Kids Say...

Will had been in his room, reading a book, when he discovered an issue with one of the words in his book.
Will: (Directing my attention to his book) Mom, there’s something wrong here.
Erin: What do you mean?
Will: (Pointing to a word in his book) What’s this word?
Erin: Pea. As in pea soup.
Will: EEEWWWW!!! I thought I was reading it wrong, but I was right. Why would anyone want pee soup?


Hallie: (SCREAMING) I want to put on my underwear! – 117 times
Erin: So then put them on.
Hallie: (SCREAMING) I can’t do it!
Erin: So then let me help you.
Hallie: (SCREAMING) NO! I DO IT MYSELF!


Hallie: What “together” mean?
Erin: You know the answer to that question, silly girl. Can you tell me what “together” means?
Hallie: Captain America?


Will: (doing push-ups) What are these called?
Erin: Push-ups.
Will: I’m really good at push-ups, since I’m so, so strong.
Erin: (doesn’t answer because she’s doing sit-ups)
Will: They sure do hurt my penis though.


Will: (laughing to himself in the backseat) I can’t wait until I get a real sword.
Erin: I don’t think you need a real sword – they’re pretty dangerous.
Will: Well, when I’m 18 I can buy a real sword if I want to.
Erin: I’d really rather you didn’t. I don’t want you to get hurt.
Will: Oh, all right then. But if there’s a battle, I’m going to run right out to the store and buy me a sword.
Erin: Deal. If there’s a battle, you can get a real sword.

The Playground Beckons

Now that the high temperatures are (only) in the upper 80's we're visiting the park once again. I kid you not - we went to the park in early May and didn't go again until late September because it was just too hot.

Hallie loves to "paint" on the sidewalk with water, though she usually gets her dress wet and ends up heading home in just her diaper.

Will loves to run laps around the track...

...and play tag. When tag doesn't end well he likes to pout.

But their favorite activity is sword fighting. By themselves, with me, with each other.

About 15 months ago we filmed this sword fight:



And last week I filmed this sword fight:



I'm so proud of how far Hallie's come with regard to her sword fighting. (I especially love the last couple of seconds of this video, when Hallie just cracks her sword down on Will's head. For the record, no children were injured in the making of this video.) I find it comforting to know she'll have something to fall back on when destroying books for a living doesn't work out.

Another Epic Battle

A few weeks ago, Tom and Will engaged in an epic, Star Wars-inspired sword fight (they even played Star Wars music in the background to make the battle feel more authentic) in the backyard.

Shortly afterwards, Will took the sword-fighting skills he'd learned from his daddy and turned them on his best friend, Logan. The boys chose noodles over swords as their weapons and the island in the middle of the swimming pool as their battle ground, and fought time and time again (seriously, like 25 times) to "the death". Logan must have learned a few sword-fighting skills from his daddy as well, because the two were very evenly matched.

Can't wait to see Hallie up there with a noodle sword next...

pirate attack!

Turns out Will thinks pirates are very cool. He gets really excited when we watch Spongebob together because there's a pirate at the beginning that sings the themesong. Also he and I have been pirate "Arrr!"-ing a lot lately and singing pirate songs (like the Spongebob themesong).

A couple weekends ago we went to a "graduate students with children" event sponsored by UM, where there were several fun events for kids. Will met Pirate Mike, who made him a pirate hat and balloon sword. He likes these props very much and has been playing with them for a couple weeks. The most fun thing to do is chase the cats and try to whomp them with his "piyat" sword. In the video below, Will introduces the poor cats to the game "pirate attack". Not too much fun for them, but hilarious for Erin and I. Duke finally figured out he can hide under the bed to avoid getting whomped with the sword. But he has to hide "pfarr" under the bed, as Will explains in the video.

Happy Birthday, Gramps!

Happy birthday to this young-at-heart (who in the last four days has sword-fought, camped, fished, played disc golf, played soccer, water-skied, tubed, picked raspberries, built robots with Legos, played Uno, rode horses, organized a slip-and-slide party, and set off fireworks with the kids) Grandpa!

Sword-fighting

Camping

It's no wonder he's tired...

An Evening Walk/Sword Fight

This has been a rough semester for Tom. He's teaching two classes (instead of the usual one), and puts in quite a few really late nights every week.

On the rare occasion Tom makes it home before the kids' bedtime, the four of us like to head out into the neighborhood for short walks. Well, Tom and I would like to take long walks, but Will and Hallie can only make it for about eight blocks for starting to whine and then cry and then attack one another.

My favorite walks are the ones that turn into sword fights along the way.  Their time together may not be large in quantity, but it's large in quality.

Hallie's bath pictures: 15 months

Wow, I'm sorry but these bath pictures are really awful. I have an excuse: we were at the Lodge last week when Hallie turned 15 months. The first night we bathed her in the sink to get these pics, and it was a very traumatic experience for her (in case you can't tell). So these are the best we could do, then we showered her or just rocked it grubby for the rest of the week.

