Slurp!

We took the kids ice skating tonight at the outdoor rink in Midway (about 10 minutes away). We had a really fun time, although my back and arms are SORE from bending over to help Carinne for such a long time! Some of the kids protested before we went, lamenting that ice skating would be SOOO boring. But everyone had a fantastic time, and, of course, didn't want to leave to come home!

On our way home, Christian was doing this "slurp, AHHH!" noise in the car, and Camille joked, "Christian's drinking air!" We all giggled, and then she exclaimed, "He's not drinking air; he's drinking the snow off his boot!" I looked back there, and sure enough, the little monkey had pulled off his boot and was sucking the (dirty) snow off the bottom of his boot! Ewwww! What a disturbingly resourceful little guy! I grabbed the boot and we got him a big drink of clean (!) water the moment we got home. Too funny!

The perfect place to stash evidence?

Remember that cute little girl from the post just prior to this one? Well, that same Little Miss Cuteness, who is almost always sweet and perfect, occasionally gets into trouble. She is a kid, after all. Thanks to that doll-faced cherub, I've got another great item to add to my list of yucky household discoveries: today I found a pair of her very damp, peed-in pants and panties in the overflowing laundry basket of clean (well, not anymore!) clothes. Carincess, as we've taken to calling her, had very carefully hidden them under several layers, and everything around them is now infused with the stanky essence of urine. They'd been steeping for over 12 hours, so the odor is not exactly subtle. I'm wondering what my big kids had to grab out of there this morning, since I haven't folded laundry for a few days and their drawers are empty of several necessities, such as socks and underwear....

Well, I guess I have just been sitting around, filing my nails and reading juicy romance novels in the bubble bath, all the while wondering what I could possibly find to do to fill my empty day. Now I get to go rewash 2 days' worth of clothes. Hooray!

A glimpse into Carinne's little world

Carinne just turned 4 on Sunday. As you may know, four-year-olds love to talk. They tell all kinds of stories and make endless observations about the world around them. I love it! Yesterday, a couple of Carinne's observations had me laughing so hard, I just had to write them down.

Let me preface this first story with a little background. My parents had to put down their geriatric dog, Nikki, a few months ago. She had become mean and ornery, but she was a dog, so Carinne automatically adored her. She still misses her and often comments when we're at their house, "Nikki's not here. She died." So yesterday, we were at their house getting Legos for Kenneth's class project, and Carinne found a rectangular rabbit pelt in the closet (not sure where it came from, but I remember using it as a Barbie rug--those were the days before Barbie adopted her current, P.C. anti-fur stance). She hoisted it in the air, and with her eyes wide with excitement, exclaimed, "Mommy! Look! A PIECE OF NIKKI!!!" She was so excited my parents had kept a memento!

The second story takes place a little later, when I took her to the doctor for her annual check-up. Our doctor's office is upstairs from a physical therapy office. As we came down the stairs, she saw a wheelchair parked next to the P.T. office. She went to examine it and said, "Mommy, what's this? Is this for the lazy people?" I kind of chuckled and thought that was kind of a strange way to think about wheelchair-bound people. I was glad for this little teaching moment, and explained that people who use wheelchairs aren't lazy, but maybe their legs don't work very well. That night I was telling Devin about what she'd said, and he wondered, "Is it because she's been watching WALL-E?" Maybe I was overly tired and more than a little slap-happy, but I started laughing so hard I cried and had to run to the bathroom (5 pregnancies haven't exactly strengthened my bladder). If you haven't seen WALL-E yet, it takes place in the future on a starship where all the people are obese because they no longer walk--they just ride around in these hoverchairs, which look a lot like--you guessed it--wheelchairs! I'm sure this image completely overshadows what I told her in our tender little teaching moment, and wheelchairs will continue to represent morbidly obese, lazy people for quite a while in her little brain.

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*Just as a side note: I was sitting with a group of young-ish (around my age--I'm still young-ish, right?) moms at our Relief Society Christmas dinner last night and shared these stories. I knew they were an I-guess-you-had-to-be-there kind of story, but, for some reason, I could NOT for the life of me even get to the punch line because I was laughing so hard. I was gasping for air and just hopelessly hysterical. I'm sure all those poor ladies thought I was high on something, and at a church function, no less! What the Helsinki? What makes a person laugh like a mental patient at something so mildly amusing? I'm a little embarrassed. I think sleep deprivation is really getting to me...

What's all this cold white stuff?

I'm pretty sure Christian doesn't remember snow from last year (actually, last year's snow didn't melt away till about 4-5 months ago). We got about 6 inches during the night, and when he saw it from the window, he just had to go check it out:

Poor little guy! What kind of mother lets her kid walk outside barefoot in the snow?!?!

Here he is after we got some boots and a coat on:

I think it's so cute how intrigued he was with all that snow on the ground! He was totally fascinated!

Items found behind the washer today

Retrieved:

1 boy's undershirt

1 pair boxer briefs

1 sock

1 pair boy's briefs

1 pair boy's shorts

Retrieval methods attempted:

Mop handle

Mop head

Hanger

Hand (while lying on stomach)

Hand (while lying on side)

And finally, leg dangled into abyss behind washer with toes used as pincers. Success!

Amount of time elapsed during this exercise:

20 minutes (which I will never get back)

Items still remaining behind washer which will undoubtedly remain there until the day we move:

2 owner's manuals

1 dryer sheet

1 fabric softener bottle lid

3 dust bunnies, which I'm sure will rapidly reproduce, as bunnies will tend to do

Snaggletooth

Quentin had been home from school the other day for at least an hour when I finally caught a glimpse of the inside of his mouth (yes, I'm aware that type of inattentive parenting won't win me any Mother of the Year awards. But, in my defense, the sweet child mumbles and keeps his head down a LOT. So cut me some slack, wouldja?) I grabbed his little head--not by the hair, although it is growing back nicely, thank you for asking--and ordered him to show me his teeth, now! He complied, and that's when I noticed it--a brand-new gap in his top teeth! He pulled his tooth out by himself at school. How cute can a person get!?



I love it when they lose their front teeth on top! What a cute smile! Now I want him to lose the one next to it so he can sing "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth."

Hide and seek, toddler-style

I've been noticing lately that random household objects have been mysteriously disappearing. It didn't take long for my astute (ha ha) mind to connect this phenomenon with Christian's newfound obsession with "relocating" items to the toilet or garbage. The other day, I went to throw something away, and this is what I saw when the lid opened:

See if you can find all 10 utensils in this photo. You get a bonus for disregarding the 3 very sharp steak knives and not reporting me immediately to Child Protective Services.

I promptly located the little suspect and brought him in for questioning. He caved early in the interrogation, and confessed to the dirty deed. Here he is demonstrating his technique:

Not the face of someone experiencing the least bit of remorse, in my opinion.

At least the cutlery was at the top of the garbage can as opposed to the bottom of the toilet, which is where I found a magnetic dart the day before. Someone (I'm not mentioning names even though I really want to) had peed and THEN told me about the need for retrieval. I was not amused.