Last night Kirstie came over to Jen and me with a couple toys in her hands. They were little plastic vehicles. A puller, and a trailer. She excitedly announced to us, “And it has a draggin’, too!”
It took us a moment… but we got it. Very cute use of the English language. 🙂
We went to visit some friends tonight whom we don’t get to spend very much time with. They live pretty far away, so we’re lucky to see each other even 3 or 4 times a year. They have a little three year old boy who I am pretty sure knows who we are, and was looking forward to seeing us.
I believe the conversation went something like this.
“Daddy, when are the Donkeys gonna be here?”
“The… Donkeys?” Dad was quite perplexed. He knew that we were coming, and was pretty sure that is who his son was talking about, but couldn’t make the donkey connection.
“You know… the Donkeys… when are they coming?” he persisted.
“Do you mean the Campbells?” asked a still confused Dad.
“Yeah! The Camels! When are they coming?”
Classic.
Can’t remember being called “The Donkeys” ever before. That one won’t soon be forgotten. 🙂
Last night we were leaving our friends’ house pretty late after another fun evening together, and as we were saying good bye I noticed our son Alex running in circles in their front yard. He’s usually one of the first out of the house when we’re leaving (and one of the first ones in as well) so I guess that’s how he was passing the time. Everyone else had made their way to the van and to where they needed to be, but Alex just needed to run around.
And somehow, in that moment, it just reminded me of how much I love him. In fact, my actual thoughts were, “He’s my favorite!”
At first I reacted to that thinking, “Of course, so are the rest…” That’s when I realized… they are. Alex is my favorite, and so are Ian, Kirsten, and Julia. Even the next baby that we haven’t met yet. I guaranteed he or she will be my favorite, too. 🙂
There’s a cool book I have mentioned here a time or two before called, The Shack. In this book, a guy has an in-person encounter with God and many times when God refers to any person this guy brings up, God says, “Oh, he’s my favorite.” (Or, one of my favorites, or something.)
Last night, I really understood that. It’s completely true of my and my kids. They really are my favorites. My favorite people. I love them more than they can know, or than I can probably express. But I’ll keep trying anyway. 🙂
[As a footnote to this whole story, I was re-telling the events to Jen as we were pulling in our driveway. When I said the part about thinking Alex is my favorite, it wasn’t long before Jen noticed him running circles around our yard, too. Guess he likes being “the favorite”…] 🙂
The other night when we were having dinner, we decided to invent a new language. I can’t remember exactly how it started, but somehow I posed the question, “What if every vowel was a ‘oo’ sound?” And then I proceeded to try it out.
“Hooloo, Ooloox. Hoo oor yoo? Hoo woos yoor doonoor?”
There was much laughter and everyone kept trying it for a while that night. It was quite fun. You should give it a go right now. Go ahead and talk to the person next to you in Oovoon. See? Fun isn’t it?
Well, our one-year-old is learning to talk – and doing quite well – so she may have been laughing with the rest of us, but when I was talking to her, she felt the need to correct me.
“Oos thoot yoor booboo?” I asked.
“No. ba-by,” she said distinctly. “Booboo?” I replied. “No. No. BA-BY,” she insisted. This went back and forth for a while till I dropped it. She was certainly not going to. 🙂
We tried doing everything with a rolled ‘r’ last night, but that didn’t work as well. For now, we’ll stick with Oovoon as our family’s second language. 🙂
I was observing my three-year-old daughter and her one-year-old sister today as they tried to play together. They were just a few feet in front of me, and truthfully, it was not going well.
Julia, the younger, was taking things from Kirstie, the older, and this was not a welcome action. Kirstie was just whining about it, and then taking matters into her own hand, retrieving what had been taken. Of course, this only exacerbated the situation, so I decided to step in.
“Kirstie,” I said in my most parental, instructional tone of voice, “That is just not going to work. You can’t whine, and you can’t just take the blocks back from her. How would you like it if she did that to you? This is a good chance for you to practice ‘Treat others the way you want to be treated.’ Why don’t you ask her for what you want, instead of just take it?”
She followed my instructions and her younger sister gladly gave up her blocks (which were stolen in the first place…) and everyone was smiling. For about two seconds. That’s when older sister decided to just take some more of what younger sister had. This resulted in very loud, shrill screaming.
