Drumsy and Sparkle

That’s right. Drumsy and Sparkle. I don’t know how those names came to be. Only that they involved a sippy cup. And some pictures that were printed on that sippy cup. And Penny and Jesse each choosing which picture they were. And then, somehow, they became:

Drumsy

and Sparkle

Jesse, in particular, has been insisting that he be addressed as Drumsy the past few days. That is, when he isn’t insisting we acknowledge him as a baby. When he is a baby, we are to applaud him doing all the things that, interestingly enough, a certain other REAL baby is currently doing in our house. “Look, Mom, the baby is rolling over!” Drumsy will say, as he rolls from side to side. “Look, Mom, the baby is smiling” Drumsy will say as he smiles in what he assumes to be a baby-like manner. And we must all cheer and shout hoorays for baby’s accomplishments.

BUT, back to Drumsy and Sparkle. I was telling Abe that those names sounded like they ought to be part of some story or show: some grand adventure. The Adventures of Drumsy and Sparkle!

So, wasn’t I pleased, pleased and laughing quite loudly, when Abe later presented me with the very beginnings of a Drumsy and Sparkle comic strip!

Their real adventures today were a little less exciting (and mostly just included some glue and beans and a whole lot of spilled apple juice), but I can not wait for a continuation of the fictional adventures of Drumsy and Sparkle!

The Sixth Baby–In Pictures

We sometimes joke, when looking through my family’s old photos, that my brother Chris was clearly the favorite kid. There are loads of pictures of him. I can see the same thing happening years from now with my own little family. The kids will be going through old albums and teasingly asking why there are so darn many baby pictures of Anders. They will shake their heads and insist I played favorites. I will, in turn, shake my head and equally insist that it only happened to be that Anders came along just as my interest and skill in photography was beginning to develop. Of course, then Anders will mischievously chime in with a “Believe that if it makes you feel better, siblings, but we all know the truth. I was the favorite”.

My defense shall have to rest in the fact that, while they may have fewer baby pictures, the sheer number of photos of each and every one of them shot up dramatically around this same time.

Still, I won’t deny that I can’t stop taking photographs of this little boy of mine. Here he is, just shy of five months. And with the added skill of yelling “AAHH!” as loudly as he likes during the quietest moments of most church meetings (with complete and total disregard for those who have come to reverently worship).

Because Anders is often napping . . .

and the older three are often at school . . .

these two little ones make up a very large portion of my days.

Earlier today Jesse asked me if he could have “some lovely punch”. We did happen to have some Crystal Light fruit punch in the fridge. I’m not much of a punch drinker myself, so I couldn’t be certain, but I assumed it was probably “lovely” – as those things go. If you look closely . . . or not even closely at all . . . you will see the tell-tale signs of that lovely punch all over Jesse’s face. Also, his hair is growing out, which I guess means I would actually have to do something in order for it not to be craaaazy, but . . . well, but nothing. There his hair is.

Penny is playing with some sort of little toys in the room next to me just now. I have overheard several awesome things. At one point someone was asking someone else to marry them and being told, in no uncertain terms (and in a somewhat heartless manner) that the someone being asked “didn’t even LOVE” the someone asking. I have also heard this:

“Have you seen my girlfriend?”
”I don’t know. What does she look like?”
”She’s pink.”
”Oh yah, I think I know where she is.”

and this:

“WHY are you out of JAIL!? Come on. You are going BACK to jail. Again.”

and there are some sort of animals talking about monkeys being their best friends and about how much they love the rain and now someone is cruelly saying, “No one will let you out! You can’t scream loud enough! You can never get out.” The part about the rain and the monkeys and the pink girlfriend all seemed lovely, but this? Well, this is terrifying.

So. There you have it. What you have, I am not certain. It. Whatever it is. I am off to do the things that need doing. And, maybe, if I’m lucky, the things that want doing. Toodle-lou.

Anders,

meet Anders.

He loves me . . .

“all the way up to the crickets”!

That’s what he tells me anyway. ALL the way UP to the crickets!

I realize that the crickets – whatever crickets they may be – are not, probably, up very far. Maybe they climb like . . . up to a bush once in awhile?

