DANGER: No babies eating cement

Sim was in a right state this morning. She pestered Ro so much. I felt sorry for him and I have trouble figuring out how to get her to stop. At one point, Ro was all hunched up on the floor busily drawing a big snowman picture. Sim had her own paper but didn't want to use it. Why draw on your own paper when your brother's back is so inviting. I heard Roen screaming and ran down stairs and Ro had big orange marker scribbles all over his back - on one of his nicer shirts too. sigh.

After the floor debacle, Ro retreated to the table to continue drawing. The table definitely limits Sim's interference capabilities. He's really into drawing signage lately. Ro likes to make DANGER signs, usually for Simone's edification. Today's DANGER sign was No Babies Eating Cement. Never Ever! I told Ro that was an excellent sign for Simone. We also have a No Babies Drawing On The Refrigerator sign.

First snow/Thanksgiving

tiny_snowman, originally uploaded by skweerell.

We had our first snow last Wednesday. Ro was thrilled. He's pretty much been waiting for it to snow since it quit back in March/April. He was desperate to get out and build a snowman and an igloo. He built a four inch snowman and an igloo of about the same height. They were really just snow mounds. It wasn't the right kind of snow for building things. Try explaining that to a four year old whose been waiting for it to snow for eight months.

Thanksgiving was ok. Both kids wailed throughout the entire meal. Because turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, etc. is the equivalent of feeding them steaming bowls of hot poison. The only thing they both like is grilled cheese. The highlight of the day was Ro got to build a gingerbread house with Grandma and Grandpa.

Everything's gone blue

Ro's favorite color is blue. If you ask him what color he wants something to be, he'll say blue about 95% of the time even for food. If we go get ice cream, he wants blue (cotton candy) -- even though he'd probably prefer chocolate in a blind taste test. When he sees the blue ice cream, it sucks any and every other thought out of his head and he stands there, chanting, "blue, blue, blue!" You can't really reason with him at all.

Sadly, we are in another bad eating patch at the moment which drives me absolutely batty. So -- I went over a list of dinner possibilities with Ro, to which he responded, "No, no, try again, no, no." Finally, I suggested oatmeal and he surprisingly agreed. So, we mixed up the oatmeal (apple cinnamon) and he sat down to eat and had a bite. He then sat there and stared at it unenthusiastically for awhile. I asked him if it needed salt and he said no, it need to be blue. I think he thought this was a spoiler. So, I did what any desperate mother would do. I dumped food coloring in it. A few drops of color and we had blue oatmeal. It was disgusting. I'm reduced to dying my child's food blue so he'll eat something for a change. Me, who in my idealistic mommy days, once swore I'd never feed my child anything with artificial colorings. Now, here I am serving it up. He did eat it though. Not with anything bordering on enthusiasm - but he ate it.

Simone correctly identified her first color this week. Not surprisingly, it was blue. She also clamors for things to be blue now because Ro does. I need to start purchasing construction paper in single color packs.

here comes the bride

Ro is currently a little fixated on brides. His Brum video shows Brum returning a bride to her wedding after mistakenly stepping on a skateboard and being carried away. So...I showed him our wedding pictures. He was enchanted. He loved seeing Mommy and Daddy and his grandparents. But then, he wanted to know where he was and I had to explain that he wasn't born yet. He was skeptical.

I also read him Cinderella because our copy of it (Disney) has a bride picture at the end. Anyhow, everytime he sees white fabric he wants to know if I can be a bride. He keeps telling me that he wants to make me a dress because the mice made Cinderella a dress. He keeps telling me that he wants to be a bride too... and I say no, you get to be a groom. You get the bride. He was happy with that and has been asking daily if he could be a groom. He's very excited about having a wedding someday, which is funny only because he doesn't have the faintest idea what it's all about of course. He likes the idea of all the fanfare. He even suggested marrying Simone at one point. We were in stitches.

onion igloos and insatiable boo monsters

Sim can say a lot of words now. New this week are waffle and empty and animal. However, despite her wide vocabulary, 90% of what she says is BOO or NO. The kids at church act like Sim is a fearsome monster and run screaming away from her every time she says BOO! She's thrilled at all the reaction of course and now expects us all to run in fear when she's in monster mode at home.

