Update Speed Dial

    Pretty sure that in the last three days Caelan has ingested several biohazards... or at least that could be hazardous to her health (or if you choose to think positively, things that will increase her immune system to bionic levels). And it all comes down to her new 'trick' of getting into something she is KNOWS she is not to get (well, aside from her licking raw pork). Picture her sticking her skinny arm through the small gap of a cabinet door. The gap, of course, is caused by the lock the we placed on it years ago. The tips of her fingers graze the edge of the dish washing soap. That's good enough. She thinks they are pretty. I get the Cascade kind that come in the little square packages, one side is the white powder and the other side is the pretty pink gel. She tried to eat it. Considering it's soap, I wasn't too concerned. Matter of fact, I sat on the stairs and laughed in her face as she was foaming at the mouth and spit was streaming down her arms, hanging off her elbows. It was two days before she tried anything like that. Then today happened.
    So far I've taken away nasal spray that she climbed up into my bathroom cabinet to retrieve and the cough medicine she found in the upper cabinet in the kitchen (thank goodness that one is childproof... or I should say is still something Caelan hasn't figured out how to open). But then she came to me, once again with an abundance of spit covering her arms and face. All she says is 'It's tewwible and it's burning my lips'. Wonderful. The substance smelled slightly familiar, as I mentally calculated all the substances that she could have possible gotten into. Well, it would appear that several days ago, she took the air freshener card out of the SUV and hid it for a while. She decided it smelled so good, she had to bite it. Sigh. As she sat on the couch, holding a wet paper towel to her lips, I immediately updated my Speed Dial to include Poison Control.

Kindergarten: Imaginative or Graphically Hindering?

   
School for us began officially last week. I say 'officially' because as we have worked through our kindergarten curriculum, I have found that Evelynn has a good grasp on the concepts so far. Mind you, it's only been a week. We've run into a couple of issues that were unexpected but definitely workable. In recent months, Evelynn has completed mazes like the one above. The difference between prior mazes and this one is the graphics. I know pictures at this point in a kindergartener's student career are to draw her interest and make the exercise entertaining. For Evelynn, they greatly hindered the process of going from the 'go' point to the dinosaur.
She studied the maze for a while and decided on the direction of the 'rhino' and the 'crane' animals. Stopping at the rhino, she said "I can't get to the dinosaur this way because his horns will poke me." She looked a little longer before moving toward the crane. She didn't say anything about the beak or the wing, but observed that she couldn't go that way either "because his feet are in the way and they probably stink." She then decided that direction would not work. She began at 'go' again and went toward the fish. She quickly nixed this idea saying "The fish would be too slippery and his tail would wiggle too much to get to the dinosaur." At this point I figured she would go the correct way. She was out of other options. However, she began at the turtle and followed the path to the dinosaur, ignoring the paths to the fossils and the diamond. I asked her how to get from 'go' to the turtle. She looked at the paper, then looked at me, and them stared at the paper before saying "But to start at 'go' I have to go by the mummy. If I do that the mummy might wake up and chase me. That would be too scary." I told her that was the right way to go and that she should draw the path completely from 'go' to the dinosaur. Uncertain, she said "Well, I guess I can draw the line REALLY fast and he won't wake up."

The List

    Thank you, Lord, that I have ONE child that likes to go to bed and does so without a fuss... at least not the kind of fuss that is the kicking and screaming refusal of bedtime. Twice a day, McKenna goes to bed, naptime and bedtime. Naptime has lately been initiated by myself, but bedtime, that is never the case. She goes willingly, even grabbing me by the hand and leading me to her room. It's a beautiful moment. It's a victorious moment for me.
    McKenna, however, has a list of items that must be present for her to be in bed and to sleep. Every afternoon and every night we head to her room. Up until recently I put her into her crib, but in the last few days, my preggo tummy is not allowing me that. I'm encouraging her to break routine a little and climb in herself. She's not sure what to think about this because bedtime always happens the same way. Once she's in the crib and laying down, she says "Blanket." In goes her blanket, covering her from feet to neck. She peeks over the edge of the blanket and says "Milk". Into her waiting hands I place her sippy cup. She doesn't drink it at this point. She just looks at me like I should know what comes next. "Monkey, Monkey," she says. This is one of her stuffed animals and by far the most important. She can do without Piglet or her baby in bed with her as long as she has her monkey. I place the monkey next to her, but she's still not ready to drink her milk and go to sleep. "Mooskit," she says. I turn on her MP3 player and place it on the bed. Once the music starts, she's just about ready. She begins drinking her milk, but doesn't break eye contact... my silent cue to turn off the light and leave. And that's it. Goodnight.

