A bunch of little stories.
My little boys love to bring me flowers. And let's face it...I love getting getting them. They come in all different ways. Sometimes they look like this:
Smooshed, squished, stemless, missing half of their petals. In other words...just perfect. They bring those damaged, barely-staying-together flowers in and we smell them and we admire them. Then I put them carefully into any container that might hold them and smile every time I see those fleeting symbols of little-boy love. I don't think any fancy store-bought bouquet could ever be more beautiful than this.
The other way I often get flowers from my boys is in the form of potpourri. They just love tearing those beautiful roses apart and bringing in little mountain of petals. One day Jason came in with a broad smile and two fistfuls of petals. He carefully separated them into little piles and handed one to Emmett and one to me. We loved them. We smelled them. We agreed that they might be the best petals we've seen yet. Jason was content. Then he noticed that he had some extras. Excitedly, he declared, "This must be for someone
really important!" Thinking on that for a second, he concluded, "Yes! Dad and Me!"
Sometimes raising a red-blooded teenager and a parrot-like two year old together is not an excellent mix. One of them says things out of anger and the other out of delight. For example, I was having a pleasant time playing with my sweet little Emmett. He had found a light saber and was swinging it around. Suddenly he pointed that light saber right at me and said, "I got you! You baa...bass...bastard!" Whoa! I could only sputter out a shocked, "What did you say?" Clear as a bell, and with a lot more confidence, he points that light saber right at my chest and cheerfully repeats, "I got you! You Bastard!" I took a couple of calming breaths and managed to breezily ask, "Just where did you hear that?" He responded with just as much energy as before, quite emphatically, "From my mouth!" And since he was so sure of himself, he dug in a little deeper with more (but also more appropriate for a 2-year old) taunts. "You pie!!! You are mommy pie! You so silly!" I smiled sweetly at my lovely baby and marched out of the room to find my not-so-sweet 13 year old. Busted Ethan
.
About 5 days after the whole 'bastard' incident, I found myself giving my little boys a bowl of ice-cream for no particular reason. Just because I could. As I sat in front of Emmett, putting his bowl together, he put his hand on my head and said in a soft, sweet, crystal-clear voice. ""Mama. You are
not a bastard." What sweeter words could a Mother hear? And actually, the English-major in me was rather impressed that he used the term in the proper context. I'm a nerd that way.
Robert and Emmett in a box. Literally.
Mornings at our house gets a little crazy. The big kids are running around looking for all the things they've lost. Books, bags, shoes. While I'm running around finding those lost items, they are forgetting to eat, brush teeth, make their lunches. In between finding lost items and shouting step-by-step hygiene instructions (ie - being amazing) I'm also running around trying to get the two babies ready enough to throw everyone in the car so that we can get those kids to school. One morning, I thought everyone was awake and getting ready for school. I ran into the little boys room to grab their clothes and all of a sudden, from behind me, I hear a clear but very drawn-out, "What. The heck! Are you doing here?!" I look back and there is Emmett siting straight up in bed. His bed hair is defying gravity and the old man grumpy expression set in stone on his face is doing a grand job at conveying his intense displeasure with being woken up by a noisy, nuisance of a mother.
When the big kids started going to school, I had two very different reactions from the little boys. Jason told me that he 'never, ever, ever, ever,' wanted to leave his Mama. When I told him how fun it would be he broke down in tears at the very thought of it. Emmett, on the other hand, screams all the way home from drop-off...everyday. He desperately wants to join those big kids and go to school. He can hardly handle watching them do things without him. (Incidently, when we go to pick them up he shouts, "I don't want the big kids. I say 'go away'" To help both the boys, I decided to sign them up for a little community class called 'messy Mondays.' All they did was paint & play with play-doh. (seriously, a waste of money...except that it was super cheap and both the boys got a taste of being in a classroom.) I knew the boys would be excited when I told them about the class, and so I got them together and excitedly asked, "Do you know what today is?" Jason, my ever-enthusiastic child yelled out, "Sunday?!" small pause. "Christmas!!!?" Messy Monday just seemed like a let-down after that.
