Five Things Friday – Great things my kids have said

My witty kids

My kids are never at a loss for words.  Never.  No idea where they get that from.

Anyway, I thought I would share some of their words with you all today.

Jacob having a Beatles kind of day

Jacob

1.    age 6 – “Why did the people crucify Jesus?”  I told him and explained that Jesus rose from the dead three days later and went to heaven.  Jacob’s reply:  Boy it sure does take a long time to get to heaven!

2.    age 7 -  Eating macaroni and cheese at Shoney’s one day: Take a fork and enjoy the taste bud ride!

3.  age 7 – A frequent party of one, one day Jacob was having a solo conversation in the backseat.  We were the only two people in the car.  Here is what I overheard: Don’t make out with my momma.  She’s already made!

4.   age 9 – Speaking to me: You can be an aggressive mean young woman sometimes.  And don’t go running away like you did yesterday.  Sing a different song.

5.   age 8 – I wish Nick would just go to sleep because he’s so cute I don’t want to do anything else. He couldn’t stop looking at Nick.

Nick having a special moment at BK

Nick

1.   age 3:  Said to me:  I’m watchin’ you hothead!

2.   age 3.5:  On the way down the stairs Nick looked back at me and said: Don’t look at me SUCKA!

3.   age 3.5:  When I was trying to get Nick down for a nap he was being too wiggly.  I told him to be still and he said: I’m just trying to get separated!

4.   age 3.5:  As he was rolling the dice during a board game he gave us his take on “baby needs a new pair of shoes”: C’mon I need a new pair of short sleeve pants and shower pants!

5.   age 3:  This was Nick’s evening prayer one night: I pray the lamp to my heart.  I see the bats in the moon.  Amen.

And there you have it – the wit and wisdom of my two boys!

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The Beginning of my last year with my tweenager

Starfaced Jacob

Jacob celebrated his 12th trip around the sun on February 16. We celebrated his birthday on the 13th with a party for him and his friends.

As usual, I was up until 2am the morning before making the cake. But I think it was my best one yet.

One-up Cake

I also made brick cupcakes with gold coins on top.

Mario brick wall cupcakes and coins

The party was a hit.  I found these superawesome goody balls that – just like oversized gumball machine balls filled with prizes – at Party City and filled them with Pop rocks, chocolate coins, Warheads and magic cards.

After cake and ice cream the boys all headed outside for a Nerf gun war.  Nicholas held his own on the battlefield fighting right alongside the 12 year olds.

The real birthday surprise came the night before though.  While I was making the cake, I was also keeping an eye on the weather.  The temp was dropping rapidly and it was raining.  I could hardly believe that the weatherman was calling for snow.  I promised Jacob and his friend Hunter, who was spending the night that I would keep checking outside and let them know if it started to snow.

And it did!  It’s been 20 years since I’ve seen snow in Savannah!  The boys have never seen it, so it was a real treat, an early birthday present for Jacob.

We threw on whatever winter gear we could find (which believe me wasn’t much considering we never really pack up our summer clothes here), and we went outside and played in the snow.  Our neighbors down the street came walking over and we all had a snowball fight.  I’d say we got maybe an inch, but it was enough to make a few good snowballs. In fact, Jacob nailed me right in the side of the face with a huge one!

The best birthday gift ever - snow!

A VERY happy Jacob!

Jacob was completely under-dressed.  His winter gear consisted of jeans, a short-sleeved t-shirt, a jeans jacket and a knit hat.  He actually wound up getting snowburn on his belly!

Nick in his mismatched "winter" gear!

Nicholas had to keep going in and out to warm up.

Snowbob Nick

On Jacob’s actual birthday, February 16, we took him out to dinner at the restaurant of his choice – Ryan’s, where he loaded up on yeast dinner rolls with honey butter, macaroni and cheese and chocolate cake.  YUMMY!

Warner gave Jacob the Matrix movies on DVD.  My gift was a bit less conventional.  Several months back Jacob came to me and asked if he could say the “C” word.  That’s the kind of kid Jacob is.  He could have gone ahead and said it and I would never have known, but he didn’t.  He asked for permission.  I denied him rights to the “C” word because I told him there were plenty of other good words out there that he could use to express himself.  But I also had another plan in mind.

Jacob get's the "C" word as a birthday gift!

What a very special present for my son!  I also gave him the traditional lottery ticket gift – 12 this year and he won $8.  And I gave him a wristwatch.

