Bathtub Cleanup...

Wanna know what's even more fun than cleaning wet oats out of the tub after giving your toddler an oatmeal bath to soothe a rash??





Cleaning oats AND poop out of the bathtub.  Oh yeah.

On the bright side, the oats do make for smooth, comfy skin, especially when you add a little coconut oil to the water as well.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Not So PC...

politically correct, that is.  I guess if they are actually Chinese, it's okay for them to poke fun at themselves.  I first saw this place, in Jacksonville, Florida, probably 20 years ago.  I was taken by surprise to see it is still there!  Funny stuff...

Apologies for my very intermittent blogging... and that this is the best I can do right now, ha ha!  Baby Lucy seems to be in a limbo stage of development: she wants to try to do things (and acquiring new skills constantly - babbling the "b" sound constantly, trying to pull up on furniture, and grabbing everything that gets near her, including my water bottle, which she even managed to get a sip of water through the straw!), and she gets frustrated easily.  Why can't I tear the pages of that book Mommy is reading to Caroline?  Why can't I climb over stuff yet, but I can start to and then fall over?  And why can't I get back up myself when I fall over?  Why can't U pull Mommy's placemat into her lap?  And why does Mommy always have to do stuff in the kitchen, which I am apparently tired of seeing?  At least, I am guessing these are the things she's feeling, but probably in a more primitive way, like, "I want to do it - I can't - WAAAA!"  So times are rough right now.  But I assume the frustration of one stage is what helps boost babies into the next phase of developmental accomplishments at this age.  While I highly doubt that a three month old can experience boredom and this type of frustration, I think a six month old can.

So anyway, I don't get much blogging done.  And really not much more than basic schooling with Caroline.  It's a better-than-expected day if I can read just one whole book to Cecilia, and it's a miracle if I can do that plus one chore, like cleaning the bathroom sinks. And seeing other people's blogs or hearing about other people's lives and what they are able to accomplish is depressing to me at first, but then I take a step back and think that I can always do more elaborate things - and blog about them too so we have the memories recorded! - when I don't have a baby.  Maybe when I have an 18 month old, or two year old... I won't have a baby to hold and nurse forever, but I will have many years with older children to do special things, and even if there is another baby with older kids, then they can do some of the fun stuff themselves.  And maybe they can even take photos so I'll remember it years later!

Random Bits

Cecilia and Caroline recently watched Cinderella, the Disney version, for the first time. As kid movies go, it is a relatively tame one other than the stepsisters calling people "stupid idiots," although my children were appalled at how the king behaved... loosing his temper at the Duke to the point that he was chasing him around with a sword. "He's worse than the stepmother and stepsisters!" they exclaimed. "At least the stepmother didn't try to stab Cinderella!" They do have a very good point. I guess it shows that they haven't seen lots of "violence humor" since they don't get it. I told them it is supposed to be funny, showing how badly the king looses his temper, but that yes, it would really be horrible to chase somebody around swinging a sword at them, even though they work for you and are supposed to be somebody you like!

As a funny side note, Cecilia thinks Cinderella's dog, Brutus (or Bruno?), is named "Brutal."

And speaking of dogs, there is a new one barking in our neighborhood, and it sounds like it is in the yard behind our next-door neighbor's... and it barks all. the. time. It sounds like a bigger dog, and it doesn't just bark, but sounds like it is dying... arf, arf, aroooooooooough! That last part is a low-pitched whine. It does this when we are outside, inside, day and night. I'm about to suggest that somebody go put it out of its misery. ;) But really, I feel sorry for it if it's life is really that miserable...

I just got a new notebook. I have been carrying a clipboard with me to appointments and any place where I will have to wait, so I can make a grocery list or something productive like that. I love the notebook - everything is going in there. All my to-do lists, all my packing lists for trips, jotting down memorable quotes said by one of the kids, taping in good stuff that I have printed off but doesn't have a home, brainstorming baby names... all in one place. It makes me feel more organized.

Awhile back I wrote about how I kept seeing cars with monograms on the back window and how I think that is a bit silly... I have been noticing lately how lots of people have those little decals of people, one for each member of their family. My feelings on those go both ways... on the one hand, I have seen several of them locally that depict families with four or more children, and I think it's a good thing to see so many people with "large" families, and that they are showing others without embarrassment that they have lots of kids. Then there are the ones with two kids - a boy and a girl, of course - and they are all wearing Mickey Mouse hats, and there is a decal alongside them for Hilton Head or something. ;) A lot of people have this connotation that if a couple has one daughter and one son, then they have "the perfect family." There are all kinds of reasons why that's a bad thing to say to people... what if they really do want more children and are struggling with secondary infertility? What does that say about the other families who have children of only one gender so far? What about the families who have both genders but have continued to have more children - have they ruined their "perfect family," then? I'm grateful my parents didn't stop with their "perfect family," because I have two additional brothers because of it! But back to those family stickers on cars... yesterday I saw one that had two adult stickers and... four dog stickers and a cat sticker. As I approached from a distance and saw seven little blobs on the back of the very small car window (smaller than normal-sized four door sedan), I thought, "Wow, that is a tiny car for a family of seven!" Then I saw that most of them were animals and not people and thought, "Oh.... I see..."

