Christmas Cheer

Ah, Christmas. It turns out that our kids were on the nice list after all. This, despite the request I got yesterday, "Dad, can you help me take Santa's head off?" It was in reference to a Lego Santa minifigure... but still.

We keep monitors in the kids rooms still because we can't really hear them from our room at night. And when the late-night dramas occur, we prefer they wake us up instead of each other. This morning at precisely 6:32 AM, we awoke to the sound of the monitor whispering at us in Ben's voice, "Mommy... Daddy... Can I get up and open presents?"

We convinced him to hang out with us and wait for Penelope to wake up before opening gifts. He can be such a patient little kid when he's well rested! Even so, you could see the anticipation just thrumming through his little body. When he noticed that there were *also* stockings filled by the fireplace, he was so paralyzed with excitement that he dropped his stuffed animals on the floor and just stood there with his mouth open. We let him start digging through his stocking while we waited for Penelope, but we didn't have to wait too long. She woke up about 15 minutes later. After they both took inventory on the contents of their stockings and compared notes, we let them have at the gifts.

Then it was chaos for a while. Between the sounds of paper ripping, you'd hear Ben exclaim "Awesome!" every couple minutes. Penelope would follow up with her own "Awesome!" even if she hadn't opened anything. Ben, holding up a tiny gift, "A small one!"  Penelope, holding up a flat gift, "A thin one!"  It went on like that for a while. When the final swatch of paper hit the ground, they both wanted to play with their new stuff.

Ben got a boomerang, and was eager to try it, "Can I test out the boomerang?"

"Not yet. Wait until we go outside. It isn't an indoor toy."

"Awww.. just one time?"

It didn't take too long before his interest shifted to some new Legos, but we eventually got around to the boomerang too (we'll skip the part where Daddy got it stuck in the tree and had to use Penelope's soccer ball to get it back down.)

Penelope got a little bike, and spent much of the morning riding it from one end of the living room to the other.  Then she'd pick it up, turn it around, and ride it back. This too, we got to test outside later in the day. When she wasn't on the bike she was trying out her new Hello Kitty rain boots and umbrella, "I'm pretending it's raining!"

It was a fun, relaxing day at home with the family, and the subject of poop only came up two or three times (that's pretty low, compared to the average)! That's my poor segue into one of the more memorable Ben quotes of the day : "Today, on Christmas, any time I go pee or poop, I call it a Christmas present!"

To which, I have no response.  Merry Christmas!

Adorable

I can't imagine Penelope getting any more adorable than she is right now (yeah.. Ben is cute too - this one is about Penelope though). Somehow, she still manages to up the cuteness ante on a regular basis.  But she's also a bit of a toublemaker.  I fully comprehend the idea that kids are cute as a defense mechanism now. It can be really hard to keep a straight face, even when the "thing you don't want them to do" is unfolding before your eyes. She's often aware when she's about to do something wrong. Fortunately in those cases she's kind enough to warn us ahead of time by telling us to go to a different room or not to look at her (see? adorable). Other times though, she'll be the one leaving the room - that's when it gets dicey.

The one room she knows that she won't usually be followed into is the bathroom, which means that most of her mischief happens in there. If she disappears into a bathroom and you don't hear a toilet flush within a minute, or if the water in the sink is running for more than a minute, or if the singing stops and things are quiet (for a minute), you know *something's* up. You are probably in for a surprise when you investigate.

It might be that the toilet is filled with half a roll of un-rolled TP. It might be that the roll was unrolled quite a ways, and then rolled back up. It could be that the bubbles in the sink were just sooo beautiful that they had to be spread all over the place to make the rest of the room pretty too. Or it could be that she's using a toothbrush to apply lotion to her arms. You never really know.

A couple months ago, Penelope headed into the bathroom singing. The toilet flushed and the singing continued. The water ran and stopped, and the singing continued. She didn't stop singing, but she also didn't come out of the bathroom right away. I waited... about a minute, and then decided I had better check on her. I was expecting a mess of some kind - not a scare. When I got to the room, she was standing in the sink, doing a little dance and playing with the top of the mirror! Perhaps we encouraged that by putting one of those little miniature staircases in front of the sink. She didn't notice me come in, and it startled her pretty badly when I lifted her out of the sink yelling "NO!" Still, as momentarily terrifying as it was (for both of us), I have to admit that it was really cute. We put a much shorter foot stool in there and (I think) she hasn't climbed into the sink since.

