A Walk in the Park

The weather we've had here lately is totally not your typical February weather. Its been nice though for getting the kids outside. My mom and I took the kids to the park the other day. Beautiful. Walked the loop around the park and then let them run around the playground until almost dark. They all slept great. ;)

Nick and the Fish

My Nick story of the day involves a plecostomus, one of the fish in my dad's fish tank. For those who don't know, its one of those fish that sucks the algae off the side of the tank. This fish has grown huge and today was the center of Nick's attention. He was talking to the fish. Talking about the mouth he could see presseed against the glass. As I sat in the next room I could hear him talking to the fish about nonsense things. Then I hear him exclaim, "Awwww. I am so proud of you!" To the fish. Laughing I walk into the next room. Just in time to seem him kiss the tank. Right where the fish's mouth is. He has since moved on to other toys but the fish story was just too cute not to share.

Wild things #1, 2, and 3 

now is that trouble or is that trouble 

The Wise Words of Nick

So this weekend my mom and I packed up the kids and headed down to Arkansas for a long weekend of visiting family. After driving through nasty sleet, snow, rain, and ice (my mom ended up with that half of the driving) we spent a long weekend bringing me to this one ultimate conclusion: you never know what's going to come out of the mouth of a two year old. Okay so maybe I, along with the majority of the human world already knew this. This just happened to be one of those occasions that highlighted it, so to speak. Let us start with Saturday night. We had gotten down there in the middle of the night on Friday so the next night my grandpa decided to take all of us out to Cici's Pizza. All of us included my Aunt Cathy; cousins Rachel, Ryan, and Caleb; my grandpa, mom, myself and the 3 wild things. For those who don't know Cici's its a pizza buffet complete with salad, pasta, pizza, breadsticks, and dessert. My mom had just sat down with her food when Nick, who was sitting across from her, started looking at everything she had on her plate. After a minute of checking everything out, he turned to my mom and asked her, "Grandma, do you like clown noses?" Coming out of nowhere she was of course confused. We hadn't been talking about clowns. He then followed it up with, "I don't like to eat clown noses. Do you like to eat clown noses?" It took us all a minute to figure out that he had been looking at her salad plate. More specifically? The cherry tomatoes on her salad plate. Only a two year old. After we finished eating we went to Walmart to get some cough medicine for the boys. I asked my mom to just run in and gave her some money, planning on just driving around the parking lot instead of dragging 3 tired kids into the store. Nick was fine with Grandma getting out until I started to move. He went into hysterics screaming, "You can't leave Grandma!!!" He was just convinced that I was going to leave Grandma at Walmart and go home. This brings us to Sunday morning. He was the last one to wake up, coming into the living room about the same time as my mom. She sat down on the floor as I began taking off his pajamas to put his clothes on. All of a sudden he began yelling, "No, Grandma, you can't get my toes." He then proceeded to tell his Grandma in no uncertain terms that she could not eat his toes because he had already eaten them and they were all gone. Just FYI: no one had made any attempts to even act like they were going to get his toes. Goes to show, you never know what is going through the mind of a 2 year old. :)

Parent Teacher Conferences

So I had my very first parent teacher conference yesterday. By the time I was finished I could clearly remember all the times my parents had come home from conferences with my teachers talking about how my teacher must have been talking about a different kid. Nate's teacher thinks that he is such a sweet and considerate boy. Sweet and considerate!! Now anyone who has met my son and spent any amount of time with him and his siblings has seen him torture and pick at his brother and sister and the dog. Anyone who knows me has probably heard me tell stories of his ingenious ways of getting himself into trouble. But no, she says he's sweet and considerate and sits there quietly for group activities. She did say he tends to wiggle a lot sometimes so maybe she is talking about my kid. :) She went on to say how very smart he is (which I totally agree with) and amazed she is at how well he's doing with letters and numbers, patterns. Logic side of brain kind of stuff. No surprise there. The only real problem she had was with him participating in group activities like singing and saying rhymes. I saw this kind of behavior first hand with the Christmas program this past year. We worked for 2 weeks learning "Away in a Manger" and singing it every night. He would sing every word with me and by himself. He KNEW that song. But when it came time to stand in front of the church and sing with the other kids, he would not do it. Meaning we most likely have the same thing happening at school. Which pretty much means he's shy. Again, no big surprise. Overall it was a good first parent teacher conference. I'm very glad that as rotten as my son is at home, he is so very good and sweet and considerate at school. But so it begins. Next year there will be two in school. That is so hard to believe. They grow up too fast. Oh well, we wouldn't want them to stay babies forever. :)

Pooped out

So I'm getting really tired of poop. For those who know where I work, you know I get to clean it up daily. With two kids still in diapers, I deal with it even on my days off of work. I deal with it figuratively and literally every single day ALL DAY LONG. I'm tired of it. Today however certainly tops the cake. Nate is 4. He is potty trained. (or he was. I'm thinking the stress of the divorce and visitations has taken its toll and he's reverting back to pre-pt days) When he goes down to the bathroom, I don't follow him. He can wipe his own bottom, pull his own pants down and up. He's a big boy. Today was no exception. He went down to the bathroom by himself and without hearing a little voice asking for help, I stayed with Kyra and Nick waiting for him to come back to the living room. Maybe it was behavior, maybe it was the stomach flu last week. Either way it spelled disaster. When he had been down there for quite some time I became concerned and went down to the bathroom to check on my son. After assessing the situation this is my best guess as to what happened (have to guess because it is next to impossible to get a straight answer out of a 4 year old). Nate apparently pooped in his pants. On the way down to the bathroom he must have began to pull his pants down before actually being in the bathroom because there on the carpet in the dining room just outside the bathroom was poop. Then just inside the bathroom before you get to the toilet was more poop. He must have promptly sat down on the toilet and pooped some more because there was some IN the toilet... just some. He must have then decided to use toilet paper and wipes to try to clean himself up because not only was it on his backside, it had gotten all over his legs when pulling down his pants. In the process of doing so, the poor kid got some on his fingers. Well yuck, can't have that. So he began to wipe it on the door. And the sink. And the rug. And the toilet lid. Meanwhile the toilet seat is now covered from wiggling around. This is about the point where Mommy walks in not knowing whether to cry or yell. Now I'm thinking I might print this off and save it for a special share-with-future-girlfriends-type memory. That will certainly be revenge enough for having to clean up that mess. :)

The bug

The flu bug has been through the house this week. Unfortunately it still hasn't completely left, but it does appear on its way out. Tuesday night I had the oldest child throwing up. Then his brother the next morning and his sister followed Friday morning. What's coming out the other end, however is the part that just will not quit. And on that note I will move on. If you guys could just keep 3 very uncomfortable, pitiful, not-quite-themselves children in your prayers I would be ever so grateful.