Foggy Morning

It was incredibly foggy yesterday morning and surprisingly warm. I think it got up the to the 50's yesterday. Now that we have our fence up, Claire can no long walk across our backyard to get on the bus. I (or Ryan, but usually me) have to help her out the gate and walk with her down the length of the fence to catch the bus. William sometimes joins us like he did this particular morning. I took a lot of pictures of the kids, but most of them show all of the mist in the air - making the picture a little blurry. Enough talk - here are the pictures:

The lost tooth, literally...

Claire has had a wiggly tooth for over a week, so I was not surprised that when she came home from school yesterday, her tooth had fallen out. It had fallen out during lunch. Now mind you, this is the first lost tooth for our children - very exciting (for Claire anyway). She quickly took the tiny tooth out of the envelope the school nurse had put it in to show it off. I told her that we had better put it someplace special so that it wouldn't get lost. I retrieved a small jewelry box of hers and laid the tooth on the little cushion inside. Claire was very upset that I wanted to put it away and insisted that she get to carry the tooth around. So, I gave it to her, warning her that it might get lost. Not two minutes later, it was lost. She was very upset and almost in tears. The minuscule tooth happen to be a same color as our carpet, making it hard to fine, but find I did. I put it back in the box insisting that we put it somewhere high so that it would be safe for the tooth fairy. Claire once again was very upset and cried that she would be more careful and keep it in the box. Being the "good" mother I am, I told her that if she holds it, she's going to loose it (where's my faith in her??) and the tooth fairy won't come to our house and give her money. Claire said she didn't care and wanted to hold the box.

Well, maybe 4 minutes passed and I heard her yelling at William. He had bumped her, she dropped the box and the tooth fell out; lost again. Of course I was upset with her because the whole thing was ridiculous and told her to not to be angry with William because he didn't do anything wrong, but to be angry with herself for not putting the tooth away. She ran to her room in tears and I could not find the tooth. After about 15 minutes, I saw it by the couch, put it back in the box and put the box up high.

If Claire really didn't care about losing the tooth, it wouldn't have been a big deal if she lost it and I really didn't care about the whole tooth fairy thing. But when the child threw two tantrums, yelled at her brother, and I had to spend close to 20 minutes looking for the stupid tooth, I was done with letting her have a decision in the tooth matter. All this in the first 30 minutes since her arrival home.

In the end, the tooth made it under the pillow, the tooth fairy came and all is well. I guess we all learned something that day - motherhood is definitely a learning experience!!

Waiting for the tooth fairy

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

There are many days when nothing happens that is blog-worthy. But when I was laying in bed last Thursday night, trying to relax and fall asleep, my mind ran over several funny things that happened that day. I just remember laughing a lot, though it was generally a rotten day. All of these things happened in the evening.

Funny thing #1: while I was working in the kitchen, William came in and seemed to be messing with something on his thumb. Thinking he had a hang nail, I took his hand to examine what it was that he was playing with. It turned out to be a booger stuck to his thumb. I quickly grabbed a napkin and wiped it off. William started yelling, "No, it's mine! It's mine!" and then he sank to the floor in tears. Ryan and I laughed and laughed. And William was right, it was his.

Funny thing #2: Actually, at the time, this wasn't very funny. I was attempting to make dinner so that I could get going to scrapbooking night at the church. I had decided to use the last few potatoes, since they were going to go bad soon, and make baked potato soup (one of my favorites that I make often in the winter). For some unknown reason, I went to boil the potatoes and then removed them thinking that I would just boil them with the soup. So I took them off, made the soup from milk and butter and put the potatoes in. Only then did the thought come into my mind "Susan, what in the world are you doing? The milk is going to burn if you try to boil the potatoes in it!" So I removed the potatoes, strained off the thick milky soup as best I could, and boiled the potatoes in water. I then tried again. In the end, the soup was OK (definitely not my best work), but it took twice as long to make and I messed up twice as many dishes trying to fix my mistake. The whole thing was just stupid.