Again… not going to fly with Dad.
Since this didn’t seem to be getting through, so I said to the perpetrator Julia, “Julia, why don’t you show Kirstie what it feels like. Take that yellow block on the top of her tower.” Julia was happy to oblige. She reached over and grabbed three blocks from the top of Kirsten’s tower. (She was probably pretty amazed I was letting her do this!)
Once the blocks were safely in Julia’s possession, I asked Kirstie, “Now how do you feel?”
To my surprise, the first response came from Julia who said, “Good!”
Haha! That was too funny. Kind of ruined the moment, and taught the wrong lesson, but… at least we know that when you’re allowed to do whatever you want… it feels good. 🙂
Last night we celebrated Ian’s birthday. His birthday falls on Christmas day, so it has been our practice to set up a day in January to celebrate Ian, and nothing else. Well, he wanted to invite our friends the Velasquezes to join us for a night at Chuck E Cheese’s in a town about 35 min to the west of us. Would work out perfect as that is where Mr. V (we call him Uncle Scott) works. I was to bring a cake that I made, and we would play games, eat cake, and celebrate Ian.
Well, the funny thing is…
As we were on our way there, we went through an intersection where the traffic light was out. “Oh my goodness…” All of a sudden, the days events all came together in my head… We had some serious wind (remember? we might get blown up?) and power was out all over the nearby areas – just not ours. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until just then that…
You guessed it. The only block without power in the entire area we were going to was the block where Chuck E. Cheese’s resides. Nice.
Well, we decided to head back to our friends’ house and eat cake and play games there. Ended up being a fun night, just a huge waste of gas and time I guess. Again… nice.
Next time… call ahead. 🙂
It’s a very blustery day here in Western New York state. Many limbs are down, power is out, all sorts of crazy things. My niece has power back now where she is at in Buffalo area, but she told me a few trees are down at her house – including one on their house! Yikes!
Well, as I was battening down the hatches this morning, I remembered another time we were in some seriously powerful winds. It was the spring of 2002, and we were out in Colorado, north of Denver. We were introduced to a chinook. These very strong, constant winds blow over the Rockies in the late winter/early spring and we weren’t prepared for the intensity of them!
As we left the hotel where we were staying that morning, little Ian (who had just turned three) was doing his best to keep his feet on the ground! He was very concerned, and just blurted out, “I’m gonna blow up!!!”
Well, as you can imagine, first we laughed … then we helped the lad stay connected to the Earth. He was very glad for big, heavy parents that day. 🙂
It’s similar today, just not as sustained.
Let’s hope we don’t blow up today! 🙂
I think I have written here before that when Jen has babies, I take a week or, last time, two off to take care of the other kids while she can focus completely on the baby. And of course, I take care of her too. 🙂 So, I am no stranger to being the “Mom” of the family. (Plus, I am the main chef of the household – by my own choice and desire – and often am accused of being the “girl” in our marriage … so… I am kind of used to it. Kind of.)
Well today, due to extenuating circumstances, I offered to help out our good friends, the Velasquezes, by watching their three girls at their house while they went to a wedding. Their oldest had been really pretty sick yesterday… lots of throwing up… but mostly that kind of sickness has not affected me in life, so I figured I would be pretty OK, and it would help them out.
The day was to start at 9:45, but I did get there a little late. Just before ten I got there and got the scoop. They hadn’t had breakfast so we did a little of that. Then once Mom & Dad left, we got into the fun. We watched an episode of the Knight Rider! (Yes, that instantly makes me the best babysitter ever. I carry episodes of the Knight Rider in my POCKET!)
No one was sick, thankfully, but it was a day full of being a Mom. 🙂 We had hurt feelings, we had sibling spats, we had ouchies – even needed ice for one! – and all of that fun. Of course I needed to make lunch, which was awesome! 🙂 We had diaper changes, bathroom reminders, and kitchen clean up. We also played games, and even had a nap time routine. I was quite the mom.
The real Mom & Dad returned around 4pm, and after a brief report, I headed out to do some returns and other shopping near the mall (more Mom stuff?) and then stopped by Wal-Mart for another quick surprise for the family. Finally got home – fairly exhausted – just after 6pm. Of course, Jen had our FOUR kids all this time, so she certainly had no picnic of a day! But after a few brief moments catching up with Jen… I realized that I had to make dinner for my family! Sheesh!
