Sunday, March 31, 2013

Spring has sprung.

No time to post much as SPRING HAS SPRUNG!
  It's warm, there's no snow on the ground and the kids want to be outside!
This will be Tommy's first real summer where he can walk around and enjoy it.
It was a beautiful day Saturday, and we took the kids out to play--running and blowing bubbles, riding bikes and sliding on slides--it was like there was 4 months of outdoor energy that had been trapped since Christmastime.  They had a blast.
 Tori made it her goal to pop every bubble Dani blew.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 And then it was Easter.
 Another failed attempt at a family photo!  Took a dozen--this was the best!

 We had a big ol' Easter egg hunt today.  I took the girls to one in the city yesterday, and it was mayhem.  Kids of all ages running and swooping in to grab eggs.  Dani and Tori each got 2; and that was with me, literally standing over each one so they could pick it up. I didn't care if they got a lot--but they needed something!
 Today, we had about 50 eggs, just for the three kids.  Much to Dani and Tori's delight, Tommy had only a passing interest at egg hunting.
 He did, however, just rock his awesome white trashy tuxedo tee!
Happy spring!  Happy Easter!

Friday, March 22, 2013

Dem bones.

Wow, there's a whole lot of learning going on in this house.  We've got these Leap Books, with a Leap Pen that the kids can use to point to words and pictures, and letters, etc.
One of the books has a section on the body, and Dani and Tori love to point to the bones on the skeleton.  And I went on youtube to let them hear the "Dem bones" song, and now it's the theme song of the week.
Tonight at dinner, Tori told me that when she grows up she wants to be a skeleton.
She is also known for saying, "I have a PELVIS!" "I have two patellas!"
Both Dani and Tori are happy to point out where their scapulas are, and are well-versed in metatarsals and metacarpals (and that's more than I know!)
Tonight, while skyping with my parents, Tori told them that she had phalanges.  When grandma and grandpa asked what those were (and I had no flipping clue) she wiggled her fingers to the camera and said "here".  The kid is not quite 3, won't poop on the potty, but knows the skeletal system better than I do.  It's adorable, but in a way where you start to wonder if you are turning your kids into little nerdies who will be teased mercilessly in kindergarten maybe not letting them watch enough Spongebob.
 
 Tommy is turning out to be the best mimic ever.  He repeats everything anyone says. He is really musical--can baby mumble sing the words to songs in perfect pitch.  It's really pretty awesome.  We've got to bank on some kind of artistic or athletic talent with that one--he's eaten more board books than he's read.
Dani asked me tonight if she could stay up all night, because last night she had bad dreams.  She came into my room at 1:30am literally shaking.  I had to turn on lights and she flipped when I left her in the well-lit bathroom to get a fresh underjam for her (ain't noone peeing in mommy's bed).  And then we had a mommy half asleep discussion about whether dinosaurs could hurt us, and I literally was teary and begging promised her there were no dinosaurs in mommy's bed and she went to sleep. I told her that she was going to sleep on Daddy's pillow and that always means good dreams. She was so resistent to sleep tonight--but in the eldest child, compliant way.  She went upstairs, we brushed and washed, and she pleaded to stay up, knowing full well she would get into bed when I told her to.  Then she begged for Daddy's pillow because it was the good dreams pillow (but Big Man was sleeping as he works tonight!).  Hmmmm, what to do.  I went into my dressing room and got out an old bracelet, a costumey one with stones.  After I turned off the light, I put it on her wrist and told her it was Mommy's good dreams bracelet, and that it would help her to have good dreams tonight...she was in awe.  I whispered, "Don't tell Tori because I only have one.  But if you think happy thoughts tonight and know you have my bracelet, you will be fine."  It seemed to work, but I'm guessing I will have company in the wee hours.
 Tori's making progress on the potty.  She's in pullups, but will always pee on the potty.  She always asks for a magazine when we ask her to try to poop.  She will just sit there, flipping through the pages.
It's the most wonderful chaos.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Just let me grab my purse.

 
That's what Tommy would say, if he could talk in sentences.
  He's been pretty happy to walk around the house sporting Dani's Hello Kitty purse lately.  It's pretty cute, and I actually think its cuter that there does not appear to be even the slightest sentiment among my children that there's anything odd about it--because, really, there isn't.  Dani and Tori don't really seem to identify anything of theirs as for girls, or of Tommy's as for boys.  Tori's as happy wearing a Spider Man shirt as she is Hello Kitty.  Tommy rocks the girls' hand-me-downs all the time.  Dani and Tori are just as likely to pretend they are Mario and Luigi as they are to play with their dress up dolls.  Tommy is as happy to chew on a Barbie leg as he is to chew on a toy car.
I think it's pretty cool. 
 
 This is the state they are usually in, however.  Running, chasing, shrieking and generally instigating each other into zaniness.  At any given time, one kid is acting silly enough to inspire the others to bounce off the walls.
 Inspired by one of my favorite nursery school toys, I picked up some building blocks last week.  Much to Big Man's dismay fatherly joy, they all required assembly. Strangely, Big Man kept referring to them as recyclables.
 We could not build them fast enough.
If you need me, I'll be in my castle.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

With a love like that, you know you should be GLAD!

