Snippets From The Week: The July 28, 2012 Edition

We have a bunch of Dum-Dum suckers lying around, and the Suz came up to me and asked, "Mom? Could I have some of those um... popsi... no, um... LOLLYSTICKS?

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The Suz put two sticks together in the shape of a "t" and said to me, "This is the cross that Jesus died on. He was put there by the Indians. You know, the BAD GUYS."

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Campers to his sister:  "Have you ever seen a dinosaur?"

Suz:  "Noooooooo, of course not! We've not even been to the zoo!!!"

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Suz:  "Mom? Why are you making all this food?"

Me:  "It's for a little Olympic party we're having tonight."

Suz:  "Right! Well, the cat needs a birthday sometime."

Snippets From The Week: The June 9, 2012 Edition

We were working out in the garden one day, and I noticed that some dill had voluntarily come up all over the place. The kids wanted to know what dill was, so I explained it was the flavor they knew from dill pickles. A week or so later, the Suz was looking at the garden and asked, "Hey, Mom! Where'd you plant the pickles?"

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I keep a couple of drawing books around for the kids to use. Lately the Suz has been drawing animals, and today she brought me a picture of a "drwa tiger." I spent some time trying to figure out what a "drwa" tiger was and then it dawned on me--each page in the book is titled "draw a _____" with the animal listed after that. Ah. "Draw a tiger." The Suz had merely copied what she assumed was the animal's name.

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We're big fans of Subway around here, and recently the Zig asked if I'd buy some sub sandwich bread so we could replicate our favorites at home. I had the special sandwiches all made one day, and when the Suz saw them, she started jumping up and down and yelling "We're having BUNdles? BUNdles? Like when we have hot dogs?"

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No surprise, as we drive around town, I've got the Suz a babbling and singing, and Campers asking logical and tech questions galore. Zig sits in the back by himself (who can blame him?!) and I almost always have to double-check to make sure he's there because he's just. that. quiet. 

I asked him the other night about his time in the van. 

Me:  "When you're sitting all quiet in the back of the van, what are you thinking?

Zig: (thoughtful pause)

Zig:  "Happy thoughts."

Me:  "Like what?"

Zig:  (another pause)

Zig:  "Like how I'll see the cat when we get home."

In all my days, I have never met anyone who lives life with such quiet content. Can I bottle that up and SELL IT?!?

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Our local grocery story is Fred Meyer, which everyone refers to as "Freddy's." I was headed there this past week, and here's my conversation with the Suz right before I walked out the door.

Suz:  "Where you goin', Mom? Fred Meyer? Or Freddy's?"

Me:  "Fred Meyer and Freddy's are the same thing."

Suz:  "Which one?! JUST! TELL! ME! Freddy's or Fred Meyer?!?!"

Me:  "Freddy's."

Suz:  "Oh, okay!"

Me:  "And then I'm going to Fred Meyer. And back to Freddy's. It'll be a long night."

[Neither one of us can stand to not have the last word.]

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Suz:  "I saw the mainian debbil!"

Me:  "The what?!"

Suz:  "The MAINIAN DEBBIL!!"

After twenty questions, followed by a lesson on how to tell a story, I finally figured out she was talking about the Tasmanian devil, which she saw on TV. Of course.

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Suz:  "I really liked San Francisco. When can we trabbel there again?"

Me:  "It's travel."

Suz:  "I know! TRABBEL TRABBEL TRABBEL!!! That's what I said!!!"

Snippets From The Week: The June 2, 2012 Edition

The kids and I were volunteering at our local food bank where we all had to wear hair nets. Suz took one look at them and said, "Oh, yeah! We had to wear these when we saw the DUMB SUCKER place!"  [Dum Dum Suckers]

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The Suz is starting to read signs as we drive around town. Today she said with the joy of discovery, "Ooooooooh! It's Taco BELL, not Taco BILL!!! I didn't know that!"

