Too much chocolate

This weekend Haus Meister and some of the kids attended a wedding.  He was asked to sing at the Mass, which was in the Extraordinary Form, and so I’d not have the usual backup for the toddlers thus we stayed behind.  Rascal and Princess went along because one of Rascal’s friends was the flower girl and he hadn’t seen her since she moved a year ago, and Princess went because it was a formal occasion which involved dressing up and looking “pwetty” plus she got to see a bride who looked like a princess herself.  Our Princess was on the dance floor constantly with her Daddy, Granddad, aunts and numerous other friends.  She came home reeking of perfume!  Rascal didn’t bother dancing at the reception but he was elated at clean-up time, after the bride and groom departed, when he found we were able to take home three small cakes!  Apparently instead of having a huge wedding cake, each individual table had a small cake, and rather than throw them away the mother-of-the bride gave them away to the guests that helped.  Three chocolate cakes (missing some small pieces, but not too bad)!

Last night I cut up some of one for the kids’ dessert.  I gave them each a reasonable piece but of course Rascal was quickly back for more.

RASCAL: More, please!

ME: No, thank you, that was a good size cake piece.

RASCAL: But we have plenty! We brought home three cakes!

ME:  I know, but we’ll have more tomorrow.  Another piece now would give you a tummyache.

And then I saw it–a prescient of the future.   I could see him as a college student, going to the grocery store and buying one of those little cakes and eating the whole thing just because he could.  And maybe he’d see I was right.  I could see this because when I was eighteen and away from home, I bought a box of Count Chocula because it was something we never had growing up–too much = tummyache.  I ate two bowls in one sitting.  I got a tummyache.  Blast it all–Mom was right all along!

Acting Up

I wasn’t having the best day yesterday.  The news made me feel cynical, one of the kids decided to exercise free will to an outrageous extent, things piled up here and there, attempting to catch up on a blog I hadn’t read in a year opened a proverbial can of worms and all in all left me at dinnertime in quite the Boromir mood, as I put it.  Reference: movie Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir tells Aragorn “I do not see it; it is long since we had any hope.”

But despite everything there most certainly is joy and hope and laughter in this life.  Trooper is doing very well with a new workbook program I found for him.  He was assigned one page (front and back) yesterday but did three more full pages voluntarily, even though he knew that the assignment was all that stood between himself and the chance to play outside.  More, when I asked him if he was done, he made eye contact with me, closed the book and handed it to me with a sort of smile.  Those looks of his make my day more than anything sometimes, although hard to describe just why.  I guess it’s because I know he understands us, I can attempt to explain to people till I’m blue in the face that he understands us, and here he is showing it.  He knows he’s a big boy, and a smart kid beneath it all, even though it’s blasted hard for him to express it with his delays.  There’s a line in Ben-Hur that we quote about him, and yes I know it’s about a horse, but hey, it’s good.  ”Steady Antares, like a rock.  You will be our anchor.”  He is our Steady Antares, and he can be our anchor at times.

And on a lighter note, Rascal, Dino, and Princess were hopping around the house yesterday pretending to be “chocolate bunnies.”  I didn’t know chocolate bunnies could hop, but these apparently could.  Dinosaur, resident actor, kept it up a while longer than everyone else.  He was still at it as he followed me downstairs while I tended to some laundry, and then when I was going upstairs again ahead of him he called out: “Hey, don’t leave your cream-filled chock-o-lit bunny behind!”

That Dinosaur.  He always takes a role and embellishes it further.  I love it.  My absolute favorite though, was when he was out in the backyard digging and told me he was a “ERTL die-cast toy Jawn Deere toy excavator.”  We can’t be just an excavator, after all, no, it has to be an ERTL die-cast John Deere toy one.

That’s why I’m smiling now.

College Conversations

On one of our weekly errands we pass a stone sorting business (I can’t recall the exact title, but there’s always heavy equipment working to take stones to different landscaping venues).  Rascal says he wants to work there someday.  Some time ago I said he could after college, and he must have remembered this because yesterday after we passed the place he initiated the following conversation:

RASCAL: Mama, what does college do for you?  Does it tell you where to go [to work]?

ME: Nooo, honey.  Not really.  It doesn’t usually tell you.  You find out what you want to do with your life by asking God for guidance and finding things that go along with your interests.  Like Daddy–he wanted to be an engineer and work on robots (the laymen’s terms we use to talk to the kids about their Dad’s job).  So he went to college and took special engineering courses.  You could do that too if you wanted to work with Daddy (his goal yesterday).

RASCAL: I wanna be a rock-pounder!!!

ME: Okaaay, so I guess you could take construction classes.

PRINCESS: (chiming in) I wanna take PWINCESS classes!!!

…..and that effectively derailed the discussion.

Easter Woes

Today I was checking something on the sidebar of the blog and Princess came up next to me.  She took one look at that picture of Jesus in the previous post and wondered why Jesus was “cwoss.”

ME: “Oh, He’s not usually cross, darling.  It’s just the way the artist made Him look.” (I was aiming for a strong image of Jesus to go with that quote, ok?)

PRINCESS: “No, he’s vewy cwoss.”

