Slow Down, Gym Shoe!

Strange Kids Ya Got There!

Yesterday was a pretty weird day, partially because our schedule for the day got all messed up! Diana's mom and I were thinking of becoming CASA volunteers, so yesterday we went to the courthouse for an orientation. We left Sarah to watch all the kids for a few hours. By the time we got back, Pufferfish had gone down for an early nap (she had gotten up at five in the morning for some reason, and was exhausted!) so we couldn't really go anywhere until she woke up. I figured, once she got up, we would just go hang out in the near by town of Wheaton, which is a cool town to hang out in. Its a rich town, and the home of Wheaton College, so they have a lot of cool spots other towns don't have!
We went to the DuPage Historical Museum first. I have never been in there before in my life, not even when I lived in Wheaton! I kind of like historical museums, but I always figured it wouldn't be a very good idea to bring Little Bear and Pufferfish into one. I was pleasantly surprised, though! It was a small museum but they had a lot of interactive exhibits, including two playrooms where kids could just hang out and play with toys.
There was also a place where you could try to ride on one of the first bicycles ever created...

<--------Poor Little Bear couldn't even reach the pedals!

Strangely, the kids' favorite exhibit was this room where you could do laundry using a wash bucket, a washboard, a wringer, and a plunger. They had real water and towels out so the kids could actually experience it. I think we spent about forty minutes there, with Sarah, Monkeyboy and Little Bear working diligently on the laundry! They were actually talking about it and mapping out a plan so each one of them had a job in order to get all of the towels cleaned! Hmmm, maybe if we just buy a wash bucket, washboard, plunger, and wringer, the kids can take over the household laundry!

Next, we got ice cream cones, and then we visited the Popcorn Shop. I don't know if thats what its really called, but thats what its referred to in Wheaton. Its a very small shop... in fact, it doesn't even have a real address. Its like 111 1/4 Front Street, or something like that. Its so small, you have to walk in sideways! I'm not even joking with you! However, wdging yourself into the little claustrophobic shop is well worth it! They have the best popcorn in the world. I don't know how it tastes so good! You don't even need butter on it, because its delicious plain, too! And they have a wide selection of dime-store candy that still costs bout a dime! Once you get into the shop, you take a small white bag, and you can fill it up with pieces of candy. A full bag of candies like those little paper dots, Slow Pokes, candy cigarettes, etc, can add up to just about two bucks!
After consuming ice cream cones, popcorn and candy, we hung out by the fountains.

 

<-----------Aw, how sweet! We love throwing coins
                                                                                                into fountains and making wishes!

<----------Oh no, Little Bear! What happened???

<--------Oh well, what can ya do....

Life is so much fun, huh!

Throw In the Towel

Weird Conversations You Just May Hear Around Here...

Jimmy: "I bought new towels for all of the kids to bring to the pool. This way, they can stop bringing our bath towels to the pool See, Little Bear's is pink, Monkeyboy's is blue, and Pufferfish's is turqoise! They were only four bucks each at Wal-Mart!!"

Diana: "Yeah, but I wanted to ask you, why have you been giving them the bath towels to bring to the pool? We have nice beach towels already. Why didn't you just make them take the beach towels?"

Jimmy: "Because I didn't want them wrecking our nice beach towels, or losing them. Its better for them to bring the regular bath towels that we don't care about so much! Only now it doesn't matter, because they have these new beach towels that only cost four bucks!"

Diana: "Okay. But, when are they going to use their nice beach towels, then?"

Jimmy: "They can use those in the bathroom! Okay?"

Uh... okay!

Stop, Thief!