Naughty or Nice?

Ben decided he needed to write out a Christmas card to Santa today. Not a wish list (that was weeks ago)... this is a bit different. Here's what it says on the inside:

He's obviously heard "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" one too many times, and this is a last-minute effort to butter someone up. It's too bad he forgot to use the word "please." I am sure he'll find something creative to do with all that coal. Better luck next year, buddy.

When She Grows Up...

I think most parents look at their kids every once in a while and make some guesses about what the future holds for them. I know I do. What are they going to be when they grow up? Over the past few months, my guesses for Penelope keep coming back to a career in the performing arts.

Is she gong to be a singer? She looooves to sing. She sings while she's playing, she sings in bed, she sings in the car, she sings while she's pooping. It isn't liks she's singing *all* the time, but every so often she will just break out in song unexpectedly. Sometimes it is a song that we all know well, and sometimes you'll recognize the tune, but she's made up her own words. A few nights ago at dinner, she sang her own Christmas song to the tune of London Bridge - "Santa Claus is loving you, loving you, loving you, Santa Claus is loving you, and he's Santa." And then sometimes it's just a random, Broadway-style show tune about whatever is bopping around in her little head at that time. Those are usually the most entertaining ones, because they involve a bit of interpretive dance and a large arm flourish or some jazz hands at the end. If you clap after one of those performances, she'll bow gracefully. And if you don't clap, she'll say "Clap everybody!", and then of course, you'll clap, and she'll bow gracefully.

Or maybe she'll be an actress... she's definitely got a flair for the dramatic. And she can instantly mold her face into nearly any emotion you might ask her to. Happy (of course), sad, angry, scared, serious, tired, bored... you name it. The only one you really have to watch out for is the sad puppy dog face.  

If you see that one, run. You never know what she's going to talk you into (I say "you" meaning "me"... Mommy is not quite the pushover that Daddy is). The faces show up unprompted most of the time, usually well-timed for a laugh. So maybe she's going to be a...

...comedian?  She has impeccable comedic timing. She's only three, so I have to believe it is accidental. But she has a knack for interjecting a word, sound, phrase (or face), etc. at just the right time. One of my favorite recent examples took place at dinner time. The kids had sat down at the table and we were getting ready to sit down too. Mommy and Daddy gave each other a kiss in the kitchen, and precisely when you'd expect it, from the table behind us we heard Penelope's voice, "Awww!" It was exactly the way you're hearing it in your head right now, complete with that little tongue click noise right before it. That's a sound she normally reserves for when she sees puppy dogs or anything built on a miniature scale, and probably the same noise she'd make if she could see herself half the time. When we started laughing, the entire family had the giggles for a while.

On Writing

It's been a while. Long enough that people are starting to ask me when I am going to write something again. And the requests have finally broken into the public domain, which is usually enough impetus for me to get off my lazy bum. To be fair, I've actually been writing things down.. just not finishing them up and posting them. So, I am going to finish off some of the stories, thoughts, etc. that have floated through my head recently (and some, not so recently). Perhaps I'll end up with five or six different posts out of the deal. First up, an easy one - because it has pictures of course, and also because its a nice segue from me not writing.

Penelope learned to write her name! She's been writing different letters (mostly P's) in random order for a while now. About a week before Thanksgiving, she "signed" a picture she colored. It wasn't quite her name, and it's not quite another word... but it is close enough to earn a spot here:

Yes.. not a whole lot has changed from earlier in the year. My kids are still obsessed with poop, but I am not sure she knows what she almost spelled. Then again, I'm not really sure about everything those guys have in that basket. Perhaps she intended to title her artwork instead of signing it. After all, she is the observant one in the family. It's probably best if we never know for sure.

And then, a few days later...

Yay PENE LOPE!

Confidante

We went out to dinner tonight - without the kids.  It happens sometimes.  And almost every time it happens, we get to hear an amusing story about something they said or did while we were away.  Tonight was no different.  I hope I can get it right, here.. Apparently Ben was dead serious during this exchange :

Ben : Hey JoEllen?
JoEllen : Yes Ben?
Ben : Do you know how to pick your nose?
JoEllen : Well... yes.. but it is normally best to use a tissue.
Ben : Yeah.
...pause...
Ben : I know how to pick my nose.  I am pretty sure my parents don't know that I know how to do that.  Don't tell them though.. it's a secret!

Humor and intrigue all rolled into one happy little five year old.

