Little Bird Takes a Bath

The birds that frequent our feeder and birdbath leave me laughing sometimes.

After a warm rain last week, this little guy thought he'd have a bath. He was so hilarious, I ran and got my camera. Check my long lens, yo.

Fluttering, splashing...

...slipping and sliding.

Check out his face in the next one.

And now he's clean and happy.

Got somewhere to be!

Sharing vs. Caring

One of Sadie Lou's favorite sayings is, "Sharing is caring!" She especially likes to use this in situations when someone else is not sharing with her. Never is it employed when SHE is hording toys. Anyway, the other day a conversation went something like this.

Oli is playing quietly with a car of some sort.

Sadie Lou:    Oli, can I please have that car?

Oli:   No. I paying wiff it.

Sadie Lou:    Oli!!! You need to share with me!

Oli:   NO, Sadie!!

Sadie Lou:    But Oli! SHARING IS CARING!!!!! If you don't share, you don't care!

Oli:    I NOT caring!!!

Video Flashbacks from 2013!

Playing around at the park - Sadie, age 2, and Benji, age 5.



Wanna know how to stop a tantrum? (Sometimes...) Repeat what they said so they feel heard. (Until they figure out what you are doing and it doesn't work anymore.)



When Sadie was two, what happened when Papa left for work? Oh, just a little hanging from the front door knob...this video doesn't even capture how long she could pull herself up - she could hang for 30 seconds at a time, and she would climb all the way up to the knob.



And...it's a powerful dance until you land on a tiny toy...



The following sequence is classic Sadie and Benjamin. Though the years pass, their interactions have not changed much. In the first, Benji's dance is upstaged by Sadie's happy feet. (She still walks that fast and bouncy.) In the second, she's all belly and britches and boots.





Near the top of the cuteness scale is a big brother who is learning to read teaching his little sister to read. Throw in eating some chicken-veggie stirfry and all is right with the world.

Annual Adoption Picnic

Every year our adoption agency hosts a huge picnic. Adoptive families come, birth families come, even friends of either side come. Bounce houses, grilling, a clown, and lots of chasing of children provide entertainment. This year we went with Sadie's birth father and his parents - her Nana and Tata. Sarah, our fabulous adoption facilitator (she helped with three of our kids), is in the pink shirt.

Sadie and Benjamin were first in line to get painted by the clown.

Benjamin told the clown that he wanted to be "gold." What?  "Just gold." The clown, who had already made fun of Sadie Eloise's name (I know, right?), acted like he was a real weirdo. That's OK...we can deal with a cranky clown.

I'm pretty sure I know what happened. Our boy who likes shiny things and sequins probably thoroughly looked over the paint kit and decided that nothing looked more fun than that glittery pot of gold. He's no fool. He asks for what he wants, even though he marches entirely to the beat of his own drum. (I pray he never loses that innocence, but I also ache for what challenges that might bring in today's world.)

Oh, Bella. Sitting on a serape.

Oh, Oli. Playing with your lei.

So then the clown started her show. For being such a cranky pants, she was pretty darn funny.

And here are my kids. The only ones who get up and run toward the front when she asks for a volunteer. They are having so much fun they can't contain themselves. I really should teach them to sit down.

Poor Oli was sick and spent a lot of time lying on Papa. And while this was going on, Sadie had the urgent need to pee. In the middle of a huge crowd in a huger park, girlfriend just kicked off her panties, hiked up her dress, squatted and did her thang. Free Range Kiddos are big time awesome, even when they are embarrassing.

We'll end with The Papa and his sense of humor. Sitting on hot coals was all his idea.

Little Rascals? Bonnie and Clyde? Thing 1 and Thing 2?

This is the work of one Sadie Eloise and a boy sometimes called "Oli Bug."

I was down the hall in my bathroom doing, I don't recall what...plucking stray eyebrows? Brushing my teeth for the first time that day (somewhere's around 4PM in preparation for The Papa's return from work?  It happens...), or perhaps applying another round of deodorant on that sweltering afternoon?

I was only out of sight of these two rabble-rousers for less than 10 minutes. Truth. I heard them cheerfully chattering, sounding sweetly happy, getting along...that last one was the tell-tale sign, the sign that should have had me bolting down the hall to see what was going on.

As it was, I sauntered through the house happily, thinking of how I had a chicken roasting in the oven and did not need to run around, a sweaty mess, before The Papa would return to a Really Nice Meal. And then I saw this. Only when I saw it, the toilet was still overflowing.

