Snow and Funerals and Curtis, Oh My!

We just got back from a whirlwind road trip to Utah for Ren's Grandma's funeral. Grandma was very old, so it was a blessed thing for her -- it was just sad to see Grandpa get emotional about it (he's 94). We took the whole family and spent a day-and-a-half there...and there was SNOW! Oh my boys were thrilled beyond words about seeing snow. (How can they possibly be the twins who were born in Rochester, NY?) Curtis and the Littles I can forgive for losing their minds, they were born in California and have never seen snow. It was hilarious to see them out in the church parking lot, in Sunday clothes and gloves, having a snowball fight for an HOUR without complaining. Any sensible Utah child would look at them and think they were crazy! So, it was a great trip and gave me a few funnies to share... all from Curtis.

First, we're driving around and Curtis says, "Why do they have a Christmas tree in their front yard?" ... "Hey they have one too!" He was observing the pine trees planted in people's yards -- this from the California boy who only knows palm trees.

Next, we're at the funeral and we decided to bring Curtis but leave the Littles with a babysitter. The funeral was a little long for a six year-old boy and at one point, after squirming for many minutes he whispers, LOUDLY, "Mom, can we have pepper steak and rice for dinner when we get home to Arizona?" I guess he was planning the menus for me while he sat there.

Finally, we get to the cemetery and Curtis hops out and yells LOUDLY, "This is the PERFECT place for a snowball fight!" Um...NOT!

My Baby's All Grown Up!

I just thought I'd do a little update on my baby since he is growing and changing so much faster than the rest of us! (Okay, so I've managed to GROW pretty fast myself and changing back to a shape that I actually recognize needs to happen MUCH faster!) But I digress...

Gid is 15 months old at the end of January and he finally started walking last weekend. He's so much happier now that he can attempt to keep up with Eli and I have no doubt he'll be running after his big brother before I can blink! He's trying to talk now too, I think "Nana" (for Hannah) was his first word, but he also says, "Enai" for Eli, "mama", "dada", "aw-duh" (for all done) and he can moo (such a prodigy -- the mooing). He has figured out that it's funny to poke people (he must get that from his poking brother Eli -- or his poking father!) but instead of saying, "poke, poke" like Eli does, he just grunts something that approximates the same sound. He figured out how to open doors this week, a development I'm not thrilled about, because it requires me to remember to put down the lid on the toilet (anything requiring me to REMEMBER something is gonna take a miracle!) He loves to play at the park and slide down the slide on his own and he loves to swing. He tries to mimic us when we sing and he also did a little dancing today -- maybe it's time to enroll him in a pre-school for the arts to take advantage of his budding talents.

I feel a little bad when I realize that this will be the last time I watch a child go through these milestones and all I can do is rejoice! I should feel somewhat sentimental about the whole thing, but I just keep seeing more and more light at the end of the tunnel as he gets closer to being a playmate for Eli. Gid is a child who knows what he wants and lets you know, in whatever way possible, what that thing is. I decided that maybe the reason we have him ('cuz we never really planned on 7 kids) is that he and Eli were buddies in heaven and they must have told us they were coming together, or not at all! They certainly are both full of energy and mischief and I know that in a few months, they'll really be giving me something to blog about!

You never know what you're going to find...

...in your baby's jammies?!!! I was cuddling Gid after he got up this morning and I noticed something long and hard inside the leg of his footie jammies. Huh? So I unzipped him, fished down the leg and pulled out...
a SCREWDRIVER! Good grief! I really don't remember stuffing a screwdriver down his leg when I got him ready for bed last night! I know he wandered off and was happily exploring for a few minutes after I got him dressed, so my only guess is that he found the screwdriver and for reasons inexplicable to all but the toddler demographic, stuck it down his jammies from the neck. I can't imagine that it was all that comfortable to sleep with a screwdriver in the leg of his jammies, but maybe he felt safer knowing he could whip out his screwdriver and poke anyone who messed with him in his crib in the middle of the night! I guess there's always another mystery or adventure around here!

The Partners in Crime Series

I didn't know it was going to be a special day. It's only in hindsight that I realize the moon must have been full or the planets all aligned or Jupiter's second moon was in the house of Mars or SOMETHING because, the "Littles" went on a rampage and Ren decided we'd be less likely to injure them if we caught it on film. Unfortunately, for some of these pictures, while we were capturing one of them on film, the other had moved on to something bigger and better.

