Quick Funny from a Kid You Don't Know

Okay, this funny is not from my own child, it's my friend Donna's son. But it was so funny I couldn't resist sharing it!

Campbell was singing the song "Let It Be" (Beatles) and in his version, the lyrics include: "Speaking words with whiskers, let it be..."

Quick Funny from Preston

It's been busy around here. I have several posts I want to write, but just haven't had the chance yet. I'll get to them as soon as I can, but until then, I just had to share this quick funny.

Preston moved to a new daycare when school started. It just worked easier with the kindergarten schedule, and he really has been wanting to go to PAWS with Haley for the last year. So on the last day at his old daycare - where he has been going since he was 6 months old - Michelle asked him if he was going to miss them. His response:

"Well, I'm going to miss the dogs."

Ouch! (For the record, though, he was very excited to go in and say hi to everyone when we went there last night to pick up the other boys. So he did miss more than just the dogs.)

Contemplation

A sister in our ward is about to have a baby any day now. I've been watching her updates on facebook as she hopes each string of contractions will turn into real labor. And it really makes me think about the last time I was in that situation. I swear that it doesn't seem long ago at all. How can it have been nine months already since Rylen was born? Probably because he's my last, but I want him to stay my baby for a little longer. While I love watching him learn to explore and enjoy the world around him, I already miss the days when he just wanted to snuggle with me all the time.

When I mentioned my feelings to Aaron, he said he's been doing a lot of thinking lately, too. Specifically, he's been thinking about some dear friends who lost their baby at 8 months. Ever since Rylen hit that age and then moved beyond, Aaron's been thinking a lot about what we would have missed if we were in our friends' situation. And of course, now I can't help but think about it, too. It makes our hearts ache again for our friends and makes us feel even more grateful to have our sweet boy. (And our other children, too, of course!)

Surplus

Surplus [sur-pluhs]: an amount, quantity, etc., greater than needed.

That's a good description of the grocery situation at my house right now. Which is certainly better than the opposite! But wasn't exactly what I had planned.

I like to use King Sooper's HomeShop service because I can create a shopping list online and then King Soopers will gather everything up and deliver it to me. Believe me, that $10 delivery fee is totally worth it to avoid dragging four kids through the store with me - especially on a big shopping trip.

So I created a (rather extensive, because we were out of everything) shopping list and set up a delivery for Saturday. Then I ended up with time to do an actual shopping trip on Thursday. I used my online shopping list as a reference and went to the store to buy all the things on my HomeShop order. After which, I cancelled the order and the scheduled delivery.

At least, I though I had. Right up until Haley looked out the window on Saturday morning and said: "King Soopers is here."

They certainly were. There with my entire order - that I had already bought. So now I had doubles of everything. 10 pounds of flour... make that 20. 5 pounds of rice... now it's 10 pounds. A gallon of milk... drink fast, because we've got two gallons to get through. 10 frozen meals for work... I've got 20 now, so I'm set for the month. 20 tubes of Go-Gurt... eat up kids! Because I ordered more than I ended up buying in person and we now have more like 60 or 70 tubes.

It was quite a challenge to find room for all this in my over-crowded pantry, fridge, and freezer. And an unexpected hit to my grocery budget. But on the plus side, I'm stocked up on everything now. I can make a lot of bread with 20 pounds of flour. And my kids go through the Go-Gurt like nobody's business, so I'm sure it will get eaten. And since I had to pull everything out of the pantry, fridge and freezer and reorganize to fit everything in, everything looks nice and tidy and organized for the moment.

If only I had ordered more Pepsi... that's something I would definitely like to have in surplus!

Quick Funny from Preston

Preston was in a bad mood and I was trying to cheer him up. I tickled his cheeks and coaxed: "Come on, let me see those cute dimples!"

"No, Mom." he told me. "It's a no dimples day."

10 Things I Should Learn From My Kids

Today's prompt from Mama Kat's Pretty Much World Famous Writer's Workshop: 10 things that your kids could teach you.