Speaking of children and their genders, people can make somewhat hurtful comments regarding gender of children... often people will now notice I am pregnant and comment. Last week, one person said to Chris, "I hope for your sake this one's a boy!" Now, that can be taken as lighthearted, you know, like making a joke about him being outnumbered, but it still doesn't sound quite right. Then we had the comment, "Another girl? Don't you know how to make boys?" Ouch - what to even say to that (even though I am sure the comment was intended to be funny)? I have just been responding with things like, "Well, I'm still pretty young, you know, so there's time yet..." I don't really know what else to respond with.

We have planted all our tomato and bell pepper seedlings... many of them in pots on the patio this year. We shall see if they will do well... we have not had good luck growing things lately. The patio gets more direct sunlight that the garden boxes, so the hope is that the plants will grow better there. We added a third blueberry bush that is still pretty small, but hopefully it will get much bigger over the next few years. Also in the yard, we got three pine trees taken down. One was oozing sap - pine bark beetles, probably - and the other two were either too close to the house or leaning . With all the storms lately, I am glad they are gone! Our back yard does have less shade now, so it may be that we have to use sunscreen more often in the summer, unfortunately. The other day I was outside and kept smelling the strong scent of Pine-sol... I was starting to get concerned that somebody had been dumping cleaner somewhere around our yard. Then I realized, oh yeah - that must just be the smell of actual pine, since the trees were taken down and we have wood chips from their stumps in our yard! Pregnancy really amplifies smells for me (can you amplify something that is not a sound??).

We have basically finished up the school year! I hope to get around to posting photos from the last several letters at some point. I need to finalize our first grade plans and then maybe will do a post about them as well. I think we'll start first grade in July so that we can get a few months in before the baby's birth.

Random Bits

Cecilia asked me the other day why Daddy goes to work every day. I told her it was so he could get money so we could buy things like food and clothes. Several hours later, I was talking to my mom on the phone, and Cecilia wanted to talk. When I handed her the phone, the first thing she said to Gramma was, "Daddy's getting money because Mommy wants to buy things for us!"

Caroline continues to amaze us with her mind: "Mommy, one hundred dollars is 100 one hundred centses." Aww, even when she makes profound mathematical statements, we are still reminded that she's just a little kid when she makes up interesting pluralizations of words!

Cecilia: "When I run like this, it seems like I'm pushing the wind!!!"

Cecilia, after watching A Charlie Brown Christmas with Daddy and Caroline: "Sally said why is Linus always carrying that horrible playsilk around!" Translation: "Lucy asked why Linus is always carrying that stupid blanket around."

Cecilia was turning the knob on one of the drawers in our kitchen, and it was coming loose. "Aaaah, I'm unloosening it!" she cried out. Then she started turning it back the other way to tighten it back up and said, "There, I'm loosening it back."

Cecilia decided to eat a cranberry while we were stringing them with popcorn... of course, she made a terrible face and shuddered as she tasted the bitterness. She made the same face to a lesser degree when she had some lemonade at lunch today. Both times, she said, "It makes me burrow!"

On Guadete Sunday, the priest is supposed to wear rose-colored vestments. Since we have been lighting our Advent wreath and doing the Holy heroes Advent Adventure, my kids know this well. Imagine their surprise when our priest (not our pastor, but another priest who comes to fill in here and there since we only have one priest assigned to our parish) was NOT wearing rose, but a shade of purple instead! It was actually almost fuchsia, so at first I thought maybe it was trying to be rose... so anyway, he said at the beginning of Mass how he was supposed to wearing

purple, but he "didn't look good in pink." Caroline was appalled, ha ha. But hey, the rules say wear rose, why not just wear rose? It's not like they have to wear it often - only twice a year!

Here are some of our gingerbread men I was decorating... one of them fell from my hand and landed on another, breaking both of them. The funny thing is that the one I dropped was the "Mason" cookie - my parents' cat - and it landed on the "Mike" cookie - my brother. Mason was named by my brothers, Mike and Tim. Mason is a girl cat. I think this is part of what has her so messed up, ha ha. I took this as a sign of her impending revenge on Mike, and maybe Tim too, for giving her a male name and thus beginning her troubles in life.

So, am I the only person who gets really tense when I hear a baby cry for a prolonged period? It makes me feel a bit panicky inside. So, why use a real, live infant in a children's Christmas pageant? Am I the only one who doesn't think it's "cute" when a baby cries for ten minutes straight? Whatever happened to using a doll as the baby Jesus? When I was Mary in my kindergarten pageant, I had a baby doll, not an actual infant who would be distressed to be held by a child who was clearly not its mother or father. Once, my baby brother, Tim, was the baby Jesus (he had a November birthday), but my mother held him. I think it was an informal pageant held in our church nursery... I remember he had a "halo" of tinsel on his little bald head. My mom was wearing a red dress, so I don't think she was actually playing the part of Mary, but she was holding him in all the photos and in what I remember. Better that or a doll than a baby screaming throughout the pageant, in my opinion.

Cecilia, sniffing a cookie: "I smell seasoning in it!"