Funny thing #3: We had just got our chimney cleaned that day, so Ryan was going to build our first fire in the fireplace. William watched on as I read my book on the couch (Claire was in bed). Ryan had a nice fire set-up and lit the newspaper. Then Ryan turned to me in panic, "Susan, is the flue open?" " I don't know, didn't you check" That's when the smoke from the catching fire started to fill our living room. "Quick, put it out! It's closed!!" Ryan, grabbed a piece of wood and started frantically stabbing the burning newspaper and cardboard, messing up his carefully laid firewood. We then looked at each other and laughed. I opened the flue and Ryan tried again. This time it worked and our living room had a nice smoky aura to it. Ridiculous.

Funny thing #4: While Ryan was fixing the fire, William had Ryan's big Maglight flashlight. William was cradling it in his arms, pointing excitedly to its light on the ceiling. William then tried to turn to his body so that he could point to the light and in doing so, he kept moving the light (since it was in his arms). The end result was William "chasing the light" as he kept turning in circles trying to point to it, chattering wildly the whole time. Ryan and I were in tears laughing at him as he was spinning in circles, tyring to figure out why the light kept moving while he was trying to point to it. He got so dizzy that he fell over, flashlight and all. He then repeated the whole process. Crazy kid - who needs pets when you have kids!!

Funny thing #5: After the fire died, we decided to go to bed. While Ryan was finishing up in the bathroom, William climbed in our bed and laid down on Ryan's pillow, hiding himself with his blanket. Ryan came in and saw William laying there, "William, it's time to go to your bed". William didn't move and lay as still as possible, hoping that Ryan wouldn't notice him. Ryan finally asked "William, can I sleep in your bed?" William responded in very distinct words "Don't sleep in my bed." Now understand that most of what William says is gibberish with a few coherent phrases here and there. He can say anything he wants to, but in the mean time, he just blabbers about who knows what. Ryan looked at me and we laughed again at the clarity in which William spoke this command.

Funny thing #6 - the last one, I promise: Now that William was in his bed, Ryan was crawling into his side of the bed, he asked me "Susan, I want to return that book to ___, where is it?" My mind started racing when I realized that that particular book was now in the home of the wrong person. I was tired of it sitting on our desk and I kept asking Ryan to take care of it. When he wouldn't, I took it upon myself to mail it to the person I thought it belonged to (he lives in St. Louis and we hadn't seen him since we moved). Turns out, I mailed it to the wrong person. Without responding, I just stated laughing and laughing at the thought of this strange man receiving a book that wasn't his with an note of apology in it for keeping it so long. I was so embarrassed with my mistake that I wouldn't tell Ryan who I had mailed it to, though he tried to tickle it out of me. Whoops.

Random Pictures

I finally uploaded the pictures from my camera onto this computer. So now that I have too many to share, I have to go through them and pick out some fun ones. It's been a quiet Monday morning full of laundry, dishes, diapers, paying bills, and more. I always spend my Monday trying to catch up from the weekend. We didn't do a whole lot this weekend; we stayed home Sat and played and after church Sunday, we took naps and played at home. Nothing exciting, but relaxing. William and I are going to the store later to pick up some eggs, milk, lunch meat, etc. Enough about my boring day, here are the pictures:

I was mowing our lawn when William came and joined me. He followed along side me for several minutes. He was pushing our spreader - it was really cute and he was very serious about it.

Claire was trying to get away from William, so she went in her room and locked the door so William couldn't get in. Well he was mad, so he threw a coat hanger at her door and then she passed a "note" to him under the door. It was funny brother/sister time.

Cute bed-head.

You know how in cartoons, there will be someone trying to play an instrument of some kind and there is a bug on the music, which makes them play wrong notes, etc? Well I thought this was kind of funny: a Mozart Sonata with a ladybug on the music - just like the cartoons (but hopefully we're not dumb enough to confuse it with a note)!!

There are two kids in this pictures, can you find them??

The kids love to play with the marble works - the only problem is that they can't set it up themselves. That's where Ryan and I come in - it can be a pain.

This is a funny picture of William. After my kids have their baths, we get them dressed in the living room (more room to move), so the kids always run in and curl into a little ball on the floor to stay warm.

Coloring on a Saturday morning - a little clip from our past Saturday.

We finished our fence a few weeks ago - here it is (most of it anyhow).

There's more laundry to do and lunch to fix. Bye!