Typical conversation with Little Lamb

Little Lamb is still of the age that she thinks we all know what’s in her heard.  Oh how much easier life would be if we did…

LL:  Mommy, who’s that girl with the white hair?

Me: What? … Who? … From school?

LL: No!

Little Bear: Tinker Bell?

LL:  She doesn’t have white hair!

Me:  Is she on a show?  What show?

LL:  I JUST TOLD YOU!!!

Me:  Huh???  So she’s on a show?

LL: Yes. (huff)

Me:  So she has white hair and she’s on a show.  I’m going to need more details, LL.  Can you tell me something about the show?

LL: (silent staring)

LL:  There is a blue guy that’s a blob.  

Me: OH!!  Monster’s Vs. Aliens!  Hmmmmm, what is her name?

I then remembered that we have a M vs. A coloring book and looked in it.  Her name is Susan.  I omitted all the other random blond haired people that LB called out which only served to frustrated LL more.

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Little Lamb, age 3

    Sweet Little Lamb keeps me laughing and smiling with her adorableness.  She no longer wears capes every day, nor does she require me to call her by other names-whomever she is pretending to be that day.  She’s beginning to like some girlie things like Barbie and My Little Pony, but she often pretends to be the boys still.  She has begun to find the joy in Mommy/LL time, but she’d still rather have Little Bear or Belle with her.  Baby J, the baby I watch 2 days a week, is a suitable stand in for them if necessary.  She told me the other day she wanted a Baby J of her own.  I told her Daddy said, “No More Babies!” but I’m not sure she believes me.
    We often have discussions of what the kids want to be when they grow up.  Belle has a list a mile long of possibilities, most of which are far out of reach (Olympic skier, Olympic ice skater come to mind, seeing as she’s never skied and only ice skated once!).  Little Bear will sometimes say construction worker, others Iron Man/Spiderman/Batman, and, most recently, a pizza cooker with Daddy.  But, Little Lamb is the funniest of all.  At first she said she wanted to be a zebra, as if that was just as normal as being a doctor or lawyer.  Lately, however, she says she wants to be a nice lion with sharp claws.  She’s offered to protect J and I, so I’m not complaining!
     She enjoys her preschool class greatly.  Her teachers adore her, and I can tell because she always comes home smelling of their perfume!  Lately she has been able to tell us more about what she is learning at school, rather than just expecting me to somehow know the book her teacher read that day based on some sketchy description.  My favorite was the one about the girl in the bathtub.  You know the one, right??  She insisted I should know it.  According to LL, the hot game in preschool right now is Princesses and Princes.  Where the girls are princesses and the boys are, you guessed it, princes.  It must be all the rage as she claims to play it every day.  I’ve spied on them playing at recess and it looks like a bunch of random running in circles and throwing mulch on the alligator, but what do I know???  
[If you’re wondering how I’ve spied on my daughter at recess…They are the last group on the playground, just before dismissal.  Sometimes I finish my errands a little early, so I’ll go to school and just hang out in the parking lot.]
     The kids gave me Beatles Rock Band for Christmas.  We all take turns with the various instruments-guitar, drums, vocals.  LL’s favorite songs are Yellow Submarine, Twist and Shout (esp. the high Oooo!, complete with head shake), and Goodbye, Hello.  She’s partial to Paul most days, and likes to pretend the guitar is a “pinanno”.  
    I know I’m going to blink and she’ll be the 8 year old.  Making Belle 13, which is beyond my comprehension right now.  It’s my goal to enjoy the kids just as they are, each day.  I’ll be sad when she no longer believes she can grow up and somehow be an animal.  When she will delight in time away from Belle and LB.  And me.  When she won’t respond to J’s claims that he feels like an old man with, “I feel like a deer.”  Until then, I’m loving every minute of it!

More Belle, age 8

If you recall, I’m emptying my brain of tales of the kids this month.  Here’s more on Belle…

     A game the kids often play is doctor.  A doctor’s kit, or two or three, are necessary items when your Daddy is a doctor.  I love seeing the kids acting in caretaker roles.  On this one day, LL was sick, and a puppy, if I recall correctly.  Here is a list of her chief complaints, carefully scribed by Dr. Belle:
Tummy hurts a lot,
foot cramps a lot,
nose bleeds a lot,
has trouble going pee-pee,
eyes get puffy a lot,
lips chap a lot.  
Not sure what the diagnosis was, but it couldn’t have been good!
     Belle’s latest book that she’s writing here at home is titled, “The Girl Who Liked Church”.  I wish I could share the pictures for her book, but I’m a terrible scanner.  Plus they’re on orange paper.  Anyhow, here is how the story stands at this point….

