TURKEY DAY....GOBBLE GOBBLE!

What an AWESOME Thanksgiving! Emerson saw Sponge Bob in the Macy's Parade and tickled Jack silly with his feather sword; Ida helped Mom cook and licked anything she could get her hands on; Uncle Chris ate a lot and showed us that he is neither a hippopotamus NOR scary; Grandpa didn't snore and stalked the grand kids; Mommy cooked and smiled; Uncle Josh got to eat apple crisp and impressed us all with his "L-name" memory; Auntie Em "did" Ida's hair, cuddled Emerson, and marveled as Ida showed off her outfit; Daddy took a nap, carved the turkey, and learned how to share his cherry pie; and Jack showed off his superior skills in spinning and rolling! The kids played so well together and Emerson couldn't get over Jack, "Boy, Baby Jack sure is a tough guy!" I am so thankful for my family. They make me smile and I love them to death!
(Ida found the laughter and conversation to be a bit much at times.)

(The kids waving goodbye after our great day. We have so much to be thankful for.)

HIPPOPOTAMUS

This picture of Ida was taken 7 months ago when she spent days-on-end walking around the house backwards on all fours. Not much has changed since this picture was taken. Although she doesn't wear diapers anymore, her "view" of the world is still unique.

I don't think it is uncommon for parents to worry about what their children eat. Is she eating enough vegetables? Did he eat his fruit for breakfast? Should I give her more cheese? Could it have been the pizza that upset his stomach? That's what parents do. That seems to be the pattern of questions I ask myself about Emerson's eating. I don't think he is an extremely picky eater, I just think he rather play with his toy zebra than stare at a hunk of lasagna. Eating is just so boring. And from what I have observed, it seems that most children have very stubborn taste buds that abhor anything that isn't floating in milk, filled with dye, covered in sugar, or smothered with cheese. However, somehow we were blessed with a little darling who is fearless when it comes to eating and has a super personality to top it off. She eats ANYTHING: humus, onions, broccoli, avocado, beets, plain sour cream, nuts, leeks, asparagus, cabbage, cole slaw, zucchini, eyelash curlers, chap stick, deodorant, hairspray, lotion, toothpaste, stickers, I mean anything. Sometimes, there is something in the back of my mind questioning if she eats the rubber cement or dish soap when I'm not looking. And I'm almost certain if you didn't know her witty personality, you would think she was; especially when she gets into one of her silly moods. Tonight at bedtime was one of those times.

MOM: Aren't you guys so excited for Thanksgiving?

EMERSON: I am! Will baby Jack and Grandpa come?

MOM: Yep!

IDA: But not Uncle Chris?

MOM: Yes, he will be here with Auntie Em.

EMERSON: Yea! And Uncle Josh?

MOM: Yes! And Aunt Amy.

IDA: But not Uncle Chris?

MOM: Yes, he will be here.

IDA: But I don't want him to.

MOM: Why?

IDA: (Being very serious) Because he is a scary hippopotamus.

MOM: What? He's not a hippopotamus.

EMERSON: laughing under his breath

IDA: But he is. Oh, he's not? But he's scary.

MOM: Uncle Chris won't try to scare you. He likes to play with you.

IDA: Oh, but I don't want Baby Jesus or Santa coming on Christmas. They're scary.

MOM: (Thinking in my head, What?) O.k. we can talk about that later. You don't have to be scared. Christmas isn't for a while. But I think we will have fun on Thanksgiving, don't you?

EMERSON: You want Santa to come!

IDA: No I don't. No Santa and no hippopotamuses.

I mean, where does she come up with this stuff? I checked to see if her breath smelled like anything toxic but it didn't. I think it was all "Ida" talking. Boy, she makes us smile.

"IT'S RAINING SNOWBALLS!"---Ida

After it took us 20 minutes to get all of our gear on, and then off to go to the bathroom, and then back on, we went outside to investigate the snow and find "where all the snowballs were hiding." I mean, we had just seen them fall from the sky and then they disappeared! Ida wasn't quite sure how that happened. She gave up trying to figure out the physics of the "hiding snowball" and went right into the phenomenon behind the icicle. Emerson wanted her to "stop thinking" and join him in ferosiously shaking, hitting, and body slamming the bushes, pine trees, and leaf piles so he could marvel at his creation of a human snowblower.

