Mister Doomsy

3 yo just informed us that Black Widow (Marvel character) has a brother named Mister Doomsy, who is 9 years old and wears a pink shirt, blue pants, and green shoes because that's the only clothes he has.

His attacks, apparently, are "punching gloves," which he has for his hands and his feet.

Sneaking out at night.

Me, to my teenagers: "You guys don't sneak out at night, do you?"

14 yo: "Uh...does the back porch count?"

16 yo: "If I'm sneaking out, I'm so sneaky that even I don't know I sneaked out!"

12 yo: "My friends all go to bed early, so there's nothing to sneak out for."

14 yo: "If you provide the Victorian clothes, I'll sneak out with you, Mom." (Man, I would do that!)

9 yo: "I sometimes sneak out to the freezer to get a pizza."

14 yo: "Sometimes I sit on the front porch and whittle at 3 am...."

I guess every time they've snuck out at night, I've proposed it. I'm good with that.

And now they're teasing me because I'm awake all night anyway....I mean, I asked them all this at 3:45 am, when nobody was willing to get in bed.

Kids are so funny!

Me, explaining to 3 yo that her grandparents are on vacation, so we can't call them easily: "Grandma is in a cottage in England right now."

3yo, in a very serious, solemn voice: "She probably got captured!"

Apparently 3 yo thinks her grandparents are either super spies or superheroes.

Me: "Emmy, who captured Grandma and Grandpa?"

3yo: "Grandpa didn't get captured. Only Grandma! By Hydra!!"

Then she called the police on her TV remote to report it so they will go rescue her. She says Grandpa didn't get captured because he stayed at home.

Jack says,

"Mom, dogs and cats can't talk. Dogs say, 'barf barf' and cats say 'meow meow.'"

Emmy Says

"The Duck says quack quack and the frog says frog frog!"

Emmy today

2 yo spent the whole day throwing massive fit after massive fit because I was doing it wrong and she wanted to do it better but I wouldn't let her.

What was "it"?

Choosing a pen to write with (I wanted red, she said I had to write with pink)

Making a math answer key for 8th grade pre-algebra

Loading the dishwasher

Changing her diaper

Plugging in a laptop to its charger She insisted Jack stole her charger and therefore she couldn't use her laptop. He didn't.)

Washing her bottle

Filling her bottle

Putting the lid on her bottle (yes, three fits)

I hope this is a very, very short phase. Even if it's to a toddler, it wears you out to have to constantly justify every single thing you do, and then to have your justification and explanations flat-out rejected. Violently. 

Sheesh.

It's also worth noting that sometimes her nickname is "Myself" because it's the most common word that comes out of her mouth some days. I can't do anything for her anymore without hearing, "NO! Myself!" She will go down the stairs and start over if I carried her. Or walk back across a parking lot and start over if I picked her up. Get back out of the van and in again. Throw her whatever-toy-or-dish back on the floor and pick it up again. Yell at me if I start singing along when she sings and start the song over where I interrupted. Death to me if I'm in a hurry and try to help out to get things moving--I have to breathe slowly and remind myself that if I interfere, she'll throw it all apart (whatever it is) and start again, which is slower than just letting her get through it herself the first time, no matter how much a hurry we are in. 

I thought I had strong willed kids before. This little gal puts them all to shame.

Emmy Says....

Emmy came in chomping on a pink peep (marshmallow chick variety) yesterday.

"What are you eating?" I asked.

"Wormsies," she said.  "There's more in the kitchen."


Hahaha! They do look a little like worms....

Emmy says....

Em, just a week shy of 2 years old, just excitedly brought me a DVD and said, "It has clues clues on it!" (her name for Blues Clues).

No, but it did have the movie "Clue" on it.

I guess she recognized the word? As in, she read it by memorizing the shape of that word? She can't even reliably name the letters yet (last she told me, the alphabet was, "A, B, Moon, Emmeline, Daniel...."), but I guess she can read that one word.

Emmy says a lot of fun things, and also Dan

Emmy found a large stuffed Disney character at the store and carried it all around, happy to have "Icky Mouse" to hug.


Dan says: "McDonald's scrambled eggs looked like they could be a communicating life form."


Emmy threw a temper tantrum because she's not old enough to go to Young Women's Wednesday activities yet. "I want to come with my womens!" she screamed over and over.


Emmy is so competitive.
Me to Em: "Are you stubborn, just like your mom? Just like me?"
Emmy: "No! Me like Mom. Not you like Mommy!"
Me: ...

Emmy says,

1 yo is highly competitive and independent. Yesterday it was:

Me: "I need to blow my nose."

Em: "NO! Boogers are mine. _I_ blow nose."