The kid's are all having a bit of a hard time adjusting to their new school. There are things that all of them really like, but also a bunch of things they don't care for. They have uniforms, (The horror!) They have a devotional before school starts, (stop the madness!) And finally, every Friday is called "Formal Friday" where they have to dress up in a tie/slacks or tie/dress and at the end of the day they meet some professionals from around the community. (We really want to make their lives miserable.) For each kid one of these things really bothers them. For Alaina, it's the devotional. Actually, to be more precise, it is the waiting time after the devotional and while the kids are dismissed to their classes. During that time, a very peppy, drama teacher plays on the ukulele and gets the kids singing songs. (The grades are K-12, so a lot of those times, the songs are really geared towards little ones.) Alaina can't stand it. It's entirely too cheerleader-ish for her. "2,4,5, 8...who do we appreciate! Alaina!) During dinner one night, Rob asked Alaina how they disciplined at school and Alaina immediately deadpanned, "They make you listen to the ukulele lady." Pish Posh. What a pill. Here is Alaina and Austin after Fancy oops, I mean, Formal Friday. See how fast Austin got out of his clothes....he still had his shoes on, though.
Just for Alaina, I found these rather chipper Vegas Glasses. I threatened her that I was going to buy them and wear them at drop of. She wasn't amused.
Robert left for the Philippines yesterday. The morning he left, I had been up all night and only managed to get 2 1/2 hours of sleep. It was a combination of helping Robert get ready, and having Emmett wake up twice and Jason once. I also had to get up and take Rob to the airport by 5. So...no sleep that night. That means that last night, I was dog tired. I fell into bed about 9:00 and was out. I woke up around 4 in the morning to Ethan in my doorway shout-talking (in the special way that he has), "Mom! Mom! MOM!!" First thoughts that rush through are, 'fire, death, flood, earthquake.' What I hear as I jumped up in a daze was, "What is wrong with you?!?!" Sometimes my son is just a little too much for me. I managed to sputter out a very clever, "Uhh." That's all. My confustion didn't slow down Ethan. "Mom." He continued, "
What is that
noise coming out of your mouth!? It sounds like a horn!" Then it clicked. No fire, then. No emergency of any kind. I found my voice again and managed to respond, "Yeah. It's called snoring. Because I was sleeping.
WAS sleeping, that is. Not now. Now I'm being yelled at." And with that, I turned over and prayed that I'd be able to start snoring again before he left my room.
Emmett loves to touched. Every night he asks me to give his back a "rub scratch." You know...a little of both. He also manages to give very satisfying encouragement. Lots of sweet sighs. Lots of 'ahhs' and 'that's nice.' However, if you try to stop the rub scratch before he's asleep, he'll keep grabbing your hand and putting it back on his back. He's the boss.
Emmett is so curious. He has started to phrase his questions in a funny way. He'll ask, "Why is that guitar there?" and before he takes a breath, he follows up with a quick, "Why?" Or if it is a 'how' question, it might go like this, " How is that balloon not falling? How?" But the best part is that he can ask about 20 'why' or 'how' questions in a single breath. He is so curious and so observant.
Jason came down stairs in a rather chipper mood. Let's face it...he's a morning guy. He's always full of hugs and smiles in the morning. This morning he announced, "I just woke up because I dreamed all my dreams." Check that off the list. Time to start the day.
Jason acts out everything. When he hurts himself, no matter how upset he is, he'll come in and reenact the entire scenario. Right up to the point that he is on the ground crying. If something good happens, he does the same thing. He reenacts jokes he tells or surprises that got to him. He is always on instant replay. After a storm he was trying to tell me about the thunder and this is what I got, "I went AAAAHHHH. It went KABOOM! It is humongous thunder!!! Yes it was." Now waving his arms up and down he concludes, "It was HUMONGOUS-ER thunder!"
Emmett is always learning things. On the way home he declared, to no one in particular, "My wholer name is Emmett Carter Jones. Jason's wholer name is Jason Robert Coby Jones."
While in Target we were talking about our last trip to Disneyland. Suddenly Jason yelled out, "I LOVE Mickey Mouse with ALL my heart!!" That got a couple shoppers to smile. Whenever he mentions Disneyland, he calls it Never Land.
Emmett peed his pants and instead of getting upset, he started to giggle. Emmett has the cutest giggle, by the way. It is full of high pitch, 'hee hee hee's' usually with a hand over his mouth. So, he starts giggling and says, "I did not go potty in the toilet AND Daddy grounded me!" I don't think he really understands what that means.
Just a few little phrases I heard from emmett today, "My tummy's rumbling. But... that's alright." and "Where is mine awesome turtle." He just expresses himself in such an articulate, silly way. I love to hear him talk.