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I pulled out the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" book and the Suz soon announced, "Oh. This is where the caterpillar turns into a RACCOON."  [cocoon] 

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Recently, we toured our local public TV station where the Suz got to hug an adult-sized Clifford. I asked her if that was the real Clifford. She stated, "No. That was just a person dressed up as Clifford. The real Clifford lives inside our TV!"

I then asked her if we cut open our TV if Clifford would be inside. She's still mulling that over.

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Since the girl is starting to spell / read, the rest of us in the family have to be smarter about how we talk to each other. For example, it's not uncommon for us to spell the word C-H-I-N-A because if the Suz hears that word, she goes off like a game show contestant who just won the jackpot. Well, now if we want to talk about China (or some other trigger word), we have to either spell it backwards or add some extra letters. 

Campers (OF COURSE) loves this game, and he's been know to shout out, "Mom!?! Are we going to the P-Q-A-R-Z-K today?" Poor Suz. She's never going to forgive us for misspelling all these words.

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By some miracle, all three kids were quiet *at the same moment* in the van. Soon enough, though, I heard the Suz shout out, "WALL-uh!! wall-UH!" I had no idea what she was saying, but by about the fifteenth time, I figured out she was trying to say, "Voila!" We tried, in vain, to get her to say it correctly. She finally got exasperated and said, "Oooohhh. This SPANISH is SO HARD."

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Campers saw a picture of someone with a Guinness beer sign hanging behind him. He said, with much surprise, "Whoa! That guy set a Guinness World Record?!?!?"

Snippets From The Week: The April 14, 2012 Edition

A regular theme of the Suz's life is "practicing self-control." Bless her heart, she's quick to move now and not think later. Same goes for her speech, no surprise. I never knew that parenting my complete and total opposite was going to take me to my wit's end and back, and this is where my mother laughs loudest, as she is laughing last.

I digress. 

We were walking up and down hills and up and down hills all around San Francisco, which required a firm grip on the Suz's hand--especially when going downhill. She has but two speeds: fast, and asleep. I had to give her speech after speech about what would happen if I let her walk downhill by herself, and let me assure you, the speech included such theatrical phrases as "slamming into a car" and "bloody mess."  

This past week, when we were walking in downtown Portland, Suz took on a mild hill of her own, walking all deliberately and exaggerating how careful she could be. She eventually shouted back at me, "Look, Mom! I'm self-controlling!"

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Our cat is one of the most long-suffering felines I've yet to know. Bless his heart. It's a household rule that we don't trap the poor thing in the kitchen cupboards, and you guessed it, we had to make that guideline after the cat had been put in a cabinet that was then shut tight. 

I caught the Suz sticking the cat in one of the kitchen cupboards and trapping him there, so I said, "Hey! No putting the cat in the cabinets!" To which she replied very matter-of-factly, "But I've got to cook him in my oven!"

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I had each of the kids dictate to me their memories of San Francisco so I could print them out and keep them as memorabilia. Well, it was also a school writing assignment, but I didn't tell the boys that. Ha! I win again.

Anyway, I let the Suz loose to talk her fool head off about whatever she wanted to talk about. She finally got tired after I'd typed two full pages. (Two full pages!) This was her take on Alcatraz, and I quote her, word for word:

"One time all five of us had headphones and we were in the room where the guys were in their cages. That's where they were sleeping, eating, going potty, washing their hands, and sitting down. Those were the bad guys that were there a long time ago. Now they are out of their cages. Plus, I don't like bad guys cuz they'll shoot us and kill us and I'll be sad the rest of my life cuz I'll never see my mom again. But the good part of the story is I'm still with you and the bad guys are gone cuz they took them away in the 1940s." [1963 is the actual date the prison closed down. She was no doubt pulling a date out at random.]

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And from Ziggy's report on San Francisco:

"We got to go to the Transamerica Pyramid, but not in it because it's an office. We were like 50 steps away from it and Mom couldn't find it, so I said, 'Mom. It's right there.'"

