An autumn outing

While everyone else is awesome and takes their kids to the pumpkin patch, I was happy I took the time to let my kids ride bikes in the peaking lot across the street.

Tonight's adventure went something like this:

• All children happily riding various wheeled things around.
• Older kids show up, snickering and being obnoxious. Eventually they realize that that six year old on a skateboard is pretty good. They leave.
• More wheeling around. Caleb is really getting his balance on the bike.
• Stray cat shows up.
• Naomi and Caleb attack cat. Lots of cuddling, loving and dragging around.
• Phebe joins the action. Victor just loves riding bikes.
• I eventually teach them how to pet the cat without bodily harm to it.
• Happy petting
• Then crazed petting and my declaration that they need to go play and leave cat alone.
• Victor then clips Naomi in the back, knocking her over.
• Crying and comforting commence.
• I look up to realize the cat has lured Phebe into following it and now my two year old is I the street with a car coming.
• I start yelling, car stops , Phebe comes back with her head hung low. She is in trouble and she didn't even get the cat.
• Caleb immediately decides that he too should go down the grassy hill that leads to the street.
• Too bad he can't really ride the bike so he loses control and crashes in the street.
• Not just in the street, the storm drain and he can't get  the bike out.
• More riding. 
• Phebe pushes mom around on Caleb's bike.
• Victor's bike chain falls off.
• We go home to eat ice cream.

Strategy

My four year old Caleb likes apples. He likes them the same way many children do, meaning the first 3 bites. After that the apple is no longer as exciting. Let's face it a full apple is quite a commitment. Especially if you are four and have many important things to do like tackle your sister. Due to my lack of keeping fruit locked up there is a possibility of finding random partially eaten apples around my house. It is not how I want things to be,but thus far other things have been more pressing. This evening when we sat down to read scriptures,Caleb's little hand found another apple he had left. Ethan figured out Caleb's method.

Ethan: Caleb just likes to leave partly eaten apples strategically placed around the house so there is always a snack easily reached.

At least he is willing to take a few more bites later.

A happy chameleon

Naomi had a happy meal that came with a toy chameleon whose tongue is a Chinese yo yo.

Kind of like these. You fling it forward and then it rolls itself up on the way back.

So we had the following conversation, after a bunch of her family members had been hit in the face by a chameleon tongue....

Ethan: (holding it while she does her homework) I can see why she keeps hitting people, it is really hard to resist shooting it out at them.

Naomi: I gave all the bugs away to kids at school so now it has nothing to eat, it only can eat people faces now.

I'm not sure how long the Chinese yo yo chameleon is going to survive around here.

I guess I was wrong

In the past I have posted about fabulous moments of peace and beauty and harmony. Comparing them to what I thought heaven would be like. Naomi has corrected my notions.

Naomi: I haven't seen uncle Roger since Victor's baptism. He let me sit on his lap and play with his phone. His breath smelled like mint because he had life savers in his pocket. He let me have some. It was paradise. 

Doesn't take much to have a great moment with a kid, does it?

Sacrifices of the crafty

I don't know where it came from, but  Naomi is into crafts. She loves them. On my lawn right now are tiny ghosts made of balloons wrapped in tissue paper on sticks. She is very busy at the kitchen counter cutting up egg cartons and then taking two mounds together to make little monsters.  Then she gave me the following monologue....

Naomi: mom, I am going to hand these out to everyone when they are trick or treating . So I need you to gather candy for me when everyone else in the family goes and I stay behind. I have to hand these out and then I won't get any candy because I am at home and that isn't fair. I will be so sad when everyone else is eating candy and I don't have any. Or you could just buy a bag of candy for me to put inside all the monsters and to eat while I hand them out. That would be good. What are those candies called again? Ooh! Robins eggs! Get me robins eggs to eat while I hand these things out.

I think my favorite part of this is that it doesn't seem to occur to her that she doesn't have to stay behind, she could just trick or treat with us. Oh, the sacrifices she makes for her crafts,

A touching moment

Tonight during Family Home Evening, Ethan was telling us about what he had learned during the priesthood session of General Conference. The conversation went something like this....

Ethan:... so there are times in your life when people around you will want you to be less good, stop working so hard because it makes them uncomfortable or look bad....
Phebe : Let's sing about it! Twinkle Twinkle little star....!

Poor empty Godzilla

I just found Phebe working hard to put play dough into the empty arm sockets of mecha godzilla. After being told that play dough should not be in there she and Caleb went to work filling his mouth.

This is all after Phebe worked hard to paint her high chair red. At least it was just her high chair. She even sat in it and wiped it all down for me.

It smells like fall

As I sat reading scriptures with my family last night my toddler was snuggled up in my lap. I put head down into her hair and realized that her locks smelled very distinctly of the autumn leaves we has spent time playing in twice that day. It made me smile. My baby smells like fall.

A bit of freehand

Some of you already know my husband saw me doodling and encouraged me to try painting it instead of drawing it. So I would like to share with you some of the freehand doodling paintings I have done.

The black squirlies on her leg and shoulder are the freehand I did.

 Another angle of the freehand on her thigh.

It is kind of hard to see, but there is a brown pattern on the hem of her dress.

 My husband painted this one, I just did the pattern on the hem.

This picture is just to give you a frame of reference of how small they are. That is a ball point pen with them.

I am pleased with them.

Brown sugar waffles

That sounds delicious doesn't it? Brown sugar waffles. Phebe thought so. She made some.

That is indeed brown sugar dumped in a waffle iron. Kinda makes you smile doesn't it?

A good mom moment

My eldest son caught onto letters, colors, numbers etc really quickly. He loved that stuff.  

His younger sister had other things to worry about. Ninjas, dirt and hideouts were far more pressing. So she did not have near the grasp on basics when she left for kindergarten.

So my third child will be entering kindergarten next year. I am trying to do a better job for him than I did for his elder sister. In an effort to teach him without confining him to a chair I have come up with a little thing I think of highly.

I wrote the alphabet out, one letter per page. Then I had my youngest two help me tape the letters up in order along the stairwell.  It was the only place I could find with enough wall space for the whole thing.  Though I hadn't fully realized how perfect it would be there. Now when we walk up we sing the song pointing to the corresponding letter.

I admit it is a bit cluttered looking. I am also surprised that none have been shredded yet. But the day we put them up I had never seen my four year old so excited so even if it they get destroyed that one day was worth it.

My kids love it.