet again that his banshee-like powers need to be disguised from ordinary people or else the government will come and lock him up and study his mutant ability.

We got our errands done with only 1 potty trip, no blood, 1 jammed thumb, no lost cars, no crying, 1 sibling argument, and 6 million requests for water.

Not bad.

I am NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN.

That's not funny, that's just not good

When I put the kids to bed I usually sing them a lullaby. They've come to expect this, and I'm happy to oblige.

Bryan's musical talents lie outside of vocal music and so he doesn't sing to them at night. Except the other night, when he sang them "Row Row Row Your Boat." While I'm sure they expressed the appropriate amount of gratitude the night of, I heard a rather interesting review of his performance tonight while he was at hockey.

G: I want a nigh-night song.... please. (the "please" was a decided afterthought)

P: Yes, please sing us a song.

M: Which one?

G: Rock a Baby!

P: You know mom, daddy can't sing.

M: *laughing*

P: (very seriously) No mommy, it's not funny. It's just not good. Daddy just can't sing.

M: Well love, not everyone is good at singing. But daddy's good at a lot of other things.

P: Yeah. Like playing, but not singing.

Mommy, where did you get me?

A few days ago Penelope asked this very simple, yet very complex question.

"Mommy, where did you get me?"

"Well love, what do you mean? Where did I pick you up today?"

"No. I mean where did you get me. Where did you first get me."

"Oh, I see. Well, I gave birth to you. I made you in my uterus, which is in my belly, and then I pushed you out."

"But how did you push me out?"

"Once you were big enough, the muscles in my uterus helped to squeeze you out of my belly."

"Oh" long pause "But where from your belly?"

"Here, let's get your birth book and look at pictures from when you were born" (note: these pictures don't actually show the birth)

"Oooh! Ok!"

We then spent the next 10 minutes going through all the pictures in both her & Griffin's yearbooks (books I made chronicling their first year of life).

It was a conversation I hadn't expected, but overall I think it went well. I'm sure we'll have this conversation over and over again - in slightly more detail as she gets older.

Ah, my precious love.

Another conversation we had recently was about love and marriage...

Penelope: Daddy, who is your best friend?
Bryan: Mommy.
Penelope: (laughing) No, she's your wife!
Me: We can be married and be best friends.
Penelope: My best friend is Kayla, but she's not my husband.
Me: No, no she's not.
Penelope: But mommy, princess can marry princess.
Me: Yes, sometimes princesses do marry princesses. If they love each other.
Penelope: And princes can marry princes.
Me: Yes, if they love each other.
Bryan: You can marry whoever you want, when you're 40.

I wasn't kidding when I said they don't stop talking

The car. Today.

Bryan: The guys at BNI were giving me a hard time about shaving my beard. I told them how I had it when I dropped off Penelope at dance class last week, came home and shaved it, then went to pick her up and she didn't recognize me. She finally said "Dad, where'd your beard go?"
Penelope (from the back): Yeah Dad, you just shaved your beard.
B: Yeah, but I'm growing a little back, just for you. (he's growing a goatee)
P: Will it be rainbow colored? Or just black.
Me: (DYING)
B: Probably just black. Is that ok?
P: No, I prefer rainbow colored.

Last night she had a dream that she was a big girl and could read all by herself.

Today she insisted on taking her new library book (Little House in the Big Woods) with us to dinner. As in she brought it into the resturant and flipped through it.

I like this new stage. It is full of awesome.

Out of the mouth of babes

Today was a play day and I realized that:

1. 4 year olds don't ever stop talking
2. Since they never stop, much of what they say is utterly ridiculous
3. 2 year olds are also chatterboxes, but 2 year olds with older sisters have a hard time getting in a word edgewise
4. Thus 2 year olds must invent even more ridiculous sayings in order to be memorable.

Today, after we made alien/spaceship Valentine's Day crafts, the kids pretended to be astronauts "blasting off" to various planets in search for food. Just so you know, here's what you can find in our solar system.

The sun: popcorn
Mercury: pudding
Mars: juice
The Moon: cheese (ok, so this one was mine)
Venus: cupcakes
Jupiter: lemons/pineapple
Saturn: soup
Neptune: ice
Uranus: apples

Then we had the following conversation:

Penelope, having returned from Jupiter (which, by the way, is the bush at the end of the driveway): "Look at this giant pineapple. It can talk! And since it can talk we will, of course, not eat it."
Me: "You're right, that IS a very large pineapple. And I've never met a pineapple that could talk before. How wonderful."
Griffin: "I'm Buzz Lightyear! Take that pineapple!" (kicks the air where said pineapple is sitting) 
Me: "oh Bubby, we need to be nice to sentient beings."
Penelope: "Nevermind mom, it's a dragon pineapple and it's evil. Let's kill it!" (joins her brother in kicking the air).

Later.

P: "Mom, which planet should I go to?"
M: "I dunno Sissy, which planet do you want to go to?"
P: "The forest planet I think, they have lots of pine cones there."
M: "Yes, I imagine they would."
P: "But there are a lot of chipmunks in the forest (whispers) but you'd better watch out because they might eat you."
G: "I can eat squirrels, they're deeeeeelicious!"
P: (aghast) "No, Bubby, you can't eat squirrels, they're senchen!" (read: sentient)

After bath:
P: "Mommy, I'm a superhero."
M: "What's your super power?"
P: "I fight crime."
M: "Sweet."
G: "Sissy is the best sister in the whole world."
M: (melts)

A Typical Evening

Fridays are unofficial movie nights - unless we have plans (and we usually don't). So Fridays go a little something like this...