So, our stupidest chicken, 'Lorpie, reached a new level of idiocy. She's so sweet, I love this chicken best for some reason, ha ha... But she is so dumb, as I have shared before. She got her feet stuck underneath the chicken tractor. She was stuck for probably 24 hours, poor baby. No broken bones, but she's acting sick, not eating much. She can walk, and she will go to get some water here and there. She ate an egg and some saltines yesterday (not kidding!) and Chris said she would eat some of her feet when dropped on the ground around her, but she won't eat it out of the feeder. And now we're getting a snowstorm, so I'm sure she'll continue to be traumatized, ha ha.

'Lorpie, able to stand and drink

This post was begun well before Christmas, so I will finally publish it now!

Journey to the Center of the Bed

When I got up in the morning...

Lower right: Cecilia's mattress

Upper left: the big bed, where Cecilia's half-asleep state got the better of her and she gave up at the halfway mark

About ten minutes later...

...and five minutes after that.

Pretty impressive sleep travel.

Random Bits

First, some assorted photos that I have been meaning to post... then there is text way down below. :)

Cecilia sleeping - she inherited this position from my father, apparently.

My niece - my brother's daughter, Julianne

She had recently learned to crawl and was fascinated by the latch thing for the double doors on the threshold to my parents' sunroom

My brother Stephen had just come back from a year in Kuwait/Afganistan. Here he is with all three of his nieces, and the first time meeting Julianne!

Cecilia with the toy sheep Uncle Stephen brought her

Cecilia strangling Tyke

The photos don't show it, but she was shaking his head back and forth

You wouldn't know it from how she's getting right in his face here, but he had just nipped at her as a warning before this... obviously, Cecilia didn't take his threat seriously. We finally made her stop and leave the poor thing alone...

CC and Daddy

Julianne with her Uncle Chris

Happy baby with her Grampa!

So, here are the random babblings:

Caroline, from the back seat of the car: "Mommy, are you more Irisher than me?" followed by, "Mommy, are you more Scotlandish than me?"

So, I figured out why my car's stereo is acting possessed... I told Chris, and he figured out that it was because of his new portable ham radio that he just put in the car. It is plugged into the cigarette lighter (ahem, accessories outlet, isn't that the PC term? ;) and when the car is turned off, there is extra power there somehow that keeps the music playing for another several seconds. Now that I know this, I can just lock the doors and walk away from the blaring speakers, not having to worry that I will come back out an hour later with a group of people staring at my car wondering what is going on!

When Chris reads books to the girls, he sometimes gives each character a different voice. I do this some too (just ask my youngest brother what each of the Berenstein Bears sounds like!)... but if anyone hears my kids sounding like Billy Bob Thornton in Slingblade as they quote Mr. Chumley from the book Aunt Eater's Halloween, that wasn't my doing!

Speaking of voices, Cecilia has an interesting way of pronouncing some words... and yesterday, I put my finger on who it is that she sometimes sounds like: the girl in the TV show Daria (showing my age and my bizarre taste in television as a high schooler here!), Quinn's friend, the one who is the president of the fashion club. Cecilia doesn't have her voice (thank goodness), but the way she pronounces some words is oddly similar! I think it is in the over-enunciation on vowel sounds or something... If you start the video clip below at about 1:35, she is the first person to speak.

Caroline said, "I won zero prize!" in a rather excited way. She went on to explain that the "zero prize" is better than first prize because zero comes before one, "so zero is the real first prize."

Cecilia understands that people and animals have bones inside their bodies, so the song "Doggy, Doggy, Who Took your Bone?" causes her some confusion. Today, after singing it through, she asked me, "Took a bone out of the dog's body?" I told her that dogs liked to chew on bones, and she asked, "Chew on their own bones in theirselves???"

So I received an email (for some unknown reason) from Ace Hardware, specifically, the one in my town. It has images in it, and at the bottom it says, "The perfect gift for anyone on your list!" Under that, it pictures an example of gifts and says underneath each, "Him," "Her," "Kids," "Pets," and "Yard." Huh, I didn't realize that people bought gifts to give to their yards at Christmas. I hope my yard doesn't feel like we've been giving it the shaft all these years!

Cecilia says: "for a few whiles" and "I have too many stuffs in my hands."

Caroline: "That car is for sale... or, maybe the brand is called For Sale."

"The McDonald's M is made of French fries, Mommy... isn't that disturbing?"

She also told a friend while we were trick-or-treating, "Listen to this dream I had - it was horrifying."

Today I took the kids to the McDonald's indoor play area near our house. I hate that I do that, but on rainy days, I like them to be able to climb and get out their energy, and the place is about three minutes away. I buy a drink and let them play. But man, the playground at a fast food place was like a huge, special, nearly once-in-a-lifetime deal for me as a kid. I remembered dreaming of the McDonald's playground (literally). It was special. But anyway... today when we went into the section with the play area, Cecilia looked at the steps to climb up and excitedly proclaimed, "It's BROWN today!!!" Uh, was it a different, more boring color last time? Marge Simpson immediately came to mind... "You hear that, kids? Brown!!!"

Random Bits

Caroline: "In the video, Pooh sang a song about his appetite."

Cecilia: "But he doesn't wear tights!"

Cecilia found a dead fly the other day. She picked it up and said tenderly, "It's my baby. I love it." She then proceeded to carry it around the house, tuck it in with a blanket, blow it out of her hand (to simulate flying, perhaps?), share her snack with it (which I didn't actually let her do, by the way!)...