[It's true. I couldn't find the building and it was just around the corner from where we were. Then once we were standing right next to the this very tall and highly-recognizable skyscraper, we started asking for directions to the Transamerica Pyramid, thinking we were SO FUNNY. Giddy was more like it.]

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Campers latest game he likes to play is "the anagram game." For example, he walks around the house mumbling, "steak is an anagram of stake." [short pause] "Ropes. Hmm, ropes. Prose is an anagram of ropes." He alternates this verbal whatnot with the old standby, "Look at the time what does it say, 2:48, 8 divided by 4 is 2." And on and on, and on and on, all day and I'm guessing, all night. What a goof. What is he ever going to turn out to be?!

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We took the subway from downtown San Francisco when heading back to the airport. It's a 30-minute ride, and while I was attempting to find my Quiet Happy Place, the Suz was chatting up the lady beside her. Suz went on and on about how she had to get shots, "here! and here! and here! and here!" Bless the lady's heart, she was giving Suz every non-verbal clue to say, "SHUTSKY UPSKY, I AM DONE WITH THE TALKING." But, like her true extroverted self, Suz just read that as a challenge and chose to fill the silence with even more details about her thrilling five-year-old life, and when that got old she did what all talkative people do best: she over-shared. Next thing I heard out of her mouth was, "When my mom was little she got shots IN HER BUTT!"

That got the lady's attention. Chalk one point up for the Suz; minus fifty points for the Ma who apparently hasn't told her girl enough not to share that story with the public.

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Snippets From The Week: The March 17, 2012 Edition

Pa and I have a few favorite cereals that we eat after the kids go to bed. I know. Livin' it up. We happen to keep these boxes on the top shelf of the top cupboard in the kitchen. Out of the kids' reach, if you will.

Couple of days ago, I saw the Zig climbing all over the kitchen cabinets like a monkey, hanging on an open cupboard door and desperately trying to reach the peanut butter cheerios. All the while he was muttering to me, "Why do you put the cereal waaaay up here? I can't reach it! This is not a very safe place to keep the cheerios."

Dang it. Now I gotta find a different hiding spot.

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The Suz came running up to me (as she has just two speeds: running, and asleep) and started telling me a story, which was the standard shouting-slash-doesn't-know-when-to-stop story: "Mom! I went up to your room! And I knocked! And there was my bruther! And he was playing Legos! And I walked in and he said 'get out'! And then I came down the stairs and saw you!"

To which Cam replied by shouting through the heat vent in the floor, "TMD! TMD! TOO! MANY! DETAILS!!!"

Like mother, like son -- I finally asked the Suz, "Was there a point to this story?" And she, of course, said quite happily, "No!"

[I am totally gonna start a group called Introverts Anonymous. And I'll have meetings by myself and invite no one besides myself.  NO ONE!!!]

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Suz, looking at a picture of Zig with a dum-dum sucker in his mouth: "Mom! He has a CIRCLE in his mouth!"

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Snippets From The Week: The March 10, 2012 Edition

The girl and I were self-checking our books out at the library, all the while she was chatting to herself. "I have eight books. I am checking them out myself! Wait! I will count them! 1-2-3-4-5, oh wait, gotta start again, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8! Now I will put them in my bag! Hey where's my bag? Oh there it is! I'll put my books in my bag!" The whole time this stream of consciousness was going on, an Asian lady was beside us, watching the show. She finally asked, "Is she your daughter?" And I said, "Yes, she's adopted from China." And before I could get another word in edgewise, the Suz shouted out for all to hear, "MY MOM'S TEACHING ME TO SPEAK ENGLISH!!!!!"

And aren't I doing a great job.

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I got after the Suz for playing with her glasses. Her reply? "Oh, that's right! They're so expensible!" 

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The boys spent part of one afternoon seeing how many times and how fast they could say "Uncle Andy's Undies." And giggling like a couple of goofballs at their attempts.

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Back when the Suz was having such a hard time learning her colors, I started her on the Signing Time videos. She loved them, of course, because they mix learning with movement and songs. So when it came time for her to learn her letters and her numbers, I was sure to put the ABC / 123 DVD on repeat and voila, she was signing and singing her facts with ease.

