Parenting Win!

The Frog came home from a birthday party recently...

Me: How was the party? Was it fun?
The Frog: Good. Yeah.
Me: Did they have food?
The Frog: Yes, I ate the pizza but I didn't eat any birthday cake.
Me: Really?!!  Why not?
The Frog:  It was store bought...

yesssssssssssss

A Day in the Life of a Toddler

Hazel has definitely been the one that plays best by herself - although Peach maybe never got a chance to prove herself, being squished in between the other two so closely.  I have appreciated Hazel's self-entertaining abilities immensely, especially with having a new baby around.  However, sometimes this leads me to stumble upon some interesting findings.

Fairly normal, just a regular-old day building a snow man. inside.  Hazel is truly her mama's daughter and often prefers to stay inside on a cold day, observing the beautiful the snow from the warmer side of the window.  Sometimes her older siblings can get her to go out, but you'd never find her out in the snow by herself, and for sure not in a sled. No. Way. Whereas The Frog, who absolutely loves it, will go out alone if he must.

Hazel often gets ahold of my phone and enjoys playing with the few functions that require no password, especially setting random alarms (that occasionally go off in the middle of the night...) and taking photos.  Usually it's just one blurry shot with 22 exact replicas, but occasionally something interesting appears.  I like that you can see her reflection in the door knob.

Once I was going through her photos and I noticed that she had taken at least 80 shots of the pew behind ours one Sunday.  It was actually hilarious to scroll through because most of the shots were a play-by-play of a 2-year old trying to climb over the back of her pew and her mom struggling to keep her from doing it.

Hazel often leaves little remnants of human life, whether it be arranged artifact displays

or evidence of the discovery that chopsticks happen to perfectly fit inside the bookcase-shelf peg-holes.  (and a butterfly eraser not only stays on a pencil, but also fits on a chopstick end!  How multifaceted!)

Hazel: "Mom.  Guess which hand the carrot is in."
Me: "The left"
Hazel: (whispering) "Mom, guess the other one"
Me: "The right"
Hazel: (yelling triumphantly) "WRONG!!"

Hazel loves to make and abandon "obsperiments" (experiments) anywhere, but mostly in the bathroom or kitchen.  For awhile she asked if she could make "Christmas soup" which always consists of water and lots of cinnamon, usually some sprinkles, and then any combination of other spices, grains, and leavening agents available at the time.  She has, thankfully, learned never to partake of her "Christmas soups".

This is the day Hazel discovered that "Uni" (short for "unicorn", obviously) could share her clothes and hair accessories.

I have no explanation for what is going on here...  Hopefully she's not anticipating a future game with Toad.

I believe I ordered a hamburger, and this is what she brought me.  Glad she's health conscious.

Little Toad can boast that he has already been accessorized more than any of his predecessors by 4 months.  Usually he has nothing to do with it, but he takes it in stride.  Not pictured are the hair clips, outerwear and even a hicky his oldest sister gave him on his fore arm.

Why hang only one hanger on your bunkbed ladder, when 10 hangers would be 10 times the fun?!

This lovely number was a gift to moi from Peach.  She wrote some sweet nothings and then taped a bunch of my foreign coins and a few other little numbers as well.  This must have impressed Hazel immensely for soon thereafter I was presented with this:

Which is really rather sweet since she taped a few of her most prized possessions (and had Peach write a few more sweet nothings on her behalf...) and gave it to me. :)

Hazel is quite the princess in the making.  She enjoys all things pink, sparkley, cupcake, rainbow or fairy related.  She loves dresses and skirts and is usually wearing one, even if she also has on pants.  I could fill pages and pages of hilarious outfit combinations she painstakingly chooses for herself.  I don't like to take too many photos of outfits, though, because I don't want her to associate what she wears with what I think of her.  I try to constantly remind her that the thing that makes her the most beautiful is being kind and her smile.

Don't you just want to squeeze her?!

"Monkey Eats" Rhymes with Orange

Every time I get pregnant and have a new baby, I have noticed a decline in my ability to procure words at the right times or remember why I walked into a room.  I always chalked it up to the sleep deprivation and stolen Omega-3s but I swear this time it is SO BAD that there must be some old age thrown in there.  I thought that having more time to recover from the previous 3 babies would have helped.  (and don't get me started about this post-4th baby belly...)

SO, this time I decided to take matters into my own hands and actively get this memory exercised!  Rather than memorizing pi to the 100th place or other triumphant (yet pointless) memory feats, I am trying to learn a few languages. I got the Duo Lingo app for my phone and now while I'm nursing, I review my Spanish and Hungarian, and I'm trying to learn several others as well.

Now for the reason I felt inspired to sit down...

I have always felt it a travesty that nothing rhymes with orange.  I am one who enjoys making up my own lyrics to beloved tunes, on the fly, and un-rhyme-able words really throw off my game!

Well, as I have been studying French, it has become very apparent that many many words, in French, rhyme with "orange".  "I eat" ("je mange"= zhuh mahnzh) for one- which makes it exceedingly fun to say "I eat an orange"  = "Je mange une orange", but even more fun to say "The monkey eats an orange" = "Le sange mange une orange".

Just out of curiosity, I wanted to find out exactly how many words rhyme with "orange" in French.  Turns out 625!!

So if you ever feel like rhyming with orange, rest assured it should be fairly easy in French!

FHE Fail

In our family, we have what we call FHE - short for "Family Home Evening".  Every Monday (almost), after dinner, we have a family pow-wow of sorts where we can discuss any family issues, have a short lesson on something I think would be valuable for our kids, and then usually a treat (this is a loose term.  My kids consider graham crackers w/ leftover frosting, or a spoonful of peanutbutter with chocolate chips stuck in it to be a treat) and an activity of some kind (board/card games, talent shows, etc.).  Lessons have ranged from acting out scripture stories, how to accept a "no" answer, all the way to how to properly fold laundry.

This past Monday, I thought we needed a refresher in "honesty".  Things were going very well- I told the classic story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, everyone offered their thoughts about the moral of the story, why people lie, why it's important to always tell the truth, what bad things can happen if we lie, etc etc.

 Then, I decided to illustrate the point that telling one lie often ends up spiraling into many many lies, to cover up the first lie.  I should have quit while I was ahead...

I asked The Frog to try to find out about my day.

The Frog: "So mom, what did you do today while I was at school?"
Me: "I discovered a grizzly bear in our yard, and so I chased it down!"
The Frog: "Oh really?  I thought grizzly bears didn't live around here, where did it come from?"
Me: "It escaped from a circus!"
The Frog: "Where is the circus?"
Me: "In Lowell."
The Frog: "How did you hear about it?"
Me: "Dad told me."
etc. etc.

I eventually cut it off in order to point out that I had to keep lying to cover up my initial lie.

Hazel raises her hand, so I call on her:
Hazel: "mom, can I have a turn telling lies?!"

Then she makes us ask about her day and she makes up some wild story about a rabbit.

Pretty soon, everyone sees how FUN it is to tell lies and wants to take turns!

**smacking forehead**