Mommies and Daddies

On Monday, we were downtown at the Children's Museum. On the way home, I pointed out the building where I used to work.

Victor said, "Oh. Did you use to be a daddy?"

Fun Shake

We did three fun things today.

First, we spent part of the morning at the Children's Museum. (It's more of a giant play place than a museum, but whatever.) As it was especially crowded and as I am especially fun (i.e. helping Victor on the climbing wall and attentively watching Zeke play airplane), I managed to lose each boy.

I am happy to report that the museum's "Code Adam" child-finding procedure works very well. But using it twice in the space of an hour and a half is keenly embarrassing.

Fun Thing Two was making milkshakes after Family Home Evening instead of just eating vanilla ice cream. I generally avoid using more kitchen items than are strictly necessary, but Jeremy suggested milkshakes, and I thought, "Hey--I'm fun now. Why not?"

Why not? Because poor Zeke could not figure out how to eat his. It was too thick to suck through a straw, but thin enough to splatter his face when he blew INTO the straw. It was too complicated to eat with the too-big spoon Victor provided him (which is saying something because Zeke, if I may say so, is an excellent spoon-user). Glops of it fell onto his clothing. A puddle of it pooled under his chair. And he had the sad but universal experience of getting a face-full of cold shake when he tipped up his cup.

Fun Thing Three was a three-player Candy Land game. Jeremy was our third. Victor was able to strengthen his sportsmanship muscles when victory was once again snatched from him by Grandma Nut.

Our day was not all fun. I did not allow Victor to work on digging his hole this afternoon owing to the extraordinary mud created by yesterday's rainfall.

Awesome Mothering

I don't think I'm a terribly fun person if you mean spontaneous, do-new-things fun. But my mom says I should try to be a fun mom, so I'm giving it a whirl.

Yesterday, after we dropped Grandma at the far-away airport (sad), we drove to the temple. Going there seemed like a good idea despite my general rule that one must travel home from a far-away destination as quickly as possible. The only people there were groundskeepers, so I didn't feel like we were disturbing anyone. Victor was very interested to know if the temple is hard or soft. We decided the walls were hard. He insisted that the (unseen) carpet was very soft. He wanted to know what Angel Moroni was doing, and who he was warning.

Today we went to Jump N Fun, which is a large cinder block room full of blow-up slides and jumping pens like you see at carnivals. Going there broke my general policy of avoiding loud, hot, crowded, or smelly places. Turns out that the owners put a limit on the number of patrons, and the smell was not too bad, so I was able to enjoy the intense vertigo induced by going down/around/in/up/out the bouncy palaces.

Yesterday I beat Victor in Candyland and taught him about sportsmanship.

Today, we colored with Crayons.

Next week, I intend to take the children to the zoo. (See above prohibitions on long car rides, heat, noise, smell, crowds.)

Fun, here we come!

Another Birthday, Another Bruder Truck

Victor turned FOUR yesterday.

Zeke and I took chocolate cupcakes to Victor's preschool class in the morning.

After lunch I let Victor open his big present: the Bruder crane. It is amazing. I'd had it in the house for months, and Victor was excited to finally get full possession of it.

In the late afternoon, Victor tracked clay through the house.

There was no dinner. I don't think we could have eaten anyway for the smell of the rubbing alcohol I used on the carpet and rug.

Victor's cake was the ugliest cake I've made yet. He wanted a red cake. And he wanted it to be a circle. Despite using an entire container and a half of Wilton red gel, the frosting did not progress beyond neon red. I made a V on top with Jelly Belly candies (which Zeke promptly picked off) and added a border of fun size Twix. It tasted good, but the frosting! Neon Red!

I'll post a picture when we sort out our computer issues.

After a five hour delay in SLC, Grandma arrived at 8:35 p.m.

Victor is very pleased to be four, and he had a very happy day. In case you were wondering, his favorite color is red, his favorite shape is the circle, and his favorite number is five.

I Can See

Today, I finally got to wear my contacts again.

I can see!

No more headache.

No more crazy amusement-park ride every time I turn my head or glance around.

No more scary driving or sore ears.

We celebrated by raking half of the front lawn. Victor and Zeke helped me bag the leaves. It was a good reminder that what you don't do in November just has to be done in March.

Suretrack

We have a wooden train set. One of the vexing things about it is the risers you have to use when building with certain bridges or making elevated track. They shift and fall and the track falls apart.

I saw Suretrack at Toys & Co. and decided to try it. Suretrack are small clips that slide onto the track and hold two pieces together. They are easy to use and they work. Even if your riser shifts or falls, the track does not fall apart.

We have been able to build much more interesting (and durable) tracks with Suretrack. I highly recommend it.

Helper Man

Yesterday I discovered Zeke crouched under the kitchen table with the dustpan and little broom. He was picking up pieces of cereal and putting them, one by one, into the dustpan.

After he picked up all the finger-sized cereal he picked up the dustpan (by the wrong end) and little broom and carried them to the trash. It took him two tries and he had to re-collect all his cereal pieces along the way.

He finally made it to the trash can, where he very carefully swept the cereal into the trash.

It was just about the sweetest thing I've ever seen.

Conjunctivitis

I woke up this morning with conjunctivitis. We had a series of morning adventures involving the local doc-in-a-box, which resulted in a prescription that requires me to wear glasses instead of contact for at least two days.

I don't have pair of glasses.

Rather, I didn't have a pair of glasses.

Now, I am the proud owner of the least expensive pair of glasses available at my local Lenscrafter. They are not the most attractive glasses I've ever seen, but they're not bad looking.

But wearing them is like being on a carnival ride. My peripheral vision is blurry. Every time I turn my head I get dizzy. Door and walls are all curved. Everything looks tiny. It's making me sick.

This is definitely an afternoon for movie-watching.

Medical Deciphering

Today Victor told me "my heart is on fire."

Unless he and Sophie are sneaking out to the same romance movies, I have no idea what that means.

Deciphering

When Victor was learning to talk, my cousin Alisa deciphered one of his first and most frequently-used words: mee-nah, said in a sing-songy way. It was the Barney clean-up song, which he must have learned somewhere besides our house.

Victor called food "mabum," and for a long time airplanes were "whoreplanes" (ha!) and umbrellas were "hairbrellas.

Zeke doesn't use the word "eat." He says "take a bite" instead. When he's hungry, he says "take a bite, Mom. Take a bite!"

Zeke had a new one for me this morning. Death Star! Death Star!

The Krispy Kreme hat on the floor clued me in. He meant "donut store."

Super-Advanced Child

I want to boast that Zeke wrote and published the previous post all by himself. Can your twins do that, TAMN?

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