Fast-forward a year or two, when the Suz is learning to add. She worked very hard one day to come up with 6 + 1, with her answer being "4." Took me a long time to figure out how she could be so far off on what (to me) seemed like a pretty simple problem. And then I realized she was using her "sign language fingers" to add--in sign language, the number "6" is the middle three fingers raised on one hand. So, three fingers ("six") plus one finger equals, YOU GUESSED IT, "FOUR."

Huh. Who else but the Suz would take me down such an interesting path with math?

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I was doing a little tracking of our field trip group's outings over the past four years, and as part of that, this random conversation came up:

Me: Do you guys remember the trip to the art place where you made crafts out of scrap materials?

Boys: No.

Me: Oh, you know, you made magnets and name badges and stuff like that.

Boys: No.

Me: I stayed home with the group of little kids and you rode with your friends so-and-so, remember?

Boys: Nope.

Me: That's when your friend so-and-so got carsick and puked out the window.

Boys: OH!!! WE REMEMBER THAT TRIP!!!

Yep. Makin' memories.

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We were talking one lunchtime about the ladies we know who are pregnant. From the Suz, "When someone's fat, that means there's a baby inside!"

To which I replied, "Do NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT say that the next time we're out and about."

Which means she absolutely will.

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During piano lesson:

Me: Well, you got the notes right on that song but why'd you skip all the rests?

Campers: It saves time.

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Snippets From The Week: The March 3, 2012 Edition

We finally took Ollie to get his first round of immunizations. Not bad for having the cat around for seven months, eh? We went to a clinic, which meant we still paid a bunch for the shots, but got to wait in line for a long time, too! Suz was off shopping with Pa while Ollie got his shots done, so she missed The Show. (After all, she equates "getting shots" with "Armageddon.") Her first words once she saw the cat were, "Did Ollie get his shots? Cuz I don't see any Band-Aids!"

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Suz: "Mom! Campers and I THINKED up a new game!"

Campers: "It's not, "thinked," it's "THUNK."

Me: "THOUGHT! It's THOUGHT!!!"

Campers: "I know. I just like to drive you crazy."

Me: *BIG SIGH*

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We have a scripture CD with a song to the verse, "Keep your tongue from e-e-vil," and the Suz has been listening to it all week. She's got the verse memorized, but too bad the words aren't right. The two most recent versions are, "Keep yo-self from me and you," followed by "Stick your tongue for me and you."

And for "Honor your father and mother," she's memorized (and sings at high volume), "I know your father and mother."

See? We are so on the ball.

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Kids sat down to dinner where there was a big bowl of cole slaw on the table. Suz hollers out, "Oh, yum! Slimy Joe!" (I assume she was thinking of sloppy joe, which we weren't having at all.)

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Thanks to the girl's gymnastics class and the kids being caged up inside, they've started doing somersaults all through the house. Over and over and over again, mostly on the couch. I can stand the noise and chaos for a few minutes before I, well, calmly ask them to do something else. *cough cough* The boys were able to trick me for a while, though, as they started saying to each other, "Hey! Let's go do our winter peppers!" It took me a while. Yes it did. Finally I realized they were speaking in code: winter peppers = summer salts. Huh. Score one for the kids.

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Snippets From The Week: The February 25, 2012 Edition

The Suz was looking at a picture of herself where her belly was sticking out. She said, "Good thing my NICKELS weren't showing!" [referring to her chest, of course]

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I've been working with the Suz for weeks now on understanding what a "vowel" is. One of her workbook lessons from this week had several short words where she had to circle the vowel. She did all right until I said, "Okay. In the word 'I,' what is the vowel?" And you know what she shouted with a great deal of confidence? "U!"

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When it's misty outside, the Suz says it's "soggy." And when she's eating cereal, she doesn't want it to get "foggy."

