Bed Time Song

Tonight is a Monday, and that means that Mary is at show choir rehearsal. So I tucked both kids into bed tonight. As part of her bed time routine we always read Sofi a book, and this week she is favoring a library book called Dirk Bones. But after I was done reading it she pulls out this Christmas greeting card that she tucked away under her covers, and she opens it up, and inside she has colored all over it with color crayons. And she begins pointing at various colors on the card and informs me that each one is a song that we could sing. "Here's a Kitchen Song... here's a Bedtime Song..." Eventually after she gets done naming them all (there was quite a few, and unfortunately I can only remember the above two) she starts to teach me one of them. I can only assume it was the Bedtime Song, and it went like this...

Bed time
Bed time
Oh won't you work for me
Let's sing a song
Let's sing a song
And then we'll go to the museum

We snore
We snore
Dad snores all the time
And Mom
And Mom
She snores day and night

There were actually four verses total, but I was so amazed that she was actually singing her own song (and making it up as she went as far as I can tell), and somewhat shocked by the snoring accusation, that the other two didn't really sink in.

They all had the same pattern of repeating the first and the fourth lines. It was a joy to hear, despite the accusation.

Thanksgiving To Do List

In order to prepare for Thanksgiving tomorrow, one of the first things Mary did this morning was make a list of what she wanted to accomplish today.

Mary really should be the one writing about this, because she was nice and generous enough let me sleep in, and I wasn't there when the above list was created.

But as you can see, at some point the list was taken over by Sofi. Not only did she add the figures on the paper, but she also added lines to which Mary notated Sofi's agenda items that she wanted added to the list.

On Mary's to do list:

• Clear Hearth
• Put Up Nativity
• Put finish on floor
• Vacuum floors
• Clean Bathrooms
• Clear Ping Pong table
• Grocery shop (finish)
• Get flowers
• Pumpkin fluff
• Cut up pumpkins
• Vacuum basement & stairs
• (Mow Lawn)
• (Spread Compost)

On Sofi's to do list:

• Get a new kite
• Sofi kite & Isaac kite
• Go to the Museum
• Go to the Circus
• Eat Gingerbread man
• Pick up toys & dog
• Clean Sofi's room & vacuum
• Clean the dishwasher
• List the chores to do
• Write note to Santa
• Go to the zoo and see the Lions & Tigers & Monkeys
• Go to the Puppet Show
• Clean sofa
• Wipe TV

Mary and I accomplished everything on our list except for the last two items. Sofi actually accomplished about a third of her list...

• Eat Gingerbread man (which she worked on throughout the day)
  
• Pick up toys & dog (not sure where the dog part comes in, this may be referring to her new flash light which looks like a dog, but she did pick up her toys)
  
• Clean Sofi's room & vacuum (This may be more Mom than Sofi...)
  
• Clean the dishwasher (she put away the silverware, which has become her part of emptying the dishwasher everyday)
  
• List the chores to do (which she obviously accomplished right away simply by dictating this list to her mother)
  

Just before bedtime Sofi did point out however, in a tone of shock, that "We forgot to go to the zoo!"

In regards to her drawing, I was informed that this is a picture of her and Isaac. Isaac is on the left with a "spider kite" and she is on the right with a "kite box" with an "owl inside, with eyes looking out".

Family

Above is a family of figures that Sofi drew tonight at our early Thanksgiving service. She drew them all one right after the other, in fairly rapid succession.

what else does a girl need?

Tonight Sofi and I (Mary) attended a Show Choir Show in our town. I knew she would enjoy it with the singing, dancing, and costumes, but was interested to find out exactly what her reaction would be. When the High School girl's group came on dressed in red sequins, white opera gloves, and white feather boas she was extremely interested. She turned to me and said "Wow Mom look at all the princesses!". She also mentioned that she saw one fairy (I think she was referring to one of the smaller girls). I few minutes later she announced to me that when she grows up she want me to buy her a pair of "clippety clop shoes" (high heels)..........and a treasure chest.

What else does a girl need? Perhaps she is destined for the stage!

Bagel

"When you were asleep, I snuck a bagel!"
So I was informed after I woke up this morning.
"I kind of wondered about that", I answered, noticing the plastic bag that held our last bagel empty on the kitchen counter. "So where is this bagel?" I asked, thinking I'd get an answer regarding her tummy.
"There are crumbs all over my bed!"

Painted Toes

Sofi decided to paint her toes and feet today, with glitter markers.



Thankfully they weren't permanent marker... though this time of the year I suppose it wouldn't really matter.