I was chopping up onions in the kitchen and Ro came bursting in and got all excited thinking I was building an igloo. I hadn't really thought about it but onions really do look rather igloo-like. Ro wants to take all the little cubes and build an igloo but I thought it might cause his eyes to sting so I didn't let him.

In the last two weeks, I've spent unholy amounts of time imitating Kipper the Dog characters, which involves adopting a somewhat dim-witted style of British accent. I think I'm pretty good at it now. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.

The good cut

my mother is going in for thyroid surgery this afternoon. I've been trying to explain the situation to Ro for the last week but it just seemed to go in one ear and out the other. He basically had no response. I don't think he wanted to listen. I finally got him to listen to me about it tonight as I was putting him to bed and he was devastated. He was sooo sad and anxious about Grandma and "the doctor that was going to cut her throat". He prayed for Grandma and then rolled around in bed for quite awhile. Later, I could hear him praying for Grandma again so I went in to assuage his fears. When he saw me, he said, "Mommy, we need to get the soldiers to -- to--- to cut the doctor on his face and then shoot him! AAUGH!" I was a quite surprised at this because I thought I had thoroughly explained that the doctor was HELPING Grandma by cutting her - but he was definitely having visions of Grandma being in danger from a knife wielding evil doctor. I ended up having to go into surgical procedures in much more detail than I would have expected. I tried to be even more reassuring and explain that they have to cut the skin just to move it out of the way. It will hurt but then they'll put her back together again. Ro suggested tape would be a good way to put Grandma's throat back together. I said the doctor would use thread but he said I was being silly because the doctor would need to use yarn --because it was bigger than thread. It ended up being a funny conversation and he finally went to sleep ok. Not really the sort of conversation you want to have at bed time but it ended up fine. He also called Grandma this morning to talk to her about it a little bit and tell her that God would keep her safe. It was sweet.

The soldier comment also really surprised me because I just explained "soldiers/military" to him earlier in the day when we saw to Marines who were collecting Toys for Tots outside of a local toy shop.

My friend, mommy

Ro introduced me to another little boy at the playground today. He said, "This is my friend, Mommy." That's the second time he's done that in the last week. I feel a bit silly when the other child stares at me but they seem to accept it. Ro knows Mommy is not my name. I don't think he understands that most kids call their mothers mommy. I don't know though. I appreciate his attempts at polite conversation/introductions though.

Sim is a singing girl this week. We've caught her singing "pat-a-cake", "twinkle twinkle little star", and " l like apples and bananas". I think she was also singing "Itsy Bitsy spider" but it doesn't really sound like it but she was doing hand motions as mumbling tunelessly to herself. The other songs are actually recognizeable, especially apples and bananas. It's not that she gets the words right but she does have the tune and a few recognizable words. She also likes counting to three and unloading the dishwasher.

halloween and all saints day

halloween, originally uploaded by skweerell.

We went out trick or treating tonight. Sim really got into collecting candy but mostly she was super determined to get inside everyone's house. Everyone's house!!! She was successful at one point and Daddy had to run in after her. She's very little and wriggly and would worm her way between me, Daddy, and Roey and squeeze through the door while the home owner was doling out the candy. It was really funny but got a little tiring when she did it at every house.

Roey had a great time being Brum. His costume came out pretty well. We spent quite a bit of time on it and he was very pleased with it which is what really counts. Most of the people we saw trick or treating wore really lame costumes -- or no costumes at all. We saw so many older kids with nothing. A lot of the people we saw handing out candy seemed pretty jaded on the whole thing as well. They thought Ro and Sim were cute. I think it's rude to trick or treat with no costume. It's so typical of our "something for nothing" culture. sigh.

Holidays are too short for Ro. So, he pretended today was Halloween again and dressed up as a witch, a bat, a mummy (I wrapped him in toilet paper), a book, a pumpkin, oscar the grouch, a trolley train, a ghost, a fire truck, and a pom-pom. How do you pretend to be a pom-pom? By making appropriate shh-shh-shh noises and jumping up and down and waggling your fingers of course. He has no idea what a cheerleader is but we do have some pom-poms both kids like to play with.

Ro also went trick-or-treating with his classmates during school. He and several other boys all dressed up as "princesses" out of their costume box. I would've liked to have seen that.