I've was talking to alaina about the nerves in the body. I told her how nerves were the biggest tattletales in the world because every time someone does something to her, they run up and tell the brain what happened. Then I demonstrated how it worked by tickling and poking her while pretended to be the voice of her nerves, saying, "Hey brain, she's poking me. She's tickling me." Alaina's first inclination is to think I'm joking with her and didn't believe me for a few minutes. After I convinced her that I was telling her the truth she went down stairs and pulled Austin aside. "Your nerves tattletale everything to your brain. Everything." Austin, of course, believed her instantly and with a wave of understanding said, "Wow, Ethan's nerves must really tattletale a lot!" He was referring to Ethan's penchant for tattletalling on everything and everyone at every moment. Although, Austin comment was more true than he realizes.
I walked up to Ethan's classroom to pick him up after school one day. As he walked out of his classroom I noticed a crumpled up little piece of paper in his hand. Before I could say anything to him, a classmate of his called his name out. As Ethan looked back at the sweet little blond girl, she lifted her hand up to her ear in the universal sign for telephone and said, " Call me." Sure enough when I looked closer at the crumpled up paper, I saw 7 digits scrawled out in crayon next to the name Sydney. 1st grade? Don't I have a few more years before I have to beat away cute girls from my sons?
Rob was trying to figure out what to say in his talk for church. He was suppose to write about the atonement, and looking anywhere possible for inspiration he asked Laina, "What do we have to do to live with Jesus again?" She doesn't skip a beat, "Die."
At dinner Austin declared, "I have so many girlfriends that I can't even remember my girlfriends' names. Mama, I kind of like my girlfriends." Again. Too early for that kind of talk.
Alaina's class from Charlotte wrote her a letter and one in particular made her a bit twitterpated. She had me read it over and over and keeps it in her desk for safe keeping. It reads, "Alaina, I miss you, my little buten. I hop you fil betr soon. Camden." Every time she mentions it she gets a little starry-eyed. Here she is at a picnic in what she calls her 'picnic dress,' obviously.
Ready for bed, Ethan came down the stairs to give me a goodnight hug and kiss. I stood waiting at the bottom of the stairs and he stopped a couple steps above me. Looking down at me he said, with authority, "Mom. I want to be the King of Portland!" Austin, stomped down the stairs just in time to hear Ethan. I asked, "Well, how about the President of the United States. Before Ethan could reply, Austin said, "I want to be the President. The President of the Carolinas." (seriously...'the Carolinas' where did he get that?) I guess we need to learn how to aim a little higher around here.

Yesterday Austin refused to go to Heaven when he dies. "All the most cool golf places are here on earth. It wouldn't even be fun to golf in clouds." Random child. He was a puddle of tears when I told him there wasn't much choice. So he decided, "Well if I get there and there aren't then I'll just come right back down to earth." I informed him that I didn't think you could just come back down whenever you wanted...that this life was a one-time deal. Smarty pants retorted, "Well, Jesus did it."

The twins set up all their stuffed animals up by the window. "They are watching Disney movies" Do you think they are still going through TV withdrawal?

Putting Ethan to bed tonight I was cuddling up to him and told him I had to leave because I had to go and clean up the kitchen. "Well," he mused, "that works out pretty great for me. When I wake up it will be all sparkly and clean." I snuggled a little deeper in the covers. "Well, it isn't like I want to clean up but someone has to do it." Ethan, yawned and with half-closed eyelids, told me, "Well. I like cleaning." Then, after thinking about it for a second, " Unless my legs are tired." And thinking a bit more about it, his voice became a little more emphatic, " And I'll never clean up the WHOLE house. You can just forget about that." With that out in the open he relaxed and a few minutes later he was breathing steady and slow. It is amazing how quickly that child can fall asleep. Thinking about his last comment, I brushed his hair to the side and whispered, "I already have, baby." and I rolled out of bed to attack my kitchen.

I hurt my knee. I first hurt it while running on the hilly side of the park. It wasn't too bad but a little annoying. After resting it a couple of days plus a weekend, I tried it out again. This time while I was on the hill, it totally gave out of me. I had to walk back to the car. So, I let it heal for about a week and promised not to run on any more hills. Ever. Which lasted a couple more days until Ethan's big fall up our neighbor's very long, very steep driveway. When I ran to get him my knee decided that it was now war. I've iced it. I've rested it. Yesterday I took a whole day and did nothing. The result has been a slightly better knee but only if I walk carefully.

