Ways my kids have made messes today:
Tackling each other into piles of freshly folded laundry
Picking up handfuls of grass and dropping them into their kiddie pool (Grass soup)
Bringing in handfuls of grass to "wipe their feet with" before going inside
Tracking in muddy/grassy/wet feet through the kitchen on the way to the bathroom
Forgoing the bathroom altogether and just standing in the garage, peeing on the concrete (Owen)
Bringing a handful of dirt into their bedroom, them slowly stomping it into smaller pieces
Breaking all of their crayons into small pieces
Taking pieces of newspapers and printer paper and cutting them up into confetti-sized bits in the library for no apparent purpose
Yanking all the books around the one book they want off the shelf into a big pile on the floor, and then leaving all the books on the floor
Filling up plastic baggies full of water and throwing them against things
Running the powder room sink until it nearly overflows while they "wash their hands"
Playing in the ashes and cinders of the firepit
Touching their own poop (Owen)
Pulling of long sections of toilet paper to use as capes
Pulling handfuls of dirt out of the houseplants
Pulling handfuls of dirt out of the diorama we made for homeschool
Bringing in additional handfuls of dirt and stones from outside to add to the diorama we made for homeschool
Walking around in the basement in sockfeet/barefeet, then tracking it back upstairs into the kitchen
Sloshing water out of the bathtub
Searching for clothes in their dresser by pulling out anything that might be on top of the desired item/then leaving it on the floor
Using clothing as a napkin (Owen)
Using his own hair as a napkin (Owen)
Using my shirt as a kleenex (James and Owen)
Bringing a bucket full of legos into our bedroom and leaving them on the floor
Pouring themselves cups of water and then knocking them over with their elbows
Pulling all of the cushions and pillows off the couch
Refusing to eat the cone part of the ice cream cone, just sticking as much of their face as will fit inside
Noise pollution
Trailing any pairs of earbuds they might find behind them like a tail
Eating huge bites of an apple, then needing to spit it out into someone's hand. (Or onto the table)
Repeated changes from outside clothes to tiger costumes without ever putting clothes away/in the hamper
Spitting up on shoulders/down fronts/down backs (Felix)
Bonus quote: "YES! The Iron Giant is mine favorite AND thcary!"
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Wednesday, September 20, 2017
51/100
I.
“Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime, when I was widdle, I had a widdle bruvver, and his name was Uncle Woocas. And I had a pond, and there was a BEAR. And it was SCARY! But I fighted him wiv my sword and I knocked him down, and the bear...ate some garbage!”
“Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime, when Mommy was pregnant wiv Fewix, I had a baby in MY tummy, and it kicked my tummy and twied to knock my coffee cup down.”
James: “Owen, sometimes I think that you are not telling the truth.”
“No, no! Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime when I was widdle I went to wiv on the MOON! And do you know what was there? Dinosaurs! And they tried to eat me, and I wode in my time machine!”
James: “No you didn’t.”
II.
Friendly Neighbor: “Hi Owen, are you out for a jog with your Daddy?”
Owen: “Yes, and today is mine BURFDAY!”
Friendly Neighbor: “It is? Well, happy birthday!”
Me: “It isn’t.”
Friendly Neighbor: “Well, when is your birthday?”
Owen: “In OCTOBER!”
Friendly Neighbor: “And how old are you going to be?”
Owen: “I’m going to be FIVE!”
Me: “Nope.”
Friendly Neighbor: “Are you going to be two?”
Owen: <holds up three fingers and grins>
“Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime, when I was widdle, I had a widdle bruvver, and his name was Uncle Woocas. And I had a pond, and there was a BEAR. And it was SCARY! But I fighted him wiv my sword and I knocked him down, and the bear...ate some garbage!”
“Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime, when Mommy was pregnant wiv Fewix, I had a baby in MY tummy, and it kicked my tummy and twied to knock my coffee cup down.”
James: “Owen, sometimes I think that you are not telling the truth.”
“No, no! Wemme tell you a story. Onceuponatime when I was widdle I went to wiv on the MOON! And do you know what was there? Dinosaurs! And they tried to eat me, and I wode in my time machine!”
James: “No you didn’t.”
II.
Friendly Neighbor: “Hi Owen, are you out for a jog with your Daddy?”
Owen: “Yes, and today is mine BURFDAY!”
Friendly Neighbor: “It is? Well, happy birthday!”