The barf bucket---long post

Stainless steal mixing bowl. That was my "barf bucket" growing up as a girl with my parents. Whenever mom, dad, or one us kids looked to be sick, thought we would be sick, or was actually in the process of being sick, someone in the house was in a full-out sprint to get the "barf bucket." I don't know why we called it a bucket because, in actuality, it was my mom's stainless steal mixing bowl. Each one of us kids also had an empty Swan's bucket under our beds just in case we had an unexpected nighttime accident. You can never be too prepared. I will have to do that when our kids are older. The name "barf bucket" has stuck with me and now it has a permanent place in our house with our kids. Our barf bucket is a 70's green Tupperware bowl that is the largest in a set of three bowls: barf green (hee hee), red, and yellow. The kids HATE it. They think that they have to or are supposed to throw-up if the thing emerges from the cupboard. What parent would ever make up that rule? We hate throw-up. We want absolutely nothing to do with it. We think it is one of the worst inventions in all of creation! But, we know that things of nature get ugly sometimes and we are forced to use the barf bucket once in a while.

Emerson hasn't been feeling well all week. He doesn't have the stomach flu, luckily, just a nasty cold that makes it hard for him to breath and keeps him up coughing all night. One night it had gotten to the point that he was coughing so much that he was making himself gag. I didn't want to have a mess all over his bed so I forced the barf bucket upon him. He almost could not live with the idea of having the bucket in his bed the whole night.

"Do I have to throw up in it?"

"Well, if you feel like you have to throw up because you are coughing so much, than you should do it in the bucket. But you don't have to throw up just because the bucket is in your bed. Do you get it?"

Please, I confused myself trying to explain that the barf bucket doesn't have some special power that makes someone throw up. Less is more, right? Anyway, I thought we should be done talking about throw up so I just smiled, hugged him, and left. When I went in his room the next morning I saw that the little guy turned the barf bucket into a trash can to ease his worries about it nesting with him for the night.

"Emerson, what's this?"

"Kleenex."

"Oh, you put them in the bucket?"

"Yep, like a trash can."

"Oh, your pretty smart."

"Yep, I like it like that better."

That afternoon I was trying to decide if Emerson needed the bucket in his room during nap time. Did I want to risk the distraction? I didn't want him to be too uptight about the bucket that he couldn't take a much needed nap. I decided in favor of the bucket and hoped that he would fall asleep. Josh didn't have to work that day so we all laid down for a nap that was way overdue. After getting cozy and drifting off to that place right between being awake and being asleep, where you think you hear things but you aren't sure, well, I thought I heard something. I nudged Josh and asked him if he heard something. He agreed. We couldn't decided if someone tried to knock down our front door, if a wrecking ball smashed through our living room, or if a tree fell on the house. My brave husband volunteered to find out what could be so scary in the mid-afternoon. This is what he found:

........the barf bucket outside of Emerson's door. It ended up being to scary for him to have in his bed and his whole trash can distraction died early, I guess. Josh and I figured that he couldn't take having it on his bed anymore, like it was eating away at his mind or something. So he grabbed the thing and the Kleenex box for good measure, ran like the dam just broke, threw it outside his door, slammed the bedroom door to make sure they'd stay out, and jumped back into bed before we caught him up during nap time. We barely took a nap because we were laughing so hard and trying to figure out how his mind unfolded during his barf bucket protest. Emerson didn't mention a word of it when he woke up. Some things are better left unsaid. I think we all hope the barf bucket stays in the cupboard all winter.

Playing Lighthouse

We found a new game to play on a rainy day. The kids thought of this game with the help of Emerson's "we-better-think-of-something-quick" mind. I think he saw Ida getting ready for another round of dress-up and decided he couldn't bare another minute of purses, dresses, high heels, and "shopping" for another outfit.

Stockpile.....again!

I think it is safe to say that Ida likes underwear. To express her absolute infatuation she put on EVERY pair in the underwear drawer, regardless if it was hers or Emerson's. It got really funny when she whispered, "I have to go pee-pee," thinking it would take her just as long to get 32 pairs of underwear off as it did to get them on. "Hold it....Please hold it" took on a new meaning. If she would've had an accident, we would've had to go commando until I washed every last pair of the kids skivvies! That's not fun! It was close, but they come off really fast with a little help from the "laundry lady!"

Indian Summer

"Summer, you old Indian Summer

You're the tear that comes after June-time's laughter

You see so many dreams that don't come true

Dreams we fashioned when Summertime was new."

-Frank Sinatra

GOD BLESS AMERICA!