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Campers was at the entrance to the room I was in, opening and closing the door multiple times. He said, "Mom? I can't believe you've not told me to stop." So I said, "Well, it's still early in the day when I have a nerve or two left. My real beauty shows up later on." He replied, "I think you mean The Beast."

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Right before lunch one day I hollered out, "Campers! Say prayer." And once we all got settled and quiet, he said just one word, "Prayer." To which I replied, "Okay! Let's eat."

[I laughed. Boy did I laugh. Yet Campers knows this is a one-time joke. I figure lightening up and letting go are things I should do more often.]

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Snippets From The Week: The February 18, 2012 Edition

It's not unusual to sit down for a family meal, and have the Suz spend the first five minutes talking. I guess a) she hates the silence and b) she knows that while the rest of us value eating, she values talking and is hungry for attention even more. Anyway, one lunch time she started her meal with a song about the colors of the rainbow, and did you know there were seven colors, and I saw a show about that, and won't Dad be proud, and sing sing sing, talk talk talk, on and on it went until she finally said, "Whew! I need to stop talking cuz my tummy says it's hungry!" 

To which Campers replied, "Great. Now her stomach is talking, too."

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I asked Campers to take his dirty dishes to the sink, and not thirty seconds later he said, "Mom? What'd you ask me to do?" So I reminded him (nothing new), and he went on to explain that there's long-term memory, short-term memory, and mom-term memory. "Mom-term memory," he said, "is like short-term memory, only shorter." Good to know where I rank.

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The Suz keeps telling me the word "drink" is spelled with a "g." I couldn't figure that out, and couldn't figure that out and then finally one day I heard her say the word, "jrink." Huh. No wonder my girl can't spell. Might be that NONE OF US CAN SPEAK.

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I was reading this elaborate story to the Suz about a man who worked in the storeroom at the emperor's palace. I kinda gathered that she wasn't trekking along with the story, so to check her comprehension, I asked what the man did at work. Her answer? "Dwink coffee." This all harkens back to the day she told me what Pa does all day: "He goes to wook, does stuff, and dwinks coffee!" No wonder he's exhausted.

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I've discovered that the Suz has a rather, how shall we say, "interesting" take on the world, including her vocabulary. And with her--if she doesn't know the meaning of a word, she just makes something up and to her, it is RIGHT. I asked her recently what the word "rich" meant. "Happy!" she says. So then I asked her what "poor" meant. "Sad!" I told her otherwise, but I'm guessing she'll still hold strong to her own definitions.

Pa and I used to joke that it'd be "fun" (read: twisted) when we had kids to mess with their vocabulary, for example, call a banana an "apple," call a pair of socks "shoes," and on and on and on. Apparently our fate had been set.

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Snippets From The Week: The February 11, 2012 Edition

Suz: "Mom, can I play Wii?"

Me: "Go ask the cat. If he says 'yes,' then you may."

Suz: [runs up to cat, starts talking to him, and then shouts] "MOM! IT'S NOT WOOK-ING!!!"

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That Suz. She talks from the moment her feet hit ground until her feet are tucked back in at night. She can't think unless she's talking. And she has a zero-tolerance policy on silence, which means she can't stand it and will do anything to fill it. GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE.

I have her sitting right behind me in the van, which means I get the Stream of Consciousness the entire time I'm driving from here to there. I've mostly learned to tune it out, or when it gets bothersome, to turn the radio up Nice And Loud. You'd be amazed at how enjoyable commercials are to listen to when you need some Alternate Noise. 

One day I tuned into the Suz channel and this is what was playing: "Some day I'll get a dad [husband]. And then we'll get a house and you'll come see me and he'll get me a ring! And we'll have kids and I'll be a mom." Then there was a big sigh and she said very matter-of-factly, "BUT FIRST I NEED A MAN." Indeed, my girl. Dream big.

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I started using a different fabric softener recently, and Campers came up and said to me, "Mom? You smell like programming." Come to find out, I must have used this particular scent back in the day when he'd sit in the basement and program on his computer, which happened to sit next to the laundry room. 