So first, we found Eli and Gid helping themselves to our tub of margarine (Smart Balance, so at least they weren't getting too many trans-fats).


Then, within about 10 minutes, they'd disappeared again and Ren found them in the basement, happily dismantling games from the game closet.


Well, we decided to bring them upstairs (to keep an eye on them!) and since I was trying to get ready for the day, I brought Gid into the bathroom with me and he found some fun stuff under my bathroom sink. My twins used to call these "Num nums" because they looked like candy wrappers to them. Gid just thought they were fun to dump in large quantities on the floor.



But then, while I was happily photographing Gid and the "Num nums", Eli was even more happily finding a new "snack".


Which got messier as he tried to show me how great peanutbutter tastes!


So, when I walk into other people's houses, and I feel like a big fat failure because my house is a disaster and theirs are perfectly clean and nicely put together, I have to remember that they don't have the partners in crime running around doing that thing they do. I'm sure in 17 years when Gid graduates and leaves, I'll miss the tampons all over the floor and the two "Littles" helping themselves to one more knife-ful of Smart Balance.

Oh Shoot! I must be getting old...

I had a disturbing time in Yoga yesterday... (by the way, yoga is my new therapy, apparently I am very TENSE all the time and the stretching and relaxing is making me feel sooooo good.)

BUT, yesterday while I was at yoga class, I was sitting on the floor with one leg out in front of me and the other one pulled up against my chest, and every time I leaned forward to stretch, I TOOTED! Usually, we do yoga to music, but yesterday they forgot the cd player so it was nice and quiet in the room and here I was tooting at regular intervals. So embarrasing!

Then, I came home and told Ren and he said, "Oh no! You're turning into an old lady who can't control her flatulence!" Thanks dear, that thought hadn't even occurred to me. Now I must conclude I'm just getting old and it's all downhill from here. Shoot.

The Byers League of Justice

Inspired by my sister's blog post stating the rules for coming up with Super Hero names (see her blog: Huh? And other profound reactions to life) I've come up with Super Hero identities for everyone in our family.

Ren is "The Potty Parker" (named for his supreme ability to park on the pot for hours at a time!)
Jen is "Distracto Woman" (named for her amazing power to be distracted in the time it takes to walk from one room to the next "What am I doing in the garage?")
Zach is "The Belchinator" (the name is self-explanatory)
Hannah is "SlapHappy Girl" (named for her powers of silliness, especially late at night while playing games -- Zach has this power too)
Cody is "Supreme Self-Image Boy" (for his powerful sense of self-esteem, a.k.a. Coco the Great)
Jonah is "Factoid Boy" (named for his ability to produce random, meaningless facts anytime, anywhere)
Curtis is "Mr. Dimples" (maybe this is really his secret weapon)
Eli is "GigglePants Boy" -- Mr. Dimples sidekick
Gid has two identities: Destructo Boy and The Poopinator (both superpowers that 1 year-olds possess)

I'm sure that we broke some of the rules, but you have to admit the members of The Byers League of Justice would scare away any criminal!

Leftover Funnies from 2007

I always like to include funny stuff the kids say in my Christmas card, but sometimes I don't have room for the ones that require a long explanation. I thought maybe this might be a good place to include the longer funnies that happened last year and perhaps a few from the archives, just for fun!

** Curtis gets so tickled with himself when he has a funny idea -- his big dimples flash and he'll run and tell me something like, "Mom! If the dishwasher was for trash it would be a 'trashwasher'! And if the garbage can was for silverware it would be a 'dishcan'!

** I heard the quintessential grade school boy, tattling anecdote from Curty the other day. He told me, "Mom, I made Cody pinky-promise not to change Jonah's name on his deluxe ATM machine to Poo Poo Jonah, but then he did it anyway and said he was crossing his teeth!"

** We were at a restaurant with Eli, sitting in a booth, and he was getting very restless, but we were too tired to do much about it so he was climbing all around the booth. As I was doing my best to eat, my subconscious picked this up in the background: "Poke, poke" "Poke, poke" Then I heard the guy in the next booth say, "I'm getting poked." I turned around and saw Eli accosting him from our side. How embarrassing!

