Doo-ah

Doo-ah

Now what would you think that word means? We have no clue, but maybe looking at what the root words are we can figure it out:

do - action verb, make, engage in

a- a space filler ex. "We..a..don't hit...a...a brother, a...huh mom?"

Ya, still no clue. This is a word that William uses. He just randomly yells out, "Doo-ah", so now when we say to him, "Doo-ah" he answers with, "Not Doo-ah...dat Doo-ah". What on earth is that (dat)?

Then I realized that "dat" was actually "Grant". So, Grant's Doo-ah, but then he'll say "Daddy Doo-ah", or "Der Doo-ah" (Der= Roger). Help! We don't know if he is calling Grant, and the rest of us, names, or giving us a compliment. I think he's calling us names, but I can hope that my child is sweet, right?

Also, the other night when we were having a "Doo-ah" conversation, someone said that William was "Doo-ah". He got a silly grin on his face, making me believe that if it has a mean connotation, it can't be too mean. Maybe it's like everything else my boys say, just plain silly.

Boundless love

I walked up behind Roger, wrapped my arms around him and told him that I loved him. He then told me that he loved me. Playfully,to get our little "I love you more" game started, I asked, "Who loves you more?"
"Jesus"

Game over, Roger won. Too bad I'm not as insightful as my 3 year old.

Joseph Smith?

Yes, that is a play sword that Roger is attempting to swallow

As Roger was playing by himself, singing made up 3-year-old songs to himself, I heard Mikey yell out:

"NO, I'm Mikey. He had brown hair, I have yellow hair! Do not call me Joseph Smith!!!"

Roger had only mentioned Joseph Smith's name, but did not call Mikey Joseph Smith. And how does hair color determine if you're someone or not. LeNae just dyed her hair dark, so does that make her "Loni"?

Payday

As a mother, there are times that I feel as though the work I do goes unnoticed and not appreciated. Well, yesterday was an exception.

Fridays' are my "scrub the bathrooms" days, which with 2 full and 2 half bathrooms, it can be a long daunting task. But the worst part is that I have 3 boys that have very bad aim, making the task very unpleasant and smelly. The bathroom that they use the most I usually have to scrub the toilet and surrounding areas more often. Sometimes I wonder if my boys understand that you're supposed to pee into the toilet, not just open the bathroom door and shoot towards the toilet.

After scrubbing the inside of the toilet, I will let the blue cleaner sit inside the bowl for awhile to allow the bleaching and sterilizing powers take over. Therefore, the water in the toilet is blue.

I was in the kitchen when I heard Roger excitedly call out:

"Who cleaned the Bathroom!!" he then ran out to me, "Mom! You clean the bathroom? Thank you so much!! I love you". He then jumped into my arms to hug me.

Who would have thought that a simple bathroom cleaning would invoke such a great response. That should cause me to enjoy cleaning the bathroom more, but it won't.

Joy School Valentine's Day Party

Last Wednesday was a very windy night. I woke up several times during the night because of the noise made by the wind. The next morning I looked out at our yard to inspect our property. When I looked out the back door, I recognized that something was different, but just couldn't figure out what it was. After a moment, I realized that our trampoline was missing. I looked around our fenced in yard, only to discover that it was in my back neighbor's yard. The trampoline had gone over the fence and was sitting in our neighbor's yard, upright and perfect, as if it had always been there. I really would have suspected that my neighbors had stolen our trampoline, had they not been an elderly couple.

Monday we had a Valentine's day party for Joy School at our house. So, the first event on the schedule was getting the trampoline back in our yard. It is a heavy beast, but with everyone's help, we surprisingly got it over the fence and back in it's spot in 5 minutes.

Since the party was for the kids, we did have them put together candy necklaces, William had Jenna help him and Greg pushed his daughter out so he could put together one.

The kids exchanged Valentines Roger got to give his Valentine a hug

They played "Attack Greg" Jenny took Mikey into a corner and painted his fingernails to give Todd a hard time. Mikey did not like having his nails painted, and I had to take him upstairs immediately to take off the paint because of his dislike. "We don't put nail polish on boys, ...only girls wear nail polish, not boys."

But, his brother felt differently. Roger enjoyed having his nails painted, but mostly because the nail polish was his favorite color, blue.

Valentine's Day

My friend posted this, and I thought it was pretty cute, and fun. The idea is from the book Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak and the idea is to tell your love story in 6 words. So in celebration of Valentine's day, here are some of mine:

Don't deserve the love he gives
Supportive love is always given freely
I'll never regret marrying him
He's always fun to laugh with
Lots of living in short time
Microbiology is such a pain, nevermind
Science bonded us, children strengthend us
Why so many children so soon?