It's full-on Beatlemania in our house.  Well, for the toddlers.  Big Man's been playing a lot of the Beatles for Dani and Tori.  And Dani wants to torture me is happily singing the songs.  It's pretty adorable to here her version of things.  Like, "It's been a hard day and night, and I've been working like a dog."  It's really pretty cute.  And, she's Paul, Tori's Ringo, Big Man is George, and I'm John, apparently.  Tommy, he's Pete Best or something, but he can hum the tunes too.
 It's been a week of interesting Dani-isms.
Tonight was the one that made me realize that my daughter knows how to completely maniuplate me I've been working a bit too much, "Mommy, I had a bad dream last night.  You went to work and never came home again.  Ever. It was really scary."
 The other night we were watching a bedtime show, and Dani informs me, "Mommy, that's a Sphynx.  Those are with the pyramids in Egypt."  After I scooped my jaw off of the floor, I gave her a hug and told her she was a smart little girl.  She replied, "I'm smart, because I have a smart family."
She's been really into letting us know just how smart she is lately.   Two nights ago at dinner, she asked me about people who hunt cavemen, and whether they would hunt us too.  After a brief explanation of there being no cavemen presently, she tells me, "Mommy, I'm smart.  I know everything.  Well, maybe not everything.  But a lot."
 
We took a potty break where I was informed that, "Mommy, my poop is bigger than the universe."
 And later the same evening, when Dani was again professing her wisdom, I talked to her about it.  I told her that it was wonderful that she is so smart, but that she also needs to be humble.  That when she goes to pre-k in the fall, there will be kids who don't know how to say the alphabet, much less identify the letters and sounds, that some won't know their colors, that she will probably know more things than many of the other children.  We talked about how everyone has different skills, and knows different things, and that she needs to remember that everyone has to learn together, even if it means going a little more slowly than she would like to.  She replied, "Mommy, if they don't know things that I do, can I help teach them?" 
And we went to the park, and Tori and Tommy were adorable and all those good things too.  Tommy can now climb up and down the stairs (and my lower back thanks him for that).  Tori is flirting with being potty trained, and all is well.
I went for an annual physical, and to my surprise, I'm doing okay.  Like off the charts good.  Literally, when the doc was reviewing my blood work, he was commenting that it's incredibly rare to have the good cholesterol number higher than the bad (which mine was, with a rockin' low 144 total cholesterol) and that the labs were great.  My blood pressure is amazing, and apparently I'm going to live another year.  Literally he was so nice about it--I was like, hey doc, do you think they mixed up the vials?  I'm glad to know I'm so healthy for being a fat sedentary slug.  I asked him if that meant I could grab a whopper on the way back to work, and he said it was fine.  I'm guessing that somewhere, some poor, fit soul, is being told by their doc that they have the cholesterol and organ function of a nearly 40, overweight, overstressed mom of 3.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

They say its your birthday.

Last week was Big Man's birthday...he's on the other side of 40, barely.  He was born in Bethany Hospital in Chicago in 1972, and in 1991, as a sophomore at the University of Chicago, he met a Bethany who he would eventually marry, and he would share a birthday with her mother.  Sometimes the universe sends you hints that you were meant to be together.  Those are the signs.
But back to the celebration.  We had presents, and party hats and cake (that Big Man baked).   Before you yell at me--I was totally going to bake, but he had the day off, and did it while I was at work.
Even Big Man rocked the Mickey ears.

 Dani, asking over and over, is it time for cake yet?
 We had Giordano's pizza (from Chicago) for dinner, and I had gotten out some veggies.  Tori ate a dozen or so baby carrots, and then dumped the rest of the bag on her plate.  When it was time for cake, she would nibble a carrot and have some cake and proclaim "carrot cake".
As I mentioned, my Mom's birthday is the same day as Big Man's.  We called her in the morning before she left for work, so the kids could sing to her.  After a rowdy rendition of "Happy Birthday" Dani and Tori were chatting with Grandma on speakerphone.  I asked Dani, "Dani, do you know how old Grandma is today?".  Dani's reply, "Hmmm, I think she's one hundred."


Monday, March 4, 2013

So big-a-big!

Dani has always been insistent that she wants her hair to be like Mommy's.  For about the past year or so, we've been taking her to have her hair professionally relaxed, but it is still so curly.  The relaxing makes it managable for day-to-day, and means fewer tears while we comb and style haphazardly put it into a hair tie or two.
The day we go to the salon, she gets a blow out, and looks just so grown up.  This weekend we did layers, and, except for the bangs (which she begged for) she actually looks like Mommy!
 Everyone at the salon was amazed at her ability to sit still.  She LOVED the dryer chair, and was just as polite as can be.  Tori, who carried on the last time we took her, had insisted that she did not want to go.  That was until we were leaving, at which time she insisted that she needed to go.  She screamed at the top of her lungs as I got Dani's shoes and coat on.  Then she sat at the picture window as I loaded Dani into my car, wailing at the top of her lungs.
On the way home, we stopped and got her some puzzles.
 Tommy had his 18 month baby visit last week--he weighs 31 pounds and is off the charts.  I don't think Dani weighed that much until about age 3.  Thank God he can climb the stairs.  Wes and I may need rotator cuff surgery if he isn't potty trained soon--lifting the little dude's legs to change him is a killer.
 Dani was happy to pose with me post-haircut.
 Tori and Tommy have made a game of chasing each other around the living room pillars.
In other funny kid things....
Tori has taken to nibbling everything she eats.  The simplest little goldfish cracker must be nibbled.  Last night at dinner, Big Man had grilled some burgers, and we were enjoying them with some salad and tater tots.  I look over at Tori towards the end of dinner, and she is hunched over, holding a tater tot with both hands, nibbling on it.  I motion to Big Man--he says, "Tori, you're not a mouse." 
Tori's reponse was to look up and say, "Squeak, squeak, I AM a mouse."
In the car the other morning, Dani told me, "Mommy, I wish I had two daddies."  When I asked her why, she responded, "So I could get twice as many hugs."