** Eli was having one of those irrational, two year-old fits one evening and I tried to get him to calm down by laying out a super-soft blankie, hoping to entice him to lay on it (because he always loves to when I lay it out for the baby). Well, he got mad and yelled, "No blankie!" Then he picked it up, ran to the kitchen garbage, opened the lid and stuffed it in!

** I've been trying to teach Eli to draw on paper when he finds a marker or pencil lying around (which was a CAPITAL offense when we were trying to sell our Murrieta house and I had just painted all the walls and kept finding marks on them!) Well, one day I found him standing on Ren's office desk with a sharpie marker in hand, happily coloring in one of Ren's professional journals while saying, "Draw on paper, Mommy!" I had to praise him, right?

** Trying to give directions to a two year-old can be dicey. Last spring Eli learned to put a diaper in the garbage can, then he'd come running back for a high five! But one day I asked him to give something to Ren in the kitchen and he ran in, threw it in the garbage and came running back for a high five and a "Good Job, Eli!" Another day, Eli found a baby bottle on the floor so I said, "Go put it in the sink, Eli." He ran into the kitchen, then slowed and asked, "Garbage?" I said, "No, sink." "Sink?" He asked. So I said, "You know, where the wa-wa is." So he went to our bottled water dispenser and tried to put water in the bottle. I tried to make it more clear. "The sink, where you make bubbles in the wa-wa." "BUBBLES!" he yelled and ran to the back door. Seeing I wasn't going to talk my way through this, I walked over and said, "Let me show you." I put the bottle in the sink and said, "Sink." Eli looked up with his darling, dimply grin and said, "Good job, Mama!"

** Cody is ALWAYS worried about food going bad or eating something that will make him sick. One time he even asked me if a toothbrush he found, which was still in its package, had gone bad! One morning he found a piece of cooked bacon in the fridge and asked me if it was okay to eat it cold. I'm getting a little exasperated at answering silly questions like that...so, when 5 minutes later he asked me "Mom, will anything happen to me if I have yogurt after eating bacon?" I said, "YES! You'll turn into a girl! Or grow an extra head!"

** Gid babbled "Nana dada babab" So I jokingly asked Curtis, "Curty, do you know what nanadadababab means?" He replied in a kind of disgusted voice, "Mo-om, I USED to know baby talk."

** One day I told Eli it was time to go get Zach. He said, "A snack?" I said, "No, let's get Zach." He replied, "I no wanna snack." Getting frustrated I said, "No! Zach, your brother." "My brudder?" He thinks for a minute..."Pooh Bear?" HUH? "Pooh bear?" I ask. "Yeah! My brudder, Pooh Bear!" Um, okay...whatever.

** Hannah was babysitting Eli and he wouldn't eat his dinner, he only wanted milk. So, Hannah, trying to get him to eat SOMETHING said, "How about a cheesestick?" He thoughtfully replied, "Um...how about milk?" So she offered, "How about an apple?" He says, "How 'bout milk?" So she replies, "How 'bout NO." And he answers happily, "How about YES!"

This post got long, so I'll save the archives for another time!

Away, Away with Rum, by Gum

I had occasion today to do some video-taping of my three youngest in the bathtub. It's always cute to see the three of them cute and nakie in the tub, but today they were singing a song Curtis learned from our i-tunes playlist. Ren put lots of songs on the computer that were funny standards that his Dad used to play for their family. This one happens to be by the Chad Mitchell Trio and is called, "Away with Rum, by Gum". Curty started singing it and this is how it goes:

I never eat cookies because they have yeast

and one little bite turns a man to a beast
Can you imagine a sadder disgrace?
Than a man in the gutter with crumbs on his face.

Away, away with rum by gum
rum by gum
rum by gum
Away, away with rum by gum
The song of the temperence union

We never eat fruitcake because it has rum
and one little bite turns a man to a bum
can you imagine a sorrier sight?
Than a man eating fruitcake until he gets tight.

Repeat Chorus

So, it's a funny song for Curtis, my six year-old to be singing. But wait...later that day, during church, while taking the sacrament, Eli starts singing, "AWAY, AWAY WITH RUM, BY GUM..." loudly! And when he senses that this is not a song I want him singing during church, while taking the sacrament, he gets beligerant about it and sings it even louder! Yikes! It's funny...now, but not then. Someday I'll figure out how to upload the video from the tub, but for now, you just a get a picture of the three boys with soap horns on their heads. Aaaw, so cute.