I've told her repeatedly that markers, and all art supplies, are for paper. To reinforce this the markers were thrown away (though I retrieved them later to give them to the church art room). Seeing them thrown out didn't bother her at all.

Does this mean I will being seeing tattoos in my future?

Isaac's 11th Month

MILESTONES:

• Started waving

EATS:

• Lots of foods now
• Liked chard for a day, but only a day (think he preferred it warm)
• Likes peas again

Has 6 teeth

Still fairly easy going, but no longer a push over. Used to take anything his sister would dish out, but no longer. Complains LOUDLY when Sofi starts getting on his nerves, which is usually because she is physically in his face, squeezing him and chartering away about something.

Crawls everywhere, and will pull himself up on anything.



Has started to climb up on things. Likes to climb onto the hearth around the fire place, and into the dishwasher. Very persistent about climbing into the dishwasher, which makes it very difficult to load and empty the dishwasher. Can climb up a couple steps, and even figured out how to climb down the steps outside the front door (took a couple of practice attempts, but he figured it out).

Though he is easy going, he screeches VERY LOUDLY whenever he wants something.

Still not sleeping through the night. If he doesn't wake earlier (often at midnight or one, ugh!) he will wake at 4am and will want to nurse/have a bottle.

Still loves to play peek-a-boo.

Very interested in dogs, especially Grandma Ardelle's dog Foxy.

For more photos of Isaac click here...

Wedding Manners

The kids made it through Christina and Josh's wedding, and I have to say that considering what a wedding puts kids through, especially kids who can prove to be a bundle of energy, I have to say they did a really good job.



At the wedding Sofi was very excited about seeing the bride. Isaac slept. At least through the first half. That was about all Sofi could handle of the wedding too, and she became her typical sitting-through-church self. She was antsy, sliding out of her seat, looking for things to do, paper to draw on. But neither of them were disruptive, thankfully.

After the wedding we headed to the reception, and I assumed that during the trip (which took about 20-30 minutes) the kids would fall asleep. After all, the wedding was during their usual nap time and I could tell by the way they were acting that they were tired. Well I assumed wrong. I wasn't too worried about Isaac, because he'd napped in the morning and in the afternoon on the way to the wedding. Sofi on the other hand... well, to be blunt, I had no intention of bringing an unrested Sofi into the reception. An unrested Sofi is loud, pushy, and often spins our of control---literally.

So blunt I was, straight to Sofi's face. I told her that she had to take a nap, and she could either take one here in the car, or we could go back to the hotel. Thankfully this did not become a battle. She chose napping in the car, and I dropped Isaac off at the reception with my parents and Sofi and I drove around until she fell asleep.

I had my sister call me to let me know when people were sitting down to eat, so that I could wake Sofi up and we could go in. She called at 5:30, at which point I woke Sofi up and we joined the party.

This turned out to be an error in judgement on my parent, and if I'd thought things through a little deeper I would have known better. It's not that Sofi became a monster to deal. Quite the opposite. Again, considering what she had to go through at the reception, she was very well behaved.

I miscalculated because I forgot that at weddings, when everyone sits down to eat, no eats right away. There are speeches to be made. The father of the bride, the father of the groom, etc.

And the father of the bride, my Uncle Roy, well... Christina, the bride, is his only child. So of course he has six pages of notes for his speech. And considering that Michelle called me in at 5:30 and we didn't start eating until 7:30, and that Roy talked for at least forty minutes during this time span, I can only assume that those six pages of notes were set at six point font.



The above photo pretty much sums it up. Sofi is dinging her water glass with her knife, trying hard to have some fun, but doesn't feel much like smiling. Thankfully I brought food with me to feed Isaac. It wasn't long before Sofi was asking to eat his cheerios. And around 7pm Sofi had finally given up on food and was begging to "go home". But she wasn't throwing a fit, and she wasn't melting down. She was still trying her best to have good manners.

Finally the food came and we all ate, and Sofi was still asking to go. And we were about to when the dance started up. Sofi can't pass up a chance to dance...



but as you can see from the above photo, it proved hard to wait, again, this time for the dance floor to become available for everyone.

But finally it did and we all had fun. Sofi danced with the bride and the groom...





Isaac danced with his grandparents...



And after dancing our hearts and little legs out to several songs, Sofi and Isaac were truly ready to go.

And so, around 9pm, we finally did.

For more wedding photos, visit my Flickr page...

Happy Trick or Treat!

That's how Sofi greeted everyone at the doors she visited this year, if she wasn't too shy—"Happy Trick or Treat!"

And what a happy Halloween it was!

The day started with a trick about treats...