They did a sweet job, these two, of unwrapping an entire BRAND NEW roll of toilet paper and getting it all to fit into the bowl. They even tore up the cardboard tube and put it in for good measure. And then they attempted to flush the evidence.

So, yes, you are looking at a layer of water that covered the entire bathroom floor and extended out into the living area. It does have some nice reflective qualities. (Don't mind the water damaged wall behind the toilet. The folks who lived here before us also had a house full of kids and no doubt dealt with these types of events. That drywall is going to need replacing even if my kids are perfect angels for the rest of their time here.)

But the trouble with the mayhem caused by two and three-year-olds is that logical consequences just don't work. They can't exactly clean up a mess of this magnitude. So...Bonnie and Clyde got to sit on chairs for a Really Long Time and watch me as I cleaned it up, heh, heh.

Anyway, if counting my blessings I would say it was wonderfully fortuitous that dinner was basically done and I had the space in my afternoon to pull wads of paper out of the toilet and to wipe up oodles of water with half a dozen towels.

Those two do make an effective team, don't they?

Let's just hope we have sufficiently hidden the diaper cream: Vaseline, Mama?

And if you like stories like this, check out THIS blog.

Excuse me, I was sleeping here...

This was the scene at 6:45 one morning recently:

Isabella's little face poking out of a deep pile of Oli's clothes and toys.

See, Oli likes to get up long before anyone else is awake. And he likes to find others to hang out with at, say, 5:30 in the morning. And since he started getting in trouble for going into the older kids' rooms and waking them up (oh yeah, one night at about 3:00AM, he got Sadie to join him in exploring the garage...but that's another tale), he has decided to entertain himself by dumping every available resource into his roommate's bed.

Here's the adorable little perpetrator. Notice the stash he has worked up? Caught in the act!

Gargling Girl

In other news, Sadie has taught herself how to gargle.

Who needs 911?

June 2013

While playing with a friend one day, this was overheard:

Benj:      I'm so tired of emergencies.

Friend:  What are you going to do?

Benj:     Get in your pixie dust boat and go away.

The Red Animal

LP: Mama, come and see what I painted. It's a red animal.

Mama: Ooh, cool. Tell me about it.

LP: Well, guess what it is.

Mama: Um...a dinosaur?

LP: No. It's something else. Not something a long time ago.

Mama:  OK. An anteater?

LP:  No. Because it doesn't have a long snout. That is its mouth (pointing at the indentation on the right). THAT is the tail (pointing at the part I thought was a long snout).

Mama: OK. Hmmm...I don't know.

LP: It's the biggest of all the land mammals.

Mama: I want to say elephant, but I can see that it doesn't have a trunk. What is it?

LP: [big sigh]

Pause. He looks around the room and dramatically rests his chin in his hand, elbow on the counter.

LP: [another big sigh] You see, it's a...gleason (pronounced glee-sahn). You just haven't seen one before. When I was watching Jeff Corwin, he wrestled a gleason.


More information on the gleason, by Benjamin:

It's very feminizing. It can eat bears. It eats anything that is meat. It can gobble up a whole elephant all at one time.

Future Coffee Drinker?

It's been one of those mornings...

**No caffeine was ingested by this child. Her mug was filled with chamomile tea.

Vaseline, Mama?

This morning I made the grave mistake of sleeping in until 7:45AM. Brent had gone biking; the house was quiet. The boys were apparently occupying themselves in their room, and Tati is old enough to find something to read. Sadie woke up several times throughout the night, one of which resulted in replacing her diaper...so I knew that would not be needing attention.

Finally, I rolled out of bed thinking how lovely it was to get an hour extra sleep. And then I saw this:

Yes, those are clumps of Vaseline on the wall and in her hair, and yes, she is trying to poke a thermometer in her eye.

I could cry. Not out of concern for her, mind you, but out of pure, unadulterated self-pity. Let's look at the mess while using a flash. (The natural light photos showed the clumps on the wall better, but the flash shows you just how shiny she became...)

Everything that has been safely stowed on the wall shelf was pulled down. Wipes were removed and thrown everywhere. Drawers, emptied. Vaseline clung to toys, shoes, and clothes.

Not to mention to her. She kept rubbing her face as I do when I put moisturizer on in the morning. She is an attentive, if overly exuberant, student.

Oh, Sadie Lou. I don't even know what to say.

She has now had three hair washings with dish soap and cornstarch (look it up on the internet), but she still looks like a greaser. I managed to adequately clean up the mess, but I still need to remove anything that she could possibly get into trouble with. Yes, that cute, colorful pennant might need to go, along with the piggy bank, and the flower vase on the shelf, and the painting by my grandma. It's going to be a while before she can be trusted with anything!