Cecilia, running into the kitchen, excitedly announces to me, "Santa Claus is going to come and sleep in my bunkbed when I go across the hall!!!" We have mentioned that one day she will sleep in Caroline's room and we might get bunkbeds... not sure where the Santa Claus part came from, though!

We were reciting the nursery rhyme Diddle Diddle Dumpling today, which says, "Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John..." Caroline thought it was "Diddle diddle dumpling, mice on John." Poor John, ha ha!

Chris is installing a new toilet in our hall bathroom as I type this. Apparently, I will no longer be able to keep a dish of decorative seashells on the back of the toilet... Did you know that a medium-sized seashell is basically impossible to plunge out of the toilet? I still can't figure out which one it was because all my "favorites" are still in the dish. Well, we never liked that toilet anyway... too tall and had an "elongated bowl," which was just weird. As I looked in at his progress, I told Chris that he deserved some homemade doughnuts. He answered that he deserved more than that. Well, I am going to make the doughnuts anyway as a start!

Caroline (in a voice of total awe and amazement): "Mommy, Cecilia just said, 'The angel Gabriel appeared to Mary,' and that's right!!" Turning to Cecilia she asked, "Cecilia, how do you knowthese things?!?"

Caroline and Cecilia were "playing school." Caroline was the teacher and was asking Cecilia questions out of a book (how do all kids seem to play school the same way, even if it looks nothing like their own experience of school??). Caroline asked, "What does a camel eat?" Cecilia immediately and enthusiastically replied, "Seaweed!!" A brief pause... then she added, just as enthusiastically, "Grasshoppers!" So random...

Wonderings of the Week:

1. I walk through the workout room on my way to the indoor pool where I swim laps a few evenings a week. Usually there is upbeat, fast-paced music playing. One day recently as I passed through, they were playing Hotel California. How does one work out to Hotel California???

2. The other day, the local ice cream truck (er, that is an exaggeration... it is really an old mail truck that sells slushies out of the back!) was playing Braham's Lullaby. Do they want to put the children to sleep before they can manage to run up and buy slushies? Seems like a poor marketing strategy to me...

3. Why do most college students of today drive cars that are newer than both of my cars? Shouldn't they be cruising around in 1996 Ford Tauruses (Tauri?) and such? It used to be that, on this particular college campus, anyone entering after dark would turn off their headlights as a courtesy to the person in the gatehouse (who has to look at the windshield to see the parking permit before opening the gate to allow the car in)... now the cars are all so new that none of them have headlights which can manually be turned off after dark while driving. I was feeling like a weirdo every time I turned off my headlights at the gatehouse, until I saw somebody else do it tonight - hooray for somebody's parents who didn't think they needed to drive a 2009 model car to college! Or maybe it was the car of a poor professor or something...

I saw the weirdest toy last week when I was at Tuesday morning (can you tell I love that store?)... it was battery-powered "racing grannies," something like this. Pretty disturbing, and almost tops the talking Dr. Laura doll that I saw there last year...

So, what are the signs for you that it's going to be one of "those days," hmm? This morning, Caroline came into our room before 7:00 (which is the time we tell her she can get out of bed - if she wakes up before then, she is supposed to read in her room awhile) and was clearly grumpy when we told her it wasn't 7:00 yet. She was mad because I didn't have her clothes laid out for the day, and she wanted to wear a dress... I think. It was somewhat incoherent... Once we did get up, there was grumpiness from both children, and I knew it was one of "those days" when I entered the kitchen and immediately thought, "Boy, I need coffee..." because you see, I don't even drink coffee regularly. So I instantly went for my regular form of caffeine. And then I turned on my "happy place" CD before breakfast, the one that makes it harder for me to lose my patience while it is playing. So, I know it is going to be one of those days when I get up looking for coffee and turning on my CD as a distraction before even getting breakfast ready! But you know, it actually wasn't too rough of a day overall... could have been better, but certainly could have been worse. And I did get to go grocery shopping in the afternoon, which I love. Go ahead and laugh at me. ;)

Okay, Weirdness of the Day today: while I was grocery shopping, I had the opportunity to go to several stores (the bank, Big Lots, the library, Payless, Wal-Mart, and Kroger, in case you were curious). Each time I parked my car and turned off the engine and removed the keys, my radio kept playing (CD player, rather). At first, I thought I hadn't gotten the car turned off past the accessory position or something, and my key was coming loose from the ignition prematurely (which wouldn't make sense 'cause it is a brand new ignition). So I just stood there outside my car with the door open, dumbfounded as the music continued to play even though the engine was not running and the keys were in my hand. I was unsure what to do - should I just close the door and walk away? What if it kept playing until I came back and the battery was dead? But then, it suddenly stopped. Phew. Well, then it did it again, and again, every time I stopped. I was beginning to think that the CD must have a mind of its own all of a sudden. Every time, it did stop after about 20 or so seconds. I just felt a bit odd standing outside my car in various parking lots, waiting for the music to stop before I locked the doors and went into the store! And as I pulled into my driveway, I ejected the CD, and after turning off the engine and removing the keys, the radio continued to play for 20 seconds. So, it is not just the CD player... maybe the speakers are possessed? It's really strange...

Of final note: my husband makes awesome eggplant parmesan! Soooooo good!!

And a few photos from our La Leche League conference at Calloway a couple weekends ago:

"I'm making a sugar lake!!!"

