more preschool wisdom...

Nora is perched on the big toilet in the bathroom and she screams out to me, "Mom, don't come in here...it SMELLS!"

Addison is 'telling it like it is' to mom and dad in the car, "My name is NOT Addison Rose. It's Addison. You can call me Addi."

Dad yells, "Let's GO!" Nora responds, marching."Hut 2,3,4..."

Wisdom... recent snippets from our house that I just have to record...

Nora is breathing rapidly while she is feverish..."mom, I think I am mad, listen to my noise."


Addi, when told she was a little girl, " But mom I am not a baby, look, I am THIS looooonnng."


Addi tells her Aunt "I am a big girl, I wear panties all the time."


Gavin gets a kiwi out of the fruit drawer. "What are you eating?" I say. "Zucchini" he replies.


Nora: "Mom is it hungry time yet?"


Addi: bored..."Mom, I think I have to go to Sara's (daycare) today."


Nora at the zoo: right after a goat head butts the fence near Gavin, "Get me outta here...the aminals are gonna get me."


playing hide and seek at our house: Maleah screams from her hiding spot, "okay, we are ready, come and get us"...Addi "I hafta count first, one two free seven ten nineteen, ready or not I am here coming"


Gavin: I spent a little bit of time explaining to my kids about the burial process before the funeral. When we were at the cemetery in a small crowd of family walking to the burial place for Great Grandma Gordon, Gavin is observing where we are placing our feet and he yells a little too loudly, "Hey mom, we are walking on dead bodies."


Maleah: "oh" when her aunt Kim tries to explain what Bieber fever means. A few moment later, "Who is Justin Bieber?" she asks.


Gavin: "I pretty much know every word now," after the fourth time in three days of reciting the prayer of the rosary.


Nora: coming home from being out of the house for the 5th day in a row....runs to the dining room chair and gives it a hug, "I love my house, mommy."


Maleah: telling me about the bullying assembly at school. "and then he asked how many friends we had and some kids said they had hundreds of them...I didn't know they kept track like that." Me: "I think they are talking about facebook friends." Maleah: "oh"

Words of Wisdom on a Wednesday

From Nora:

Mom, my tummy hurts. I think when I eat candy it will feel better!

I am a taco taco girl and Addi is a nacho nacho girl.

Screaming very loudly. EVERYBODY BE QUIET! Maleah is sleeping!

It's 8:45 am and we just finished breakfast. Nora scoots a chair over to the counter and grabs the bag of Fritos Scoops... Nora, if you get one chip mom will spank your butt.

Okay, I will get two chips mom!

From Addi:

Mom, at Sara's only one person goes in to the potty at a time. We have to wait outside the door for our turn.

I am tired mom, I am going to bed. You stay up all night and work on the 'puter.

Mom, do you like the blue coffee or the red coffee better? (Maxwell house vs. Folgers) my answer? ...the one that is on sale honey.

seven and nine year old wisdom

I was telling Maleah that I heard people on the radio talking about the best Christmas present they ever received. I told her that the best gift I was ever given was my first baby girl born a couple of days before Christmas and how the nurses wrapped her up in a stocking for me. "Yeah", Maleah said "And if I was born on St. Patrick's day they would have probably painted me green."

I was showing Gavin the scarves I have been attempting to crotchet. He looks them over and then says."Mom, if you have time today, make a hundred of these and we can sell 'em at a craft show for money."

Maleah is reading the back of the cereal bag and she says, "This is my favorite cereal and it is much cheaper than Honey Bunches of oats. I think Malt-o-meal is a much better value. They have a website, too mom. We could learn all about cereal."

We put the reindeer up in the yard and Gavin worried about it falling over. "We need to stake it, mom, do you have any stakes?" he says. "And we gotta figure something out about that star on the top of the pine tree, too. One big wind and whoosh it's gone for good."

two and three year old wisdom

Driving in the car I am wiggling along to the Christmas songs on the radio and telling the girls to dance, too. Addison starts singing. Nora screams, "ADDI don't sing, JUST DANCE!"