Overheard

As he is in the bathroom going potty, this is what I hear:

"I'm just trying to be like the Africa guys. I took off my shirt to be like the Africa guys. Yeah. I took off my shirt because it was wet, and now I'm like the Africa guys."

**This combines two of his latest obsessions - his friends, the Africa guys, and his extreme sensitivity to the least amount of wetness on his clothing. He merely gets a sleeve damp while washing his hands and suddenly he simply canNOT wear the shirt any more. Yet another excuse to remove his clothing.

The Africa Chronicles

Since around the beginning of September, Benjamin has been obsessed with Africa. Whenever he shares new information with us, he tells us he learned it from his Africa friend. He dances a dance and calls it Africa dancing. Every story he tells is set in Africa.

I think a few factors contributed to this:

1. We have photos and art around the house from our time in Africa - before Benjamin even entered the picture; before, in some cases, The Mama and Papa even met. We have always wanted our kids to feel as though they are citizens of the world and have thus talked about other countries and cultures and languages openly.

2. At his new school, Benjamin is required to bring a placemat with him in his lunchbox. As I prepared for his first day, I placed a batik placemat from Zimbabwe in the box. And then I told him about it - how a woman in Zimbabwe had made it, how it was beautiful and artistic, how it was special that he got to use it at school. (I was concerned that perhaps other kids would have something "cooler" as in something with licensed characters on it - Cars, Spiderman, Shrek. I was hoping to ward off any potential disappointments. I needn't have worried.)

So when I called the school director to tell her we would be in the mountains the entire week of Thanksgiving, she told me how wonderful it was that Benjamin got to travel so much. How he talks a lot about his time in Africa. Then she asked where exactly he had gone.

Ahem. How to reply. The kid's got a wild imagination and a fascination with adventures in foreign lands.

*      *      *      *

Let's go now to an incident with his favorite "frenemy."

frenemy: (n) Someone who is both friend and enemy, a relationship that is both mutually beneficial or dependent while being competitive, fraught with risk and mistrust.  (urbandictionary.com)

We will talk about that relationship later. The important thing is...the frenemy bit Benjamin on the leg during circle time.  

The director called me later in the day to see how he was doing. They had been unable to ascertain the damage due to Benjamin's resistance to allowing any adult to pull up his pant leg and view the wound. This was the first I had heard of it. 

Sure enough, there was a purple bruise in the shape of a mouthful of teeth on his inner thigh. When I asked him about it, he said, "No!  Y--- did not bite me, a giant pincher bug did!"

"But Miss W--- said he did. Are you sure about that?!

"Yes!  I was in Africa, and there were giant pincher bugs!  And they bited me all over my body!  They bited my leg, and then they bited my other leg. And then they bited my arm and then my other arm. And then they bited my HEAD!!! I had to run very fast to get away from them."

Such is the story to this day. Despite having a tortured relationship with Kid Y, he covered for him. Or he lives in an alternate reality...

*      *      *      *

Here's what he looks like telling one of these stories about the dangerous pincher bugs. Around the time that the firemen came to his school for safety week, he added in dangerous fires and dramatic rescues and lots and lots of smoke.

*      *      *      *

Finally, in an attempt to publish one of his stories for your amusement, I asked him to retell one. And here it is - with all its drama and redundancies. Enjoy:

At Africa, I was by myself with those pincher bugs. I passed the pincher bugs, and then they hurried up at me and they bite me on the head and everything. Some of the pincher bugs bite my hair off.

The pincher bugs just bite me all over, on my self, on my neck and on my chin and on my legs and on my shirt.  But some of them just BITE my SHIRT.

I get away from pincher bugs when some of the pincher bugs were going to our home and trying to be friends. Yeah. Some of them are just bad pincher bugs.

There was a big blast of fire on the Africa wall. It was like a giant or a robot and it shoot off like a robot. I didn't have ear plugs and it shoot right past my ears and it just went down, down, down, down, down. And it shoot up in the air again and went down, down, down again.

There was a lot of smoke in the air. Lots and lots of smoke in the air. And I was wiggling my stuff off with the smoke. And the pincher bug bite my finger.

There was Africa water I was supposed to drink on the island, on the Africa sea. And then we had some goggles on, and we were on top of the sea, on the ocean. We got on a Africa cliff and just jumped right off it and splashed right into the sea. 

We got in our Africa seats and they were magical because they could move up into the air. And we went very high up in the air to Saturn, and we looked at Saturn, and then we went to another planet and we looked at something. We were going on our magical Africa seats, and we shot the Saturn and it turned into the sun. That was cool, Mama.

