9.18.2014

{ Spazzy and Other Scottisms }

One of my most enjoyable things is seeing my kids being funny or saying funny things. I love a good sense of humor. Not to be confused with outright craziness and running around wild like maniacs-though that happens a lot around here. Just a good old fashioned great sense of humor, sweet innocent sayings, and some deep full on belly laughs. The kids seem to always be saying something that I think is so funny. Scott is my top one for saying some pretty clever things.

Scott has this amazingly intense side to him. He loves to focus and concentrate and create. And then there are times that he is just so silly. That little head of his can scheme up some pretty funny things that come out of his mouth. Here are a few from the last few months that I remembered to jot down.

  • Erika was complaining that she was so hungry (she’s hungry a lot it seems), and Scott was evidently kind of sick of hearing about her hunger problems, so he offered her some sound advice. “Erika,you need to be the master of the food”.
  • We were eating tacos for dinner and they were coming apart and in his little fit of frustration he did what he does best-he came up with a creative invention and solution for his problem. “Mom, what if we had tape for taco?”
  • We have a real problem with Scott and Ryan staying at the dinner table during meals. One particular meal Scott ran off and I quickly tried to verbally bring him back to the table. He got a little huffy and turned around and in his best exasperated voice says, “Mom, I can’t even sit there, Ryan is being so spazzy on the bench”. Ahh. Some good 80’s lingo is always enough to make my day.
  • We were coming back from the beach and Scott said from the back seat, “"You know those red things in your eyes? Mine are all burnt out.”
  • To say that Scott is a picky eater would be a gross understatement. He loves what he loves, and certainly makes it known what he does not. I was making dinner one night and he climbed up on the counter to inquire what I was making. I told him and he got real excited and said, “Ooh I love that, keep making it.
  • We were driving in the car and he says, “Mom, my brain has a mind of it’s own”.
  • “Is there wine at the store? We should get a bag and garbage it. I think satan drinks a lot of wine.”
  • He calls hard boiled eggs, hard-spoiled eggs
  • When Scott asks me something if I say no right away he gets pretty upset-typical 5 year old I think, so I have started asking him if I could think about it first. He had requested something one day and I pulled out my magical “Can I think about it?” phrase and he replied, “Sure, but you only get 7 minutes.”
  • In the spring when he still went to preschool he would ask everyday if tomorrow was preschool. When I would say no, it was the day after that,he would say “Oh, I know the tomorrow-morrow.”
  • This one wasn’t funny, but just so honest that it made me smile. Scott was sick with the flu one night, and had already thrown up several times. He finally turned to me and declared, “I just can’t take this anymore!”
  • This one wasn’t by Scott, but directed towards him from Brooke. I hear from the back seat of the van, “Don’t stick your fingers in my mouth if they’ve been in your nose!” Lovely. Sometimes that craziness just creeps in.

9.15.2014

{ Master Builder }

This summer we had a couple weeks when the two big kids were gone at different camps for a week, and it was just me and the kids. I tried to make it a little bit of fun, so towards the end of the week we planned on heading to see the Lego movie at the dollar theater. Let’s just say, Everything was awesome! It was a super cute movie. The boys were talking through the whole thing-getting exciting as each new character would show up that they knew of. Ryan was most excited when Batman came-no surprises there, he still loves Batman. Scott just loved all of it!

They had gotten some Lego cups in a Happy meal a few weeks before, and Ryan was SO excited to tell me every time he saw “his guys” from the cup. Scott and Ryan love to build Legos. Like REALLY love to build Legos. They both got some new sets for Christmas last year, and combined with the large stash we already had, now have a whole huge basketful to create with.

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Scott is always building some amazing creation. I would love to get inside that kid’s head sometime and see where he comes up with all these ideas. He is definitely a master builder at heart. His favorite thing to do is to build things for presents for people on their birthday. He will make it in “layers” with a big container as a present, and then it will have moving parts to reveal what’s inside that he made.

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Other times he will be making places for his special stuff. He will construct something to hide him money, or his candy, and anything else he managed to swipe from someone else. I can almost always count on going in his closet and finding a Lego creation hidden there with something inside of it. We try to keep the Legos upstairs, but undoubtedly they always make it back down here. Scott always wants to show me his stuff that he has made, but more times than not, it gets destroyed on the way down. I have finally resorted to just keeping the basket in the piano room for weeks on end just so they have closer access to me to show me their cool things.

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9.11.2014

{ Ethan at 6 Months and His Thoughts on Eating }

It seems like a lot has changed since  I wrote down Ethan’s last monthly review. Mostly eating and sleeping-and unfortunately neither are in my favor. Boo! Ethan got a cold when we returned from our summer vacations and had a hard time sleeping with a cough and really stuffed up nose. We tried our best to keep him comfortable, but he usually ended back up in our bed at night and couldn’t sleep for very long before wanting some comfort. Comfort turned into a habit and now his and our sleeping schedule is all messed up. He is back to waking up every couple of hours to eat. Which leads to our next issue.

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This kid hates baby food. We have tried every trick in the book to get him to eat it, but he has a very real hatred for baby food. His food of choice is saltine crackers. That’s it. He doesn’t really care for baby puffs, Cheerios, Baby Mums, Ritz crackers, banana pieces he can feed himself, or anything else we try to let him feed himself. Every few day I try to trick him and I pull out a jar of baby food and he reminds me very quickly how he feels about it. So for now, we are still just nursing –he has some pretty strong opinions about bottles and formula too, and just nibbling on a few crackers when he can. He went to the doctor for his 6 month check up and he is over 16lbs, so I’m pretty sure he is getting enough to eat! I just wish some nights at 3am he was getting more from a spoon.