The Girl Who Liked Church
Chapter 1: Church head!
     There was a girl who liked church.  All the other kids did not like church.  Church is importent! she would say.  Church head!  Church head! Evreyone would yell.  I am not a church head!! Christey yelled.  I’m sorry, said her friend Evelyn.  Like evreyone says, you are a church head.  Brrrrrrrrrrriiiiiinnnnggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!  The shool bell rang.
Chapter 2:  Ya!!  Ya!!  Ya!!
     Since you all know a lot about church, we are going to study it, for the rest of the year!  Ya!!  Ya!!  Ya!! yelld Christey.   Noooooo.  Evrey one said, as if the were melting.  Christey opened the bible and sat reading it.  Wow!  What are we going to do? said Miss Peaterson.

That’s as far as she has gotten so far.  It had gotten lost in a pile in the office.  Shocking, I know!  I found it this afternoon, and I’m hoping for another chapter this weekend.  I have at least one more thing to post on Belle, but I’m going to wait a few more days.  I’ve got some adorable stuff on Little Lamb to share first.

Belle, age 8

     When I first started my blog, I used it to record things I would like to remember, but wouldn’t likely put in a scrapbook.  Not that I have scrapbooks on my kids anymore.  Maybe some day I’ll get back in to scrapbooking, but for now I’ve put it aside.  Unfortunately, I’ve let myself get lazy about recording much of anything here and my brain is feeling very full of things I hope to remember.  My plan is to take some time to unload a few of those memories for each child over the next few days.  We’ll see how it holds up!

     Belle is ever the imaginative one.  She creates games for the other two to play with her that are so detailed, they often get lost before they even begin playing!  Her story writing has taken off in strides this year.  I’m doing my best to encourage those creative outlets here at home, as I’m not seeing much evidence of such at school.  Second grade has not been my favorite thus far.  Her teacher is nice and caring-Belle loves her-but everything feels so serious.  I don’t have any big gripes about the teacher, per se, I just don’t feel the fun.  Belle’s first grade teacher warned me that it would be this way (not about the teacher specifically, but the whole grade).  I suppose it wouldn’t bug me as much if Belle felt like she had a niche at school, but she just doesn’t have that this year.  The girls in her class aren’t mean to her or anything, and there is one girl who seems click with Belle most days.  I guess it comes down to this:  Belle loves school because she loves to learn and see her teachers, but she doesn’t get excited about being with her “friends” like she has in the past.  She was hurt deeply by a friend from first grade (who isn’t in her class this year) early in the year and hasn’t really rebounded from it, I think.  I honestly don’t know how hard to push other friendships or rather ride out the rest of the year and pray for a better year next year.  The joys of motherhood.
     Ok, enough of the psychoanalyzing!  Let’s move on to more fun things.  I mentioned  earlier that Belle likes to write books.  She also likes to get Little Bear and Little Lamb to “write” them as well.  After one afternoon of intense writing, wherein Belle feeds ideas to LB and LL and writes them down for them, I found a flier on my desk.  It reads as follows (spelling and punctuation are hers),

“Dear Parents   We will be having stories, told by your children, on stage!  Pleas have your child dressed, nicley, and have the feeling of the story!”

This is so very Belle.  The feeling of the story!  She makes me laugh, that one.  I’ve got more fun stuff on Belle, but I think I’ll divide it up into another post.

Aggrevation!

Found this one lost in the “Drafts” pile.  I had a few others I thought I’d posted over the last few weeks…Haven’t found them yet.  Guess I need to go back to hitting the “View Site” button after every entry.

I’m sure you moms and dads (are there actually any dads who read here?  who knows??) know this feeling well:

The kids have been crafting all day.  While that tends to be messy, it’s easy enough to clean up.  And, the fact that they’re using the table ensures that they will need to clean up before every meal.  No problem there.

After dinner, they decided to play some other game.  I don’t really know what they were doing, but it involved taking Little Bear’s button down shirts off the hangers and shoving them in random drawers in the living room.  Well, that’s what it looked like to me.  I think maybe they were pretending to sew or something.  Anyhow…we had our usual clean-up before dessert.  We ate our lovely dessert (Barefoot Contessa’s Brownie Pudding-without the butter because I forgot it-and ice cream) which was followed by a few rounds of slap jack.  Bedtime soon followed with pj’s, brushing teeth, reading books, etc.

When I went to tuck in Little Bear and Little Lamb, I discovered they had thrown all of LB’s shirts on LL’s bed, which she had thrown on the floor.  There was mess all over the floor and tons of books in their beds.  I was so irritated!  How many times have I been through the whole “Cleaning up the living room does not mean you take everything and throw it in your rooms!” bit???

No video games for anyone tomorrow!