Several months ago, when Little Bear and Pufferfish and I went to the library, Little Bear picked out this one book called Who Are You, Baby Kangaroo. Its a board book, sort of too easy for Little Bear, but she really wanted it, so we checked it out. I figured, if nothing else, Little Bear could practice reading it to Pufferfish!
But the book turned out to be Little Bear's favorite! She usually doesn't really get into books that much. She'll ask you to read them, and then she's done. With this one, she wanted to read it over and over again, and very quickly she memorized the entire thing so she could "read" it along with us. The story is about a puppy who goes from animal to animal asking what the name of a baby kangaroo is, and the text is very repetitive. Only the name of the animal changes from page to page. (Think, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?)
We read this story over and over again. i usually keep the library books in a story bag, but I kept finding this one stashed in Little Bear's room! Finally, when it was almost time to return the books, I told Little Bear that we'd have to return it and that maybe we'd check it out again. She put it back in the story bag, and eventually I returned all of the books in it!
Lately during times when Little Bear is out playing and I just have Pufferfish to watch, or when Little Bear is at her dad's, I've been trying to read some stories to Pufferfish too. She enjoys pointing at the pictures and turning the pages. So just yesterday, I went into Little Bear's room to look on her book shelf for some board books that would be good to read to Pufferfish. And guess what I found? Who Are You, Baby Kangaroo?
I brought it out and told Little Bear I was going to read it to Pufferfish, and Little Bear came and sat by me and cuddled up to read it with us. To my surprise, she still remembered all of the words!
I told her I really have to return it to the library, or they're gonna charge me $20.00 (for a book thats only worth $6.99!) but I think I'm going to order another copy on Amazon.com and have it sent to her in the mail. That will be a fun surprise, won't it?
In other news...
We live really close to the public pool. This year Monkeyboy and most of his friends are old enough to go to the pool by themselves! So yesterday I brought Little Bear and Pufferfish up to the pool for a while, and later on Monkeyboy and his friends rode their bikes over.
I stayed several hours with the girls, and brought them home at about five. Soon as I got home, I got  a phone call from Monkeyboy. Of all things, he wanted me to go up to the store, buy him some goggles, and drop them off at the pool for him!
I told him, no, I had just gotten the girls home and settled down, and I wasn't about to drag them out in the 90 degree air again to go search for goggles!
Monkeyboy hung up, mad at me. (Ugh... 11-year-olds!)
Five minutes later, Monkeyboy calls me up again. I thought he was going to keep on begging me about the stupid goggles. But this time he was calling me, asking me to pick him up at the pool, because his bike had been stolen!
So, I load up the girls back into the car after all, go scoop up Monkeyboy, and take the whole crew over to the police station to fill out a police report. (Unfortunately there's really not a lot they can do about a stolen bike, especially since we don't know the serial number or anything!) In our ghetto neighborhood, bikes constantly get stolen!
Later on I found out several things.
1.) Monkeyboy did own a bike lock, but he didn't know where it was, and just hadn't really bothered to look for it.
2.) Jimmy had warned Monkeyboy, just that morning, not to ride his bike to the pool because, without a lock, it would probably get stolen!

As a consequence, Monkeyboy has to use his own saved-up money to buy a new bike, because Diana wants him to have a bike for the summer so he's getting some exercise and not just staying at home playing video games and using his lack of a bike for an excuse. I guess the whole thing ends up being some sort of valuable lesson for Monkeyboy. It still sucks though. Who would steal a bike? I mean, I know it happens all the time. But can you imagine seeing a bike and just thinking in your head, "Hmm, I guess I'll take this bike?" And just riding off on it? And if its a kid who takes it, can you imagine being a parent and seeing your kid come home on a mysterious new bike and just saying, "Hey, cool new bike!" I mean, WTF?

Well, over and out for now!

PS... Please vote for my review of Red Robin restaurant! To vote, just read the review, and scroll down past the Google ads to where it says, Did you find this review helpful?
Thanks!

Little Pack Rat!

Today Diana asked Little Bear to straighten her room, which was a real disaster area!
Easier said than done though! I peeked into the kid's room, and it was impossible to even walk through it! I hate it when Pufferfish goes in there and plays, because she's always finding little tiny pieces of things to pop in her mouth! The place is like a death trap!
I decided to give Little Bear a head start. While she was out playing, I snuck into her room and gathered up everything in the room that didn't actually belong to Little Bear. She has this weird habit of hoarding things.I got all of Pufferfish's and Monkeyboy's toys and put them back into their respective rooms. I took all of the household items... coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets, batteries, old mail, pens, etc... and put them back where they belonged. Then I went in with a garbage bag and picked up all of the garbage that was strewn around!
When I was done with that, I called Little Bear in and asked her to finish straightening up her room. I showed her to put her dress-up stuff in one spot, her dolls in another, her housekeeping stuff in another, etc.
But seriously, by that point, there was really barely anything for her to pick up! Ninety-five percent of the big mess had consisted of things Little Bear had swiped from other people! Her own toys were barely touched!
Go figure, right?
I swear, Little Bear is the biggest pack rat I have ever met!

  By the way, please come and vote for my review of The Family Book, by Todd Parr. To vote, read the review, then scroll down past the Google Ads to where it says, "Did you find this review helpful?"
You can find more of my reviews here!