Some guns are magical in Africa because some make suns. They shoot to Saturn, and then it turns into a sun.

We were swimming inside the water, and we were drinking it at the same time and we felt that it was good.  Then we got a plastic cup that doesn't break -  it was a water cup - and then we go inside the water, and then we come out of the water, and then drink the water that was inside the sea.

The Africa music is like ba-ba-wa-ba-ba-da. Duch-ee-wah-du-so-man-nee-didju-wa-do-na-do-na...

Quick Report

We just returned from a week at the family cabin in Aspendell, a little village nestled in the aspen trees in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. Photos and video are forthcoming, but here are a few tidbits I learned about my children while we were there.

#1: Kid Sunshine likes the old lady.

Benjamin thinks Phyllis Diller is a hoot. We were watching episodes of The Muppet Show, which vary in their ability to connect with a three-year-old. On our third episode, he encountered Ms. Diller for the first time (well, so did I). It didn't matter that half of what she said surely went right over his head - every time she let loose her signature raspy laugh (at her own jokes, of course), Benjamin about guffawed himself right off the couch.

#2: Bright Eyes has earned her belly.

It's not like this surprised us or anything. Sadie Lou is known for her love of all things edible. It's just that she encountered some new foods on the trip, a few of which she grew positively quivery about eating. On Thanksgiving she EAGERLY consumed...turkey, mashed potatoes (oh, how quickly she could devour the mashed potatoes!), stuffing - with pine nuts, yams, green beans, cardamom rolls, and sweet cranberry sauce.

#3: Kid Sunshine likes chardonnay.

Well, we didn't actually give him chardonnay. But he did get his own stemmed glass filled with Martinelli's, and he DID run around clinking glasses with everyone and proclaiming joyously, "Cheers!" And he did think he was drinking apple chardonnay.

#4:  Being an American Man requires running around the house with no clothes on. 

This one surprised us. Sort of. Actually, not really.

The Scene: Papa, Auntie Bek, Uncle Mike, and I were sitting in the living room downstairs. Benjamin was in his room upstairs, in pajamas (so we thought), experiencing some much needed "calm down" time. Suddenly...

"Mamaaaaaa! I'm all ready!"

"You are ready to come down and calmly put your clothes on?"

"Yesssss!"

"OK, come on down!'

He peered through the railing from the upstairs hallway that overlooks the living room. He was naked. White buns glowing in the morning sunshine. Not a lick of clothing.

"I'm an American Man!" he shouted, and began to prance down the stairs. Now. I knew he was naked, but no one else had noticed this yet. The stairs are behind a half wall, so his bare skin remained hidden. But then...

"See? I'm an American Man!" he said proudly. "I am NAKED!"

We all held back our giggles as I attempted to get him into his clothes. But he was not ready to get dressed, so I said, "Fine...but American Men who want to hang out with everyone downstairs need to wear clothes. You are welcome to go be naked in your bedroom."

So he turned around and marched his spotless bare buns back up to his room - until he decided it might be more fun to play outside. 

The Backstory:  Apparently, Grandma had passed through his room and found him nakedly dancing around. She asked him what he was doing, and he said he was being an African Man. She said something like, "Why don't you be an American Man and put some clothes on?"  As is wont to happen with little people, the message got scrambled and reinterpreted.

Of course, he might have been right on the money, had he included references to Woodstock...

#4:  Bright Eyes met Baby Einstein.

And ohhhhhhh, did she LOVE it!  Of course we brought videos on this trip. One can't be in a small cabin with seven adults and two little people without the occasional numbing DVD experience. So we broke out a video that has not been in effect since the nebulizer days: Baby Einstein's Lullaby Time. Sadie Lou was drawn toward the TV. She stood with her hands on the TV stand -  completely still (this is NOT normal for her) and staring at the screen as marbles rolled down a track or the ocean water caught the sparkling reflection of the sunset or globs of what appeared to be pink hair gel dribbled and bubbled. STILL. This child is a wiggler extraordinaire, and she was mesmerized.

#5: Kid Sunshine knows precisely how to decorate a snow man.

Unlike American Man, the snow man must possess several essential accessories. Benjamin was very clear that the nose HAD to be a carrot, the eyes HAD to be two black rocks, and the arms HAD to be sticks. Sadly, Benjamin became quite perturbed by the end of the snow man experience and refused to pose for a picture with his creation. The next day the sun bore down warmly, melting said snow man enough that his nose slipped out and his eyes became mere sockets.

Perhaps I will think of more bits to share in my Thanksgiving at The Cabin post. For now, enjoy!