Boys and Girls

I have a pet peeve (ok.. I have lots of them, but I'm only going to share one today). It bugs me when I see parents applying double standards to their kids, just based on their gender. I cringe a little whenever I hear the phrase "Boys will be boys"... because it usually follows some action that the boy in question did which really shouldn't be O.K. The boys get away with a lot of stuff that they shouldn't. Like peeing in the plants at Whole Foods. How does the fact that he's a boy make public urination acceptable, particularly when there's a bathroom 40 feet away?

Even so, at least observing my kids, there's some obvious, stereotypical differences in their tastes and their behaviors. Penelope loves anything remotely pink or purple, and anything with Tinkerbell or Strawberry Shortcake ("Strawberry Cort-cake" in her language) on it is an instant favorite. Ben on the other hand, wants to be a race car driver when he grows up, and he can turn any unsuspecting toy into a race car or an airplane or a robot. Most likely, they get this from what they get exposed to at school from their friends. Then there's the clothing thing. Both of them would probably run around nude all the time if we let them, but if they have to wear clothing, its a very different story. Penelope is very particular about what she wears, to the point of going back to her room and changing when we put her in something she disagrees with. Ben could care less. He'll put on whatever gets laid out for him. Is that genetic? I don't know.

Another good example this morning - I was wearing a new shirt, and Penelope had on a new dress. The instant Penelope saw me, she said "Daddy, you have a new shirt!" Mommy had commented that I was wearing the new shirt too, when she first saw me.

Ben, after playing with Penelope for about an hour, remarked "Hey Penelope.. I haven't seen that dress before. Is it new?" That made me look, and my thought was "Oh hey.. he's right.. that is her new dress!"

Multilingual

Driving through San Antonio, Ben interrupts his constant monologue from the back seat to ask a question, "Does everyone in San Antonio speak Spanish?"

Parental unit, from the front seat, "Oh.. I'm sure that not everyone in San Antonio speaks Spanish.. why?"

Back Seat : "Because I just saw a sign in Spanish."

Front Seat : "Well, there's Spanish signs in Austin, too."

Back Seat : "I never see them."

Front Seat : "Ok... well I bet that people speak lots of languages in San Antonio, just like they do in Austin."

Back Seat : "Like English?"

Front Seat : "Yes."

Back Seat : "And French?"

Front Seat : "French too."

Back Seat : "What about British?"

Front Seat : "British?  What words do you know in British, Ben?"

Back Seat : "Oh.. not that many.  I just know a little."

Front Seat : "Can you tell us what you know?"

Back Seat : "Ok.  'We've hopped across the pond to give you Yanks one for, eh!'"

Joy

Very few things in this world are as quite as wonderful as hearing one of your favorite classical songs played by one of your favorite little kids, while another of your favorite little kids is using you as a jungle gym.

Little Big Girl

Our little girl is growing up .  A couple of changes have made their way into Penelope's life.  For three weeks, she's been wearing underpants during the day instead of diapers.  Aside from the occasional misplaced puddle, she's doing really well getting to the bathroom and going potty all on her own.  She's also (usually) alerting us in time when she needs to go and we're in a public place.  Its a little more difficult when we're away from home sometimes... like at Ben's last t-ball game, where there were no bathrooms to be found and she had to go in the woods - "Mommy, I'm a sprinkler!"  She's sprinkled a couple other interesting venues as well.

Of course, the bathroom kind of looks like a war zone when she's done - bits of shredded toilet paper everywhere... water all over the place near the sink, because she washes and dries her hands several times at each potty break.  There's a clean-up process now that's a bit more involved than just changing a diaper.  It is a good trade-off though.  We're so tired of diapers.  She's still wearing them at night, but the end is definitely in sight.  Actually, now that I am thinking about it, the worst thing about diapers was the diaper pail, and we jettisoned that thing a long time ago.  I tried to deodorize it one day last summer. Nearly five years worth of stink could not be erased.  Not with bleach.  Not with vinegar.  Not with elbow grease.  Not even with Lysol.  It gives me nightmares sometimes.  After all, it is still out there somewhere, smelling like a swimming pool full of pickled poop.  We should have doused the thing in kerosene and taken a match to it.

But I'm off track here. The other big change is that we converted her crib to a toddler bed (um.. excuse me.. "big girl" bed).  That one just took effect yesterday, and so far so good.  I'm a little surprised that she's not fighting the whole bedtime thing now, but she seems to be content to just go to sleep.  And at least this morning, she woke up content to just sing in her bed for a few minutes instead of immediately getting up and leaving the room.

