Quintessentially Crystal: September 2009

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Potpourri Number 4

Dishes
Some days Ben drives me crazy (okay, lots of days) but other days he is just simply awesome! Like yesterday. Jack fell asleep and as soon as I came out of the room after laying him down, Ben said to me-

"Mom, we can do the dishes?!"

Say what? I thought he was going to say, play a computer came, but he wanted to do the dishes. It's something we do together sometimes when Jack is sleeping, but I didn't know exactly how much he loved it. His interest in doing the dishes probably won't last long but I am very much enjoying it.

After doing the dishes, which Ben mostly did by himself, I wiped off the counters. I turned around to find Ben eating this

Yes, a cabbage. Hmm. Not usually a pick-up-and-eat kind of vegetable, but whatever, help yourself.

Spider Man

We've had a visitor living outside our door for the past couple of weeks. First let me say, I do not like spiders. But this spider lives outside, so he's okay. Not like whatever kind of spider bit Jack on the ear which created a huge bruise. Fortunately that's all that happened, his ear didn't fall off or anything but I was worried after looking at pictures on the internet.

Our outside visitor is kind of cool.

He's an awesome orb weaving spider.

I refer to him as a he, but I've named him Charolette. Oh well. He spends the day hiding

and then and night he comes out to feast on the bugs he's caught on his web.

Currently Charolette is without a web. My aunt ran into his web when mowing the lawn.

Lucky Me

While I've been typing this post Chad has been doing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen, and he is currently scrubbing those nasty, difficult to clean pans that go under the electric heating elements on the stove. I don't know what has gotten into Chad tonight, but I like it. I should go help him.

Monday, September 28, 2009

Blue, red, blue

Jack doesn't know his colors yet. (When I ask him what color something is he answers, "blue, red, blue.) He does however recognize when something is blue because he knows it belongs to Ben. If there is a blue candy, Ben gets it. If there is a blue toy, Ben gets it. Jack happily complies with this, at least for now. It's not like I'm only letting Ben have the blue things. Jack gives Ben the blue marker or the blue cup. Even if I purposely try to give something blue to Jack, he gives it to Ben. Jack is also aware that there are 'boy' colors and 'girl' colors, as defined by his cousins. It's fun to see his little brain working. He is talking a lot now. In full sentences of course. I'm so glad he is finally talking. He's been talking for months now, but I never wrote about it. He use to be a man of few words, now he is only a man of few words around everybody but the people he knows really well.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Barrel of whine

I ran across this on a friend of a friends blog the other day. It made me laugh. It's their rendition of Shel Silverstein's For Sale

One toddler for sale!
One toddler for sale!
One crying and whining young toddler for sale!
I'm really not kidding,
So who'll start the bidding?
Do I hear a dollar?
A nickel?
A penny?
Oh isn't there, isn't there, isn't there
some that will buy this little kid for sale,
This crying and whining young toddler for sale!

Benjamin is a barrel of whine lately. Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. And just when I think it can't get worse, it does. In my four and half short years as a parent it's my experience that children constantly reach new levels. You just get use to the way they are and how to somewhat deal with it and then they reach a new level. I don't anticipate it getting better anytime soon, because a big change is coming since we will be moving shortly. (Don't ask me exactly when. It's anticipated to be this weekend. Now my dad's in the hospital and we have relied heavily on his help and my mom's help too because she watches the boys for us, a lot. We have a few things to finish up that we cannot have the boys in the house when we do it, so we'll see how the week goes. Moving can wait if it needs to. We are mostly concerned for my dad. He is relatively okay (he's alive thank goodness), but is in the ICU, so it's not like he's doing great. Heart problems, not a heart attack, but close enough.)

I bought a garbage can like this for the pee house -

Tonight Ben dropped a little flashlight in it. He reached in to get it and couldn't reach it, so he climbed in to get it. Then he couldn't get out. Chad and I were just around the corner and we heard him crying (again, he cries a lot lately). We quickly investigated and found Ben's lower half hanging on the edge of the garbage can with the lid down in his back. We helped him out and of course he had a look of panic on his face. We of course, started laughing, and explained to Ben how funny it looked to find him like that. Chad was thinking we should recreate the picture. I'm thinking Ben doesn't want to go near that garbage can again for a while.

