Bedtime Songs

For awhile, at bedtime, instead of singing 2 songs to Peach, as usual, she has requested to sing to me the second song.  The first time she did it, I quickly realized it was a stalling technique...  She "sang" nonstop for about 5 minutes about everything and nothing.  Whenever she begins her song, it always starts out, "Houses everywhere..." and then she throws in everything she can see in the room, and other tidbits of information she picked up that day or sometime recently.

The tune is unrecognizable to me and there seems to be no real rhythm.  (either that, or the time signature changes frequently...)

It's cute all the same. :)

Peach has gone through quite a few phases with her bedtime song routine, and I thought it would be fun to record them.  Her requests, for a long, long time, used to always be ABCs and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star- I realized later that it was because her "blankie" has letters on one side and stars on the other.  After awhile, she would want to sing Twinkle Twinkle while I did the actions.  (didn't know there were actions?  that's because I made them up! :D)
Later, she started requesting Popcorn Popping and either ABCs or Twinkle Twinkle for the 2nd song.  Slowly, we started changing the words to Popcorn Popping and we had all kinds of things growing on our trees - pancakes flipping & eyeballs rolling are two that come to mind.  Then she always requested Kookaburra and the other song would change.

When I put Hazel down for a nap and I always sing the same 2 songs to her (I've discovered, if you always always sing the same songs before bed, it acts as a kind of sleepy trigger- a signal that it's time to go to sleep.  Never fails, when I start the routine she starts yawning!  Try it!) "Gunk, Gunk" which is a song I'm pretty sure my mom made up- because of the funny "gunk" noise, it gets babies' attention- but I have expanded it to many other animals (it's basically a song about the sounds different animals make.) The "gunk" is kind of a hard sound to describe... you're not really saying "gunk".  It's more of a deep clicking in the back of your throat... or something...  Anyway, the original verse is
gunk gunk
said the little green frog one day
gunk gunk
said the little green frog
gunk gunk
said the little green frog one day
and his eyes went
gunk gunk gunk

So I have added other verses with other sounds:
blub blub says the little blue fish, and his gills went...
ssss ssss says the little red snake, and his tongue went...
bzzz bzzzz says the bumble bee, and his wings went...
tick tock (really tongue clicking) says the little white clock, and his hands went...
cows, pigs, dogs, cats, ducks...

you could probably sing it indefinitely, but I usually just sing those first 5 rounds of it.

The other song is "Give, Said the Little Stream".  So there is a fun song and a quieter song.  Anyway.....

The other day, I think the monitor was one when I sang to Hazel, and Peach really really likes to pretend to be a baby lately...  So she's been requesting "Gunk, Gunk" now.  However, every single time I sing it she interrupts me and says, "mom, frogs don't say "gunk gunk", they say, "ribbit ribbit"!"  And I have to tell her that there are two kinds of frogs- some that say "ribbit" and some that say "gunk".  This one says "gunk".

I usually sing to Peach in her room first, and then sing to The Frog second.  He always asks me what Peach requested before choosing his songs, just in case she asked for something particularly silly so he can get that one too.

Some other bedtime favorites are:
The Baby Bumble Bee
I've Been Eaten by a Boa Constrictor
I Am A Child of God
I Love to See the Temple
How Much is that Doggy in the Window? (and more verses about a cat, fish and bird)
Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam (and it's counterpart- daddy wants me for a snowman)
A Child's Prayer
Families Can Be Together Forever
I'm Trying to be Like Jesus

What are your favorite bedtime songs?

Kid Conversation...ish

We had our ward primary program a couple of Sundays ago.  I don't remember it being like this for me, when I grew up, but in our ward, they always have the kids prepare their own part on a given topic.  For the youngest kids, they will ask them questions and write down their answers for them to share.  I think they asked The Frog what he know about prophets and this was his response:  (and what he shared in sacrament meeting from the pulpit)

"When it is conference time, the prophet speaks in a microphone.  Then, the electricity goes to our house.  We have a book about prophets.  I know who President Monson is, but I don't always know the other guys..."

Kid Conversation

Hazel has this habit of knocking half her food on the floor while she's eating and then being done (**clap clap**) right after I sat down just long enough to have a couple bites...

So I get her out, wash her hands, and set her down in the next room to play while we eat.

She then crawls in and eats the stuff she threw on the floor earlier.  (which hasn't been cleaned up because I'm desperately trying to eat my food before it's completely cold)

Do you remember this?  Okay good.  Enough back story.

The Frog was sitting by the front closet, putting his shoes on for preschool.  Hazel crawls over to him, clutching some floor-toast.

Hazel: (opens big) aaaaaahhhhhhhh aaaaaaahhhhhhhh
The Frog: (copying her)  aaaaaaahhhhhhhh  aaaaaaahhhhhhmfrg
The Frog: (laughing) Mom!  Hazel just fed me some toast!

Halloween!

I'm feeling a bit scroogey...  I didn't let Hazel go trick-or-treating this year because she had a cold.  But I was really excited about a bee costume a friend loaned to us, so I got her all dressed up long enough to take a picture and go visit said friends when it was still too light out to go trick-or-treating, but still after dinner.