Todd's is: This party definately is not over
Sweet, I know, so glad he got in touch with his sensitive side

I had a nice litttle Valentine's day. To help celebrate, I made chocolate covered strawberries and grapes.
Todd got me this gorgeous ring, the boys loved the box it came in. My dad sent me these:
I have always been able to count on getting flowers from him every Valentine's Day

Had a "Girl Party" with my friend and her cute girls (ya, that made me want a girl even more, thanks) while watching American Idol - Taylor Viafanua, who made it to the top 36, is actually an old family friend, so we're voting for her.
That evening Jenny came over with her kids to watch my kids so Todd & I could go out. We went to Cheesecake Factory, which was packed! I put our name in at 4:30 and we didn't eat until 6:30, glad I put our name in when I did (and glad we live super close so I was able to go home after putting our name in).

Jesus so Happy

Roger has become very concerned about making Jesus so happy.

I think it started by my telling him that when he fights with his brothers, it makes Jesus sad. So whenever he does something good, he asks, or rather confirms to me, "That makes Jesus so happy".

I was at the craft store picking out ribbon (yes, with all four kids, but I had LeNae with me also). I did allow the older boys to walk around until Roger and William lost that privilege. Roger started shrieking from the shopping cart while pointing to a spool of ribbon that had a tail of ribbon hanging off.

"What's wrong?"

"I need to roll it" he replied. I took the shopping cart near the ribbon and he rolled it up.

"That makes Jesus so happy, Mom"

He says this all the time, even when probably not the truth. Like today we were looking at a book and he saw the word "squares".

"Mom! There's two S's! Two S's! That makes Jesus so happy!"

One game I will play with the boys is "Eat your ...." where I will act like I'm grabbing a body part and eating eat. Like, "I'm going to eat your head", and I'll pretend to grab their head and eat it. Roger gets very upset and serious about this game, demanding that I return the item, and freaking out if I don't.

The other day I told Mikey that I was going to eat his kidneys as I grabbed around his stomach. "Mom, kidney's in the back". I guess I need to take an anatomy class, thanks to my 4 year-old.

Here's a clip of both Mikey and Roger.

One of those days

This morning I woke up to a messy kitchen, the table was still set with the used dishes from the night before, crumbs were found holding onto my bare feet, and toys were strewn throughout the living room. I hate waking up to a messy main floor. I usually try to at least straighten up before going to bed, having a cleaner "working area" to wake up to usually helps me have a better day, but I was out last night so I didn't get the chance. The curse of not having it clean came upon me.

I woke up this morning with plenty of time to make it to the library for story time. But, I did exercise a little bit longer than usual, and read my scriptures a little too long. It came time to make breakfast and because of the lost time, and the fact that we only have 5 eggs, I decided to have cereal. It went well, besides the fact that Roger spent more than half of breakfast crying because he wanted to put the toy snake away, not have William do it.

I noticed that Mikey was wearing the same clothes he has been wearing for the last two days., and they were filthy. I asked him to run upstairs and change his clothes. Meanwhile I was getting everyone ready to get into the car to go to story time. As I was herding everyone to the car, I yelled for Mikey to come get his coat and shoes on.

Believe it or not, sometimes loading up 4 kids takes time, so it was no surprise that we got to the library just as story time was starting, that wasn't counting the time it was going to take to unload and herd all the kids to the back of the building.

We entered story time 5 minutes late, which I always hate. When I'm already in story time, sitting down when other people arrive, people don't notice as much the number of children I have with me. When I come late, it screams that I have tons of children and no control over any of them.

As I sat there, I realized in horror that Mikey did not change his clothes. His khaki pants had mud, chocolate, and grass stains all up and down them, and they were wrinkled to boot. His shirt didn't appear too dirty, but it was on backwards (the joys of having kids dress themselves). Both he and Roger had bedhead hair, and I don't mean the hair product. And of course during the entire time I had at least one child wandering around. I was wearing the sign that read, "BAD MOM". But if this had been the most of our problems, the most of my embarrassment, I would have been fine, I would have celebrated. But no, it gets worse.

After story time was over, we were in the kid's area of the library. It was especially full of people today, and there were some women that I knew, so I was happy to hang out and chat while the kiddos played with the toys and other children. I was sitting at a table where Roger was across from me working on a puzzle. He had a weird look on his face, but I ignored my motherly intuition and continued chatting. He started crying about something, but the crying caused his words to be difficult to understand. Of course this got all the mothers in the area to turn and look our way. "What? Roger, what do you need?" I asked.

"I peed my paaants" he then fell to the floor where I couldn't see him.

