Silence

I knew the silence that I heard as I finished my shower yesterday morning meant my kids were either being very good or very naughty. Fortunately, the former proved to be true. This is how I found my little readers:


(I sometimes use this umbrella stroller to wheel things in from the car since we have long hallways to get to our place; it then becomes one of the kids' favorite play things in the house. And I accept total responsibility for turning our kids into such readers - they've definitely learned this one by example. :)

On a different note, earlier today a herd of vicious sharpteeth invaded my shopping list!

All the other items for the list were too scared to be written here after the sharpteeth arrived.

Father & Sons Campout/Girls' Time

I haven't blogged in a while. Being the Relief Society president has a funny way of causing any free time I used to have to disappear. And my life seems to have sped up about 1000 times. I can't believe how the weeks fly by. A couple of weeks ago I had a dream that I was talking to my friend, Emily, who is also pregnant and due about 2 weeks before me. In the dream (or nightmare :), Emily was telling me that she was going to have her baby in 3 weeks. I became panicked in my dream as I said, "But that means I'll have a baby in 5 weeks. I'm not ready for a newborn!!" I was very grateful when I woke up to remember that we have babies at 40 weeks, not at 20 weeks. I really feel like I'm going to blink and the baby will be here.

But here's what's been happening in the present: Peter took Asher on his first Father & Sons Campout this weekend. They had a great time, although Peter decided to ask Asher if he saw any dragons when they took a hike through the woods at night. Asher was scared by this so Peter had to tell him that it was a nice dragon and it had flown away. Then they started looking for rabbits and squirrels instead. The only wildlife they actually saw was a frog.



In the meantime, Kaia and I had girls time. (Peter took this picture when he got home, but it shows what we spent a lot of our time doing.) Here's a synopsis of our time spent together:
$1 - red box movie rental
$1.23 - bananas
$1.29 - Cool Whip
$0.50 - yogurt (for a dinner of bananas dipped in a mixture of Cool Whip & yogurt - yum!)
Kaia's spontaneous giggles throughout Horton Hears a Who - priceless


The kids have been doing a whole lot of bike riding recently - Asher is a pro now! The kids can ride the 2.5 mile loop from our house to the playground and back.


Here's the peanut butter chocolate treat I was mentally, and then in reality, drooling over this afternoon:

I can't take credit for the picture or the recipe (mine didn't turn out nearly as beautiful, but they are good - seriously, amazingly good). Click here for the recipe and blog where the pictures are found.

Asher and the kids enjoyed some reading on the couch this afternoon.

Then Asher enjoyed a long hour and a half nap. We tried diligently to wake him up to no avail. He was gone. The days of playing outside in the beautiful weather have obviously taken their toll.


And now, as Peter is trying to convince him to go to sleep, Asher is saying, "My no need to go to sleep. My already went to sleep before!" It could be a long night. :)

True Confessions...

...or how my kids have spent their time this gloomy, rainy week.

First, a little test to determine whether or not you should continue reading this post: if you let your kids jump on the couches, read on. If you don't, you may want to stop here and catch up with me on my next post. If you decide to read anyway, you have been forewarned!

So Monday morning dawned gray and rainy. The kids have become quite excellent at bike riding and have really fallen in love with it. I knew it was going to rain most of the week, so when it wasn't raining when we first woke up on Monday morning I told the kids we would take the bikes out for a while if it still wasn't raining when I finished showering and getting ready. Of course, it was raining by that point. The long and short of it is that I did let my kids ride their bikes in the house. Shocking, I know! In my defense, the kids tires still looked pretty clean since we'd only been outside with them a couple of times; plus, we have all wood floors except for a couple of rugs and my floors were in desperate need of mopping anyway. I figured they couldn't make the floors much worse than they already were, and letting them ride in side really saved my sanity. Every time they got a little antsy, they would just hop on their bikes again (I did enforce the rules of wearing their helmets and shoes at all times on the bikes). And they had good practice maneuvering corners while they rode in circles around the house. (I know that was the last time they can ride inside; we took the bikes out a couple of days ago during a break from the rain and Asher just had to ride through every puddle, water and mud, and there's no way I'm letting him track that around the house.)


Could you say no to this face?


Today was another rainy and dreary day, but Kaia figured out how to entertain herself. She loves to play in the bathroom sink with bubbles and buckets and such, so I usually just leave her be when she's entertaining herself in there. Well, today when I went to check on her I found that she had decided to give herself a bath! First she turned the stool upside down and filled it partway with water, using her bucket and watering can. Then she lifted it and put it in the bathtub and gave herself a bath with the shave gel I'd forgotten to put away (which is now basically gone). I was pretty impressed by her resourcefulness.


Later today I was busy cleaning up one mess, only to turn around and see that the kids had carried every pillow in the entire house into the kitchen and piled them up. Their original plan was to jump from the top of the couch onto the pile of pillows. I immediately nixed that idea, but I told them they could jump from the floor onto the pillows. Who needs a trampoline?



All in all, we've had a great week!

Help!

I need advice from any moms who have been there done that. Asher has recently discovered that the most fascinating word in the English language is (apparently) "poop." Case in point - the kids were taking a bubble bath recently. Kaia was pretending the bubbles were ice cream and she said, "My arms are covered in ice cream!" Asher then yelled, "My arms are covered in poop!" I had to hide my laughs so as not to encourage him.

This is where I need advice. So far my philosophy has been to just ignore him saying poop in general, as long as he's not calling someone else poop. So saying "triceratops poo poo" is ignored but if he says Kaia's name is "Poop" then he's disciplined. First question: is it best to ignore the use of the word in the former situation or should I be addressing that as well? Second question: does anyone have any methods of discipline they recommend for name calling? This is the first time I can remember having to deal with it.