The Blame Game. And Other Fun Games

Everything is Drew's fault. At least according to Owen. Ask him just about anything and he'll say, "Drew did it." Drew threw the toys all over the room. Drew colored on the wall. Drew even peed Owen's pants. While Owen was wearing them.

This morning, Owen asked me to fix his Lightning McQueen car for him. I noticed the tires on the wheels were askew, so I asked Owen if he'd tried to take them off. He said, "No. Drew took them off." I straightened the tires, but still nothing. I had seen Owen drop the car a few minutes earlier, so I told him, "Maybe it broke when you dropped it. You need to be more careful with your toys." Owen said, "Drew dropped it." I fiddled around with it for a minute and couldn't get it to work. I told Owen, "I think the batteries are dead." He replied, "No. Drew's batteries are dead."

Last night, the boys and I played hide and seek with Vito. This game involves telling Vito to sit at the top of the stairs and stay there 'til I whistle. Then he comes running down the stairs sounding like a heard of elephants and runs around the room trying to find us. Generally we hide in very obvious places--like under the pool table in the middle of the room, or between the couch and the TV. It cracks me up to hide from Vito because I can never tell if he actually knows where we are and is just pretending to not know, or if he really can't find us. I got the idea that he just pretends that he doesn't know where we are because when we were playing with Drew and Owen, they kept yelling at him from our hiding spot and he just stood there two feet away from us looking around like, "Which way did they go, George? Which way did they go?" Then I whistled and he looked over at us all surprised and came bounding over. The boys have never had so much interaction with Vito (he usually stays as far away from them as possible while remaining in the same room), and they loved it. When we were all tired out from running around and hiding (Vito and I got tired long before Drew and Owen did), the boys jumped up and down yelling, "We'll play again tomorrow! We'll play again tomorrow!" I guess they had fun, too.

Feelin' Spoiled

The view outside our window Christmas morning; snow, snow, snow! And lots of it

piled on our screens, too. It practically dwarfed my homemade snowflakes...

We had a low-key Christmas celebration this year, which was nice. The in-laws came over Christmas morning, after digging themselves out of a couple feet of snow drifts. The kids woke up at their usual time between 8:30 and 9:00, and we kept them downstairs until the in-laws got here so they could see the kids' faces when they saw all the loot under the tree. Drew and Owen were pretty excited. They ran around for a couple minutes yelling, "Presents! Presents!!" before they even thought to sit down and see which presents were for them. Samantha was interested in pretty much every present Drew and Owen got, particularly the trikes that we got for them. Whenever we handed her a present and helped her unwrap it, she promptly threw the contents of said present on the floor and toddled over to play with whatever car or truck her brothers were playing with.

Santa brought the kids a Thomas the Train set, and expansion kit (it's sorta visible in the bottom of the phot0). David and I got them a trike and Grandma and Grandpa C. got them another trike.

I got so much good loot this year. I wasn't expecting much because whenever David asked me what I wanted and I told him, (take new frying pans for example) he said, "Why would you want pans? You've already got pans, and they work just fine." (Except that they don't, because they're warped, because a certain husband loves to hear the sizzle of a hot pan under cold tap water.) I also asked for a drill, to which he replied, "Why don't you just borrow my dad's?" (Because I never know when I'm going to need to fix something or put a new hole in the wall real quick, and it's kind of a pain to be borrowing stuff from people all the time.) Finally I got sick of trying to justify my wish list, so I told him to get me some textbooks.

After all that, I was pretty surprised when there was an electric griddle and a cordless drill under the tree with my name on them. And my father in law loves to get people tools, so I've got a gazillion piece drill bit set, three tool boxes to put stuff in, an electric screwdriver (not sure how that's entirely different than a drill fitted with a Philips bit, except that it has thirty different sizes), a leveler, and a new tape measure.