Me: “It isn’t.”
Friendly Neighbor: “Well, when is your birthday?”
Owen: “In OCTOBER!”
Friendly Neighbor: “And how old are you going to be?”
Owen: “I’m going to be FIVE!”
Me: “Nope.”
Friendly Neighbor: “Are you going to be two?”
Owen: <holds up three fingers and grins>
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
50/100
I.
J: "I like this sign because it says to 'speak gently.' Do you know who we know that is SO good at speaking gently?"
James: "Who?"
J: "Nama is so good at speaking gently. She always thinks about her words before she says them, and she always says them in a very gentle voice."
Owen, cheerfully: "I don't!"
II.
At the liquor store
Lady in the line ahead of us: "Oh, look at this sweet little guy. How old is he?"
Me: "He is ten weeks."
James, not watching where he is walking, comes out from behind the lady, who nearly trips over him
Lady: "Oh, my! You surprised me!"
Owen, hopping out from behind a case of wine, in a tiger costume: "ROOARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!"
J: "I like this sign because it says to 'speak gently.' Do you know who we know that is SO good at speaking gently?"
James: "Who?"
J: "Nama is so good at speaking gently. She always thinks about her words before she says them, and she always says them in a very gentle voice."
Owen, cheerfully: "I don't!"
II.
At the liquor store
Lady in the line ahead of us: "Oh, look at this sweet little guy. How old is he?"
Me: "He is ten weeks."
James, not watching where he is walking, comes out from behind the lady, who nearly trips over him
Lady: "Oh, my! You surprised me!"
Owen, hopping out from behind a case of wine, in a tiger costume: "ROOARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!"
Monday, September 11, 2017
49/100
"Daddy, tell me a story from when you were little!"
This is a common request at the breakfast table now. Actually, it usually goes like this:
"Daddy, tell me a story from when you were little and Uncle Lucas was little and you had a pond!"
Owen is far more interested in hearing the various episodes of my childhood than James was at his age. So I tell him stories of adventures, clubs, scrapes, heroics, and near-misses, and at the end of each tale he always insists "and ANOTHER one!"
Often, though, having heard the story of Martha and the bear, he'll follow up the end of a story about breaking a window with a soccer ball or tipping a canoe over by asking "and then did the bear come?" I think he's a little disappointed that Martha's bear doesn't play a larger role in my childhood as a whole.
I think he has grasped the idea that the versions of myself and his uncles that appear in these stories were, in fact, little children, and he is spellbound by the idea of having lots of brothers to wrestle with, a big backyard for football and tag, woods to the North and the South, trees to climb, ponds to swim in, and a hedgerow. He usually wants more stories than I can remember in a single sitting, so if anyone does remember any particularly good County House Road tales, Owen would be happy to hear them.
And James is interested, too. As a matter of fact, he was drawn into a story I was telling Owen the other day about when I was in Kindergarten and I was terribly upset because I couldn't find my backpack anywhere and my Mommy and Daddy were laughing at me instead of helping me to find it, and I couldn't go to school without my backpack and the bus was going to be here any minute! (It turned out it was on my back the whole time.) James nodded along and asked whether I felt bad that people were laughing at me even though I was looking for it very hard. He's sympathetic to the frustration of not being taken seriously when you take yourself VERY seriously.
Owen was just disappointed that the bear didn't show up.
This is a common request at the breakfast table now. Actually, it usually goes like this:
"Daddy, tell me a story from when you were little and Uncle Lucas was little and you had a pond!"
Owen is far more interested in hearing the various episodes of my childhood than James was at his age. So I tell him stories of adventures, clubs, scrapes, heroics, and near-misses, and at the end of each tale he always insists "and ANOTHER one!"
Often, though, having heard the story of Martha and the bear, he'll follow up the end of a story about breaking a window with a soccer ball or tipping a canoe over by asking "and then did the bear come?" I think he's a little disappointed that Martha's bear doesn't play a larger role in my childhood as a whole.
I think he has grasped the idea that the versions of myself and his uncles that appear in these stories were, in fact, little children, and he is spellbound by the idea of having lots of brothers to wrestle with, a big backyard for football and tag, woods to the North and the South, trees to climb, ponds to swim in, and a hedgerow. He usually wants more stories than I can remember in a single sitting, so if anyone does remember any particularly good County House Road tales, Owen would be happy to hear them.