It was a good day for him.  When I asked him what his favorite gift was he said my word gift rocked!  Well, crap, if I had known that I wouldn’t have spent money on the watch and lottery tickets!

Jacob and Nick scratching off lottery tickets

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My Funny Valentines

I found these superawesome lip lollipops at World Market and had to get them. We had a lot of fun with these photos. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Air Neutron

Me and my guy!

My Funny Valentine!

Whole lotta love goin' on!

Lotsa Lips

You look good to me!

Lippy Nick

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This is Sparta or How Nick defeated Robosapien with nothing but a banana

Nicholas chose his weapon and got to work beating the heck out of the poor robot.  I believe Nick was 2 in this video.  Thanks to my brother-in-law, Scott, for suggesting the whole 301 theme.  What can I say?  It just works.  Brilliant!

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Five Things Friday – Five things about kid’s parties that make me mad

Nick beating the heck out of a number 4 pinata

In honor of my 4 year old’s birthday party tomorrow I thought I’d share some of my frustrations with you regarding kid’s parties. And just in case you are wondering, the theme for tomorrow’s party is Spiderman and yes, there will be goody bags and a pinata.

1.  Goody bags – Let me get this straight. We invite kids to our child’s birthday party where they are supposed to bring him gifts and yet we have to return the favor and give them prize-filled goody bags in return? What’s up with that? When I was a kid we were lucky to get a piece of cake that didn’t taste like cardboard, much less a goody bag. Every year I get angry about this trend imposed by some childless marketing guru who decided that convincing moms that it was only fair to give presents in return for presents would be in his best financial interest and easy enough to do considering that we moms are a guilt-ridden lot. “Oh you don’t want anyone to feel left out, do you?”

2. RSVPs – Respondez vous s’il vous plait which translated means, respond if you please, should have the s’il vous plait dropped from it because it seems to have been taken literally. If you want to, you can let me know if you are going to come to my child’s party. If you don’t, no sweat. It’s all good. Well, I’m sorry it’s not all good. In fact, I think it’s quite crappy for someone to ignore an invitation that comes with an RSVP attached. Especially when you consider my first complaint (see above) because it makes for some difficult planning.

3. No Shows – I have had people not RSVP and show up before. It becomes a problem when the 4 year old who is jumping up and down yelling “Goody Bag! Goody Bag!” hears me say, “No goody bag for you!” because his mommy can’t follow directions. Sometimes I even find myself scanning Nicholas’ shelves in search of some discarded plastic treasure that I can give to the child to calm him down enough to get him out of my house! I’ve also had people RSVP and then not show up which means I wasted my money on goody bag loot (not to mention food and drinks) for nothing. Not cool.

4. Opening Gifts – I realize that preschoolers are a hard lot to control, but when my son starts to open his presents and the other monkeys jump in and start ripping the paper off I do expect the monkey parents to step in and referee. Instead, what I have witnessed in the past is the parents standing off to the side as if to say “your house, you handle it” while I try to calmly explain to the little rippers that this is not their birthday so they need to back off. Meanwhile, Nicholas’ lip starts to quiver and the birthday joy makes it quick descent into birthday fury.

5. Pinatas – First let me say that whoever decided that it would be a great idea to fill up a cardboard character with candy, teasingly hang it just out of reach of a bunch of sugared up, overly excited kids, give them a weapon, I mean stick, disorient them by blindfolding them and spinning them around, then let them beat the hell out of it was high on crack. Everything about that screams disaster. Even worse, tell each kid that they can only hit the pinata two times so as to keep it fair. Once you give a kid, especially a 4 year old boy a stick and let him beat anything, trust me the testosterone has been fully activated by hit two and he is just getting warmed up for full warfare. Try moving in to take the stick and you’ll see what I mean.

And talk about warfare, just wait till that first piece of high fructose corn syrup falls from the bowels of the maimed pinata, and you have yourself a full-fledged candy conflict with sucrose soldiers willing to do just about anything to fill their bags.

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Nick turns 4

Nicholas, my baby, turned 4 today.  Hard to believe that this is the child we almost didn’t have.  It took 8 years for me to feel like I could handle a second child.  In fact, Jacob was going to be an only child.  But there was always this tugging feeling that I couldn’t let go of – the feeling that I wanted to have another baby.  Now I know that was my persistent little Nick up in heaven trying to wait patiently for his Mommy and Daddy to realize he was missing.  I can’t imagine my life without Nicholas.  He was very much worth the 8 year wait.

