Saturday, October 31, 2009

Budding tastes


Here are two different ways that Mim has described food or drink that did not meet her taste standards recently.

"It tastes like an alien crawled into my mouth."

and

"It tastes like a pool with bugs in it."

Leading me to ask, of course, "How on earth could you possibly know?"

She has a cold, which is presumably why things don't taste quite the way they're supposed to.

The picture below is how my two children write the word Popeye. The left is Mim and the right is Zaya. (Zaya had a little help with the last two letters.)



In case it's hard to tell, Mim drew an eyeball after the word Pop. Then she made the pupil an M, because she likes to autograph her work.

This was all done in Grandma Lilibeth's classroom, which we try to visit once or twice a week after school is over. The seniors are currently selling those big round lollipops, so the kids usually leave school with blue, red, purple, pink or white tongues. And lips. And faces. And hands. Thank you, Grandma.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Pomegranate Goodness

My mom directed me to this video. You have to watch the whole thing. Don't just give up and decide it's another boring commercial.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Run Away! Run Away!


Yesterday we were driving to visit Grandma Lilibeth when Mim surprised me with a question.

We had been traveling quietly for awhile, the children reading, or so I thought. Apparently Zaya was reading, but Mim was contemplating unimaginable brutality with typical nonchalance.

"Mommy," she spoke into the silence.

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Mommy, do they make bunny slippers from real bunnies?"

"Umm. No. No they don't. They make them from fabric, just like clothes. They just look like bunnies," I said while trying not to imagine someone ripping the insides out of a bunny and sticking their foot in said mammal. "They are not real bunnies."

"Oh, ok."

For the rest of the day I had the Monty Python bunny stuck in my head. (The picture above is of the Monty Python Killer Rabbit slippers from thinkgeek.com; a fantastic place to shop for all the geeks in your life, by the by. The Teeson family may just have a wish list there, in fact, in case you were, you know, curious.)

Oh, and on a related note, my father said that Monty Python was one of the things that his generation had done to my generation that required apologies.

The man speaks truth.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Be Kind


I have this crazy idea for a column I might try to present to the editor of our local paper. Actually, the idea of writing a column for our local paper is also crazy, so that makes this loco on several different levels.

Anyway...

If I were to name a specific strength I have, or expertise, if you will, (besides my excessive use of commas) it would be that I love learning about new/different things, and I'm a quick reader and researcher. And I can write a bit, too. (I'm not talking about grammar. I hate grammar.)

What do you, my supportive and uplifting family and friends, think about a column that is just a small explanation of various things in our world? Each week would have a different topic, like an encyclopedia, but more friendly and fun. Sound thrilling? If you were an editor would you pay, oh, anything, for that?

Here are some examples of just how random I'm thinking: What makes up the earth's atmosphere? What exactly is a Ponzi scheme? How do your white blood cells work together? Who invented the pop can? How much sleep do children need? What are the best strategies for solving sudoku puzzles? What might you see if visiting Budapest? etc....

So here is my question/idea for you -

What are some random things you would sit down to read a little column about? (A well researched column, I promise, but little nonetheless.) (And no, I wouldn't just be going to Wikipedia.) Or, alternatively, do you think this would be at all interesting?

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Life and Raindrops



It has rained a lot in the last couple weeks. I like rain. I even like foggy, cloudy days, but it was nice to have a few days of sunshine when we did. Now the rain is back, and so the children and I are cooped up inside again.

I've also had a cold for about three weeks. It affects various parts of my respiratory system, but only one part at a time. There was about a week of bad earaches, a week of nose issues, and now a week of that dry, itchy throat cough. Ugh.

I realize that you don't care about that, I'm just letting the world in general know. It's made me even more apathetic than normal about important things in my life, like cleaning, cooking and, oh, anything else that requires motivation and self-discipline.

The kids, however, are fine. They're just as crazy as ever. Sometimes more so.

Mim has decided that school is not as much fun as she thought it was, and she'd rather stay home with Mommy. Every morning she has the mysterious tummy ache and says she doesn't want to go to school. Every morning she goes anyway and is perfectly fine once she gets there. Fun stuff.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Wow!



Coming from a family with several accordion players (although I'm not one myself) I can tell you that this is extremely difficult!