"Smells like programming," what a funny boy.

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The boys have created their own game they play pretty much around the clock. Literally. They look at the digital clock (any one of them in the house) and either turn it into a math problem or flip it upside down and make it "say something." So all day long I hear Campers and Ziggy shouting, "Look-at-the-time-what-does-it-say?!" and then I'll hear something like "12:34! 1-2-3-4!" or "6:42! 6 minus 4 equals 2!" or "8:08! 8:08 is BOB upside down!" And on and on it goes. When will it stop? Nobody knows.

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I sat down to do piano lessons with Campers, and he played a note wrong. I said, "You need to play a B." To which he replied, "And you need to call that B an F, because that is how I learned it."

I just laughed and laughed. That's just the kind of ridiculous thing my firstborn would come up with--that he would assume the whole world would change the name of a note simply because he learned it incorrectly.

Snippets From The Week: The February 3, 2012 Edition

[Just random stories from the week.]

At dinner one night, the Suz asked if I could make "corn on the HOB" sometime. "Corn on the WHAT?" we asked. "HOB," she insisted.

While the kids were all warming up in prep for gymnastics class, the teacher had them sit with their legs stretched out in a "V." From there, they would reach and pat forward to "put their toppings on their pizza." The teacher went around the circle, asking each child what s/he wanted on the pizza. "Pepperoni!" one said. "Cheese!" said the next. "Pineapple!" said the third. On and on it went until it came Susie's turn. She immediately shouted out, "MAC AND CHEESE!!!" I looked at the lady beside me and said, "That. That is the girl I've been given to raise." Everyone else was amused, after all, I mean, if you like mac and cheese then OF COURSE it should go on a pizza! But I was bumfuzzled. Where does she come up with this stuff?! So later that night, I was telling Pa this story and through his expert interrogation skills, he determined that she meant to say "Parmesan cheese." She loves Parmesan cheese on her pizza. But during class, she was so excited and her impulsive brain shouted out the close-enough answer of "mac and cheese." See? NEVER DULL. I should also mentioned that the Suz has called "Parmesan cheese" "CARmesan cheese" for years. So maybe this is progress.

Speaking of gymnastics class, the Suz got her first turn on the big trampoline. If you can imagine a bouncing, exploding stick of dynamite with hair, you've got the image about right.

The boys spent a good portion of one day this week talking in only three-word sentences. They got the idea from some book they had both read. Honestly, it was great exercise for their brain. But it drove me nuts. Nuts. And just when I thought I'd get a breather from the word game, Pa came home and joined in the fun. He is a sucker for a good word game. I kept speaking normally and they all insisted, in three-word sentences, of course, that "Mom has lost!" "Mom's not playing!" "She's no fun!" Nothing new, you see.

And that's all the news that's fit to print.

Just Another Day At The Store

So there's this Vietnamese lady who checks out our groceries, each and every week. She knows me well enough to know that my daughter is Asian, and my son is verbose.

Well, at least he was this time.

So out of the blue Ziggy says to me (in full view of our checkout lady), "Why does ev-ree-boddy have different colored skin?"

I mumbled something about "God making us that way" and "all kinds of colors" and things like that.

Big pause.

Zig continued, "So why isn't anybody green?"

After she chuckled, our checkout lady had a great line about "they aren't eating their greens" (as she went on to scan my romaine, spinach, and collards).

Then I said something educational about green being the color reserved for bad guys, like the Green Goblin and Hacker.

I didn't get to be this smart overnight.

Just another day in the life of this Ma.

Joke Of The Week

Knock Knock.

Who's there?

Interrupting cow.

Interrupt---

MOOOOOOO!!!!


Thanks to the Pa, this is our joke of the week. Oh, and having an almost-seven year old in the house? Out come aaaallllllllll the corny jokes. Pa has a new audience (Campers) who will giggle 'til the cows come home at his humor.

Ziggy likes to tell this joke too. Only it's "erupting" cow and there's no, you know, "interrupting."