Here's what's going on here: since last month, we have finally gotten rid of that safety bath seat, because she was constantly climbing out of it anyway. Around this time Erin was taking the kids to the pool by our house a lot because it has been hot as H and also so that Will could get comfortable with playing in the water so we could maximize our fun in the lake when we went to the Lodge. Hallie suddenly developed a terror for water - crying hysterically and trying to climb out of the tub whenever we give her a bath. Poor baby. We're still working on her though - if we eased her in very carefully, she would sit with piggies, even up to her tummy, in the lake. And we're making progress with the bath, but for now, these are the pictures you're gonna get.

We had a really great time at the Lodge, like we always do. We did in fact swim in the lake a lot with the kids, also fished a lot, were repeatedly visited by a small black bear that Will named "Black Smokey", and Hallie took her first boat ride (pics coming). In some ways, it was the best trip yet because Hallie could really play, and play with her brother, rather than just act like a potato to be passed between family members.

Here's something fun we discovered on this trip: Hallie can say "Will"! It kind of sounds like "Oh-wee-oh", but she reliably makes the same sound when she's playing with, or trying to get the attention of Will. They giggle and chase each other around and dance, occasionally yelling each other's names. It's so much fun. They also swordfight a lot, and Hallie's surprisingly good at handling a sword considering she's so little. She's also surprisingly tolerant of getting whacked by an overzealous sword-wielding brother.

I feel like I write this every month, but Hallie is now at my favorite age ever. Now that she walks around everywhere, she's much more of a little person instead of a baby. She loves playing games, some of which she invents herself. She is also getting better and better at communicating. Her nonverbal communications are more reliable with hand signals such as pointing (at the teddy grahams, which is the only thing she wants to eat these days) and waving. She also uses words much more often, maybe they're more effective at telling us when she doesn't want to do something. We're still working on a few key words with her - despite mastering "dada" and "oh-wee-oh", she still doesn't reliably say "mama". Unless she's crying.

Mamamamamama!

Visits to Will & Hallie's page as of this post: 26881

Bad Parents

This is what 12:15 am on Saturday night/Sunday morning looked like at our house last weekend. The oldest and the youngest - the sweet girls - were passed out on the couch, and the boys, well, the boys were still playing Wii and sword fighting and making plans and inventing games and roughhousing and arguing and problem-solving like best friends do.

The pictures are terrible, but I was trying not to wake the girls so I turned the flash off.

To be clear, not every Saturday night looks like this. On most Saturday nights, the kids are in bed by 8pm and Tom is zonked on the couch by 10pm.

When I was a little girl my family would often spend evenings with our camping family. There was a "rule" - perhaps once spoken and then unspoken after that - that as long as all of us kids didn't bother our parents, break anything, injure each other, or fight, we could stay (or stay up, if the gathering was at our house). I think the same "rule" will apply to Will and Hallie.

So we weren't the best parents that night, letting our kids stay up until the following day, but in our kids' eyes we certainly weren't the worst parents either.

Six

Has it been a year since Will turned "A Whole Hand" old? 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days? I can't believe it.

It seems like we celebrated Will's fifth birthday just yesterday.

Will's fifth birthday wasn't yesterday, however, and I know this because yesterday he reminded me that he was five-years-and-364-days old. Five-years-and-one-day old Will wouldn't have known how many days there are in a year, or that "physics has to do with gravity", or that "multiplication is kind of like adding numbers over and over again".  The ease with which he communicates, the depth of his knowledge, the confidence with which he carries himself, and his ability to make new friends and adjust to new environments remind me every day that even though I can still call him a little boy (when he's not listening), he won't be little for much longer.

At the same time, I see my superhero-cape-wearing baby struggle to meet the social expectations of kindergarten - controlling his emotions, solving his problems with words, winning humbly and losing gracefully, and "keeping his hands to himself while waiting in line for lunch" (straight from a note home from his kindergarten teacher) - and am reminded that he is nowhere near grown.

Thank goodness.

Here's to you, my sweet boy.  May you spend this coming year just like a six-year-old little boy should: playing baseball and soccer, taking karate and swimming lessons, building Lego spaceships, watching Tom & Jerry cartoons, reading Garfield comic books, reenacting Star Wars sword fights, making new friends, loving kindergarten, and antagonizing your little sister.  And I hope you do it all while "rockin' it" in your superhero cape.

Happy birthday, Will.  I love you to the moon and back plus infinity times a million with a cherry on top.

summer lodge trip wrap-up

This is going to be a massive post, but I need to get caught up with all the pictures. I'm going to rapidly try to wrap up last month's trip to the Lodge. Thanks much to AJ for taking and sharing most of these pictures.

Hallie had a great time at the Lodge - she took all kinds of different naps.

She didn't sleep all the time though, she was her normal sweet self when she was awake too.

Erin brough her various swimsuits to wear and she looked very cute in them (here's another one).

Meanwhile, