One Tired Cowboy

Justin loves cows and horses and anything farm or cowboy. He has this rocking horse, and every night when we put him to bed, we can hear him in there riding and whooping and making a LOT of noise.

The other night, Bryan went to check on the kids before we went to bed, and he couldn't find Justin. He wasn't in his bed. He looked around in the dark for a couple of minutes and this is what he found:

Carsten the Invincible

Carsten is not a baby anymore. At 15 months, he is, most decidedly, a toddler- or a “todd” as his brothers and sister are fond of saying. Because he is a “todd,” he gets into everything. Now, he has, of course, been pulling things out of cabinets for awhile. This is different. In the last month, he has mastered both the art of moving and climbing up on chairs AND opening all the doors- even the ones that go outside.

And so, overnight, he has become “Carsten the Invincible.” He runs outside to get on his little car and go riding around the driveway. (Fortunately, our house has an alarm, so the doors beep when they’re opened.) He can get into all the bathrooms and unroll toilet paper or squeeze shampoo bottles. Worst of all, he can get to the kitchen countertops and drawers. I’ve had to move the knives and other things away. In the picture, he has gotten several small tools out of the junk drawer. You’ll notice in the picture that he looks as if he’s going to close the drawer. That’s what he does when I catch him. He just quietly puts whatever he has back- or hands it to me- and then gets down and plots his next adventure.

Funny Things

Here are a few random funny things that the kids have said lately:

Nathan: He was trying to memorize a particularly long Bible verse, and he finally said in frustration, "Mommy, I don't have enough memory! This verse is taking up a whole gig."

Justin: Justin is our passionate and impulsive one. He was mad because I told him he couldn't do something, so he shouted out, "Bad Mommy!" I went to him and told him very directly, "Justin, you are not to say, 'Bad Mommy' or 'I don't like you.'" He looked at me with this hurt and imploring expression and said, "You no like me, Mommy?" Of course, we all just cracked up and explained it to him. Now, he's been saying, "I like you, Mommy," many times a day since then.

Megan: Seeing some candy on the counter, Megan said, "I'd better move that so that Justin isn't temp-a-tated."

A Matter of Perspective

This is a picture of Megan's room. This display constitutes "cleaning up." Now, to my way of thinking, this is actually a mess, but not to Megan. It's really a matter of perspective.

You see, I have given all the children, Megan included, bins. I love bins. They can be labeled and stowed away and all the mess is out of sight and out of mind. They have bins for toys and papers, bins for books and crayons. These bins are, once filled with various and diverse junk that was previously spread all around the room, meant to be slid under the bed in a neat row, labeled side out.

The boys pretty much follow this pattern, although once a week I have to make them pull the bins out from under the bed so that they can clean up the stuff that has mysteriously found itself behind the bins, safely hidden from view. Still, it's "out of sight and out of mind," so I'm happy.

Megan, on the other hand, likes all of her treasures displayed. This doesn't just apply to conventional treasures like, say, a jewelry box, but also to those things that only Megan defines as treasures: Toilet paper roll crafts from Sunday school, every picture she has ever colored, shoes, hairbows, stuffed cats, books, and scraps of material. These treasures she carefully arranges as if she's setting up a display in a store window.

It's not really a matter of laziness, because it takes her longer to arrange her displays than it would for her to toss her stuff in the bins. It is, instead, truly a matter of one's perspective. In Megan's world, things only have value if you can see them. In my world, things you can see constitute clutter. Chances are, that this appreciation for the visual side of "things" comes from Megan's artistic bent. It may also be attributed to her more patient nature. And these things are very good and defining parts of her personality. So for now, Mommy will just say, "How nice, Megan" and just try to keep her from drowning in paper.

Happy Birthday, Nathan!

Nathan turned 7! I can't believe we have a 7 year old already. They just grow up too fast. We've had a serious battle with the flu over the last couple of weeks. Every single one of us got it and it basically took us out of commission for two solid weeks. Nathan's birthday party had to be delayed, but he was a real trooper about it, and the party was a lot of fun.

Nathan invited all of his buddies- there were about ten kids his age and about six or so littler kids. He loves Legos, so that was his theme this year. The kids guessed how many Legos were in a jar (133: we had guesses that ranged from 2 to 1007), did a Lego relay, and took some shots at a Lego man pinata.

I found a Lego ice cube mold so we had colored Lego bricks to go in Sprite. That was actually the biggest attraction of the evening. Each child picked a couple of colors and then watched the Sprite turn colors.

The party was in the evening, so it was dark when we did the pinata. One of our friends turned the lights on his pickup on and then all of the kids got to have a flashlight. (They were so excited that they got to keep the flashlights.) The Lego man ended up a lot bigger than we had envisioned, so it sort of looked like a dwarf was swinging from our tree. We had the first Lego figure lynching, I guess. At any rate, the kids certainly seemed to have a fantastic time.

Probably Evan: Justin and the Blame Game

Well, Justin is 2 and very mischevious. He is, quite literally, into everything and he's very impulsive. The other day he ran past me in the kitchen and next thing I know, he's sprawled out across the top of the washer, just laying there. I have no idea why. He's like that- he just does things that must make sense to him on some level, but they certainly don't make any sense to me. (If that story's not convincing enough, I've also found him climbing up the hood of Bryan's car to the sun roof. Instead of the usual cat paw prints, Bryan actually had little barefoot Justin prints on his windshield.)

At any rate, because of his nature, most of the things that happen in the house can eventually be traced back to him. Now, for my other kids at this age, they weren't savvy enough to really lie to get themselves out of trouble. That came later. Justin, on the other hand, is already perfecting the finger-pointing art. If something goes wrong, Justin, before I've even had time to demand an explanation, is pleading his innocence. "I didn't do that. SOMEONE did." "Someone," I think, is Justin's alter ego. If I ask for more details, as in, "Who is someone?" Justin's reply is invariably, "Probably Evan."

So, our conversations go something like this: Two keys are missing from the laptop keyboard. Justin says, "Oh no! Look at that. SOMEONE did that. Not me. Probably Evan." The greatest comment came from him yesterday. He had wet his pants. "Justin, did you wet your pants?" "No, not me. SOMEONE wet them." "Someone wet your pants for you." "Yes, probably Evan." And then he flashes his little impish grin and throws his arms around me for a hug. "You silly, Mommy."

Yes, almost as silly as trying to blame THAT on SOMEONE.

Happy New Year!!

We managed to take pictures of the kids to send out with our New Year's letter. We got a couple of cute ones before general mayhem erupted. These pictures were taken at the back of our property. I love the look on Carsten's face at the end of our photo session: "AAAHHH!!! NO MORE PICTURES!!"