I woke up to find Sofi already dressed in her costume, which is Jane from Disney's version of Tarzan. We had just checked the movie out from the library, and she saw it with "Papa" and Grandma D when they visited the other weekend, so when Mary and Sofi went to the Goodwill to look for costumes and found the Jane costume, that was an instant winner. Any Disney leading lady will do. At least I can have some peace of mind knowing that Jane was a proper English lady, and not a princess.

So as I was saying, Sofi is in her costume first thing. And as I come out the bathroom after doing my morning routine, I'm almost run over as Jane goes literally racing by, straight into her bedroom.

It isn't until I'm well into making breakfast for Isaac and I that I realize things are, once again, too quiet. So I head in the direction that I last saw Jane.

The bedroom that I believe I will find Jane is closed off—the door is shut. I open the door. I don't see Jane anywhere, but I do see a Jane-sized mound underneath the blankets on the bed. I run to get the camera, and as I snap the picture Jane reveals herself—and the plastic jack-o-lantern that she already had candy in it from trick-or-treating at the local farmers' market last Friday (the plastic jack-o-lantern is not seen in the photo because it is still covered by the blankets).

So that is how Halloween started. With a rush to and from the sugar.

We had storytime at the library in the morning, so I got Isaac dressed up in his jack-o-latern outfit and we all went and had a good time, as we usually do every Wednesday. Below is a photo of Isaac enjoying himself with an older boy who was very taken with the baby jack-o-latern at the library.


In the evening I stayed home to hand out candy and Mary and the kids did the rounds, with Isaac in a different costume, that of a lady bug (Mary also had a lady bug costume to match). All the photos are below. When they came home, even Isaac had his own candy—a full size 3 Musketeers to be precise. While there was no way we were going to let him eat it, he certainly had a tight grip on it for the rest of the evening.

One more snippet to close this Halloween story. The next morning, while I was blogging about Sofi's reaction to grapefruit at breakfast, Sofi found our pumpkin carving knives. Thankfully these are designed so that there is no sharp edge and are extremely dull (and yet they cut pumpkins amazingly well—I love them and wish I'd had them when I was a kid... perhaps I never would have needed stitches!), so I had no need to worry. What Sofi had discovered was a great exercise in fine motor skills. She literally carved the pumpkins to pieces. One of them the top was completely cut off (much like the cup cake a few days earlier!).



For more Halloween photos visit Flickr...

Tri-Grapefruit

It's a pleasant surprise to find that people other than family have taken the time to read some posts from this blog, and I appreciate the comments received.

One of these people is Loie, a friend from church whom I mentioned in an earlier post because she was gracious enough to watch the kids on my birthday. Thankfully she didn't think the kids were too awful, because she agreed to babysit once a month so that I can attend my synod's monthly Assembly Meetings.

Not only was this extremely kind of her, but when she came by last time she brought grapefruit, because she had read my previous post about how the kids like grapefruit.

In her generosity she brought three, one for each of us, so that we could each have our own for a change. There was two small ones for the kids, and then she found a large one that she said was for me.

The reason I'm mentioning all this is mainly for Loie's sake, because I thought she'd appreciate Sofi's reaction to her gift at breakfast this morning.

Because today I decided I'd like to have some grapefruit for breakfast, and I decided "Yeah, I would like one just for myself", I took out two and set them on the table. Since one was for me I picked the large one and then one small one for the kids.

Before I could finish my cereal Sofi was all excited. The name grapefruit seems to elude her for some reason, and she keeps referring to them as mangoes (which she also loves). As she put it: "This mango is for Sofi" (pointing to the smaller one, and then to the bigger one) "...and this one is for Daddy... and Sofi." Actually, if you want it to sound more like Sofi, it would be faster, like this: "ThisMangoIsForSofi..AndThisOneIsForDaddy... AndSofi."

As you can see, Sofi wanted to make sure she had a claim on both grapefruits. Poor Isaac wasn't on her radar, but it turns out he wasn't too interested this time. Isaac was actually upset with the grapefruit this time around, but I don't think it was because he didn't like it. He just saw the cereal bowl it was in, and I think he wanted cereal instead, so he refused to eat the grapefruit until the very end when it dawned on him that he wasn't going to be offered any cereal from Dad's cereal bowl.

Sofi kept very close tabs on me during the entire sharing process, and let me know if I took two sections of grapefruit instead of sharing every other section. And after the juice was squeezed out into a glass (and drank entirely by my daughter) Sofi looked at the kitchen counter, looked at me, and announced "There'sAnotherMangoIfYouWantAnotherMango—I'mNotFullYet!"