Quotable: Mad Guys Rescue the Day

LP:  I'm a mad guy. Mad guys rescue the day.

Mama:  Like, save the day?

LP: Yeah.


*        *        *        *        *        *

LP:  Mama, let's go Nowhere today.

Mama:  OK. We will stay home.

LP:  No, let's go Nowhere!

Mama:  Love, we're not going anywhere. We're staying home.

LP: NO! Nowhere is a few streets away.

Mama:  That would be somewhere. Nowhere is not a place - it means not anywhere.

LP: NO!!! Nowhere is down the street!!!

Mama: If we go nowhere, we don't go anywhere.

LP:  Mama, I want to go somewhere. I want to go to NOWHERE!

Language Acquisition 101

Papa: (reflecting on his family)  I don't have a nephew.

Little P:  Why do you want to neff me?

More Conversations

This morning, talking to Mama...

Little P:  I'm a guy and you're a lady. Let me show you my awesome dance. (followed by much awesome dancing) 

*     *     *     *     *

Last week, Auntie Bek brought Little P one more present - a t-shirt that has a bike on it and says: This is how I roll. Apparently, Christmas has raised the expectations around here.

Auntie Bek:  Benjamin, I have a present for you.

Little P:  Really? What is it?

(Mama displays the t-shirt.)

Mama:  Look, it's a cool t-shirt with a bike on it.

Little P:  (silence)

Mama: What do we say to people who give us something nice?

Little P: Where's the other present?

*     *     *     *     *

A boy is a noise with dirt on it.

Someone has been playing in the dress-up box.

Anywhoo...

Little P:  OH!!!

Mama: (silently eating scrambled eggs)

Little P:  Mama, I said "oh!" because that bird outside is singing a lovely song for me.

*     *     *     *     *

Papa prepares to throw the Christmas tree off the balcony for trash pick-up.

Papa:  Say goodbye to the Christmas tree.

Little P:  Why?  Is it sick?

*     *     *     *     *

Little P finds a mini-flashlight in the car as he's climbing into his car seat.

Little P:  Mama, I can use this flashlight in the evening when it's dark out. It will show me the way.

*     *     *     *     *

As we're driving in the car. In the midst of getting to know a new birthmother and talking about his soon-to-arrive baby sister:

Little P:  Mama, do you have a baby growing in your uterus?

Mama:  No, love, I don't.

Little P:  (satisfied silence)


PHOTOS BELOW BY LITTLE P

How about them apples?

Last night, while walking through Target, Benjamin and I passed the lingerie section. In the front, bellied-up to the aisle, were rows upon rows of brightly colored brassieres. They came in extra large sizes with inch-thick padding stiff enough to withstand the poke of a small finger. They swayed on their slight hangers.

Benjamin was enthralled. Poking at them as I turned around to hurry him on his way, he announced in the most amazed voice as if this were the coolest discovery ever:

"Whoa, Mama!  Look at deez apples!  Whoa!" (gleeful giggles followed)

Overheard on the Phone

Little P loves to talk on the phone.  He asks to call Gramma. He asks to call Grandpa. And Papa. And Emma. And Auntie Bekah.  And Auntie Rosie. And sometimes Uncle Mike.

Today he wanted to talk to Cousin Amal.  The guy in the photo. The guy he used to see every day.

So hear is what I heard while eavesdropping on the other line. (Of course I had to record some of the conversation for your entertainment, dear readers!)

LP:  I want to talk to Amal.

Amal: (unintelligible noise as he gets on the phone)

Amal:  Hi?

LP: (silence - trying to figure out what is going on)

Mama:  Say "hi" to Amal.

LP:  Hi, Amal!

Amal:  Hi!

LP: The popcorn tastes good!  (He is eating popcorn.)

Amal:  My sister is Koa. My mom is Diana. My dad is Seth.

LP: Yeah!

Amal: Is this BJ?

Diana (Amal's mama):  No, it's Benjamin.

Amal:  Oh, I thought it was BJ.

LP: Yeah!

Mama:  Tell Amal that you are going to visit him on Saturday.

LP: Amal, I coming to see you on Saturday!

Amal: I have a big Transformer.  I can share it with you. It's big. He's a big guy.  I can share it with you.

LP:  (chewing popcorn)

Mama:  He just said he will share his Transformer with you. How nice!

LP: Yeah!  You share your Transformer!  Wif me!

Amal: (excitedly shares something that Mama totally cannot understand)

LP:  Yeah!

And so on...

P.S. As I write this, Little P is squirting excessive amounts of toothpaste on his tooth brush and sucking it off. I must log out now.