I say to my littlest when she just wakes, "Morning, sweets."
"No," she says. "I am Nora."

Addison is pretty much potty trained. She is noticing that Nora is getting treats more often than her for voiding on the potty. So she negotiates a deal with me. "Mom, I will go potty IF you give me a BIG sucker."

Santa entered the gym last night after the concert and Nora sees him and yells, "Mom, I wuv that man!"

I tell the girls that Grandma's birthday is coming up. They get really excited and say,"I want to go to her party!"

Digging in the treat bags they got from Santa the girls are devouring candy. I ask, "How many candies are you going to have?" Nora holds up one pointy finger and says, "TWO". Addi looks at her fingers and finally just holds up all of five and says, "Free".

I take requests

This is what I found in my kitchen this morning.

I set myself up for this one

Nora and mommy in the bathroom for pottying...

Mommy, "Nora sits on the little potty with her little butt."

Nora, "And mommy has a BIG butt."

name that tune

can you guess?

tookies

My nose is cold and I am in my own home. I find this the perfect excuse to A) use the dryer and B) turn the oven on. While it's on we should probably put it to good use and make COOKIES! I mean just because we have had cake almost every day since October 8th we can't deny the perfect cookie baking day a dream of her own.

Addi has been fighting a cold and her naptime :) for a while now. She whines and grumbles every day. "Mom, I am a big girl, see I have unerwear!", "Mom, but it is not dark out yet." "Mom, my mattress gives me owies." This last one I thought was fairly clever and she demanded it for several days until yesterday when I tried to change her sheets and noticed small holes in her sheet. Um, yeah, the springs have broken through the !@#$ mattress. So, into the bunk beds she goes. Shoot, I felt dumb. But today she took FOREVER to get to sleep so by the time she went down Nora was up and at 'em.

Back to the cookies...

Nora and I started making cookies and I put all the ingredients on the counter.
She eyed the m&m's. She watched them carefully. She helped me by dumping ingredient after ingredient into the mixing bowl. When I came to the chocolate she shrieked when I dumped a part of the package in and her hand went deep into the peanut buttery, oatmeal sugared batter. She was trying to save the colored yummies from a slow and heated death. She succeeeded in rescuing a few of them until I finally gave in and gave her a handful in the measuring cup. She was happy to wait until the "tookies" were done to eat the rest.

I love that little colorful chocolate lover:) Wonder where she gets her addiction?

Two

The big kids gave Nora two spankings yesterday for her birthday and she was stomping mad, "No, don't spanka me butt!" She screamed. I asked her if she knew how old she was and she proudly nodded her head. "Are you two?" I asked her. She shook her head no and matter of factly replied, "I yellow". And with that she went on with her normal daily business of making messes. Happy birthday baby Nora!

um, smarty pants?

Gavinisms

Hey, Addi, if you pee on the potty the next time mommy is at Walmart you will get a treat! I promise!

Mom, look that bird is recycling! (a bird flew by carrying a wrapper in its mouth)

I think my game is gonna be cancelled, people are gonna be sad (insert sad head shake here)

How can you do dishes so fast mom? Must be a LOT of practice.

People who only have one person in their family are lucky, they don't have to wash too many dishes.

If dad is working we have one less plate to wash!

Grandma only has one person at her house, but she eats a lot! (I think he was referring to the amount of dishes in your sink mom ;)

(I don't think he likes helping with dishes)

So mom, what can I do in the morning that is NOT chores?

2 year old wisdom

While playing with chalk and her chalk board, Addison measured the pieces and put the smaller ones in a "baby chalk" pile and the larger ones in the "mommy chalk" pile.

She counted as she wrote," One, Eight, One, Eight, Three, One, Eight..."