It seems like Christmas is still going on; I'm still finding bits of wrapping paper here and there, and I haven't even started sorting through old toys to figure out which ones to donate (and where to donate them), which ones to keep and which ones to put in the trash. I'll have to do all that when my boys aren't looking, though, because they seem to think everything is a toy, even if it's missing the majority of its parts. A beloved favorite of Drew's is a red truck that has no wheels, no bed, only one door. I don't know why I haven't thrown it away yet; at clean up time we just throw it in the toy box with everything else. Drew digs it out from the depths of the toy box on a regular basis to play with it, and it's one of his preferred toys to take to bed with him. So tomorrow I've got that big project to do, as well as pretty much scour the house and get it all fresh and clean so I can try to keep on top of things (it's one of my New Year's goals, and I figure I might as well start right away, before school starts--only two more weeks!).

So much snow! We went out and shoveled a couple times on Christmas day, just to stay on top of it all. We got even more snow Christmas night, so the next day David went around the neighborhood with a few of the neighbors and various plows, snow blowers and shovels to dig people out. Then of course the good ol' Idaho wind picked up (not that it ever really stopped) and blew all our carefully shoveled snow every which way. Happily, though, it didn't cause too much trouble.

Weenies and Junglemints

I mopped my kitchen floor today (yep, it's that time of year again...I almost put it off 'til spring because of all the dirty snow that gets tracked in these days, but all that dirty snow made mopping mandatory). I piled all the kitchen chairs into the living room, putting one of them on the stair landing. Drew and Owen were very good to stay in that general area and not tromp all over the wet floor in the kitchen. As I was mopping along, I heard Owen yelling the strangest phrase over and over. I could tell he thought he wasn't pronouncing it like he knew it should be pronounced, because the words changed each time he said it:

Weenies and Junglemints!

Babies and Winnamence!

Lalees and Ambience!

Wallees and Jellamence!

I peeked around the corner to see what the yelling was all about. Owen was standing on the chair on the landing, with his arms outstretched, making declarations to the people (which people included Drew, Samantha [held captive in her booster seat] and Vito): Weedies and Mimamints!

I cracked up! It took me a few minutes to figure out he was trying to say "Ladies and Gentlemen." It reminded me of a favorite poem that I heard when I was about four or five that I've always tried to remember and finally thought to look up online. There are lots of versions of it and no one can seem to agree on who wrote it, but here's my favorite version:

Ladles and Jellyspoons:

I come before you

to stand behind you,

and tell you something

I know nothing about:

As next Thursday is Good Friday,

there will be a Fathers' meeting for Mothers only.

Wear your best clothes if you don't have any,

and please stay at home, if you can be there.

Admission is free, pay at the door,

have a seat on me; please sit on the floor.

No matter where you manage to sit,

the man in the balcony will certainly spit.

I thank you for your unkind attention,

and now present the next act:

The Four Corners of the Round Table.

Holiday Sap

I find myself thinking in third person a lot lately. It's all because of Facebook. For those of you who don't know anything about Facebook (where have you been?), it's a networking site basically. For me, it allows me to keep up with people I wouldn't normally be in contact with since life gets busy and crazy and people tend to drift in and out of my life. But with Facebook, I know where these people are, or at least how to send them a message. Some of the people I haven't seen in a decade or more, so it's nice to see what they're up to. I don't mean to turn this post into an advertisement for Facebook, I just wanted to explain that a little bit.

Another part of Facebook, that has a little more to do with the point of my post, is the Status; there's a text bar next to my name on my front page that asks, What are you doing right now? I can write whatever I want in there, but it has to be in third person because after I click post, it will read something like the following: Heather is tired. Or, Heather thinks snow is pretty. Or whatever I type in there.

I only update my status every couple days or so, but throughout the day almost every day, I find myself thinking of things to write in the status bar. Last night as I was doing dishes, a bunch of different things floated around in my brain:

Heather owns the loudest cat in the world. Her cat is the epitome of [whatever the antonym for stealth is].

Heather's knuckles have taken a beating from dishes, household chores and winter in general.

Heather had a lot of fun making snowflakes with her boys this evening.

Heather is tired of thinking in the third person.

Heather thinks housework should be included somewhere in the definition of insanity (you know, the one that says 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results').

Heather hates the feeling of being overdue for a really good cry.

That last one is the main reason for the post. It bugs me because there is no logic or reason to crying at this point in my life; things are going well. I'm all sorts of blessed (and that makes me want to cry). It's such a happy time of year for us (that makes me want to cry), but not for others (that makes me want to cry, too).