The next step of course, is the overnight potty training.  But we'll give her a little more time to reduce the puddle count (and us a little more time to sleep through the night) before we move onto that.  

History Repoos Itself

The post this evening is about... Poop!  Big surprise there.  Speaking of surprises...

Benjamin : Oh no!  Daddy! Something isn't right!

Daddy (worried, and quickly heading to the bathroom) : What's wrong? Are you ok?

Benjamin : Look! Some of my poop is green!

It wasn't just your standard run-of-the-mill green poo.  It was bright, "hospital cafeteria tray teal" poo.

Daddy : Whoa Ben!  What did you eat?

Benjamin (thinks for a couple seconds, then wide-eyed) : Oh! Guaca-mooo-lee!

We talked for a little while longer about how guacamole couldn't possibly be the culprit, and how it was probably something blue.  Water from a blue cup?  No. Blueberries? Probably not.  But with Mommy's help, we deduced that it was the blue frosting on the cupcake he had two days before.

It brought to mind a tale about my own childhood that I've heard many, many times, but I don't really remember as I was a bit young.  It took me a while to dig up this photo, but I will just let it tell the rest of the story.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

It took me a while to decide whether to post this here or on my running blog.  It's kind of relevant to both.  More people who read about running are going to know what the heck I am talking about here.  But you know.. its a kid story.  And I seem to be incredibly indecisive this past week.

Anyway... its no secret that one of the main ways kids learn is through imitation.  They do what they see.  They say what they hear.

Part of my self-help regimen while I am training is to do some trigger point massage on my calves.  This basically entails sitting on the floor, rolling my leg around on a ball about the size of a tennis ball (and sometimes about the color, consistency, smell, and taste of a tennis ball), until I find a spot that hurts a little more than the rest of it, and massaging those pains out.  Yesterday I was doing just that, and Penelope sat down next to me.  I didn't realize what she was doing at first.  The picture tells the rest of the story.

Home Conversation

All we ever talk about anymore is poop.  But stories about poop are funny.  So to follow the car conversation...

Penelope : La La Laaaa.. La La [grunt] Laaaa

Mommy : Penelope, are you pooping?

Penelope : [grunt] No.

Mommy : I'm not sure I believe you.

Ben : Peeps, where are you? (he calls her Peeps)

Mommy : She's up here.

Ben heads upstairs, and Daddy follows him.

Daddy : Hey.

Mommy : Hey.  I think she just pooped.

Daddy : Well, we'll know for sure in a couple seconds.

[a couple seconds pass]

Ben  : Ugh! I smell a poopy diaper!

Daddy: Allright Penelope, let's go change your diaper.

Penelope : [heavy sigh] Penelope always has a poopy diaper.

Car Conversation

So I am driving in the car with the kids today, and Ben is talking up a storm (as usual).  Then there's a brief, uncommon pause, and:

Benjamin : I smell a poopy diaper!
Daddy : Penelope, do you have a poop?
Penelope : No.
Benjamin : I can smell it!
Daddy : Penelope, are you sure?  Do you have a poopy diaper?
Penelope : No!  No poopy! I don't have poopy diaper!

There's a pause, while I sample the air in the car.

Daddy : Ben, I don't smell anything.  Are you sure its poop?  Are you smelling something else maybe?  Did someone pass gas?
Benjamin : Well....

... and then I can hear Ben making an odd noise.. it sounds like he's hyperventilating, and I am not sure what's wrong. I glance back for a second to see that he's really breathing weird.. out through his mouth, in through his nose, really rapidly.

Daddy : Ben, are you ok?
Benjamin : Yeah.  Its not poopy.  Its my stinky breath.
Daddy : Oh. Ok.  Good. (Good?)
Benjamin : Yeah... sometimes when I play Wii it makes my breath stinky.

Video games get blamed for a lot of things, but I think this is a first.

The Lego Maniac Has a Birthday Party

Ben is a Lego maniac.. just like that Zack kid from the 80's commercials, only without the neon signs in his room.  He and Mommy went to the Lego store at the mall on the day it opened (Daddy was insanely jealous of that outing).

In the past year or so, he's collected several small Lego kits.  At first, he would just follow the instructions and build stuff, but after a while he started, as he puts it, "Building his imagination".  The early explorations into his imagination produced random works of art that required everyone else to use a significant amount of their own imagination to "see" them.  Sort of like the drawings you get when they first get their hands on crayons.  But then on the 4th of July, he made the coolest little car!

