grass and dirt

Josh often offers the kids grass and dirt for lunch. When they are all feeling silly, he insists that the kids like to eat grass and dirt. When they're being particularly picky, I will remind them that whatever we're eating is better than grass and dirt.

All that is to say, that when Josh made lunch today, he thought himself awfully clever:

Caroline cried.

Miriam ran outside to tell me that she does NOT like grass and dirt.

Jonah laughed and then tried to tell his sisters why it was funny. When they were too distraught to listen, he carefully cleaned off their plates for them. (If that doesn't describe all three children's personalities perfectly, I don't know what does.)

All was forgiven during the actual lunch (not grass and dirt), and Jonah and Josh continued to chuckle their way through the afternoon.

"..............god, half human half.........." and ".................that, when un-caped, turns into a............." frustrated? good. then my purpose in life is fufilled. [by Jonah].

One simple word; boredom. Nope. All done. no more blog. seriously, why are you still reading this?
I thought I made it clear I was done writing. [wow. I still am! weirdo Jonah.] do you realize how long it takes to write this? "Yes, obviously. otherwise, we wouldn't bother you like this." [-sigh-].................

are you dressing up for Halloween? Actually, forget I asked. it's obvious, isn't it? Well, we do. anyway, I am dressing up as Percy Jackson* .  This  is his.......er,........decipherable clothing:

Orange "Camp Half-Blood" shirt, Anacklosmlos [as in English, Riptide, a pen that, when un-caped turns into a celestial bronze sword. I'll explain later.], and a minotaur horn, which he obtained by destroying the minotaur. Duh. as for the ".........celestial bronze......" it is a material, in fact, the only material,  in which the monsters fear. a shotgun would probably bounce off a monsters skin like marshmallows, [yum!] but a celestial bronze sword would slice through  like a razor through air!

"I'm gonna take it off now!"

*Yes, I know how to use footnotes. why do you look so surprised? Percy is a demi-god, half human, half Greek god. He goes on adventures, usually, he saves the world by stopping arguing among the gods. he has a- HOLY COW I am about to spoil it.  /\
                                                                                   |

one more funny Miriam quote

The discussion around the breakfast table this morning centered on whether or not Miriam looks like Caroline did at the same age. As final evidence, we got down the baby pictures of each child and started looking through for comparable pictures. When Miriam saw the picture below, she pointed to Caroline and said, "It's me!"

I pointed to the baby and said, "No, sweetheart. This is you as a baby." Without missing a beat, she responded with, "Awww! It's me holding me!"

poor horsey

On Monday afternoons, Miriam and I find ourselves with time to kill during Jonah and Caroline's swimming lessons. On a particularly lovely day recently, we headed to the small park across the street. We had the place to ourselves, so Miriam was quite happy to play on each piece of equipment in turn. She spent most of her time on the little rocking horse, which was surprising to me. Those things seem to be the last toy claimed by any group of kids (and I admit to thinking they were lame until she showed interest in them).

She had no interest in scooping with the digger, which happens to be one of my favorites. A little bit later in the day, I figured out why. While telling me all about her adventures at the park, she said this:

M: ...and I rode the horsey!

K: Yes you did!

M: This park has two horsies.

K: Hmm...I only saw one.

M: No, two. That one (pointing to the digger) just died.

Poor horsey!

how to choose the perfect birthday present

When I was young, my mom gave me great advice. "A good gift is one you'd like to keep for yourself." A few weeks ago, Jonah and I went shopping for a friend's birthday present. We went to Wal-Mart an hour before the birthday party and I let him pick any gift he wanted within a certain budget.

After we walked around and looked at some options, Jonah expressed that he was feeling overwhelmed and didn't know what to pick (or what things his friend liked to eat). So I did what any good mom does, and I quoted my own mother. With that inspiration, he looked around more enthusiastically and came up with the perfect gift.

It was so much fun for me to watch him evaluate options. We spent a good 5 minutes looking at pencil options and debating the advantages of various erasers. I don't know how the gift was received, but I sure enjoyed watching his decision making.

ARTFORKIDSHUB:................... [WRITTEN BY Jonah]

okay........let's see. This is a bit simple. [That means for me, very very complicated.] There is a group called the Atforkidshub that I like, and its this ingenious dad guy who makes up step-by-step pictures and at the beginning it looks RIDICULOUS. Then at the end, it's amazing.

I like it pretty much. Anyway, I made a Jack Skellington drawing and I am going to tape it to my punk-in [Get it? this part is especially for Bammie. I know she is reading this right now and laughing her brains out. "But why? You're not even 80 years old!" {that will make no sense.} ]

Anyway, there is a bunch of pictures and some are simple,
like, he makes a cartoon character that is two inches tall,
or, he can make it hard [yeah right] for his son, Chuckers
[Jack actually]. Oh yeah! He draws the pictures with his
children, a four-year-old and a [what? 8-year-old?]        

Now it is time for din-din. It's been nice chatting!  

The girls say...

For some time now, Caroline has been telling us that she cannot sleep until the sky is black outside. After we put her to bed after dark a few weeks ago, she's added a new stipulation:

"I can't sleep until black. But if it's already black, I can't fall asleep until then either. I can only fall asleep right when it turns black outside."

Well then. I guess we'd better get our timing down!

Caroline also calls her toenails her "poenails," as in, "let's paint my poenails!"

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Miriam is full of all kinds of silly pronunciations. She also can't say "toenails." In fact, she calls them something that sounds like "pigtails" (leading to all kinds of confusion).

When Miriam wants a piece of paper to draw, she will specify that she wants either a "Mommy paper" (lined paper) or a "Jonah paper" (plain white paper).

Our favorite things she says are all versions of yes. For some reason, she starts every affirmative word with n-. "Nes" and "nep" (instead of "yes" and "yep") are funny, but "nah" instead of "yeah" is all kinds of confusing. I guess the good thing is that she's consistent.

After breakfast today, Miriam said she was still hungry and wanted some more fry bread.
Josh: How about some fruit instead?
M: Ok!
J: What kind of fruit do you want?
M: Macaroni and CHEESE!