Future Engineer

We're getting ready to sell our house, which is going to involve a LOT of yardwork. Last night Scott hooked the trailer up to the van and drove up to Lowe's to buy lots of mulch, rock and some landscape timbers. Silly tagged along to "help." When they bought all their stuff Silly was watching Scott load everything into the trailer. He told Scott that he should put the rocks in the front, but Scott put them all in the back. When they started to drive off Scott realized that he couldn't drive that way because the trailer was too heavy in the back and was trying to pull off the hitch, so he stopped to rearrange. When he go back in the car, Silly asked him what he'd done. Scott told him he'd moved some of the bags of racks to the front of the trailer. Silly reminded him that he'd told him to do that in the first place.

Scott was telling me this after the kids were in bed and we sat and wondered what must've been going on in that little 4yo brain. He couldn't lift the bags of mulch or rock, so how did he know which was heavier? How did he know the heavier stuff should be in the front, not the back? (More importantly, why did he think of that when his engineer father didn't?) The only thing I could think of was before they hitched the trailer up to leave, Scott had put Bubba in the trailer. Cakes and Silly of course asked if they could get in too, Scott told them Bubbs didn't weigh enough to tip the trailer, but they did.

Silly does those sorts of things all the time where he tells one of us how to do something and we don't listen, but it turns out he was right. I guess we ought to take his 4yo advice more seriously.

I know!

Anybody else rate this as their least favorite sentence out of their children's mouths? It drives me insane! Did I say that a lot when I was a kid? If so, Mom, I'm deeply sorry. This is Cakes's response to EVERY instruction I give her. Recently I've started explaining that I'll know she knows when I see it done. If she knows that her shoes don't belong in the middle of the floor, then I won't see them there. If she knows that she's supposed to brush the hair on the TOP of her head then I would be able to tell she had done so and wouldn't keep repeating my instructions.

M - Cakes, you need to put away that shirt you just took off, it's clean
C - I know.
M - I don't want to hear, "I know," I just want to see it done.
C - I know.
M - The evidence that you know is that I see it done. If it was done I wouldn't be telling you and you would have showed me that you know instead of just telling me. (said not nearly as calmy as it looks all neatly typed!)

I told her I'm going to start giving her an extra job every time she says "I know." And there will be plenty of extra jobs available if we're going to sell our house.

On the other hand, this reminds me that I continue to fail at my intention to "try again" whenever one of us yells or says something we shouldn't say or speaks in an otherwise unpleasant way. I always mean to say, "let's try that again" and give myself and/or the kids a chance to start the conversation over but in the heat of the moment I always forget. I need to post reminders all over my house. But that won't help it sell either.

Second Grade, Joy School and Preschool

School is off to a pretty good start. Cakes gets on the bus a lot earlier than she did last year (usually before 7!) I haven't heard any complaints yet. We've got our little weekly schedule of reminders on the fridge. This year we added a breakfast menu so we don't waste so much time deciding every morning. Daddy even joins us some mornings.

Silly is in Joy School and Preschool. About a month ago I started thinking about Joy School again and realized I was still sad that it didn't work out for Silly last year. I harassed all of my preschool mom friends again and two of them joined me. He is really liking it so far and is excited to have it at our house next week. I'm so glad I get a chance to do this with him! On MWF he goes to "regular" preschool and loves that too. He's happy to have an excuse to use his lunch box. Today I sent him a note telling him that Grandmama and Grandaddy are coming this afternoon. He's such a happy kid.

Heading off to Joy School

Last Thursday they made gingerbread men in Joy School because they're learning about bodies. He told me all about his man. You'll notice his gingerbread man appears to have three eyes. Silly informed me the middle one is his brain. The other raisins on the arms and legs show where his hinges are.

Cakes has jumped right in to second grade. She says her teacher is mean, which is possibly true (Scott and I weren't very impressed at orientation). She had such super, sweet, love to teach, adore the children teachers for first grade and Kindergarten, so we figured she was up for a less-than-great one. I've just reminded her that as long as she's doing what she's supposed to be doing she has nothing to worry about; the teacher might yell, but she's not yelling at Cakes.

Cakes coming home from her first day of second grade

They have a new PE teacher this year. Cakes told me yesterday that they don't do anything fun in PE, just walk or run, you know, exercise, heaven forbid. That's about all I've heard for complaints. She sits right down and starts her homework out on the front porch then hops on her bike searching for a friend to play with her.