Yesterday was the Christmas program at church. A gal and her five year old daughter sang a beautiful song about the story of Christ's life (it made me want to cry).

My friend Marissa had a beautiful baby boy last week. I read all about him on her blog. He's so sweet. (And, of course, it made me want to cry.)

Drew and Owen have been watching Christmas episodes of their favorite cartoons. Wubbzy helps Santa deliver the Christmas presents for everyone in Wuzzleburg and Santa give Wubbzy a special gift that turns out to be the exact thing Wubbzy had been looking for to give to his friend Daizy. (I got all teary-eyed). Little Bill's great grandma was stuck at the airport on Christmas Eve so Little Bill and his siblings wrote a letter to Santa asking him to bring her back for Christmas. She shows up Christmas morning having "gotten a ride with someone who was headed her way." (Teared up some more.)

And has anyone seen the Pampers commercial? The lady singing "Silent Night" and the pictures of all the little babies sleeping almost sends me over the edge every time.

Last night as I was doing dishes, I felt like I wanted to cry again. This to me makes more sense; housework is like having teeth pulled without anesthetics.

I felt quite a bit better this morning, so I'm attributing most of my emotional distress to fatigue. And I'll probably blame some of it on hormones, just because, as a female, I can do that.

Drew's Magic Trick

Samantha is 15 months! We took her to the doc for a checkup yesterday. As is our style, we were running a little late for the appointment, even though we started getting ready a little early. We finally got every one's coats on and were headed out the door when I noticed something around Drew's shoe. It was his favorite striped underpants! I thought, "Oh, maybe they were just on the floor in his room and he stepped on them and they got stuck..." but then I thought, "I'm pretty sure those are the ones he was wearing earlier today..." So I peeked in his britches and sure enough, he was going commando. I'm not sure how he did it; as far as I remembered, he had nothing around his ankle when I put his shoes on, and nothing around his shoes when I put his jacket on. I guess he's just magic!

Samantha is healthy and doing well. The doc asked all the development questions and she's right on track, except I had to rack my brain to think of four words that she says. He told me names count, so she's got more than four. They are: kee-ee (kitty), a-dah (lay down; this she says to Vito and points her little fist at him. It's so cute), Ooooo-weeeeeen (Owen), hi, 'aye ('bye), mum (some), muh (more; she also signs this one, and does the sign for milk, too). She babbles quite a bit, but not as much as she used to it seems.

Samantha's height, weight and head circumference are on a steady upward curve, and she's on the 25th percentile for all of them. She weighs 21 lbs, 14 oz. She's 30 inches long and her head is 18 inches. So far she's following the same pattern as her brothers: she eats a ton, but she's still a little shrimpy. I love it.

Whatever, Martha!

I like Martha Stewart. I really do. But I also like her daughter's show, Whatever, Martha. It's so stinking funny. The basic premise of the show is that Martha had countless hours of video footage from her show that she didn't know what to do with, so she gave it to her daughter, Alexis, and Alexis' friend Jennifer to do with it what they will. So pretty much the girls watch it, rip it apart, sometimes participate in the building of crafts, and rip Martha's stuff apart some more. Apparently, Alexis has a lot of issues from growing up as Martha Stewart's daughter, and the show is a forum for her to work through them. Or something. In any case, I find it hilarious.

I tried to make these cookies today. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart's website. The cookies didn't turn out--they're a little too crispy, and I even took minutes off the timer with each batch I baked. The recipe says bake 15 minutes; I baked them for 10 and they were still overdone. Maybe it's because I used regular ol' cocoa powder instead of Dutch Processed (whatever), or because I don't have a kitchen mixer with a paddle attachment (whatever), or because I didn't bake them on parchment paper or let them cool on said parchment paper, or even store them on the parchment paper (whatever, Martha! Parchment schmarchment). At least the cookies taste good.