It took her some time to get used to the hood...

I confess... I also didn't let Peach go trick-or-treating because she wouldn't take a nap that day, which was weird because she always takes a nap!  I told both of the older kids that if they wanted to go trick-or-treating, they both had to take a nap (because there was no way they were going to make their 7pm bedtime...) and The Frog took one no-questions-asked, whereas Peach, all of a sudden was adamant that she would rather stay up and play over trick-or-treating that night.  "I already had enough candy last night" she said.

ok...

And she didn't fuss about not going either.  weird.

So, The Frog and I embarked, pillow-case in hand, on our trick-or-treating adventure.

Much to my surprise, he wasn't planning to go to every house, as I always did as a kid.
me: "ok, so should we go to so-and-so's next?" (pointing next door)
The Frog: "nooooooo, I want to go to the blah's house." (someone several houses away... even though we know everyone between here and there.)

So, even though we walked by 30 or 40 houses, he only came home with about 6 pieces of candy.  and was perfectly contented.

wow.

And he ate all of it (minus 1 sucker and a few m&ms he shared with Peach) the next day.
which was fine with me.

Something else!! Every year before this one, I would buy the monster bag of candy from Costco and we would hardly put a dent in it.  This year, however, I decided to just get 3 bags (my 3 favorite fun-sized candy bars) and call it good.  And guess what... we ran out! I couldn't believe it!!  It's my fault for telling Jay to give everyone 2 and for eating 3 almond joys and a reese's earlier that day.... **blushing**  luckily, we only had to apologize to one family, but I still feel quite guilty about it.  I should have given them an apple or something.

Anyway, all-in-all, I felt this Halloween had all the benefits (costumes, excitement, candy) with very minimal costs (sleep-deprived, cranky children, too much candy)!  Woo hoo!

Ward Halloween Party

So as I've mentioned before, I'm in the Young Women's organization at my church, and every Halloween, the youth put on a Halloween party for the kids.  Unfortunately, it didn't start until 6:30, which is after Hazel's bed time AND she was sick (and really close to our other kids' bedtime, but we decided to be nice and let them go.  Just this once, mind you...) so she didn't get to go.  BUT I really wanted to have her try on the tinkerbell costume I made for Peach 2 years ago since the only thing I made this year was:

What, you didn't see that a.ma.zing. tiara on Peach's head?  That's right... my pipecleaner sculpting skills even surpassed my own expectations.  Turns out, it was actually a good idea (and not just a cheap, use-what-you-have-on-hand idea like I had intended) because the pipecleaner kind of acts like velcro and stays put on the head really well.  I'll have to store that little nugget away for future use.

Yes.  I gave in and bought a muscle suit for The Frog.  It was just THERE at Costco.  He was begging... I knew I could never make anything that awesome.  I knew I wasn't really going to have time to make anything this year and the price was right, so I totally gave in.  And it was worth it because The Frog pretty much lived in this costume for most of September and all of October.

Here's Peach in her self-designed princess costume.  (more on her extreme independence later...)

Hazel being cute in the Tinkerbell costume.

Hazel getting attacked by the Tinkerbell costume...

Look at these cute kids!

Peach ended up not making it to the toilet in her princess costume before the party, and had to change into something else.  Luckily, we just so happen to have about a billion tutu-ish skirts.  (how else would she be able to don 3 every day?)

Now we're actually at the party.  She wanted a spider on her cheek.  Looks a bit smudged already...  She spent most of her time sitting on one of our neighbors laps at the dig-through-the-hay booth and didn't get very much candy.  (and i'm glad)

Turns out, we had all the avengers there, in toddler form.  Awesome, eh?

The Frog loved the "ghost busters" booth, where they shot at stacked cups with nerf guns.

donut on a string.  classic.

Peach, hoarding her cupcake from the cakewalk.

I dressed up as Mario, but I forgot to take a picture of myself...  But you can probably imagine what I looked like if you just picture a face swap here.  (if only I knew how to use Photoshop, I could recreate it for you.)

We're not done with costumes and Halloween fun just yet...

Parent Conversation

MAN, I've been doing a terrible job at posting...  things have just become so busy and I've allowed myself to sleep in until the kids wake up to get over this darn cold, so I am just perpetually behind (says the laundry that sat unfolded in a bin for 4 days).  To give you a feel for how things are going around here, this little incident occurred yesterday:

Me: (on my way out the door for a Young Women leadership meeting)  Jay, can you just make peanut butter sandwiches for the kids for lunch?  I'll see you at church! Thanks! Bye!

Jay: (via text message 10 minutes later) we don't have any bread.

I can't believe I still haven't reported on Halloween...

Busy Busy!

Last week (the short version):

My week for Peach's preschool + drama at Jay's work + helping with the Halloween carnival at church + YW Presidency meeting + Halloween + Hazel is sick and then I got sick + Dine-O-Round at my house = no blog posts.

And I'm still tired from it all.  Will try to catch up this week.  I finally have something to write about!