A child's lyrical interpretation :

I am a Child of God
I am a child of God,
And so my knees are grey.
(And so my needs are great.)

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Twinkle twinkle yittle (little) star,
How I wonder what you are.
Ba ba ba ba world so high.
(Up above the world so high.)

9:31 PM








...4 hours later.

I applaud my children on consistency with good manners. Tonight I asked a tired Sarah if she was ready for bed. She replied, "No, dank (thank) you."

This evening Bradley was quick to remind me of his much deserved piece of candy for pooping in the toilet earlier. Having not witnessed the event, I was skeptical. But Emily emphatically stood up for her little brother and verified, "He did poop on the potty! He did! I saw it! But we can't show you because he flushed it. It was a man-sized poop!"

Bradley's "favorite grey" pants and favorite orange elephant shirt.

Bradley is our most independent child. He selects his outfit and dresses himself everyday. This picture shows his absolute favorite outfit of "favorite grey" pants and elephant shirt. If he could, he would wear it everyday. The other day he put on a red American flag T-shirt and red pants. Five minutes later he came out of his room wearing the same shirt with jeans.

I asked him, "Bradley, what happened to your red pants?"

He metrosexually replied, "I can't wear two reds."

I think most good mothers try to monitor the amount of television their children view. I have yet to determine how much is too much. I typically justify that if I am sitting on the couch with them, then that time spent is not allocated towards "too much." Today as I was trying to clean up lunch and the plucked purple grapes scattered on the kitchen floor, the kids were mesmerized by the current episode of Dora. To pull them away from the TV, I decided to engage them in an active learning activity of sorting the Halloween candy. My next goal is deciding how much is too much sugar.

Happy 2nd Birthday Sarah!

I think most mothers despise the Nickelodean cartoon, SpongeBob Squarepants. I happen to love the cartoon and find the nautical nonsense very humorous. I welcome any opportunity to sit down and watch it with my children. Today we had SpongeBob macaroni and cheese and pineapple for lunch. Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? SpongeBob Squarepants!

Sarah turns two tomorrow. I need to go visit my stash of clearance item toys in my closet to decide what I am going to wrap for her.

A Birthday Cake

Today Emily's friend, Lana, came over to play. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.
She said, "I don't know. I don't want to grow up."

I wish my kids said that.

Wendy can get herself from on her hands and knees to the sitting position. She also pulled herself up to standing in her downstairs crib today. Go Wendy! Go Wendy! Go, go, go Wendy! She is the earliest of all our kids to be able to do that. She wants so badly to be one of the big kids. I write this not to brag about my baby. I'm simply documenting. My blog is my journal, my kid's baby books, and maybe a future book of how to survive motherhood when your children are insane.

Tonight I decided to pour myself a nice refreshing glass of caffeine-free diet Pepsi before retiring to bed. Normally the caffeine-free soda is reserved for the children. I was quickly reminded why parent and child food and beverage items should never be mingled. The chunk of hot dog in the two liter bottle had infused the already flat soda with a nice Oscar Mayer beefy flavor. Not the most tasty night cap, but it was new and unusual. Maybe I will suggest it to Pepsi-Cola. They could call it Wiener Juice. Oh...wait...bad idea.

Tonight I went to Walmart. The portrait studio was gone! That is a big deal, you see, because I came up with this crazy idea when my first baby was born that I would get her picture taken once a month for her first year, every three months the second year, and once a year every year thereafter. It was a fine idea at the time and I remained faithful and diligent for the first two kids. But now that the fourth child is here, it is a little bit more difficult to actually care to take the time to make the appointment and find the time to go alone with her. (I still love you Wendy.) So her six month appointment totally got neglected and I totally failed to live up to my goal. When I saw the former portrait studio turned H & R Block tax center, a part of me was saddened, but a more part of me was delighted to know I no longer had to deal with the stress of dealing with an underpaid, inexperienced photographer trying to get seven good poses of a wobbly infant. I have probably just added seven years to my life by reducing a stress factor. Thank goodness for digital photography. I plan to take the monthly photos at home and at the year mark go to JC Penney. Parenthood requires adaptation.

Ring around the Rosies

Our Family
Emily's joke:
Knock knock.
Who's there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange farts.

Wendy is crawling. Bradley pinched his penis in a DVD case yesterday.

Every good mother should have some bubble wrap on hand. It keeps kids entertained for a good amount of time.

Have you ever been distracted from a distraction of a distraction of the original task at hand? I am very good at it.

Working Hard.

My whole spelling life (24 years) I have used the spelling dilemna. Today I found out it is actually dilemma while spell checking an email. I thought for sure my spell check was insufficient. So I went to my trusty friend Google. I was insulted when even he immediately blurted, "Did you mean: dilemma?" What? No! Have I really been wrong all these years? Apparently, according to my research, there is a generation of people that were taught this irrational spelling . Obviously a generation before spell check because there is no alternate spelling in any dictionary for this word. It's too bad. I always thought dilemna was a cool word. Now it is boring because it is spelled exactly how it sounds.

Why do kids have to step on everything that is on the floor, especially boxes?