Today:

Me: "I got up at 10:30 am yesterday, and 11:00 am today! Hooray!"

3yo: "But I got up at 13."

Em: "I get up at twenty. One." (said as though on second thought, twenty was not a big enough number.)(I didn't even know she knew "twenty.")

I lift her off my bed.

"No! Me do it!" She climbs back on so she can slide back off herself.

I put her diaper on.

"No! Me do it!" She takes her diaper half way off and realizes that she can't do it, so she says, so sweetly, "Mommy tab it up." I do. She rips it open again. "No! Me do it!"

Jack says....

3 yo Jack, telling me he found the paper that tells how to build a toy wooden car: "Mom! I found the constructions!"

Jack says...

Tonight we were discussing where each of the children was born. Jack said, "I was born at King Soopers."  We tried to explain it to him, but he insisted: He was born at his favorite grocery store.

A few minutes later we were having an "ice cream time" and Jack got his cone first and wandered out. A few minutes later, he came back into the kitchen crying, his scoop of ice cream in one hand and his cone in the other. I did what I always do and put the scoop back onto the cone and handed it back to him. He said, "No, wash it. It got wet." I took the cone back. "How did it get wet?" I asked. "It fell in the potty!" he sobbed. He got a new cone, and I washed my hands....

Jack's singing

Jack is sitting alone in the kitchen, building with Trio blocks and singing his little heart out. Most of the rest of the family are in bed asleep, so he is completely unchecked.

His song is, "Song! That's the song about fire lips. Song! That's the song about fire lips."  And sometimes, "That's the song about piwates!" Sometimes he adds an interlude of "Song song song!"

Fire lips?

Jack says,

Jack, running in his new socks, came sliding up to me, "I'm so fast! I'm the gingerbread man!"

Me: "You also smell poopy. Are you a poopy gingerbread man?"

Jack: "No! Gingerbread men can't be poopy. They don't have a bum!"

Jack says....

I was reading the computer today when Jack walked up next to me and said, "Can I bang the computer?" I, thinking he meant with his bare hand or a little toy, absently said, "Sure."  

Then I looked up. Just in time, as he had a HAMMER in his hands!

Redirected him to the couch to do his banging there.

Note to me: Always look at a kid before you agree to let them do something.

Jack says....

Jack: "Mom, we have to go to the seminary store. Because that's where my birthday lives. We have to get in the car and drive there. Because I'm poopy. So I can't go."

me:  "Or we could just change your diaper."

Jack says....

Jack, after working hard to get his shark costume on, "I got my shark jacket on. Now I'm a dolphin! Dolphins have bums." And then he walked away.

------

Jack, "I want to go to the doctor to get a robot in my mouth."
Me: "What?"
Jack: "Daniel has a robot in his mouth. I want to go to the doctor to get a robot in my  mouth."

Daniel has a palate expander in the roof of his mouth. It looks like this:

I guess to Jack, it's a robot! 

Funny kids: Jack says....

The kids are frequently telling me they enjoy reading about what they were like when they were littler--here on the blog. And I realized I have drifted from that some. Those things sometimes end up in my journal and sometimes on Facebook, but really the kids themselves can't go back and reminisce either of those places.

So funny kids is back. For the moment. Until I forget again.

Anyway...

A few days ago Jack informed me that he had an owie on his "fronthead."  "Forehead," I corrected him, looking at what he was touching.

A few days later, he told me the owie was still there on his "Fivehead."

He kinda got it.

Where do they get these questions?

I wrote this in 2007. I don't know why it didn't publish then:

"Raising kids, I get more difficult questions than ever I answered in college.

Today, Dan asked, "Mom, do monkeys have fingernails?"

Um....I think so. I'll have to look up monkey pictures online to be sure."

Fixing cars

Our little car is working again. Van not so much, but we mostly can get around okay with just the little one, provided we don't all have to go somewhere at once. (Good thing we can walk to church!)

Apparently we've been fixing cars too much.

Tonight, Jack asked us to take him to King Soopers so he could drive the car cart around the store. So we took him over and he drove while we did a little bit of shopping.

Then he insisted we stop. He climbed out and said, "It has a leak."  He lay down on the floor and peered under the car cart.  "It's a battery leak," he said solemnly.

Then he lay down on his back and tried to slide under the car cart to fix it. He banged his head. "I don't fit!" he said in surprise, and hopped up.

I finally showed him how to hit it to make it go (like you do with old TVs, right?). So he settled on fixing it that way and climbed back in to keep driving, after a swift kick for good measure.

Alas, even the 2 year old has figured out that part of the deal (for us anyway) is that we drive a bit and then the darn thing breaks down and you have to go slide underneath on your back to fix it.