PS- Ben is not for sale. If he was I already have a buyer.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Sleeping

Hands down my absolute favorite thing to do is sleep. I love, love, love it. I can never get enough. Maybe it has something to do with these little guys-

Okay, that's not fair. It's not all their fault. Anybody who reads my blog knows that I am somewhat of an insomniac. Many nights I can't sleep. Some nights after I wake up and can't fall back to sleep, I move out to the couch.
It takes me forever to fall asleep, unless of course I sit down in the middle of the day or I lay on the floor and play with the boys. Some nights I just watch Chad fall asleep in almost seconds and I'm so jealous. I just can't do it, never have been able to.
I think I need more sleep that most people. I don't know. My sister is the same way. She loves sleeping too. And her husband often makes comments about how it must run in the family because my sister and I feel exactly the same way about sleeping. We just can't get enough.

My boys are not the best sleepers, but Jack is way better than Ben. Lately Jack has been experimenting with giving up naps. It's just too hard for him to fall asleep if Ben is making any kind of noise. And getting a four year old to be quiet for 10 minutes is next to impossible. I let him watch a show but then Jack can hear the television. I'm pretty sure Jack still needs a nap, but if he takes a nap (even if it's in the early afternoon) he usually ends up staying up until midnight. Ben was just like this too.
So somedays I try to get Jack to take a nap and it just won't happen. And then sometimes this happens-

Last night Jack fell asleep like this-

Lot's of pictures of Jack sleeping, so here's one of Ben. I love the following picture it was taken when Ben was three months old. It's one of my favorite pictures of him. It is framed and hanging in his room.

Tonight Ben fell asleep like this-

I promise, it wasn't staged. When I checked on him to see if he was asleep the picture of him when he was a baby popped in my mind, so of course I had to take a picture of him sleeping.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A Sense of Style

I was once given the wonderful parenting advice- "chose your battles." A friend gave it to me before I had kids, before I was even pregnant. It often pops into my head. It most often pops into my head when it comes to the clothes and Ben.

When I see a young child at the store who is dressed a little strange I think, "that is cool that they have a mom who let them dress themselves and isn't too worried about the way their outfit looks." Being that mom who doesn't worry about it is a different story. If I had my way, Ben would wear a shirt and tie every day. Okay, not that extreme, but a nice polo shirt would be good.

This is Ben's favorite outfit-

He is allowed to wear it two days a week, as long as it isn't visably dirty or obviously smelly. I put my foot down at two, he would wear it more if I would let him. Not my favorite outfit, but he loves it. Somebody gave Chad the shirt when he was playing football in high school. I'm not sure why, it's a Michael Jordan shirt. Ben thinks it's soccer shirt. After trying to explain that it's a basketball shirt, once, I let it go. Because seriously, does it matter?

Another one of Ben's favorite outfits-

Right after I bought these shorts, I realized what shirt Ben would pair with them. I did try to explain to him that they don't go together. He thought about it for a second and then thought otherwise. It doesn't really matter, does it?

I spent a summer living in Texas with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. My cousin, Zachary, was six at the time. His favorite outfit was a pair of red shorts and a green shirt, or the other way around. Anyway, red and green go together, as they are complementary colors, but it's a strange combination when it's not Christmas. Everytime Zack would wear the clothes I would say to him, "Merry Christmas!" Not very nice of me, huh? Sorry Zack.

Sometimes Ben lets me pick his clothes. He will ask me in the morning to get clothes for him. When I question if he will truly wear what I pick he tells me, "yes, mom." And most of the time he wears whatever I choose. That happens like once every couple of months. Actually I guess it happens every sunday, because sunday is the day I put my foot down and he has to wear something nice to church. Sometimes a superhero shirt is underneath that, but who cares, huh? One day at church Ben showed a friend of his his superhero t-shirt under his Sunday shirt. Then his friends dad showed us that his friend still had on his superhero pajama top underneath his sunday shirt. And his dad said, "it's part of our sanity play for the day. Do whatever you can to get through the day without any serious meltdowns."