The result of all this knee nonsense is that I've been a little crafty lately. Of course, I mean completely, over-board, OCD crafty. I have no control over myself when it comes to my local craft store, my sewing machine and sparkly buttons. None. Worse than that is the fact that I feel no guilt about it. In fact the only feeling I get is a slight pang of embarrassment when I look back and see just how far I let myself go. Apparently, that embarrassment is either too fleeting or not strong enough to keep me from blogging pictures of my gaudy, overly-embellished projects. And this here, is one of dem blogs.

Capes.

About 7 months ago, Austin begged me to buy material to make super-hero capes for him. I caved and bought a bunch o fleece (it was winter) and promptly put it into my closet and forgot about it. A week ago I brought it out and cut out the capes. When Austin saw the scrapes of the floor he immediately declared, "You are making my cape now!" Sometimes that boy has a memory like an elephant. After that moment, the whole 'surprise' thing went out the window. Between the kids taking sneak-peeks of their own capes and those same kids trying to keep the heavy secret of what I was doing to the other capes, the whole surprise lasted about 1 evening. Regardless, they haven't had a legal look at them yet and they won't now until the twins' b-day.

Here they are.

Ethan's Cape

Ethan informed me that he LOVES Star Wars even though he has never seen it. Even though it isn't his birthday coming up, I knew it would be easier to just make all three at the same time. All three are reversible and I hate the idea of things around my babies' necks and so I tried to make the capes more like a back-pack. If I were to do them again, I would like to tinker with the shoulder strap idea a little more so they wouldn't pull the material at the side so much.

A light-saber


Space ship. I spent a whole evening trying to put together the head of Darth Vader but it turned into a total nightmare. By the end of the night I had an image of a gray-headed, goofy looking face with a terrible black mullet. I think the fact that his helmet is all black was making it hard for me. So we trashed Darth Vader and went for the Space Ship.
In the end, the space ship ended up being my favorite cape. The black is very sparkly (hard to see in the picture) and it just turned out cool.


Austin's Cape

Austin is obsessed with many things. The main two being Bolt (the movie/dog/stuffed animal) and Legos. So that is what he got.

Super Lego-Man!

You can barely see those little buttons on the right and left of super-lego man? Austin is crazy about the ABC's (still) and dogs (always). When I went to Joann's he saw these buttons and went crazy about them and so I promised I'd put them on. Here is the close up of the tiny little dog button.




And of course, the Super Bolt.


Little Laina loves unicorns. Loves them. And this one I went really crazy on. It is cuter in person with all the many, many little buttons and mushrooms.
Here is a close-up.

And she adores anything magical.


So. Just as a last note to myself. If I ever do one of these again, I'll have to remember to use cotton and not fleece. I have a very strong feeling that after a few good days of playing too roughly with these little things, the fleece is going to get all stretchy and pulled out of shape. We'll see.

But for now, my kids can romp around in fleece super-capes. Well...they can after May 30th.

Today started out so promising. The kids all got dressed by themselves. The boys did their own hair (Ethan wanted a 'cool' mohawk and Austin wanted to look like a jaguar. Naturally.) Such happy little kiddies for Sunday.

After church we took a little walk/ride to enjoy our relatively nice weather. It was calm and peaceful until Ethan took a face-plant down our neighbor's steep cement driveway. Oooh, the poor child. The only way I was able to get the grim out of his arms and head was to put him in a bath and sponge him. He was in so much pain, he was shaking. Luckily nothing was broken and he was wearing a helmet (which took a beating, so thank goodness he was wearing it!) Robert thinks the initial hit knocked the helmet back and then the rebound hit skinned his forehead. After his bath we let the air get to his wounds.

I kept him busy all evening with a scintillating game of Monopoly (why me?!) but when it came time for bed, we had a problem.

No matter how he tried to lay down, some part of his raw skin was hitting the bed and hurting him.Isn't he pathetic? Poor sweetie. So, I used some gauze and taped it on with band aids (tape would have worked better, if I had known where it was.) Still, we weren't able to put his arms down without a lot of pain.
Until, of course, I came up with my brilliant plan of having a reverent sleeping boy. That seemed to work and cheer him up a little. A few minutes later and he was fast asleep. I just hope he feels better tomorrow morning for his first field trip.
What do you think would look worse? Giant gauze strips taped to his body or the bloody, scabby bruises?