So I’d like to share our day with you.

Nicholas and his new Buzz and Woody skull cap

I knew Nick and I would be the first ones up and I knew he would be expecting to open his gifts right away.  So I put together a little goody bag of small gifts to appease him until Warner and Jacob woke up.  It worked for the first 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, we still had nearly 2 hours to go!

Presents at last!

Space Ranger to the rescue!

When everyone got up we brought out the presents.  His favorite was his Buzz Lightyear jet pack and wings from big brother, Jacob.  He also got a Buzz Lightyear kite, a bin of Spongebob games, and a remote control helicopter from Daddy.

Honk

Jacob snuck outside and wrote all over the van in honor of Nick’s birthday.  We were going to be heading into town so we decided to play a game and see how many honks we could get from people.  Our goal was at least 4 but we just knew we’d get so many more than that.  WRONG!  People are no fun!  When they would pass by you’d see them reading it and then they’d just keep going.  How lame is that?  Would you have  honked?

Monkey fun

I took the boys to Monkey Joe’s – the local bounce house.  Jacob was a great big brother and played with Nick.  Of course, it helped that I told Jacob I’d let him stay home from school if he played with Nick today.  He would have anyway, but it doesn’t hurt to bribe, does it?

CUPCAKES!

Wishes!

Then it was home for cupcakes (that Jacob made the night before) and wishes!  What does a 4 year old wish for anyway?  To be Buzz Lightyear?

My brother rocks!

After a full day Nicholas settled in with Jacob to play a computer game before bed.  I love those boys so much.

Things are looking up

Thank you, Nicholas for waiting so patiently for me to get my act together so I could be your mom.  I promise you, you won’t regret it…EVER!  You’re my buddy.  Happy birthday Nicholas Ryan McGee.

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Ummm…Ewwww! Nasty Monkey Alert!

Last week I took my two simians to a house of bounce called Monkey Joe’s.  If you don’t have kids and you aren’t familiar with these Tiggerific jumping stations, just call to mind the moon jumps that you can usually find at any state fair multiply that by eleventy-one, add a few money-sucking games of chance (as in there’s no chance you’ll win), and a nice sugar bar complete with tongue-dye ICEEs, and sugar-comas on a stick (cotton candy), and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like.

Someone got smart – obviously a mother in need of a break – and turned the world onto indoor bouncing playgrounds.  And since babies gotta bounce, the idea took off.  It’s sort of like watching a life-size pinball game with added danger – kids ricochet off inflatables at the speed of sugar while parents practice collision management.

While we were there I noticed a sign in the bathroom that was a bit disturbing.

Wash your hands after touching bare human body parts other than clean hands and clean exposed arms.

Umm….EWWW!  I’m not exactly sure what goes on in the bathrooms at Monkey Joe’s – I mean I know monkeys are nasty and kids are a close second, but…really?

First, just the fact that it specifies human body parts is bothersome.  What else would be in MJ’s – maybe real monkeys are allowed on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I just don’t know.

Running a close second – they are sure to point out that at times one might encounter in the MJ toilet area bare body parts that aren’t in fact hands, or ex posed arms.  Well, we are all aware that some, ahem, parts are exposed as one goes about one’s monkey business but I’m hoping like all get out here that not much touching is going on – this is a kid’s place for heaven’s sake.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this whole thing.  But for the record, I saw no exposed parts while in the bathroom.  I did, however, feel like going home to take a shower after reading that sign.  NAS-TEE!

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Mii Like!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a gamer. Even as a kid I was never lured into that world of Pac-Man and Centipede. I played a game here or there, but I was never good at it, and I never really enjoyed it like so many others did. Take it or leave it – it didn’t matter to me. Maybe it’s because my eye-hand coordination, heck who am I kidding, my any body part coordination has never existed.

Now when my son, Jacob, hears that crazy talk he can’t wrap his techno-brain around it. You see he’s been a gamer since the ripe old age of three. And there’s been no stopping him since.

I don’t feel so guilty letting him play his video games because I truly believe they have taught him a great deal, especially when it comes to problem solving. The only problem I’ve ever had with them is that it requires no physical activity.

Well leave it up to the wizards at Nintendo to come up with something as cool as the Wii. It got my attention. Bowling in my living room? Count me in. Tennis in my pajamas? Now you’re talkin’. I’ve never been good at sports but now I’m “virtually” good at anything!