Well, that's a relief...

Translation of Caroline's pet store sign:

Pets

Pet Cages

We do not sell raccoons.

Good thing, since they can be rabid...

Random Bits

Okay, this post has been sitting around here for several weeks... so I guess it is time to publish it!

While playing an imaginative game, Cecilia referred to something as "yogurt," and Caroline said, "Actually, it's cobbler." Cecilia exclaimed, "Just like corn on the cobbler!"

Chris put on a tie to wear to work a couple weeks ago, which he doesn't normally do. Cecilia asked him, "Why are you wearing a neckentie?"

So, there is a sticker on my bananas that says "Go Bananas After Dark." I have been noticing these stickers for awhile (I think they are Dole bananas that have them)... what does that mean? If I walk into my kitchen after dark, will I find my bananas having a rowdy party?

I had the weirdest dream the other night... so, so strange. It was really long, the longest dream I have had in ages. I won't bore everyone with the whole story line as it unfolded, but it involved the following: me owning a flock of Canada Geese that escaped into the neighbor's yard; taking Caroline and Cecilia to a "fun house" in which there was an inflatable floor and detailed scenes painted on the walls although it was pitch black inside so you couldn't see the scenes; a freezer full of frozen energy drinks and my brother trying to get a stranger to give him some of them; Emerson Hart recording a music video in my backyard and making frosting (very badly, I might add) with my children on a pizza baking sheet in my kitchen - just frosting, not a cake or anything like that; and my mom trying to convince me to go to a $5 dress sale. So weird, so vivid. There was lots of driving involved too, although I can't be sure where I was going!

Today, Caroline was reading a Winnie-the-Pooh book to Cecilia and pausing to try to get her to "fill in the blanks" in the story. Caroline read, "Pooh's head was stuffed with..." Cecilia's eyes got really big and she exclaimed, "He has a cold just like us!!!"

Okay, so here's something that happened a long time ago, and I keep forgetting to write it down... I think it happened way back on July 4th, ha ha. Chris took Caroline out and while they were in the van, a Bryan Adams song came on the radio - Summer of '69, I think Chris said it was. Caroline insisted that it was "a gruff wolf" singing!

Cecilia has some bear friends who live under our bed - used to live under our bed, that is. Keep in mind that Cecilia sleeps right next to our bed, on a mattress on the floor. She started talking about these bears several months ago, that they were under the bed and wore red hats, and sometimes when her feet came untucked from her blanket, she would ask to have them covered back up "so the bears don't eat my feet." She seemed slightly disturbed by the bears, but she also said they were nice and friendly. She also told me that they went back to the woods now... they have been back in the woods for a long time, but yesterday she said, "Daddy chased them away to the woods." She has also mentioned that they wear blue shirts.

Today, Chris had to drop something off at our parish, and he took Caroline with him. They stopped in the church for a few minutes to say a prayer. Caroline was reading the Hail, Holy Queen prayer on the back of the missal, which is one we say each evening as part of the Rosary. She suddenly got excited and said, "Look, Daddy, it's two words!" and pointed to the two words 'toward us,' saying, "It says toward us, not tortoise!"

I got Cecilia three pairs of shoes at a consignment sale yesterday for $12 total... and they all look basically brand-new except for the treads. I love this sale - it is so well-organized and they don't accept junk at their sale like the other one which shall remain nameless. They also don't cram everything on the racks so that you can't even browse, and they even put all the pants of the same size together on the rack, all the shirts together... and they have separate racks for Christmas clothes, pajamas, Halloween costumes... Anyway, Cecilia was quite pleased with her new tennis shoes - Caroline wore a size 8 when she was this age, but Cecilia really needs a 7.5, so Caroline's hand-me-down shoes won't fit her yet. Today I wore a pair of pants that I haven't fit in comfortably in awhile, and Cecilia asked me, "Did you buy those pants at a comminement sale?"

Speaking of, I have lost about 19 pounds now. My goal was 20 pounds, but I think I'll go a few more to get myself down to a nice round number (meaning one that ends with a zero). So far, even a few sweet treats like apple pie and cookies haven't impacted me too much - well, I haven't really lost more since eating those, but I haven't gained back, either.

So my brother's dog - the dog who is living with my parents while he's out of the country, the dog who I am amazed is still alive after five whole years of stupidity and natural selection working against him - cost them $300 the other day. My mom had an unopened box of brownie mix on the counter, and the dog got it and tore it open, ate the cellophane packaging, and ate a bunch of the brownie mix. My mom said she came in to find chocolate powder all over the sunroom carpet. So the dog had to go get shots to make him puke, then more shots to make him stop puking... she said it was the most expensive box of brownies ever, and she didn't even get to eat them! The funny thing is that this was a Trader Joe's Dutch Chocolate brownie mix... and the dog's name is Dutch. He must have seen his name on it and assumed it was for him. Of course, that doesn't explain why he ate a spatula with the word "Pyrex" on it...

Random Bits

Cecilia was stomping on a bug outside, saying, "I'm deading that bug!" I told her, "I think it was already dead, Cecilia," to which she responded, "I deaded it more."

