I apologize for the poor quality, all pics and movies were taken with Jim’s new and very expensive phone.

MOVIE: Honor swinging

MOVIE: Eden in the slide

This is also the trip where Honor went down a slide and BURNT HIS STOMACH!!! Really bad! He’s such a tuff little kiddo. The slide had been repaired with a black plastic which, evidentially, gets REALLY hot. It wasn’t even that hot of day. I called the City to complain about the slide and they said they’d get it taken care of. We’ll see….

We’ve been spending more time with Jim’s business partner and his family lately. They’ve got two boys relatively close to our kids ages and Eden especially has fun playing with their 3 year old, Christopher. (Don’t ask me why she gets along better with boys… Maybe it’s because they listen to her when she bosses them around.)

Last night we were over at their house for dinner. We had, among other things, watermelon and ice cream. Needless to say, The One Who Must Smear His Food was in true form. I don’t think Honor has made it one day in his life without making a BIG, HUGE mess of his meals. And if Honor is covered with food, that means that I am covered with his food too. He’s such a loving and sweet child, how could he not share the slimey love?

I noticed last night when I got home that I had chocolate ice cream smeared all over my face. (And those of you who know me and my family may attribute the chocolate ice cream on my face to the genetic love for ice cream that I am predisposed to by a certain member of my family. The same certain member who loves ice cream so much that she climbed across a table to eat ice cream out of somebody else’s bowl. But alas, I do not share that same earth shattering, to the core of oneself, LOVE for ice cream. This ice cream on my chin was wholly attributed to the Slimey Monster.)

So anyway, last night Eden and Christopher were playing “Mommy and Daddy” and Christopher was heading off to work. He said to Eden, “Oh, I need to give you a kiss before I go to work!” All eyes were on Jim, but luckily for Christopher, Jim didn’t hear it. He freaked out the other day when they were (very cutely) holding hands.

So, on our way home Jim felt the need to educate Eden on the perils of young boys.

Jim: Eden, we don’t kiss boys, they’re YUCKY; boys are SILMEY. Ok, Eden? We don’t kiss boys.
Eden: OK.

A few minutes later Jim wanted to review with her to make sure he made an impact.
Jim: Do we kiss boys?
Eden: No, we don’t kiss boys, they’re gross.
Me: Well, you can kiss mommy, daddy and Honor.
Eden: No we don’t kiss Honor, he’s slimey. He’s got slimey cheeks and slimey hands and and a slimey head and slimey LIPS. He is SOOOO slimey.

I foresee many a hosing down in the boys future.

This is what Eden said to me yesterday,

“Mom, you have a big, big BUTT.”

Yesterday while I was changing a particularly stinky diaper (Honor says “Poopoo, uuk”), Eden discovered the difference between girls and boys. She said, “Mom Honor has a sore” as she pointed to his penis.

This is where it gets kind of tricky. I don’t want my kids to be the ones who go around to all their friends and inform them of their body parts and their functions. But I also don’t want my kids to be learning about things of this nature from their friends. I guess the way I view it is that if I’m the one who wants to educate my kids, then I need to make sure I’m the first one on the job.

So I told her, “Girls and boys have different peepees. Honor has a penis.”
She said, “A penis?”
I replied, “Yes, and you have a vagina.”
Her response, “Oh.”

And that was that.

So, I’m in trouble. Honor didn’t take a nap yesterday. He’s been fighting nap time more and more lately. This scares me because I need nap time!!! What scares me more is that he figured out how to climb out of his crib. We were all outside yesterday and he just showed up on the deck. We were being lazy and didn’t want to get up, so we just let him stay up.

He must have been tired though, because after dinner he dragged Eden’s pillow and blanket outside. Rather than rescuing her blanket from the dirt, I took pictures. (I blame this on all of you because you’d rather me take pictures of him in the toilet instead of rescue him!) But, hey, what’s one more piece of laundry anyway?

And here’s Eden with the kitty.

Just yesterday I was thinking that I haven’t added anything new to the the “Things I’ve fished out of the Toilet” list. Doesn’t it seem that whenever you think something like that, it has to prove you wrong? Like whenever I think, “Wow, Jim and I have been getting along so well, it’s been forever since we’ve been in an argument.” Then he goes and throws away the Mervyns bag containing two brand new bras totaling over $50.00. Not only does he do this, he does it on trash day. (Don’t get me started on the things he’s thrown away.)