Cakes also had her first piano lesson this week. She really likes her teacher and is definitely motivated to earn lots of music money for practicing. I'll be picking her up from school every Wednesday to take her to her lesson. We have enough time so sit and let her eat a snack and talk for a few minutes then head over to her piano teacher's house.

Riding on Two Wheels

Cakes can finally, really ride a two-wheeler! Scott has taken her to the park probably five times in the last two years, taken off the training wheels and let her ride around. She does just fine, but then gets home and refuses to ride without the training wheels so her bike just sits for weeks until Scott puts them back on. Well, last weekend he took her out again and this time she really did it. Ever since then all she wants to do is ride her bike. She hates wearing her helmet, but I insist. She can hate me her whole brain-damage-free life. Literally none of her friends wear helmets. Isn't it a law? I took a few videos but they don't seem to want to load so I'll try again later.

Tooth Fairy

I spent part of my spring break helping my sister go through a few rooms to do some packing and sorting to get ready for her move. I acquired a few things in the process, one of which was a great tooth fairy idea.

Cakes has really enjoyed this fairy candle. Her hand is just the right size for a tooth.

The first question out of her friend J's mouth when we saw them at the beach was, "How many teeth have you lost? I've lost 7." I guess Cakes was determined to keep score because her 7th tooth actually came out while we were at the beach. When we got home that night she was setting up for the tooth fairy while I was in the shower, so she kept coming into the bathroom with another question:
C: Tooth?
M: Small zipper pocket of the beach bag.
Two minutes later...
C: Candle?
M: In the cabinet closest to the TV. Ask Daddy to help you.
Another minute or so...
C: Lighter?
M: Either in the little drawer in the kitchen or up on top of the fridge.
Apparently she found everything because she was all set up. She has one more to lose then hopefully she'll just be working on filling in all those holes in her mouth instead of making new ones. Silly isn't too far behind her though, so I'm sure we'll get plenty of use out of that fairy.

Beach Day

My friend Jaime gave me a call last Friday asking if we wanted to meet at the beach Saturday morning, miraculously it all worked out and we had three families with a total of 9 kids spending the day in Kill Devil Hills. We left earlier than we needed to so we didn't get stuck in the usual beach traffic, but there wasn't much so we were early. Bubba didn't like the sand at first and wouldn't walk on it but he got over that pretty fast.

That is an actual smile! He had fun throwing sand thanks to some lessons from family members not to be named.

My first job was blowing up the raft, which Silly put right to work. There were several hurricanes brewing all over the Atlantic so the water was a bit rough but that didn't stop anyone from getting in, even when the lifeguard put up a "No Swimming" flag.

I call this his "gimme" face, he wrinkles up his nose like that whenever he wants something.

Bubbs made us fill that watering can over and over. He would come stick it in my hand and wait, well clear of the water, signing MORE until I brought it back. Then he just dumped it out where ever he was standing and wanted it filled again.

His almost-birthday-buddy ate lots of our Cheetos, so he took a big pile of her cookies to get even.

All the girls played together non-stop. I actually can't recall hearing a single complaint or disagreement. Amazing. And they all spent a lot of time in the water with dads nearby to rescue them from all their many wipeouts. I made a comment to Jaime that we were all going to have some well exfoliated kids.

Silly post wipe-out. Scott eventually took his lifejacket off because it was actually getting him pulled farther away.

Even Bubbs started to like the water eventually. I took him in and held his arm with both hands. After a few tries he would see a "wave" coming and hold out his arm so I could help him. He figured out how to plant his feet pretty quickly. And even took a few big ones.

The babies didn't interact much once the finished stealing each other's food.

After several failed attempts, Bubba actually fell asleep and had a nice comfy nap on the raft under the umbrella.

We had a great day together and Krisanne and I were so glad Jaime called and everything worked out. I volunteered to be in charge of my family's stay at the beach next year so I invited them to come along too. We also talked about taking our girls to Lion King together when if comes this fall.

Hurricane Earl was headed our way all last week. Luckily, he didn't do any serious damage around here, but Al Roker just happened to be broadcasting from Kill devil Hills several mornings last week. I had the Today show on during breakfast, Scott looked at it and told Silly he could see his footprints behind Al Roker. Silly said, That's because I left them there."