And now they’ve pulled out all the stops and given us Wii Fit. As a mom of two boys I have very little time to workout. And while I do manage to fit in some working out here and there, I always feel like I should be doing something else. The Wii Fit allows me to workout and spend quality time with Jacob. No guilt and a bit of sweat to boot. I’m good.

So we’ve had it for four days now and I’m happy to report that I have done several runs, some yoga, strength training, worked on my balance and done a little hoopin’ – hula that is. And let me tell you I break a sweat…from playing a video game.

Move over Jacob, this Mom’s a gamer!

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Have No Fear Super Proxy Momma’s Here

Everywhere I go that is kid-oriented I get mistaken for a proxy momma. Not a foxy momma. A proxy momma. Let me explain.

Today I took Nicholas to one of his favorite places, Little Jumping Beans. It’s an inflatable indoor playground for babies who gotta bounce. Also perfect for aspiring Tiggers.

I like to think of myself as a player in that I play with my kids. Most of the moms, however, are happy to sit on the sidelines with an occasional “Yes, Mommy sees you. That was great!” response to the toddler who is flailing his arms madly in order to get her attention. Now, don’t get me wrong. I would, at times, love nothing more than to be inert. But being the mother of a tornadic toddler leaves me little time to relax.

So there I am bouncing right along with Nick in the big bounce house, and, I swear, I’m like a magnet. ALL the little kids surround me with their “watch me” grins and I find myself taking on the role of their mother – Proxy Momma, that’s me.

And, of course, being a mother, I’m not going to watch a child who is about to bite the dust without intervening. The other mothers sense this about me, I know. So here comes little Dodge (yes, that was his name) sliding down the big slide and he tumbles wrong or something because he is face down crying. Who asks if he’s alright? Me. Because I am the only mom supervising bounce time at the Bean.

I finally make eye contact with Dodge’s mom and tell her that her child is crying. Boy, that gets her up fast! With a mad dash to her son she sweeps him up, kisses his boo-boo, places him back down and walks away back to her table, back to her relaxation. And me? I’ve moved on to the obstacle course with Nick.

There’s one part of the course that is absolutely impossible for these little people to get through unless an adult forces it down by lying on top of it. Give you three guesses who winds up doing this for all the little knee-biters in the place. Yep, me. I’m very honored that these mothers see me as trustworthy enough to keep their kiddies safe. Proxy Mom to the rescue again. I feel like a superhero of sorts.

Nick and I take a much needed break. I go to get us a snack, but I’m just wondering…can I get a cape with that juice box?

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Don’t Break the Ice

One of Nick’s favorite games these days is Don’t Break the Ice. I find this funny, because it’s a game I find myself playing – at least metaphorically – all day with Nicholas.

As with many toddlers facing the excitement and frustration of their ever-growing independence, Nicholas is knee-deep in this pool. And me, well, I spend a great deal of my day like the little red man from the game, skating right in the middle with hammers coming down shattering the ice all around me. I try to stay strong and hang on to that last sliver of ice praying I stay afloat until bedtime.

Today, for example, Nicholas wanted to build something with old moving boxes. Great idea, I thought. At least it will take up a nice chunk of time which is always a blessing when you are dealing with a person whose attention span is comparable to that of a goldfish. What on earth was I thinking?! In Nick’s world if he wants to do something, he expects it to be instantaneous. There was nothing instant about creating a stove from a box using an Exacto and duct tape.

Down dropped the first hammer and the ice shattered around me. I tried to convince him he was helping me, so as to involve him in the tedious process. “Hey Nick, can you hand me that (insert pretty much any object here, after all he doesn’t know I don’t really need it)?” Off he goes to get said item. He returns with a grin and a “Hee Mommy!” Here Mommy. Unfortunately he found the object too quickly and the stove isn’t ready yet. I send him on a few more useless missions and then he begins to get irritated with the game saying instead, “Mommy get.” Hammer two.

Finally, he got bored with me and the stove and went into his room. I could hear things being thrown but he didn’t seem to be angry so I left well enough alone. I did get the stove finished finally. I called Nick in to see it and asked him if he wanted to make some cookies in it. Bad idea. “Cookie, Nick, me?” I started to explain that I meant pretend cookies; I had no real cookies. Third and final hammer.

Forget the whole walking on eggshells cliche, around this house we skate on thin ice and pray constantly that Nicholas has misplaced his hammer.

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