And James is interested, too. As a matter of fact, he was drawn into a story I was telling Owen the other day about when I was in Kindergarten and I was terribly upset because I couldn't find my backpack anywhere and my Mommy and Daddy were laughing at me instead of helping me to find it, and I couldn't go to school without my backpack and the bus was going to be here any minute! (It turned out it was on my back the whole time.) James nodded along and asked whether I felt bad that people were laughing at me even though I was looking for it very hard. He's sympathetic to the frustration of not being taken seriously when you take yourself VERY seriously.
Owen was just disappointed that the bear didn't show up.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
48/100
I. It's no secret that James has needed his "lovies" with a desperate intensity ever since he was little. First it was Steven Bear, and then George. There was a binky in there for a while too, and Thomas the train and Lightning McQueen have been necessities as well from time to time. We bought Owen his own Curious George just to keep him from grabbing James' all the time. I'm not sure that either of us thought he would get attached to it. But Owen loves "Dee" (from back when he couldn't pronounce "George") and he's been his unquestioned favorite bedtime friend. Still, even though he goes most places with Owen, it's never a big deal for Dee to be left home when we go out for groceries or to stay upstairs in bed for an entire morning. James would not have been able to handle these things, but Owen is just sort of less intense about everything than his older brother.
We couldn't find Dee last week. The first night, Owen took it in stride. He asked for him when it was time for bed. I told him that I couldn't find him anywhere in his room or in his bed, that I would look for him downstairs and bring him up if I found him. This was fine by Owen, and he went to bed without complaining. I looked through the downstairs and didn't find anything. The next day I don't think I thought about Dee again until bedtime. Owen asked for him again, and I said that I still hadn't found him, but this time I would really look hard.
I scoured the van, the closets, and looked under all the furniture. I went down to the basement and looked in the toy shopping cart that Owen likes to push him around in. I looked in the laundry baskets and behind books on the bookshelves. Neither J or I could find anything.
The next day we searched for real. I walked over to the neighboring playground and looked under the slides where the boys make "forts." When I was out running errands I stopped at the Wegmans' lost and found and asked if any stuffed animals had showed up. I made a note to call the other Wegmans that we'd been to that week and scratched my head in frustration. But Owen was nonplussed by it all. He didn't bring Dee up and didn't seem to miss him. He didn't even ask for him at bedtime that night.
The next day was an effort to find Dee, but really it was the long-delayed project of cleaning their room. "He has to be in here" we told each other. You couldn't see their floor for the mess, and we were sure he would turn up, and even bribed Owen into helping with the promise of looking for Dee while we did.
Nothing. The room looked great when we were done, and Owen asked at the end if any of us had seen Dee, but he didn't seem upset at all that we hadn't. He slept without him for another night without being bothered by it, and then the next day J got a message from our Kylie. It was Abby, and she was holding up a dirty monkey in a yellow shirt asking "Is this Owen's?" She quickly showed it to me, and then we called Owen over. I was expecting the same indifferent reaction. He saw his George and burst into tears.
It was a good night when J came back with him and we laid him in the arms of a sleeping Owen.
II.
James and Owen watched a bit of Fantasia the other day, the old/original one. They were both completely gassed out from having slept (but really, not slept) in the tent (in the living room) the night before. There was an hour left till bedtime, and we treated them to a couple scenes from a movie. I skipped the opening Toccata and Fugue sequence, and they watched a couple of the dances from Nutcracker. They didn't seem particularly interested, but were pleasantly spaced out on the couch. Then I remembered about the Rite of Spring animation.
"Do you guys want to see some dinosaurs?"
"Oh, yes!"
"I WUV dinosaurs!"
I skipped ahead. After a lot of initial complaining about "Where are the dinosaurs?"--there is a long opening sequence depicting the earth being formed--they started to get hooked, and when the dinosaurs came out they were both completely wide eyed. I had forgotten both how violent that cartoon is, and how explicitly it tells the story of evolution through chance and random cosmic upheaval. I wondered if any of it would stick to the next day.