So, I did. I just reheated the big turkey dinner we had the night before, and it was great. But I was still tired. And I really just wanted to sit and watch football. But the kids were not really cooperating. And Jen was really worn out too. After giving it a go for most of the first half of the game mentioned just below… I finally gave up and just got the girls and got them ready for bed, and in bed.
The boys followed not long after, but Jen was able to help with them. I spent the rest of the evening cleaning up the kitchen from the last day or two and baking corn bread and cupcakes for tomorrow’s gathering. Then I called some good friends who live in California around midnight (9pm their time…) 🙂 just to catch up. Had a nice chat there.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Well… I’d like to salute Moms out there. My wife first. Maybe my own Mom second. (Sorry, Mom.. Jen has four… and another coming!) I really am able to do the “mom thing” … but my experience today (and some of yesterday) left me exhausted and feeling unappreciated. 🙂 (Not really… just bear with me…)
I really noticed that all of the “mom” stuff I did or was doing was sort of just expected. There’s never an end to the needs of your kids. They don’t take vacations, or weekends off. And, even when I was off taking care of other kids for a day… I came home to more. (Ours are way cuter, of course…) 😉 And they just assumed I would be making dinner as I usually do. (Plus, Mom is super tired from making a baby!)
A Mom’s job is never done, and almost always taken for granted. So to Jen, Mom, and all other Moms reading this… you rock. Keep up the hard work. You can’t see it paying off now, but those kids you are loving – thanklessly – will remember it later.
And to my Mom … thanks for all the hard work. 🙂
See? 🙂
So… I’ll continue to keep up my end of the parenting duties, and maybe remember to remind Jen how awesome she is even just a bit more often. 🙂
And, since it’s Steven Curtis Chapman week here at GregsHead.net … when you get a chance (no time to find a link tonight…) check out the song from his latest album, This Moment – “One Heartbeat at a Time”. Perfect song for Moms.
And now… at 1:29… I can finally go to bed.
Good night!
I thought the song said White Christmas….
We did get a lot of the white stuff for the whole month of December. Probably the first three weeks straight. OVer a foot of the good stuff. I think I heard that we’ve gotten around 38 inches so far! BUT… for one week before Christmas we had temps in the 40s, and RAIN. Yuck!
But the best part had to be Sunday, December 23rd. That day we not only had more melting of the existing snow, we had torrential downpours!! I didn’t think about it while it was happening, but a couple hours of some seriously hard rain on top of all the melting… was too much for our basement. 🙁
So, this Christmas, not only did we have rain, but we had a flooded basement. We’re still trying to clean up from it, but haven’t had any time with all of the Christmas celebrations with family and friends. We came home tonight to a VERY stinky house. (The furnace blows up the nasty smell from the basement to the rest of the house!) 🙁 I went down and dumped some clorox on the floor and sprayed LOTS of lysol. That helped for now.
Hope your Christmas was dryer. 🙂
I’m NOT dreaming of a WET Christmas!
This morning I awoke from a series of dreams that seemed mostly disconnected, except for the last two. The last two were definitely connected. Really, it was a dream where I awoke from a dream. That happened once before (even more crazy, though!) but in this dream, the two dreams were the same.
In the dream I awoke to find two people in business attire coming into my bedroom. They stood at the foot of my bed and began to introduce themselves. (Note: This was the room in my old house, where I had two twin beds. Jen was there, she was just in the other bed. For some reason, that part was not weird to me in the dream…)
They were from a local paper, the Courier Journal (which, is local to Palmyra, where we live now) and they just wanted to let me know that I had won their drawing. “You wanted to tell us that in person?” I asked. “Well, it was the grand prize.”
“How much?” I was thinking $1000 or something. “$120,000,” the business lady calmly replied.
I was just stunned. Silent. Until (still in the dream) I said, “Wait… I had a dream about this. Somebody from a small, local paper came and told me that I had won their drawing… and I think it was for $120,000!!” Everyone laughed, and at the same time thought it was very strange.
Not long after that – while thinking of all the joys of being debt free – I awoke from my dream. For real this time.
I can’t remember a dream recently that I have been more sad to wake up from, and to realize it was only a dream.
But hey, you never know…