Pictures of a Kimchi Baby... and more!

Well, me and Diana are both hella sick with sinus infections and have spent most of the weekend popping Sudafeds. The good kind of Sudafeds... the kind that you have to show your ID to get, at the pharmacy, and you're only allowed to buy a certain amount of it each month, because its actually possible to use it to make meth! Yeah, thats the good stuff! We've been napping a lot too. This morning I woke up with a wet butt, and found that someone had emptied out the entire box of baby wipes on my bed while I was sleeping! I won't mention any names. But here are some photos of the main suspect:
















































Speaking of photos, on Friday night while the big kids were at their dad's, me and Diana took Pufferfish to the mall to get her One Year Old pictures taken. The plan was to take her to The Picture Place to get a picture of her in traditional Korean garb, which is going to be the photo used at her Korean birthday party. Then we were going to go over to JCPenneys to get regular 1-year-old pictures taken to distribute to the family and everyone.
Well, the evening didn't go so well. Pufferfish was not enthusiastic about her Korean outfit. Its called a hanbok, and is a really long dress with lots of layers, plus a head piece. I don't have a full-size picture of Pufferfish in her hanbok yet but you can click here to see an example of what it would look like on a toddler.
Pufferfish couldn't walk or stand very well in the hanbok, so she was crying bloody murder, and really wouldn't smile or do anything to cooperate with the photographer. The photographer managed to snap a bunch of pictures anyway, until we gave up and decided to call it quits.
Next we put the baby's other dress on her and I rushed her over to JCPenneys to try to get her in for a photo sitting while Diana waited for the Picture People photos... but it turned out the photo center at JCPenney's had closed hours ago! It was just as well I guess because Pufferfish was wailing miserably. I took her dress off and let her walk around in just her diaper for a while, and she was fine then. Its hard being a baby and having everyone put weird, itchy outfits on you, right?
But just to prove that the Picture People can work miracles, check out the photo they actually managed to get of the ornery Pufferfish...
.

















Beautiful, isn't she? If I do say so myself...

In other news, Jimmy is still away on his business trip, and the rest of us are still living on pizza and cold cereal, which really doesn't bother us much at all. Its kind of a 9-day-long slumber party around here! Right now the big kids are outside playing, and Pufferfish is napping, so I'm taking advantage of the peace to catch up on my blogging.
Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Half Asleep...

I'm a little sleepy today... the whole house is getting sick again with a cold of some sort.,,, so this post will be short.  Why do we always get sick? Its constant! I am thinking of getting some sort of hand sanitizer and just constantly sanitizing the kids' hands when we're out, to prevent any germs from getting into their systems.
Except I've heard that using hand sanitizer can actually make you get more sick, because your body forgets how to fight off germs, so if one germ gets through to you it wipes you out!
I've also heard that hand sanitizer is bad for little kids because they lick their hands and get drunk from the alcohol in it.
Oh well, I guess we're just doomed.
The shorties and I were supposed to have a playdate at a bakery yesterday, but nobody showed up! That particular playgroup is starting to suck because nobody comes to it. The Monday one is much better. Anyway it turned out okay because Little Bear and I ate our cookies anyway, and Little Bear played with some random kids who were there with their parents, and then we went to a near by park and played for the rest of the morning.
***
The other day I was reading in some magazine a list of phrases parents have said that they never imagined they would say. And now I have a new one to add to the list:
"Please don't put acorns in the baby's ears!"

Snakes In the Grass!

There I was, peacefully reading blogs and minding my own business, secure in the knowledge that the baby was napping and the older kids were playing outside, when...
"Nicki! Come outside! Come outside quick!" screamed Little Bear and her cross-the-street friend J through the front screen door.
I dashed out, expecting to find someone dead or bleeding.
Instead I found Monkeyboy and his friend D marching towards us up the sidewalk. Dangling from his hand was... this!














Now, watch how I masterfully teach this group of youngsters about respecting animals... (Click on it to see it in full size)
 
My Montage 5/25/08

Afterwards Little Bear cried when we let the snake go. She said it was the best snake in the world!

Rub-a-Dub Dub, Two Shorties In the Tub!