Easy As Pie

I made pumpkin pie yesterday. For the first time ever! I've watched my mom make plenty of pies for Thanksgiving throughout the years, and I've made a cherry pie (I can bake a cherry pie, Billy boy, Billy boy...) , but yesterday was the first time on my own with pumpkin. It turned out great! It's much easier than I thought. I had this idea in my head that it would be difficult, I guess because the pie has to bake forever and cool for even longer. But I don't have to do anything for those parts of the process, so no worries. I was also intimidated by the crust. Even though I have made pie crust before, my tastes have become more refined (read: picky) when it comes to crust. It has to be flaky and all-around perfect. I found a recipe on my favorite non-friend/relative blog which boasted the most perfectly flaky delicious crust ever. So I tried it. Turns out, it is perfect and flaky and delicous! Here's the link.

In more family oriented news:

Samanth is walking pretty much full time now. She falls a lot, but rather than revert to crawling when she falls she just stands up and walks some more. It's very cute and I always think of what my dad said after he watched the kids for a weekend a while back: "Now I know why they call kids this age toddlers." A word that both rhymes and describes Samantha's movements pops into mind: waddler (I don't know if that's really a word).

Drew and Owen are getting so excited for Christmas. They are a little confused as to the occasion (or are they?). We occasionally ask Drew and Owen what they'd like for Christmas. We have a book that we read to remind us why we celebrate Christmas. The boys know that Christmas is Jesus' birthday. So now they go around asking people, "What do you want for your birthday?"

I recently made some head scarves for my step mom; her hair is gone from her chemo treatments. She's doing well and is going to go back to work, so she had to have something to keep her head warm. I'm hoping I'll get some pictures of her wearing the scarves, but for now I'll post the pictures of me wearing them (I had to test them out to make sure they were good enough to give away). I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out and I'm thinking of making a bunch more to donate to chemo wards.

Here are all five scarves lined up (well, four scarves and a cap).

Above is a chemo hat that I made from this pattern.

Below are some scarves I made from a pattern I pulled out of thin air. They're all my favorites.

Once There Was A Snowman

A couple weeks ago (while the weather was still warm) the boys and I went outside and cleaned up all the weeds and dead flowers from our front yard, in preparation for snow. Ever since then, the boys wake up almost every morning shouting, "Let's go sledding today!" Except that there's not really any snow.

This past Monday we got a storm that dropped about 2 inches of snow in a fairly short time. Then the storm passed and left us with cold, cold (but sunny) weather. Drew and Owen were ecstatic to see the snow! They wanted to go outside that second and play. David took them out when he got home from work and showed them how to build a snowman. They had a blast.

I couldn't get any pictures of Owen with the snowman. He came inside before Drew and refused to go back out for the photo. He was pretty frozen because he actually helped with the snowman-making. Drew didn't help, but he was really proud of the results.

Hide and Seeking

Drew and Owen have a new favorite game: hide and seek. Or hide and seeking as Owen calls it. We played a couple days ago and had so much fun. I was cracking up the whole time because the boys never really grasped the concept of being the hider; the point is to not be found, but apparently that's not as fun... I walked around our basement pretending to not know where Drew and Owen were hiding. I searched here and there calling, "Where could my boys be? Are they in the toy box? No... Are they under the couch? No..." Then, from under the blankets in the spare bedroom I heard, "We're in here, Mom!"

It reminded me of one of my favorite poems as a kid:

Hiding by Dorothy Aldis

I'm hiding, I'm hiding

And no one knows where;

For all they can see is my

Toes and my hair

And I just heard my father

Say to my mother -

"But, darling, he must be

Somewhere or other;

Have you looked in the inkwell?"

And Mother said, "Where?"

"In the INKWELL?"said Father.

But I was not there.

Then "Wait!" cried my mother —

"I think that I see

Him under the carpet."

But It was not me."

Inside the mirror's

A pretty good place."

Said Father and looked, but saw

Only his face.

"We've hunted," sighed Mother,

"As hard as we could

And I am so afraid that we've

Lost him for good."

Then I laughed out aloud

And I wiggled my toes

And Father said —"

Look, dear,I wonder if those

Toes could be Benny's?

There are ten of them, see?"

And they WERE so surprised to find

Out it was me!