1. Live in the moment. Kids don't spend their time stressing out over what will happen tomorrow, or next week, or next year. They enjoy where they are right now. Time to play outside! Time to have video game time with Dad! Time to eat! It's all right now and it's all exciting. Granted, I'm a grown-up (allegedly) and so I do have to think about tomorrow and next week and next year. But I need to spend more time just enjoying where we are right now.
2. Tell me what you're thinking. Kids come right out and tell you when something's bothering them. They don't let it fester and stew until it's worse than it needed to be. They also tell you when something's good. My daughter is great about telling me when dinner is really good or she's really happy that I let her do something she asked for. Preston will tell me when he thinks my hair looks nice or he likes my clothes. (He'll say things like this to a lot of girls. He's quite the little ladies man already. One of my favorite memories is of 3-year-old Preston sidling up to one of the older girls - probably 6 or 7 - at church and telling her "I like your pretty dress. Can I sit by you?)
3. Have fun! Kids are so much better at having fun. It goes along with number 1, I guess, but seems important enough to have its own number. Take time to have fun and enjoy your life!
4. Take a nap when you need one. My kids are usually going 100 m.p.h. at all times. Brekken especially will never walk if he can run instead. (Can you picture that as a grown-up? What if all the people at your office ran everywhere at top speed? Not because they had to, just because life is so exciting! To the copier! To the conference room! To the elevators! Woo-hoo!!) But once they finally run out of energy, they will collapse wherever they happen to be and take a nap to recharge. At work last week I found myself so exhausted that I was nodding off at my computer. I finally just got up and went to our quiet room (a little room with a couch and a locking door) and laid down. I took a 15-minute nap. It wasn't long. It didn't take me away from my work for more than a few minutes. But that short time to just have a little rest made a huge difference. I was much more alert and productive for having had that short break.
5. Ask for help. I am very bad at asking for help when I need it. Even when I am overwhelmed and incapable of managing for myself, I hate to admit it and ask someone to help me. I need to take a lesson from my kids in this, because they often ask for my help. And even though sometimes I wish they would do it themselves, when they thank me or give me a sweet hug, I am glad to be there. (Note: This does not apply to 3-year-olds, who refuse to accept help at all costs. Brekken insists that he wants to do everything himself! Oh, how I wish he would let me help with things like getting a glass of water or putting his shoes on the right feet.)
6. Stop and enjoy the world around you. Just this morning I was trying to rush out the door to drop the kids at daycare and get myself to work. "Get a move on! Get in the car!" I snapped. To my frustration, they were all crouched in the driveway instead. "What are you doing? Get in the car right now!" "But, Mom, look at this beautiful grasshopper! I think it's the best one I've ever seen! It's so big and it has brown and yellow stripes." I hurried them into the car, because I really needed to be on my way. But I wish that I had paused for just a minute to look at the beautiful grasshopper with them. Next time, I will try to remember to do that.
7. Love one another. My kids beat on each other. They fight and shout and call each other names. And it drives me batty! But they are also quick to give each other a big hug. To sympathize over a banged knee or a bumped head. They give great kisses. They say I love you. I wish they would lay off on the fighting, but I definitely need to take a lesson about showing love more often.
8. Be comfortable in your own skin. Thank goodness, my kids do not have any body issues yet. I'm sure they will develop some as they head into their teen years, but for now, they're good. Preston is a tiny, skinny little boy. When he takes off his shirt, all you see is his white, white skin (other than the rashy patches from his mild exzema) and his prominent little ribs (we're trying to feed him up, really!). But he doesn't worry about that. This is a little boy who loves to go around without his shirt. When asked why, he tells us it's so everyone can see his muscles. And then he will flex his skinny little arms for us. He's totally comfortable in his own skin and happy with himself.
9. Be nice. Last week, Haley called her friend Emily to invite her over to play. She said to bring a swimsuit and we'd all go over to the sprayground to play. It turned out, though, that Kiera was already over at Emily's house playing. When they asked if Kiera could come, too, I had to say we couldn't do it, because I just didn't have enough seats in the van to get everyone there. Haley explained that and invited both Emily and Kiera to come over to the house and they could play in the water in the back yard. Instead, Emily said that wasn't any fun and they wouldn't come over. And more than that, Haley couldn't come over to her house to play, either. Poor Haley was in floods of tears. I was almost in tears with her. And so angry at that little girl for being mean to my precious daughter. "Why does she have to be mean?" Haley asked. "Why can't she just be nice?" I could only answer that I wished everyone would be nice and never be mean to her. But sometimes people forget to be nice. Haley swore that she would always try to be nice so no one else would feel bad like she did. And I try to do the same.
10. And finally... a friend of mine challenged me to ask my kids "What has Mommy taught you?" So I did. From Preston, I got a very ordinary answer - "Don't hit each other." But from Brekken, I got item number 10 on the list, which I think is an excellent life lesson. Don't put your fingers in other people's mouths. And don't put their fingers in your mouth either.

Camera Catch-Up

Just a few pictures I found from recent days...

Rylen LOVES to eat solid food. He grins happily whenever we put him in the high chair, because it means food is coming!

Fun at the sprayground

 Aaron and the kids love to play Super Mario Wii together.

The lovely frozen waterfall that we discovered in our freezer when the icemaker broke.