Caroline: "Mommy, we're sandpipers! We're going to pipe the sand - pipe, pipe, pipe..." (repeatedly pecking the table with her nose)

We had noticed the seagulls, sandpipers, and pelicans at the beach and casually observed the differences between the three types of birds.

You know what makes me feel old? Listening to songs from the 90s on Youtube, and seeing that the comments directly below the videos all say, "This is a great song... I discovered it on Guitar Hero." Uh, yeah, well, I discovered that song when it was actually released 15 years ago, back in the olden days - so there! It also makes me realize that the majority of Youtube commenters are only about 15 years old themselves...

I found a hilarious website about a month or so ago... absolutely hysterical. It is called Catalog Living and is described as being "a look into the exciting lives of the people who live in your catalogs." I think the concept is great, as I have always made fun of catalogs and home decor magazines that have these meticulous and often random decorating ideas shown in them... The captions they come up with on this website are very witty. I also have it linked in the left sidebar under Blogs I Visit... so go check it out! It's a relatively new site, so it won't take too long to read through all the past photos if you want...

Cecilia's latest repeated comment: "One day when I'm a grownup, I'm going to paint my toenails and pop my tooth out and go to the dentist." Such grown-up events, in her mind...

The first of my mega-purchase has come in the mail today!! I love getting homeschooling supplies and opening them up...

So, supposedly we are getting a new grocery store in my town, which would be such a nice thing... Kroger is across town, and Wal-Mart is just icky. Want to see a lady spanking her two year old for crying on the floor at 9:15 pm? Go to my Wal-Mart. Why people expect toddlers to act mature in Wal-Mart that late in the evening is beyond me... But on a positive note, my cashier tonight was so very polite and friendly. Our greeters (except for the really old lady who I have never seen talk) are also all extremely friendly and smile and such, which is nice to see since that wasn't the norm there a few years ago.

Last night, Cecilia asked if she could have more "unsparagus."

Caroline noticed that the A key on my laptop is so faded that you can barely see it anymore... just the A, for some reason. She said, "Now you won't be able to type any more As!" She thinks I need a new A key!

Today, my niece Julianne was baptized. I love the smell of the chrism that is used to anoint the baby's head with oil - so sweet-smelling. I held her a few minutes after the baptism and I am still smelling the chrism! Caroline said she wants to snuggle up to me so she can "get more Catholic" by getting the smell of the chrism on her!

Okay, this is a comment just for females... does anyone else find it annoying that the packaging of feminine products changes so frequently? First, they had those Always pads that had the symbols on the packaging - they said things like "Remember your leaf symbol." That was easy. But then they got rid of the symbols, sometime between my getting pregnant with Caroline and the seven months postpartum until I needed to go buy more. The Tampax design changed sometime during the time of my pregnancy with Cecilia. And now, the Tampax box lid has an advertisement for the Tampax Pearl products, which makes it look exactly like that is what you are buying, if you just look at the lid. I almost bought the wrong thing. Why can't they pick one simple system and stick with it??

A picture to share: the girls with Uncle Tim in his cassock after Julianne's baptism. Uncle Tim is Cecilia's godfather and now also Julianne's. I forgot our camera, so I didn't take any baptism photos, but I did take this one with my phone:

Random Bits

This post was started before our beach trip, so I think it is about time to post it....

Overheard:

Caroline: "Cecilia is wearing a cameloge dress." (She means camouflage. It was actually plaid.)

Cecilia: "I am NOT wearing a camel dress!!"

Caroline: "How about a camel skin dress? They wore camel skin back then... right, Mommy? Back in the old days... in the 80's, right, Mommy?"

Cecilia: "I'm going to eat all of it, because it's a hungry snack!"

Cecilia, after spinning in circles in the kitchen: "I need the floor to stop moving!" She then squatted down and attempted to hold the floor still with her hands. "There, it stopped." She then ran out of the kitchen, calling out, "Daddy, the floor was moving! I was spinning around, and Mommy was taking a ride!"

Cecilia, whenever she sees the Google or the Gmail logos on my computer screen, says, "There's Goggely!" I have no idea where she got this, but I assume she has made the connection with the logo and the term "Google."

Here's one that happened a long time ago - maybe even last year - but I don't think I ever wrote it down. A neighbor was pulling her granddaughter down the street in a gardening wagon. It looked like this:

Caroline called out, "Hey, why is she pulling that girl in a recycling bin?"

Just heard a TV commercial for Pamprin... it said, "I can feel my period when it's coming." Really, do we have to share every intimate detail of our lives with the public these days? Aren't some things just a bit "too much information" to be included in television commercials??

When Cecilia was playing a make-believe game with Caroline, I heard her say, "We're going on a snow walk - don't forget yourselves!"

Cecilia says "anyone" instead of "nobody." If I ask her something like, "Who's done with dinner?" she will answer, "Anyone!"

Just as Cecilia thought the kitchen floor was moving after spinning in circles, she also thought that we were moving when the water was pulling back at the beach. As the water went back into the ocean, she would call out, "We're taking a ride!!!" A few times she actually did take a ride, though - the undertow was strong enough some days that it pulled her down!