She Did It

As a new mother, I couldn't wait for my children to progress enough developmentally that they could speak and to converse with one another. Then they started talking. And it seems that more often I want them to stop.The information flow from oldest to youngest is too quick and my cute little 'rainbows and unicorns' fantasy of children speaking pleasantly to me and to each other has disappeared in the wake of the "She did it" line.

It's only in complete silence that I know someone is doing something they should not (and unfortunately it's Caelan that is silent more often than the other two). Evelynn comes running with the "She did it" or "She's doing something bad"... which the whole tattling thing with Evelynn is difficult enough to deal with because Caelan's usually doing something that's hazardous to her well-being. Sigh. The moments of "She did it" have come too frequently in recent days (and will go away soon as long as I'm the Mama in this house) and I cringe every time I hear it.

But it has now become that 'phrase'... you know, the phrase that becomes your children's go-to in every situation. "She did it. She spilled the water." "She did it. She didn't flush." "She did it. She took all the toys out of her toy box." "She did it. She took all the pillows off the bed." "She did it. She took her clothes off." "She did it. She put her toy in the dog's water." "She did it. She ate the tomato." "She did it. She moved that book." "She did it. She colored in that coloring book." "She did it. She drew on the wall." "She did it. She put her plate in the sink." See? Half those things aren't necessarily 'bad', unless of course she were stripping down naked in a public place and definitely if she drew on the wall. It just all begins with the "She did it." Grrrr...

They say it so often now that today at lunch, McKenna dribbled her food on her hand and immediately said "She did it" and when I walked into the bedroom that seemed to contain pleasant children, one said "She did it" as if the only reason I was in the room was to discover the guilty one. Then it turned out that no one had done anything. Now they could say "She did it" because I naively wanted them to speak in the first place.

Drawings

Flowers, sunshine and rainbows appear on paper or magna doodles straight from the imaginations of Caelan and Evelynn. Hundreds of these drawings litter the house and are frequently gifted. This newfound joy in expressing themselves has been wonderful for a mother to see, even though the piles of paper come from important notebooks or pages from books (Caelan in both cases). I love the concept of a magna doodle, the screen holding enough space for one picture, then it can be erased. Definitely works to keep down the paper usage.

However, there are some pictures drawn on a magna doodle that I wish I could keep forever that had been drawn on paper. For instance, the picture Evelynn drew while I removed Caelan's broken bed from her room. Evelynn brought her magna doodle to me and said "This is a picture of you, Mom. You're mad because we broke the bed. See your face?" Another doodle of Evelynn's was a picture of Caelan. The stick-person-Caelan was in a circle with a line drawn diagonally across it. Evelynn, ever my observant child, said this was a picture for Caelan to know she was not to go into Evelynn's room. Ah, all the warning signs she has observed in recent weeks have paid off.

And then there are the drawings of our family. "This is Daddy. See right there, and we're all in the picture together." Why must all the pictures I want to keep end up on a magna doodle? Why am I surrounded by papers of rainbows, rainbow houses, princesses and unicorns? I've thought of taking photos of the magna doodle, but once the drawing has been shown off to me, it's immediately erased. Maybe I should encourage more paper usage.