It did. Owen woke up talking about how the dinosaurs could hear something. He'd then pretend to listen, and declare "It's a DINOSAURUS WEX!" And he'd run around shrieking and pretending to fight. James, on the other hand, declared that he was going to make a book of the movie. And he did. He drew scene by scene pictures of galaxies forming, nebulous clouds of gas becoming planets, comets flashing through space, violent eruptions of lava from the earth's volcanoes, amoeba-like creatures floating in the water, primitive undersea life, and then the entire dinosaur sequence. He stopped at one point and in near-panic declared "OH NO! I forgot about the part with the pterodactyls!" He even made the bit with the dinosaurs turning into skeletons at the end.
Oh, and they must have watched a little bit of the Beethoven Six sequence with Zeus, because he also made himself a bunch of paper lightning bolts that he was using to smite Owen.
We couldn't find Dee last week. The first night, Owen took it in stride. He asked for him when it was time for bed. I told him that I couldn't find him anywhere in his room or in his bed, that I would look for him downstairs and bring him up if I found him. This was fine by Owen, and he went to bed without complaining. I looked through the downstairs and didn't find anything. The next day I don't think I thought about Dee again until bedtime. Owen asked for him again, and I said that I still hadn't found him, but this time I would really look hard.
I scoured the van, the closets, and looked under all the furniture. I went down to the basement and looked in the toy shopping cart that Owen likes to push him around in. I looked in the laundry baskets and behind books on the bookshelves. Neither J or I could find anything.
The next day we searched for real. I walked over to the neighboring playground and looked under the slides where the boys make "forts." When I was out running errands I stopped at the Wegmans' lost and found and asked if any stuffed animals had showed up. I made a note to call the other Wegmans that we'd been to that week and scratched my head in frustration. But Owen was nonplussed by it all. He didn't bring Dee up and didn't seem to miss him. He didn't even ask for him at bedtime that night.
The next day was an effort to find Dee, but really it was the long-delayed project of cleaning their room. "He has to be in here" we told each other. You couldn't see their floor for the mess, and we were sure he would turn up, and even bribed Owen into helping with the promise of looking for Dee while we did.
Nothing. The room looked great when we were done, and Owen asked at the end if any of us had seen Dee, but he didn't seem upset at all that we hadn't. He slept without him for another night without being bothered by it, and then the next day J got a message from our Kylie. It was Abby, and she was holding up a dirty monkey in a yellow shirt asking "Is this Owen's?" She quickly showed it to me, and then we called Owen over. I was expecting the same indifferent reaction. He saw his George and burst into tears.
It was a good night when J came back with him and we laid him in the arms of a sleeping Owen.
II.
James and Owen watched a bit of Fantasia the other day, the old/original one. They were both completely gassed out from having slept (but really, not slept) in the tent (in the living room) the night before. There was an hour left till bedtime, and we treated them to a couple scenes from a movie. I skipped the opening Toccata and Fugue sequence, and they watched a couple of the dances from Nutcracker. They didn't seem particularly interested, but were pleasantly spaced out on the couch. Then I remembered about the Rite of Spring animation.
"Do you guys want to see some dinosaurs?"
"Oh, yes!"
"I WUV dinosaurs!"
I skipped ahead. After a lot of initial complaining about "Where are the dinosaurs?"--there is a long opening sequence depicting the earth being formed--they started to get hooked, and when the dinosaurs came out they were both completely wide eyed. I had forgotten both how violent that cartoon is, and how explicitly it tells the story of evolution through chance and random cosmic upheaval. I wondered if any of it would stick to the next day.
It did. Owen woke up talking about how the dinosaurs could hear something. He'd then pretend to listen, and declare "It's a DINOSAURUS WEX!" And he'd run around shrieking and pretending to fight. James, on the other hand, declared that he was going to make a book of the movie. And he did. He drew scene by scene pictures of galaxies forming, nebulous clouds of gas becoming planets, comets flashing through space, violent eruptions of lava from the earth's volcanoes, amoeba-like creatures floating in the water, primitive undersea life, and then the entire dinosaur sequence. He stopped at one point and in near-panic declared "OH NO! I forgot about the part with the pterodactyls!" He even made the bit with the dinosaurs turning into skeletons at the end.
Oh, and they must have watched a little bit of the Beethoven Six sequence with Zeus, because he also made himself a bunch of paper lightning bolts that he was using to smite Owen.
47/100
The second day of 1st grade. Still in pajamas, today's schoolwork done, in his G.R.O.S.S. treehouse with Hobbes and George. This was followed by a snuggling party. "A snuggling party is when you have a nice, quiet morning and you sit in a comfy chair with your friends and read books and be happy."
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