But when Jesse tells me he loves me all the way up to the crickets, it sounds and feels more like something very very far up . . . farther up than anyone can even imagine. And he does love crickets. After initially being utterly terrified by their unexplained chirpy little sounds late in the night, he grew to love them. He has been missing them these wintery months.

I think it is because I love him all the way up to the moon. And, if it is summer time and your mom tells you she loves you all the way up to the moon, you might think, “Oh, we are thinking of things outside at night that we love . . . to express how much we love each other”. And he has continued, these many cold and cricketless months to love me “all the way up to the crickets”.

What a nice little Valentine.

Almost as nice as when he padded his little feet into the kitchen while I was making dinner last night and said, “Uggh! I’m tired of eating dinner!”

Which is interesting, because I was, actually, at that very moment, tired of making dinner!

Anywho, here are two of my seven little Valentines right after we dropped the kids off at school this morning.
(Please note that little heart waffle. What kind of a fantastic mother would get up at 6:30am after being up several times with Anders at night to make Valentine’s Day waffles? I can’t even imagine a mother being that spectacular.)

And, since Penny is in these pictures, I will also include this cool “makes sense” moment I had with Penny a year or so ago (and recently re-read in a little notebook kept by my bedside to record these types of things).

We were driving to the store when we saw a field of geese. After pointing them out to her I said, “It’s kind of funny because if there’s just one, you call it a goose, but if there’s lots of them, you call them ‘geese’”.

“And if they’re in the water, you call them ducks”. Penny added.

Lastly, why is everyone so down on vacuum cleaners? That seems to be thee main example of a very bad present for a husband to give a wife. Mike and I were looking at something online the other night that said something like, “Things NOT to give your spouse for Valentine’s Day”.

“Watch,” I said, “It will say ‘vacuums’ – which is crazy because I think a vacuum is an AWESOME gift!”

And I wasn’t just saying that because not long ago Mike gave me a little hand vacuum. There is a Black and Decker outlet of sorts by his work. My little hand one was losing its ability to stay charged so he brought me home a new one – which was missing a part, so he took it back and got me a different new one . . . which also had something wrong, so he got me a DIFFERENT new one. And maybe that is the one I have now . . . or maybe something went wrong again. I don’t recall. But I love my little vacuum and I love Mike for giving it to me. And for scraping the frost off the van this morning so when I went out to take the kids to school I’d see those freshly scraped marks on my windshield and think of Mike. And for teasing my constantly about how tired he is (because I resent any tiredness he might ever innocently exhibit since Anders is still a stinker at night time so only I should be allowed to feel tired around here). And for lots of other stuff that I would write if said baby wasn’t just now crying to be retrieved from his crib.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all y’all (I think I can say that since so many of my loved ones keep moving to Texas).

And Anders isn’t the only one getting all grown up around here!

That probably sounds a little strange if you didn’t read today’s first post (that started with “first off” and talked about Anders growing up so very much) . . . and I’m sure none of you did read it first as it is below this post. But, it was indeed typed first and will go into my blog book before this one, so . . . there you have it.

BUT, that was first off – about Anders, and this is SECOND, about Abe and Daisy:

Abe and Daisy.

Here is Abe (with brother):

And here is Daisy (with herself):

And nobody will really know what I mean – unless, you know, they do know what I mean . . . then I guess they would, but I have typed about things like this before, and they keep happening! What keeps happening? My kids keep . . . I don’t know . . . turning into who they are, and deciding what they want to be and do, and being good at what they are good at with out my having anything to do with it . . . or expecting it . . . or telling them to. And, to be honest, it is the greatest thing! I know I am responsible for much of how they develop and what they learn, but it is so fun to see that much of it will just be their own innate talents developing and their own decisions being put into action, and that, I am not 100% responsible for everything they turn out to be!

Take Abe. He is funny and makes me laugh often. The other day he said, “Mom, can I get a mullet?”

I responded that he couldn’t just “get” a mullet – he’d have to grow his hair super long and cut all but the back. Then, I added, “mullets are hideous.”

He raised his eyebrows and said, “Why do you think they are hideous? Would you have married dad if he had a mullet?”