And since then, he's been building all sorts of interesting things.  A lot of them are still random, but he's also made some other pretty cool vehicles, and more recently, robots.  So we decided it was only natural to throw him a Lego-themed birthday party this year, starting with some Lego-themed invitations. I had way too much fun playing around with the "Lego Digital Designer" software for that project:

We had planned a bunch of different Lego games, and we did a couple of them ("Guess how many Legos?" and "Lego Toss!") but mostly the kids all just played with Legos, cars and other stuff, ran around, and had fun.  We took a brief journey to the frozen tundra of the backyard for a pinata, which was a huge hit (pun intended) for all the kids. Then we warmed back up inside with some cupcakes, and plenty more running around.

Fun Holiday Stuff

The holidays were really good this year.  Grandma, Papa, and Uncle Jim came out to visit for a couple of weeks. This was the first time we'd seen Uncle Jim (known as Uncle Jimmy in some circles) in about four years, and it was the first time Penelope had ever met him.  She can't really pronounce the hard "J" at the beginning of some words yet, so she called him "Uncle Dim" or "Uncle Dimmy". This was amusing, because in reality he is very bright.  Even though we're well past the age of name-calling, it still tickled me a little bit more than it should have - he is my brother after all.  And Uncle Jim thought it was funny too, so all is well.  Both of the kids had a blast playing with all three of our visitors, and pretty much wore them out by the time they left.

Christmas morning was a lot of fun with the kids. We got up before they did (on most mornings, they wake us up) and waited downstairs for the older one to emerge.  They picked that morning to sleep in, of course.  Benjamin was still trying to wake up as he came down the stairs.  He started to perk up a little bit when he saw that Santa had left him a bicycle and a helmet.  He'd asked for both in his Christmas letter.  But when he saw that there was also a bell for his bicycle, he woke up in a hurry.

Penelope was awake shortly after that. She doesn't quite "get" the idea of some jolly round elf trespassing in the middle of the night to distribute gifts to the world, so her reaction was more along the lines of "Hey.. where'd this stuff come from?"  But she got into the spirit pretty quickly once we commenced with the part where everyone gets to rip paper.  She did stall out a couple times, wanting to play with the things she found under the paper.

Oddly enough, the longest of these delays came when she unwrapped, not a toy, but one of the many books that she got this year - "Goldilicious".  I have no idea what attracts her to this particular book, but it is the bedtime story of choice now.  Every night.  For 12 nights in a row.  I don't quite have it memorized yet, but I've perfected the voices. "Oh Goldie! You shouldn't have done that on the floor!"  Trust me, it is totally awesome when I read it out loud, and she loves it.

We've been reading the same book with Ben every night as well - "The Mouse and the Motorcycle".  I say "with" Ben because although we're doing the reading out loud, he is reading along and he will correct you if you miss a word or attempt to re-phrase anything.  We go through one chapter each evening.  This was one of my favorites when I was little, and quite honestly, I am probably enjoying it even more now. Its a great book, and I love sharing it with my little boy.  I didn't read it last night or the night before, and I feel like I need to go back and catch up on the stuff I missed.

We did a lot of other stuff in-between the holidays as well.  Playing, mostly - riding bikes/trikes, baseball, frisbee, badminton, yo-yos, Wii, board games, card games, etc.  We also did a little shopping and some home projects.  Benjamin's room is now blue - he got to go to his paint store - Benjamin Moore - and pick the color himself (with a little nudging towards the center of the blue spectrum).

Penelope provided the soundtrack for the holidays.  She loves to sing, and she was constantly breaking out with her renditions of "S-A-N-T-A" (Bingo) and the crowd pleaser "Dingle Bells".  Meanwhile, Ben provided several nuggets of comedy gold to keep everyone entertained.  My favorite was an evening where the adults were finishing up dinner and one of them (me) had taken a little too much on his plate.  Ben was on the other side of the couch, playing Legos or something :

Mommy : "It's ok - you don't have to finish that if you are full.  There are no rules here."

- two beats later, Ben pops up from behind the couch -

Benjamin : "Yes there are, Mommy.  There's 'We don't climb on the arms of the couch', and there's 'Set a good example for your sister', and there's ...." He continued on for a while, but I was laughing too hard to remember the rest.