In case you're wondering what my other favorite poems are:

My Shadow by Robert Louis Stevenson

Mud by Polly Chase Boyden

Crowded Tub by Shel Silverstein

Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Birthday Wishes

Here's a Happy Birthday shout out to my favorite Andrew brother! 29! Since Andrew is my closest-in-age sibling, we probably spent more time together and thus fought more and had more fun than my siblings who are much older or younger than me.

Andrew is the best at building things, taking things apart, figuring out how they work and fixing things. There are plenty of things that I associate with Andrew every time I see them: blanket forts over the heater vents; cardboard box forts of any kind; spook alleys in the basement; paper towel tubes (can be used for anything from making periscopes to pummeling one's sister); duct tape. My brain contains random memories of licking nine-volt batteries (gives a little zap on the tongue); cooling myself with my own personal teeny-motorized fan, the blades of which were usually made of cereal box, built 'specially for me by Andrew; building dams in irrigation ditches and racing boats in them.

Happy Birthday, big brother! Hope your day is a great one!

Andrew with his wonderful family

Well Fed

I went to a Relief Society (women ages 18 and up in our church) Christmas party last night. It was so wonderful to associate with other adults and have real conversations! In fact, the mention of kids was kept to a minimum, even. Amazing. Of course my boys couldn't handle that, so they had to wander out of the nursery and ask me to help them use the toilet twice (within 25 minutes) during the evening.

The food was scrumptious. I tasted crème brûlée for the first time in my life. Loved it! I need to go around and get recipes from people. A gal brought a jello (for a church dinner, go figure...) parfait sort of dish that involved a meringue and cranberries. Yum!

For the program some of the gals were asked to share what they do to bring the Christmas spirit into their homes. Then at the end we were treated to this beautiful slide show that wonderfully depicts the true meaning of Christmas. If you feel like your Christmas cheer could use a boost (or even if you don't feel that way), watch it!

Tagged

My good friend Erin tagged me the other day. Here are the 8s:

Rules:
1) Post Rules on your blog
2) Answer the six "8" items
3) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving them a comment

8 favorite TV shows:

1. Chuck
2. Ugly Betty
3. The Mentalist
4. Psych
5. Jeopardy!
6. My Boys
7. The Daily Show
8. Samantha Who?
   

8 things I did yesterday:

1. Folded Laundry
2. Turned in my cleaning work order and got paid. (yay!)
3. Worked on headscarves for my step mom. (I haven't forgotten you, LuAnn! They're just trickier than I expected)
4. Wrestled with David and the boys, showed them tackling and dog piles.
5. Played Mario Kart with David after the kids went to bed.
6. Drank milkshakes with David after the kids went to bed.
7. Cleaned the kitchen.
8. Listened to Christmas music on the radio almost all day.

8 things I look forward to:

1. Going back to Thailand
2. Finishing school
3. Getting a good job so David can quit the Railroad and pursue a career he likes.
4. David quitting the Railroad and pursuing a career he likes.
5. Christmas
6. Date nights with David
7. Setting up Christmas decorations
8. Spring
   

8 favorite restaurants:

1. Sister Dograk's (a lady in Thailand had a restaurant in front of her house. She had dozens of delicious versions of fried rice!).
2. Formosa
3. Roldolfo's (they have yummy, massive breakfast burritos)
4. Texas Road House
5. Winger's
6. Buddy's (scrumptious, garlicky Italian; I'm not allowed near David for two days after eating there)
7. Papa John's Pizza
8. Burger King

8 things on my wish list:

(no one said all of these had to be realistic)

1. A live-in housekeeper
2. A Winter home in Thailand (and the money to actually travel there every winter)
3. Cute, trendy clothes that will never wear out or get stained, and never get too tight.
4. New paint in my kitchen.
5. Some kind of organizing system for all my sewing and craft stuff.
6. Candy making supplies (not for making candies, but for making cake pops).
7. More time to practice baking and cooking(this wish would come true if wish #1 came true).
8. Supplies (cookware, spices and sauces) for making Thai food.

8 people to tag:

I tag whoever wants to do it. Just let me know if you decide to write down your 8s and I'll pop over to your blog to check it out!