I clicked off the blog and we moved on.

Later in the evening she was having an ultimate meltdown, spurred on by over-consumption of jelly beans, an exciting weekend with cousins and relatives and a fancy new dress, the fact that the boys were at Scouts and she couldn’t go, and that there are ginormous crane flies out on our porch that flit around when the porch light is on so of course she saw these when looking out for the Scouts and they scared her silly.  But instead of singling out any of the above reasons for her inconsolable tears, she instead wailed: “GOD IS CWOSS WIF ME!!! I SAW HIM! HE’S CWOSS!!!”

Of course I soothed her and promised her that God loves her always, but oh my.  I will not be taking her to the National Shrine anytime soon.

From a certain point of view…

RASCAL: (after sounding out a word) You mean like SAIL a ship?

ME: No dear.  SELL.  Ss-eh-ll.  Like Publix sells groceries.

RASCAL: (pronounces it again) Then sale and sell are the same sounding words?

ME: Only in a Southern accent.

(Just teasing. Ours isn’t that pronounced)

The Caped Crusader

This weekend during our errands we happened to stop a bit outside a party supply store for a few moments and this fellow was in one of the windows.

Later, both Rascal and Dino came to me at different times with the same unanswerable question:

“Mommy, why does Batman wear his blue underwear outside his pants?”

Sports? What Sports?

This afternoon Grandpa and Grandma sent the boys a picture of the Childrens Museum of Indianapolis’ dinosaurs with their “Super Scarves” on in celebration of Super Bowl XLVI.  They were able to see (and appreciate the humor in) the following conversation thanks to the wonders of Skype.

DINOSAUR:  It’s the dinysaur cracked out of the building at the new-zee-um Grandma takes us to!

ME: And see look boys, they’re wearing blue and white scarves because those are the colors in the Indianapolis football team.  Today, in Grandpa & Grandma’s big city, the biggest football game in the season is going to be played!

RASCAL: Why?

ME: Um, because it is.

DINOSAUR: Oh yeah, we’re going to play BASEBALL in Grandma’s Big City!

Ok, so Sports comprehension isn’t the greatest around here.  We’d better brush up quite a bit before the Olympics.

“Twas the Night,” Dino-style.

As we were getting the kids ready for bed one night, I noticed Dinosaur sitting on the edge of his, wearing a Santa hat and a pensive expression.

ME: Anything wrong, sweetie?

DINOSAUR: ‘I spwang from my bed,’ Mommy, ‘to see what’s the matter.’

“Twas the Night Before Christmas” was THE story for the children this Christmas, thanks a good deal to Grandma having given them a copy of the story that is a recorded book with her voice reading it.  Dinosaur has about half the story memorized, with a few addendums of his own.

DINOSAUR: “With a wittle old dwiver, so wivewy and quick, I knew in a moment, it must be Saint Nickawuss.”

I am so going to miss his little vocal idiosyncrasies as he gets older. On the other hand, I guess it wouldn’t sound as cute when he is seventeen.

 

Our other random tradition…

…starts 19 hours from the time I’m writing this post.

I turned on this video to show the kids, thinking they’d get a kick out of seeing all the different cities in the world.  Instead Rascal–Mr. Practical–decided to offer his critique of the animation.

RASCAL: Those aren’t reindeer! They’re cows!  They’re cows with reindeer antlers!

(or on a second viewing)

RASCAL: Silly reindeer dressed up as cows.

Ok, so when he gets up tomorrow morning, I’ll see what he thinks about tracking Santa and his bovine team.

b

Recently overheard

While browsing through a seasonal catalog that had arrived in the mail:

DINOSAUR: “Rascal, we need new swords.”

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At the foot of the ridge we live upon is a corner produce stand/farm market that currently has Christmas trees out.  They also have a large inflatable Santa that we can see below us as we drive down the hill.

DINOSAUR: “Oh look, there’s Santy Claus.  I need to talk to him about my dinysaurs.”

(Schleich dinosaurs.  Another catalog.)

***********

Princess and Miss Munchkin were sitting together in my room.  Princess had leaned over so that Miss Munchkin could touch her face and Miss Munchkin was cooing at her sister.

PRINCESS: “She wuvs me so much.”

***********

This morning I had to feed Miss Munchkin before going to Mass, and so Sunshine, Miss M and I walked in after the family had already been inside Church for a bit.  As it was raining, we entered the Church through the lower level (closer to our van) and were climbing the stairs to the main body of the Church when the teachers and children for the Children’s Liturgy were heading down to the lower level for their catechesis.  Seeing them, Sunshine whirled about on her chubby flat feet and tugged at my hand to follow the crowd.

SUNSHINE: “Wess Go!”

(That’s “Let’s Go!”)

Oh, and speaking of Sunshine… the Advent wreath is only appearing on the table during dinner.  The rest of the day it has a place of honor on the newly cleared top of my sideboard in the “parlor” (the dining room, which we use as a den or nook since it has white carpet and thus proved impractical for this family to eat over–even with  rugs).  I keep reminding myself that this is only a season; next year the wreath will be back on the table, only to be in the parlor the following year when Miss Munchkin is 2.