"Guess it's time to go home" I said as I grabbed Grant and was standing up when several women who were standing near Roger started telling me that he was taking off his pants. I ran over, his pants were almost off his knees, and to make matters worse, he had refused to wear underpants today. The good news was that he had dark pants that didn't show off the wetness too much, the bad news was that he peed a lot, there were two dark puddles on the carpet underneath where he stood. I pulled his pants up, stood him up, then had to endure this moment for a little longer as I gathered up my other children who were busy playing. Thankfully neither Mikey or William put up a fight about leaving.

Usually when I go to the library, we will stay for about 2 hours. The kids enjoy being there, and with all the time and energy it takes to get the kids there, I like to stay long enough to make it worth the trip. As terrible as it all was, the thing I was upset about was that we had to leave the library after being there only an hour. But, I did find myself chuckling as I was leaving, thinking, "Wow, that's awkward".

So tonight, this is what my kitchen looks like:

Family Picture Attempt

Why does this have to happen?

Why can't I get everyone looking at the camera and making a good face all in the same picture, myself included?

My Birthday Day

I turned the old age of 26 - old I know. I actually feel a lot older than this. It's not the age, but the mileage. I guess I should be at least 5 years older, but I am going to celebrate my young age.

I woke up this morning to Todd slipping something around my neck. He was trying to not wake me, but because I was surrounded by the children in my bed, it wasn't accomplished successfully. I woke up for just a second, but because I was tired and had a child on top of each arm, I didn't inspect what was around my neck but rather fell back asleep. When I woke up later, I checked the necklace, hoping that he got me a beautiful necklace. Imagine my disappointment when I found that it was an Ohio State emblem. Ya, Todd is determined to make me an Ohio girl. Not that I hate the necklace, but just expected it to be something more my style.

My friends came over and made me lunch and a cake. It was so sweet and lots of fun. Yvonne stayed, and it being a nice day outside, we took our boys on a little walk so they could play in the snow.

That evening we went to an Early Childhood PTA Valentine's day party. They had a jump house, pizza, games, and entertainment.

The boys had a great time in the jump house - or would it be called a jump maze. Roger would do crazy jumps. William loved it, even though he had a difficult time getting over some of the climbing walls. Also he would get upset because he could not comprehend that he had to stand in line and wait his turn.

Luckily he has an older brother that would take him by the hand

Dinner was pizza served in the Elementary school's cafeteria. It was kind of fun eating in there.

I don't know why my kids are sitting so close together, they had plenty of room around them.

For the entertainment, they had a "Bubble Lady" who did all sorts of tricks with bubbles. The boys were mesmerized by all of the bubbles she produced.Her last trick was using a hula-hoop to make huge bubbles while someone would stand in the middle of the bubble. She called Mikey up as a volunteer, which he loved. When she pulled the bubble up over Mikey, he shot his hands out causing the bubble to burst. He thought he was hilarious.

Grant enjoyed the party, and even got out of his stroller for a minute.

Only for a minute though.

After getting home and putting the kids to bed, my friend came over and watched the kids while Todd, LeNae, and I went to the city to go salsa dancing. Todd and I had taken ballroom dance classes for like 6 months while in Athens, so we were excited to try it again. Unfortunately we were a little rusty, but had fun nonetheless.

Get your shovels out

I know as you are looking out at all the snow you are wishing you had someone that would shovel your driveway and sidewalks. Well, be jealous of me.

I have four boys, yes, and some day it is going to be awesome!

The oldest two have already started with their shoveling.

It's too bad that they don't understand that you're supposed to remove the snow from the sidewalk and put it to the side, not the other way around.

Fortunately, I do have my friend, who shovels her own driveway and walk, that comes over and shovels mine, causing Todd all sorts of embarrassment.

Nature Center

For Joy School we went to a nearby Nature Center. They have snakes, fish, iguanas, turtles, a hawk, skunk, eagle, deer, owls, etc. Since Todd had the day off, he joined us. I have taken the boys there several times, but Todd had never been. He was very impressed and had a lot of fun.

Mikey's favorite part was the iguanas. He kept on talking and talking about them. He also did enjoy seeing the hawk....well, more the hawk's food. The hawk had a dead mouse in it's claws and was eating away. Mikey said, "It's a mice like Feivel (in Feivel goes West)".

William loved the rattlesnake. He and I sat by the snake container for awhile. The rattle snake started hitting the glass in front of William. William put his finger in front of the glass and said, "Bu-bite", willing the snake to bite his finger. Hopefully he'll never come in contact with a snake.Roger was so busy flirting with Anna, I'm not sure that he saw anything but her. Here they posed for their "prom photo".

Grant just enjoyed being held by Daddy