Pregnancy and Olfactory

    Pregnancy is a curious thing and now that I'm on my fourth one, there are things about it that are just weird. This pregnancy I have a heightened sense of smell. Wonder Woman would kill for the sense of smell I have, but it's by no means a pleasant experience. I find myself grossly hindered from the most mundane of tasks... like cleaning and grocery shopping because of the odors that assault my olfactory senses. Some things smell strange or awful because they just do and normally shouldn't, or because they just do and should.
    Some instances are the fault of my children. Like Caelan spraying half a can of Lysol in the kitchen. I have yet to be in the kitchen longer than I can hold my breath. Other instances are no one's fault really. Seriously, how many people can walk down the cereal aisle in the grocery store and become physically ill because they smell the cardboard boxes of cereal? Not exactly anything you can blame but my nose. It's a little difficult to avoid that aisle when my children eat so much cereal.
    Another instance of overwhelming stench was completely my fault and one I've dealt with continually since arriving home two weeks ago. In April, I carefully planned my two month long absence from home, but somewhere in the planning failed to realize that there were potatoes and onions in the pantry cabinets. The day after we arrived home, we went for groceries. Evelynn helped me put them away and she opened a cabinet in the pantry, immediate revulsions followed... from both of us. Loud exclamations and severe gagging ensued as I gingerly removed the food items in the pantry to find the source, wearing rubber gloves of course. There on the side of one shelf was a bag of potatoes (small, white, new potatoes) putrified in an inch of their own decaying juices. Shudders of horror. For two weeks, I have not been able to rid the area of the smell. It has lessened quite a bit, but I still smell it. I refused to put any food back in the cabinet until a couple of days ago. I can't stand cluttered, covered counters, so it had been nagging at my inner peace of cleanliness. I had to see my the tops of my counters again.
    So today, I decided to put the food back in the pantry. I opened the cabinet opposite the one I have cleaned and disinfected repeatedly for two weeks. The stench in that cabinet nearly knocked me off my feet. A sweet potato and two onions. Fantastic. To just go on record, I don't know why these potatoes and onions were in found in these locations because it's not normally where I keep potatoes and onions. It's been a very unpleasant surprise. So, yet again, I'm cleaning out another cabinet and scrubbing down the shelves. And with minimal energy, these things are the only things getting done today. I'm not thrilled that my life is now run according to the sensitivity of my nose, but this too shall pass, yes?

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

    The last few days have been scorchers and I have had little motivation to get off the couch. I'm still in the first trimester, so the sickness that has gone with that and the ridiculous heat made me call for a movie day. BUT, we would be watching movies that I wanted to watch. If I couldn't get off the couch I was not going to sit there and watch their regulars... like Barbie movies, Clifford or the Backyardigans. Nope, we watched my favorite musicals. Yes, that's right. Musicals. Gigi, Singin' in the Rain and then today, it was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This last movie has been in the movie library for years, but the girls never got into much of it. I had a hard time convincing the girls that this was the movie of choice.

    Then I noticed that the castle on the DVD was Neuschwanstein. Ha! I showed it to Evelynn, and yes, we had to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang immediately. She was very excited to watch it then. Both Evelynn and Caelan were drawn into the movie, engrossed in every action. Once Neuschwanstein made an appearance, Evelynn excitedly told Caelan "I went there!". Now, unfortunately, it's been so long since I've seen this movie, that I had not realized how much of Neuschwanstein was utilized for the movie. Even some of the courtyard inside the main gate is used in the movie. My second surprise came a little later when Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke) landed Chitty in the village of Vulgaria. It was strangely familiar and Evelynn told me we had been there, too. I didn't question her, but I couldn't tell where this footage had been taken. After a quick search, we have been there. It's Rothenberg ob der Tauber. Evelynn is ecstatic. There is so much footage of Neuschwanstein and Rothenberg in this movie that it has now become Evelynn's favorite movie. Oh, and FYI... Rothenberg is not near Neuschwanstein as portrayed in the movie. It is not the village that belongs with the castle like they would have you think.

Starting at about the 5:00 mark, the footage of Neuwchwanstein and Rothenberg ob der Tauber begins. There are quite a bit more of the area in the movie, but this is a glimpse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UemArxy7soo&feature=related