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Despite hating baby food, he really does love his highchair. He will happily stay in it while I am making dinner and nibble on his crackers or smile as the kids try to dance around and entertain him. He laughs now, a big full on baby giggle, and we just go crazy when we hear it.

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And as of now, still no teeth. Maybe as he gets a few teeth he will be able to have a little more table food and he’ll just skip the baby food all together. For now, we are just enjoying that cute little toothless grin for a while longer.

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9.10.2014

{ Attention: We have a crawler..I repeat we have a crawler on aisle 8 }

I’m not sure that any kid ever in the history of histories has received as much cheering as Ethan has in his short 6 months that he has been with us. You’d think that being the tail end of a pretty big group of kids you’d get the raw end of the deal in the attention department..but I would have to whole heartedly disagree when it comes to Ethan.

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I think you must have to be pretty patient to be kid #8. It takes a lot of faith and courage to sit up there in heaven watching your siblings go down one by one, and just wait… hoping that your poor ol’ parents won’t get burnt out.

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And then finally it’s your turn!

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And all the fun that you’ve dreamed of having with those wild and crazy siblings you remember so well from heaven finally comes true. And they watch you so closely,…

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…really tracking your every move. But instead of feeling kind of creeped out like your being stalked or something, you just giggle and coo and really can’t quite get enough of it.

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And neither can they. All that patience sure paid off, because now instead of just having dear old mom and dad to cheer you on when you do something as momentous as crawling..well, you get 7 other little people screaming from the sidelines too.

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Life never looked so good. And now that I can get whatever I want…it’s even better.

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Sure those big boys think that their stuff is safe..

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..but I’m fast. They try to distract me with some other little toy to keep my mind off of their really cool stuff.

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But I don't buy it. I just wait until they are busy building again and then go for it.Ethan crawling 6 months blog-16Yep, they love me!

9.05.2014

{ Scott’s New Glasses }

I think this is my favorite picture of Scott ever. He is so cute! This kid was just made to wear glasses. His love for Superman has come full circle, and now he can sport the Clark Kent look too. When Scott went in to have his kindergarten physical before school started, we found out that this poor kid was in dire need of some glasses. As part of the Pre-kindergarten testing they need to have their ears, dental, and eyes checked.

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When we went in for the eye exam she had Scott look at a TV screen with black and white letters and pictures on it. He wasn’t getting the first few and I thought maybe he was just confused because the eye tests he has done before have been the charts on the wall. She had him look through a little machine and she took some measurements of his eyes. Yep, sure enough this poor kid is blind as a bat. I felt so bad for him, and sad that I hadn’t recognized it before-and then very grateful for this little test that I had taken for granted before.

We scheduled a day to come back and have a full eye exam with the Ophthalmologist and see exactly how bad it was. Luckily, Aaron was able to come over for the exam that day and help me understand all the information. For someone who doesn’t wear glasses, it was a bit confusing and seemed a little like a foreign language. For Aaron, it was a trip down memory lane, as he relived himself getting glasses when he was 5.

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They had to put drops in Scott’s eyes to dilate them, and then we had to hang around the waiting room for another hour. Luckily Aaron’s office was right down the hallway, so he took Ryan with him to do some work, and then came back and made some awesome exam glove chicken’s for the boys. No one can claim this guy isn’t a fun doctor! And the best part of the day for Scott? The awesome roll up glasses to wear to protect his dilated eyes.

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The next Monday, we took a trip for Family Home Evening to the eyeglass store to help Scott pick out some glasses. Ten people invading the glasses store was quite a site.

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Everyone had fun trying on glasses and modeling them for us, then would bring Scott the ones they thought looked the coolest. After a while I was so confused at which ones we had tried on and which ones we hadn’t. After most everyone had had their fun, Aaron walked everyone but Scott and I, next door to Krispy Kreme's donuts for our Family Home Evening treats..

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We narrowed it down to three pairs, and then picked the perfect ones just as they were returning. Everyone gave a unanimous thumbs up. I don’t know if Scott really liked them, or just wanted to be done so he could eat his donuts, but either way we ended up finding some that we loved.

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The day that we went to pick up the glasses, lenses and all, Scott was a little nervous and actually telling me that he wasn’t going to wear them. After we walked out of the store though, he looked around and said, “Woo! Mom! Everything looks so deep!” It would be an understatement to say that his depth perception was a wee bit off too. Poor kid-welcome to the world of seeing!

Scott has been super good about wearing his new glasses. The lady at the store told him a little rhyme-“If they’re not on your face, they’re in your case.” He is very diligent about putting them in his case whenever he takes them off. We let him pick out a special green case to go with his new glasses just to make it a little bit more fun about keeping his glasses safe.

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At first he would wear them to school, but most days take them off after school. Now a days, he keeps them on well into the night as he is drawing and doing his homework. We have gotten so used to that cute little face with a pair of glasses on them, it seems like they have always been there. And now..he is pretty sure that he needs to be superman again this year for Halloween, just so he can be the Clark Kent version of him.

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