I need someone to make sure my brother Elijah sees it.

Monday, October 12, 2009

They're On To Me.


There's nothing more frustrating than having your parenting flaws pointed out to you by your own children.

Alright, there are probably some things that are more frustrating, but not many.

This afternoon I picked up lunch at the Braum's drive-thru. The kids wanted ice cream, so I ordered them each a small scoop of mint-chocolate-chip in a bowl. (For some reason that's their favorite kind. Don't blame me.) After they ate 'most' of their cheeseburgers I let them have their ice cream. When we got home Mim had only eaten about half of hers. Again.

"Mim, I'm not going to get you ice cream next time because you never finish it."

She looked at me with not the slightest speck of remorse on her face and said, "You'll forget, Mom." Then she continued with her activities.

"What do you mean 'I'll forget' child?"

"You won't remember that you told me that next time and you'll buy me ice cream again. You always do."

Which is true, actually, bless her pointed little ears. What she doesn't know, though, is that there was no better way to ensure that I most certainly would not forget next time than to be smug and annoying about it. Ha. That'll teach her.

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

The Beat Goes On

Here are a few of the strange things a fly on the wall might have experienced in the last few days here.



These are my two little warriors. They were playing outside this way, and both seemed perfectly happy with their choice of weapon. Luckily, they weren't actually going after each other. That sword was one that Art made when he was but a wee lad.



This is Mim pretending to be the Sphinx. At first she called it, "The Statue of Liberty, you know, the one in Egypt." She did that in the middle of devotions one night and cracked us up.



Then Zaya came up with this one in the hall after he'd brushed his teeth. He said, "Look. I'm a statue of DNA. It's all twisty." You'd have to see him standing there in nothing but his little white shorts to get the full effect, but let me just tell you it's hilarious. I don't think he understood why Mommy and Daddy were laughing so much, but he was proud of the result anyway.

I don't have a good picture of it, but we had to play "Cell Wars!" this afternoon. First, we were white blood cells. Zaya was a lymphocyte, and Mim and I were Macrophages. Then I wanted to be a neutrophil, but Zaya said, "Mom, can you pick one that doesn't self-destruct please?" He knows I'll use that to make the game shorter. "Oops, I ate the bacteria and now I'm dead. You two carry on."

Then he decided it would be more fun to be bacteria. He wanted to be cholera, so I was gangrene. After that we were viruses. Zaya was smallpox, Mim was the flu and I was hepatitis. And you have to play these games just right, too. I daren't go attacking cells that I wouldn't naturally be a part of. If you're cholera, you attack the intestines, hepatitis the liver, etc.

Needless to say, I'm discovering that motherhood can be as mentally exhausting as it is emotionally and physically.

Oh, and one more thing. Last week the Spanish teacher asked the kids to come up with things that were verde (green). Apparently Zaya yelled out "shigella bacteria!" Then she had to draw it on the board and he was trying to explain what it looked like.

I have a lot of interesting discussions with their teachers....

Friday, October 02, 2009

Guess What!


Zaya has invented a new kind of cloud. It's called a Cumulo-Mumbus. It is big and fluffy like a cumulus cloud, but very dark. It produces very strong storms and tornados like a cumulo-nimbus, but more frequently. He is very, very excited about it.

I just thought the world should be aware and, thus, prepared.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Pet Update

All of the pets are doing well. We even found Luva. I set a couple live mouse traps and woke up the next morning to one very irritated hamster in a little gray box. The cages have been cleaned, but Mim's room continues to smell like hamster pee. I'm at a loss, really. Luva has also turned almost completely white. (She's supposed to.) (I think.)

Two new pets have been added to the total. Both children decided to keep a caterpiller, so Mim has a green one (Now in its pupa stage) and Zaya has a fuzzy orange one, still crawling around in its jar and pooping like nobody's business.

Zaya has also lost a bit of his interest in his hermit crabs because of their complete inability to be even remotely interesting. They crawl around. We have proof because we see their tracks in the morning, but if it were just a matter of personal observation you wouldn't even know they were alive. Not very exciting for a five year old. He has now decided that he wants a ferret. I have told him that the answer is "no" in no uncertain terms, but I think he continues to hope.