Shoes on sunday is a different story. We've had way to many tears over sunday shoes, so Ben just has to wear relatively nice shoes, like clean, holeless sneakers.

As for Jack, he still let's me pick his clothes. Most of the time. Sometimes he insists on certain things.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Random, random, random

Lucky Me

My friend Heather allowed me the awesome opportunity to attend the birth of her fourth child. When she told me she was pregnant I asked her if she would think about allowing me to attend. She said yes right away as long as it was okay with her hubby. And she didn't change her mind the whole time she was pregnant. I'm so grateful they allowed me to be there. It was wonderful to be part of the birth experience and not be the one giving birth. It was so fun taking pictures. Heather was a little worried about the pictures. I promised they would be tasteful. I hope I accomplished that. If my labors weren't sooooo crazy I would have loved to have pictures from them.

With the size of my nose I can't believe I've never broken it

Today I was laying on the floor with the boys doing puzzles. Jack was being a little wild and ended up wacking his head into my nose. I can't believe he didn't break my nose, it hurt sooooo bad. Ben's first reaction was to hit Jack and then he yelled at him, "you are never suppose to hurt mommy!" Of course I didn't want Ben to hit Jack, but I'm grateful he is so protective of me. I explained this to Ben as he sat by me on the floor making sure I was okay. Love him.

Ahhhh, how sweet!

Today I was trying to get Jack down for a nap. He asked for a book, so I asked Ben to go get one for him. Ben said he wanted to read him a book and ran and got- Love You Forever. I read the story and Ben sang the song. Sooooo cute and it reminded me of this day-

Has every body made up their own tune for the song that is in this book? Chad and I worked on getting the tune just right for a long time. We were stumped on how exactly to end the song. We tried all different things. One night, Ben came up with a perfect melody which has stuck since then. I heard one of my friends singing her version of the song one day and it sounded so strange to me. Maybe someday I will post our tune when I get to plunking the notes out on the keyboard so I can write it down.

Natural born leader

I had my friend Heather's little boys with me for a while today. The boys had fun with them, but Ben was disappointed that their older sister, Elsie, wasn't here (she was at school). Ben expressed this to me a couple of times since Tuesday when I told him they would be coming over.

Also, my niece came over not too long after their dad and Elsie came to pick the boys up. My niece asked me if there had been a daddy and a little girl at my house. When I told her it was Elsie and her dad, she excited, shocked and disappointed said, "it was Elsie?!" It was like she had missed seeing Santa Claus the day before Christmas.

Apparently Elsie is quite popular. I guess it's not that suprising that people are drawn to her just like I have seen my whole life people being drawn to her mother. When I asked Ben why he likes her so much he said, "because she leads us." Apparently she is quite the girl, a not bossy leader. If she ever decides to run for president I know at least a couple of people who will vote for her.

Drawing

One day, at the pee house, Jack found a crayon. He drew on a few things including the front door. Everytime we go to leave the house, Jack points at the drawing and says, "uh oh, Jack draw." Tonight we were watching a show that had people with tattoos. Jack kept saying, "uh oh, draw."

Friday, September 11, 2009

Baby K

Out of the mouths of babes

We drove past the planetarium the other day and I pointed it out to Ben he asked me, "Is that where you went and saw New Moon?"
Jack finished his Halloween candy, handed me his bag, and said, "the end."
Mom, I love you to the stars.
Wow Ben that is very very very far.
Ya, it's farther than Logan.
-conversation between Ben and I
Mommy, does P U spell toilet?
Mommy, you have a pointy nose like Batman. --Beeps
Mommy, your hair smells brown. --Beeps
I wasn't jumping on the bed. I was bouncing. --Beeps
Princess? Mommy, is it okay if I call you princess? --Beeps
Daddy, you smell like a mushroom on sale. --Beeps