4:00pm - kids get home from daycare. Snacks. Playing in the living room (i.e. pouring every toy they own onto the floor). Music. Dancing, gymnastics on the couch, screaming, at least one tantrum and at least one time-out.

5:15/5:30 - dinner... which usually includes negotiation (i.e. eat 2 more bites and you can have dessert and/or Griffin, eat something other than frozen peas please).

6:00 - bath time! This now includes Griffin peeing on the potty before he gets into the bath (woot!). Which, in addition to making me hopeful that potty training won't be a huge PITA, also means G no longer pees in the bath.

6:15 - movie! Tonight was Lilo & Stitch - which was the kids' first viewing. They didn't want to watch it at first, but quickly got into it. The four of us snuggled on the couch, Sissy with her head on B's chest and Bubba curled up beside me.

7:30-7:45 - end of movie - cue kids dancing around to the cheesy music at the end of the movie. Then Bryan teaches the kids "pantsing", which they think is HILARIOUS and then they demand to be pantsed. Griffin figures out how to pants himself and then runs around with his pajama bottoms around his ankles, laughing hysterically. Penelope asks B to imitate a character from "Phineas and Ferb", which he does to thunderous applause from the peanut gallery. Kids do somersaults off the end of the couch, twirl around the living room, and run from one end of the room to another copying some pseudo-karate moves one of their daycare friends must have shown them. Kids do.not.stop.laughing until Mommy makes them brush their teeth.

7:45-8:00 - reading, kisses, bed.

How you know...

So, how do you know when your toddler has seen "The Little Mermaid" too many times?

When you're out to eat and the first thing she does upon sitting down at the table is exclaim "Look Mommy, a dinglehopper!" and the proceed to comb her hair with a fork.

Also overheard today:

"Hi, my name is Penelope and that is my mommy Jessica and I am two. What's your name?"

AND

"Mama, you're big and daddy is big but Bubby is little. (pause) And I'm little too"

Squishy face

Griffin has a very special "look" that he saves for when he's trying to be particularly charming. We call it his squishy face.

It's hard to capture on camera because he reserves it for moments of extreme joy/silliness and for when he's doing some hard-core flirting. It's hilarious and most certainly not nearly as sexy as he thinks it is... Especially when he has food in his mouth.

We went out to dinner tonight since I came home from work, took one look at the kitchen, and gave up. It was just Dennys, nothing fancy. Across from us was a family containing a preteen girl with long brownish hair. Griffin was in love. He was constantly looking back to get a glimpse of her, grinning, hiding his head, and blushing. And flashing her this:




The squishy face.

Nice, right?

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Nice to meet you!

Pen's new trick is to ask to shake your hand. She then says "Nice to meet you!" Then she has you shake Woody's hand.

Over. And over. And over again.

It is HILARIOUS.

Tomorrow we take family pics. I'm not sure when I'll have finished products to share. We will get a CD of pictures so I'll be able to post quite a few on the blog.

Also? Molar #2 is peeking through. So we're up to 10 teeth. Neither molar is completely out, that will probably take a week or so at least. Possibly longer. Molars are the WORST (IMO) and it sucks that there's so many of them (well, for teething purposes, not for actual eating purposes).

Speaking of eating, we have discovered that Griffin loves bacon. So Penelope and I will be the vegetarians in the family and Bryan and Griffin can go on wild boar hunts or some other such nonsense.

Today's WIC experience

First: WIC is perhaps one of the most inefficiently run programs I have ever worked with - and I used to work in non-profit.

Today's appointment was a waste of time and going into the specifics only serves to piss me off. I'm tempted to write a letter to the director.

BUT, Penelope was hilarious while we were waiting. There was a little boy in the office who was probably around three. He wasn't much bigger than Pen, but his vocabulary was better. They were playing in the back area of the waiting room and Penelope thought he was hilarious. Some of her gems:

"Silly boy!"

"Robot shirt mama. Nice shirt boy."

"Boy funny!"

They were running around, falling on the ground, and laughing at each other. It was quite amusing.

Something funny

Penelope has this book called Language Nursery that has phrases in English, Spanish, French, Japanese, & Hebrew. I usually only read the first three since they're easy for me to pronounce and she's pretty impatient with the turning of the pages... anyway at the end of the book is a mirror and the phrase "my name is..." in all the languages. It's not generally her favorite page (her favorite page is the one with the lamb & it says "I love you lamb" in all the languages). Anyway, today she was fascinated by the mirror page and I asked her to give herself a kiss - she does, multiple times, slobbering all over the mirror.

I was amused.

She's also trying to open the front door - especially when Bryan goes outside. She doesn't want Daddy out of her sight and will crawl over to the door, stand up, and attempt to open the door all while yelling at the top of her lungs.

Alright, need to go finish holiday shopping today, should probably pack up the diaper bag and go!