Well, the same happened with Honor. Just as I was marveling that his toilet fascination had come to an end, I had the wonderful opportunity to fish yet another thing out of the toilet. This may top the all time funniest thing I’ve fished out of the toilet, which by consensus is the Waffle.

Thing no.#786 that I’ve fished out of the toilet.

HONOR

and feet first I may add.

*Yesterday, I had been at the office for several hours before somebody pointed out to me that I had this stuck to my back.

At least it wasn’t toilet paper stuck to my shoe.

*And just because they’re so cute.

*The other day Jim was half spelling what he wanted to have for desert. “Do you want at P-O-P-cycle?” Eden said, “I want a Pee-cycle.”

*Oh and, check out my friend Sarah’s blog. sermon on the mount (of laundry)

This weekend we watched our friends 4 girls. So just for the record, the kid count was SIX. We had two one year olds, a three year old, a four year old, a twelve year old and a fourteen year old. My only saving grace was that the older girls helped out a ton! So on top of watching six children, I was crazy enough to take them all shopping. Really, I had no choice, we were out of food and that doesn’t go over well with six kids.

So, in truly crazy woman fashion, we ventured to Walmart at 11, Friday morning. We filled two kidfight carts and formed a screaming and kicking train that slowly moved through Walmart. The worst thing about shopping with a whole caravan is that when you’re at the Oranges and you realize that you forgot yogurt ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE STORE, you can’t really go back. Our poor fellow shoppers could only handle so much of us.

Speaking of fellow shoppers, when we were at the Vitamin Cottage (yes we couldn’t just go one place) this guy just cut in line in front of us. Yeah, right, he couldn’t see (and hear) all SEVEN of us. He totally ignored me when I said something to him. I fought back the urge to let him have it. I knew that we needed to get home in a timely fashion as I had some hungry kiddos on my hands.

Aside from the rain trapping us in our house (which is WAY too small for six children, by the way) the weekend was going pretty well. Until the one and only toilet broke. At this point I was convinced that it was Honor’s fault. I was sure that he flushed some toy down it or something, but it seems that the last time the wax seal was installed, the installer (ahem, JIM) did not install it correctly. So every time the toilet was flushed, it rained in the basement. I was going to be mad if we had to spend all the rest of our tax return on a plumber.

Anyway, Jim got another four dollar seal and the toilet was out of commission for about an hour while he fixed it. Yeah, with eight people in the house, it’s not a good idea to have the one and only toilet out of commission. Honor couldn’t quite understand why it was OK for daddy to be playing in the toilet. Jim had to totally empty the toilet to affix the seal to the bottom of it, so I had to sacrifice my turkey baster to the cause. We also had to blow dry the base of the toilet to ensure a good seal, which was the strangest thing I did all weekend.

So, the toilet works, the basement is not full of toilet water and we survived the weekend full of girls.

Eden is so freaking hilarious. It’s amazing how much she loves her little brother. My mom always said how much my little sister and I loved each other when we were little. I never believed her because we were enemies when we got older (we get along now). But I can see now how that could be.

[pause to go get Honor more milk in his bottle, the little addict! He says, “some muk, some muk”]

Eden is such a mirror of phrases we use. I guess we call Honor, “little buddy” frequently, because she always calls him “wittle buddy.” They’re playing together really well now. Eden always asks him, “Honor want to go outside and play? Would that be fun?” He shakes his head and says “side, side, side.”

But what I hear all day long is, “Mommieeee, mommieeee, mommieeee.” or “mine, mine, mine, mine.” Over and over again. Someone tell me why I wanted him to talk?

…without another Honor related medical incident. Look at his poor eye!

He was playing outside and got something in it. Jim was on duty, so that’s all the details I have. We rinsed it out and gave him some benadryl. The nurse at the doctors office said that all we can do now is just wait for it to go down. Poor kiddo.

Totally unrelated, he came to us the other day like this.

(it’s strawberry applesauce) Being the responsible house keeper that I am, I took a picture rather than save my carpet from strawberry doom.

I know you are all SO shocked that he could make a mess.