I think I have finally ordered all the things I need for homeschooling... I am just going to download this handwriting program tonight, and then I will have pretty much all I need other than supplies for projects as we get to them throughout the year. I have spent all my birthday money/homeschooling money, and I spent it all fast! I spent a bit on myself, but mostly used it for school-related stuff. I was lucky to not have to buy a pencil sharpener (my mom said I could have their old one), and I will be getting their kitchen table sometime hopefully soon. They don't have a replacement table yet... but my brother goes back to school in Ohio in a week, taking his truck with him. my other brother has a truck too, which is with yet another brother right now, but they live 45 minutes from my parents and an hour from us... so, we just have to figure out a plan for getting the table here. I still have plenty more organizing to do... the bookshelves in the "School room" are about halfway ready. The closet where I have various reference books and "work activities" stored needs some rearranging too. And I need to get our Circle Time stuff in order as well as figure out how the local library works with homeschoolers and inter-library loans. I will want books for specific weeks, so I have to talk with them about when to make requests and if they can hold things longer for us... they have a generous teacher policy, which includes homeschoolers, that we can check out books for six weeks at a time. I don't know how this applies to inter-library loans, though. I still don't know when our first day of school will be, officially... I think it will involve lots of exploration of the new stuff and how to use and care for our books and supplies.

I am getting back on the diet this week after over a week off during our vacation... according to my scale, I gained back 4.5 pounds. I was down a total of 15.5 pounds before the trip. I am hoping that a week back on the diet will get me close to where I was before, but we'll see...

Definitions by Caroline

Exile: the aisle in the grocery store where you buy eggs

If she were to use it in a sentence, it may sound something like this: "Oh, we don't use the exile, because we have our own eggs right in our backyard!"

Random Bits

**Okay, so this has been compiling for several weeks now... time to finish and post it!**

Overheard:

Caroline: I'm pretending to be named CC.

Cecilia: NO!!!

Caroline: Yes, my name is CC.

Cecilia: Mommy... she's... messing up my word!!

Caroline: No I'm not; I'm just pretending to have the same name as you. I'm not pretending tobeyou.

Cecilia: That hurt my feelings!

Cecilia has said things that lead me to believe that she thinks one day she will actually be Caroline when she gets as old as Caroline. She thinks she will have brown hair when she is five, for instance!

Does anyone else have kids who have insanely accurate memories? About the smallest, most random things? When I was putting laundry into the wash and Caroline was helping me to find stained clothes so I could spray them with Oxyclean spray, she had one of these such moments of random detailed memory. I commented, "Wow, those shorts are really filthy!" (They were covered in black something-or-other.) She said, "Yeah, I wore those at the Tonic concert." I said, "Ah, so playing around outside must have gotten them so dirty." "No," she responded, "that's from where I was leaning against the police fence after the concert. The black was rubbing off on my shorts." This was at least two weeks after the concert (I can go that long and longer without washing the girls' clothes... they have lots). She then proceeded to find what Cecilia had worn on that same day so she could see if it was as dirty as her shorts.

Cecilia was outside looking at the chickens. Lorpie, as we call the Australorp hen, bent down to peck at the ground. Cecilia proclaimed, "Lorpie is showing her tail at me! And her bottom!"

Another fun thing Cecilia does lately is apologizing to inanimate objects. She ran into the wall the other day and said, "Sorry, wall."

Cecilia was looking at a photo of Chris and me that is in a frame in the den. She announced, "That's Mommy and Daddy wearing shirts!" As if this is some kind of rare occurrence... ?

Cecilia is doing really well with learning how to use the potty. If I leave her diaperless and pants-free, she does not have accidents. She runs to the potty any time she needs to go. If she is in a diaper, or in panties with shorts, then she doesn't quite recognize the urge to go or something. So she has been running around the house (and the backyard - just in case the neighbors don't already think I'm nuts ;) bare-bottomed. She recently told me not to put a diaper and shorts on her, "because I'm being Emerson Hart." (She has been pretending to be other people/animals a lot lately) So apparently she thinks he runs around his house with no pants, too. I guess in her world, everybody must do this!

I love that my kids think that cream cheese is frosting...

Cecilia cannot say "sunflower." caroline couldn't either at this age... she said, "Sunsow seed butter" for "sunflower seed butter." Cecilia calls them "funslower seeds." I asked her why they were called that and she said, "Because... we have fun!"

Cecilia named a stuffed tiger "Caramel Soap" recently. Okay, whatever... And of course, you know Caroline had to also name another stuffed animal the same thing!

Caroline calls a two-piece swimsuit a "half and half swimsuit." Ha!!!

Cecilia was recalling our trip to the zoo and wondering if we saw tigers when we were at the "Burningham Zoo."

Lately, Cecilia's thing to say to Caroline when she is getting annoyed is, "No thanks; I don't like you!" Of course, this tears Caroline up... she is so serious that she really believes that Cecilia doesn't like her and so then she persists in bothering her, trying to get her to apologize or to say that she does really like her...

Cecilia was eating a ham sandwich and didn't quite bite through it completely. She handed me a loose piece of ham and asked, "Mommy, can you put this back in? I pulled it out... with my mouth!"

Today I was reading the book Gus Was a Friendly Ghost to Caroline. In total seriousness, she asked, "So, why isn't he a friendly ghost any more? It says Gus was a friendly ghost, so he must not be now." I'm blaming the husband's personality on this one...