The she stopped, abruptly, and looked me right in the face, " Mommy how do you spell A?"

Food funnies

This morning I was carrying a pound of hamburger up from the freezer when Addi saw me and said, "Oh yum, CAAAAAKE!"

Last night the kids were doing their chores when Maleah asked, "Mom if we are good can we have something yummy like ice cream...or Doritos?"

Wisdom from the 6 year old...

Tonight, during supper, the Gavinator twisted his face as he fished a lima bean out of the chicken casserole. Finally, he lifted it into the air on the tip of his fork, and screamed, " EWWWWWW MOM, I got an M&M in my casserole!"

I had to get these down before I forgot...

I am drowning in material for posts. I am wading in it. I am sure you are shocked.

Here's a few tidbits to get you through the weekend from my newly 6 year old son.

Standing in line in the hospital cafeteria on his birthday, Gavin is juggling plates of salad and pizza and ice cream. He carefully put each plate on the scale to be weighed. The clerk says something about how nice of a job he is doing, she should hire him, she says. To which he replies without missing a single beat. "I can't work on the 10th. I am having a birthday party."

He has been learning to read by watching his older sister and just this morning he was sitting at the table reading the cereal box. He often uses his ears to read, listening carefully to what Maleah says, but he is sounding out words like pop. So he reads..."Snap, Crapple, Pop." That one cracked me up.

So, just now he comes into the kitchen listening to his new mp3 player. He is just a singing along to the songs. He doesn't even know the words but he still pushes the noises out, it sound sort of like a howling cow. "Neuooo, make the wattaaa, woooorld a better plllllaaaaaceeee." Anyway, he stops for a minute when he sees me standing by the counter, utensils in hand. Then, at the top of his lungs he screams, "MOM, ARE YOU MAKING NORA'S CAKE!" It almost knocked me over it was so loud. We had a quick pow wow about how he doesn't have to scream when he has earbuds in.

Yowsers. My ribs hurt.

The 'truth' fairy

Gavin lost a tooth at school on Friday. He came home telling a tale of paper towels "full of blood".

The tooth went right under the pillow and, you guessed it, she didn't show.

The next morning, Gavin said, "Mom, I know why the tooth fairy couldn't come, it was the storm."

Dodged a bullet with that one, I did.

So tonight, the Gavinator walks over to me and says, "Look mom, another tooth!" He pulled it himself and only two drops of blood on his t-shirt to disappoint him. He ran to put it under his pillow while screaming, "Just in case the rain stops and she can get here tonight, I'll be ready."

Maleah, in the living room with me, ponders the truth about the tooth fairy. Picture her, all almost eight years of her, standing with her hand on her hip waving her other hand and saying "I wonder if she's real, I mean, I believe in her, definitely, but I wish I could see her. I think it might be really God and not the tooth fairy at all. But hen I wouldn't ever see Him anyway. Oh, well."

Hopefully the money gets under the pillow sometime, storm or no storm. I don't have a real good track record.

Nephew Wisdom

"Man, you are lucky you guys have a sliding door. We had an open in and out one and whenever I was getting my shoes on I always got bonked in the butt."

the writing on the wall...

Gavin: "Mom, when am I going to get glasses!"

Mom: "Hopefully never."

Gavin: "I can't read a thing."

Gabby Addi

Other perfectly acceptable titles for this post definitely include:

• Chip off the ol' block
• Like mother like daughter
• Say it, sister
• She keeps going and going like the energizer bunny.

Last night, at the dinner table we were all trying to get a word in when we noticed Addi babbling away. She went on and on and on before I even thought to grab the camera and record it. She was so cute with her hand gestures and her 'know it all' voice. She just kept going. Forgive the giggles, we could hardly contain ourselves. I know what you are thinking. Yes, I am sure my mother would agree this is just about how I started out, too. I love how she hardly stops to shove a french fry in her mouth...just like me. What have I created? Poor thing.