“Yes, I would have still married dad if he had a mullet, but –“

Abe interrupted, “You don’t make any sense. You say mullets are hideous, but then you say you’d marry anyone with a mullet.”

“No,” I corrected, as he smirked, “not anyone with a mullet. Dad.”

Also, in his 5th grade class they have recently been writing persuasive papers. They go to the computer lab, are given a prompt and then have to type up their response. The two he did so far were on vending machines being filled with health food verses candy, and on school uniforms. You can likely guess which popular 5th grade opinions he battled for, but his papers really made me laugh. His teacher, when she gave them to me, went on and on about what an amazingly clear and great “voice” he had in his writing.

Here were a few funny parts:

“School uniforms are arguably the most uncomfortable clothing item in the world (89% of our world thinks they are the worst).”

“Next, people might scream or faint if they accidentally see a school uniform. . . . teachers . . . would have to close their eyes while they are teaching math, social studies, language and spelling which . . . would make things difficult . . .”

“”Lunch ladies could faint and spill food all over the floor because they loathe looking at school uniforms so much.”

“The uniforms are sort of like evil villains fighting the superheroes, bad guys are like uniforms and superheroes are like normal clothing . . .”

And a few from the vending machine paper:

“The battle of the vending machines, which side will you choose, the candy or the healthy food?”

“Face it, the majority of kids like junk food, if you don’t believe me offer a kid a choice between having a carrot or a candybar and see what happens.”

“If you were the champion of a contest so you completely blew everyone away with how awesome you were . . . would you prefer the prize be a vending machine filled to the brim with candy or healthier foods?”

“Also, if we eat candy we will have less chance of being massacred by an angry hoard of blood thirsty pirates (not true).”

Anyway, I just got quite a chuckle out of his fabricated 89%s and his (not true)s and his overall wit.

And Daisy. She is quite the writer in her own rite. While Abe does not enjoy writing fictional stories at all, Daisy is forever starting (and not finishing) elaborate mysteries. I can’t find one just now, but she has the greatest little conversations always going on. Also, I came upon a little notebook by her bedside a few weeks ago. Opening it, I noticed it had several consecutive dates written followed by a short quick entry of how she was blessed that day. I certainly never suggested it, maybe a church teacher did? I don’t know, but I love that she just started and has continued for over a month now to keep her little goal. They are just simple things, but I love that she is finding these simple blessings all by herself each day.

A few small examples:

“I was blessed today by having fun with my new recorder.”

“I was blessed today by getting new PJs.”

“I was blessed today by getting to have dad read to us.”

“I was blessed today by not getting very sick.”

“I was blessed today by getting to do a cool science project.”

“I was blessed today by having fun with my camera.”

“I was blessed today by losing a tooth.”

They are awfully sweet and cute, aren’t they.

So, that is that. Maybe one of the happiest things for me as a mother – seeing things my kids are good at or learn to do all on their own – it is like getting a glimpse of them more as a real separate and likeable individual than just a kid I love and think is great because they are my kid and I can’t help but think it.

The Little Changeling

First off: This baby of mine is all grown-up. (I wish all grown-up meant “sleeping through the night” – it doesn’t seem too . . . yet), but really. It makes sense that other peoples babies grow up (because, you know, you see them one day and they are one size and another day and . . . they are a different size), and, it makes sense that my other babies have grown up (because, well, they have). But it doesn’t seem to make one bit of sense that my current baby has grown up! I only had him yesterday – or maybe last week. And I was all scared about how hard newborns are and how I would ever get anything done and surely none of that has been thought through or thoroughly settled, so how is it he can be grabbing our faces with his little paws, and having his little eyes longingly follow the path of a spoonful of food as it makes its way to a family member’s mouth? How can he be sitting in a little bouncy toy or flipping himself onto his stomach when nobody is even watching to tell him he can go ahead and try to do that sort of thing now? I don’t know. I keep thinking somebody is playing tricks on me. Maybe he’s a little changeling. What does that mean? He was switched at birth and some other mythical creature’s baby put in his place? Is that what it means? Well, if it does, jokes on them. I’m keeping my little fast growing changeling!