Caroline lost her first tooth today! She is growing up... the tooth fairy will bring her two quarters, I think. And I saw this really cute idea relating to the patron saint of teeth a while back but haven't made one myself, not thinking she'd lose a tooth this early. The other top tooth is a bit loose as well...

I had lots of fun putting together those last two posts on nursing in public. I have a third which will be featured on the Nursing Freedom website as a guest post sometime soon... I will link to it from my blog when it's up!

We went to Cow Appreciation day at Chick-fil-A with friends on Friday... lots of fun! If you dress like a cow, you get a free meal. So we all wore our spots and cow ears and tails... pictures coming soon! :) I am also planning to do a post sometime about the personalities of the chickens... yes, they each have their own personality, which is the neatest thing about them, I think!

The Little Pessimist That Couldn't

Today Cecilia was telling me about a book that I suppose Chris read to her. She told me, "The little engine said, "I think I can't, I think I can't." I asked her if it said, "I think I CAN," and she said, "No - CAN'T!"

Kids Say the Darndest, Er, Most Inappropriate Things

Does anyone else have kids who just babble all day long, just to hear themselves talk, asking nonsensical questions and expecting them to be answered? Things like, "Mommy, does your head like your mouth?" "Cecilia, are you a cheese?"

Caroline has always played with language... making up random rhyming words (once when she was three or four, she was saying "sh1tty" because it rhymed with something... "itty bitty," I think it was). She also just makes up words, or she uses real words in places where they don't belong, thinking it is wildly funny, and causing her to, for instance, proclaim that 40 year old rock stars are "yum yum." If somebody was to overhear this, I am sure they'd be appalled, thinking that we are actually saying these things and she is picking up on them... Or how about when she makes up her own abbreviations for words, like when she was once asking for crackers at snack time by saying, "I want some more crack, please."

There is a kids' song called Apples and Bananas, and for each verse, you change the vowels... so it starts as "I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas," and then it becomes "I like to it, it, it ipples and baninis," and so on. So Caroline and Cecilia like to sing, "I like to nip, nip, nip, nipples and baninis."

I hope I'm not the only one whose kids say such innocent yet horrifying things...

Kids Say the Darndest Things

We went to a local lake to swim on Thursday morning. We have to pay $3 for a parking permit there (it is going up to $5 in June - waah). As we drove out of the parking lot to go home, Caroline asked, "Mommy, do we have to pay to unpark?"

And Cecilia calls sunscreen "scrunscreen" - so cute!

***************************************************************************

And this is totally unrelated, but I just realized how very old our car is... I was 17 years old when it was made!!! And I am almost 31 now!!! I can't believe I was actually only 22 when we bought it... wow, I almost can't believe I was ever 22 years old at all. Seems surreal...

Kids Say the Darndest Things Friday

So, my brother got his cats shaved. Yes, his CATS. Apparently there is a company that will actually come to your house, take your cats into a van, and shave most of their fur off from their necks all the way down their tails. I think they look like rats now... big rats. These cats do really shed a lot (one practically shoots fur at you as a defense mechanism), and this is supposed to prevent them from leaving their fur all over everything they touch. So Cecilia saw this photo, and her immediate response was, "Those silly cats are wearing different tails!" Caroline just got upset and said she was mad at Uncle Tim. Poor things... Mason, the one on the right, will likely have a relapse of her kitty-PTSD now.

Caroline told me a few nights ago, as I was tucking her in, that "When the first light comes into my room in the morning, I'm going to turn back into a gerbil."

Okay, then...

Kids Say the Darndest Things

These are all from Cecilia, almost 28 months old:

On Sunday, Chris whispered to her to tell me Happy Mother's Day. She ran up to me and exuberantly exclaimed, "Happy Saint Mother's Day!!!"

Today, she was outside hanging on the glider swing (grabbing the bars and lifting her legs up, dangling in midair), and she was announcing to herself, "I'm very up in the sky!"

Then she saw a spotted bird outside... it looked like a tan-colored dove with spots near its tail. She said, "They have freckles on them!"

Kids Say the Darndest (a day late)

The other day, there was a non-full moon visible in the sky in the afternoon. Cecilia saw it and said, "The moon is broken off."

Caroline was telling Cecilia that when she was older, they could both spend the night at Gramma's house. Cecilia knows that Uncle Tim lives at Gramma's house too (in the summers anyway; he's a college student), so she said something about him, followed by, "He'll sing Hush Little Baby and that will feel me better."

Cecilia's current cute pronunciations:

• "puh-rending" = pretending
• "garolla" = granola
• "bee-rowdoe" = burrito
• "Bee-rawna" = Brianna (the name of a friend)

Caroline and I were coloring pictures of acorns for a project, and she was coloring the round part while I was coloring the caps. She said, "You color the 'a' part, and I'll color the 'corn' part." This was followed by, "Maybe they should be called 'o-corns,' because they are shaped like Os."

Today, Caroline ran after Daddy, who was headed out the back door, calling, "Did you tell Mommy about going to the car wash? Don't tell her!" Then, turning to me because daddy was already outside and hadn't heard, "Mommy, did Daddy tell you about going to the car wash?" No, but you just did, Caroline! Apparently my Mother's Day gift is a clean car!

Well, they are a wee bit Irish...

...6.25%, to be exact.

While Caroline and Cecilia were playing earlier today, Caroline was running around singing, "La la la, it's Happy Hour!"