Poor little Pufferfish has been so sick lately! She went to the doctor yesterday, and it turns out she has a severe ear infection, plus her lungs were all blocked up. So now she's on albuterol (making her a real Pufferfish!) plus an antibiotic, plus pain kilers!
With that in mind, I didn't want to make any big plans for the day, so we just saw where the day took us. And it turned out to be an awesome day!
In the morning, we made bathtub paints, and both of the girls got nekked and fingerpainted in the bathtub! This is an easy activity you might want to keep in mind any time you have a dull day that you want to brighten up! I made the bath paints by filling paper cups with baby soap (such as Johnson' Head-to-Toe) and then adding a few drops of washable poster paint to each cup. (You can also use food coloring, but we didn't have any!) i then set the kids free in the tub with the paint and let them go crazy! Its the one place where spills are perfectly okay, painting your body is okay, painting with your feet is okay, and as long as you don't actually eat the paint, anything goes! (Remember to click on the pics to see them full-sized!)

 

You can also make prints of your bathtub art by laying sheets of paper over the painted surfaces of the tub. That way, you have a way to keep your art work... and the prints turn out pretty cool!
 

The best part is, since they're painting with soap, there's very little clean-up afterwards! Actually, when the kids were done painting, all I did was turn on the faucet and hand Little Bear a wash rag. While I got the baby dried off and dressed, and fed her breakfast, Little Bear scrubbed down the entire bathtub until it was sparkling clean! I think she loved that part as much as the painting itself... she was so happy, singing to herself about how clean she was getting the tub!

Also, Little Bear had been asking me if I would get her a doctor's kit so she could play animal doctor with her stuffed animals. I looked for a cheap doctor kit at the store, but couldn't find any under $25.00! So instead I spent $4.50 on a first aid travel kit that came with antiseptic wipes and all different types and sizes of bandaids, and I let Little Bear go crazy with it! She loved that! She doctored up some of her stuffed animals, but she also put bandaids all over herself, me, and Pufferfish. (And all day long, when people asked us what happened, Little Bear told them we got attacked by a dog, a shark, an alligator, and a blackbird!)

We spent the rest of the day in a leisurely way... We went to the mall and played in the play area for a while, came home and had lunch, and then took a walk to the park. Little Bear's and Monkeyboy's dad just came and picked them up for his weekend visit with them, and since Pufferfish didn't take a nap at all today I just layed her down a while ago and she fell right asleep... giving me some time to blog! Hurray!
I love days like this, don't you?

GOT A LITTLE TRAVELER IN YOUR LIFE? GIVE HIM A UNIQUE GIFT HE CAN BRING WITH HIM ANYWHERE... A TREASURE JAR FOR TRAVELING KIDS!

Nice Outfit, Kid!

We're always trying to get Little Bear to do things for herself. Usually she'd much rather try to get someone else to do things for her... whether its getting her a snack from the refrigerator, cleaning up her toys, or getting something for her from another room. Up until a few weeks ago, Little Bear often even pleaded for someone to help her get dressed! That may have had something to do with the fact that she sees us dress the baby every day, and she wants a little of that extra attention for herself!
Anyway, Little Bear has come a long way in the last few weeks. Now she not only dresses herself completely, but she even picks out her own outfits! Sometimes the results of that are pretty wild. The other day when we went to the Children's Museum, Little Bear wore a blue and white T-shirt with a kitten on the front, pink pants with flowers on them, and a pink tutu!
Yep, a tutu!
Another day she tried to wear a pair of shorts as a skirt, with two legs crammed into one leghole, and the other leghole flapping in the breeze behind her.
And today's outfit? See for yourself! (Click the pics to make them bigger.)

Pretty flashy, huh? Coupled with my lack of hair-styling skills (today I let Little Bear wear her hair down, but on other days I attempt pigrails, ponytails or braids) I'm sure she sometimes looks like she escaped from some sort of miniature looney bin... but who cares! I think she's cute, no matter what! How about you?

Overheard in the bathroom

Little Bear, like many preschoolers, doesn't quite understand the concept of privacy. She often bursts into the bathroom when people are using it, without knocking. I usually lock the doors when I'm in the bathroom, to avoid interruptions. Not everyone remembers to do that, though, and the results can be embarrassing!
Take this conversation we overheard taking place in the bathroom this morning, as Little Bear burst in on the unsuspecting Jimmy.

Little Bear: "Excuse me... Hey, were you picking your nose?"
Jimmy: "No."
Little Bear: "Then why did I see your finger up your nose?"
Jimmy: "Okay, out!"

Poor Jimmy. If it were me, though, I would have just admitted it: "Yeah, I was picking my nose. Busted!"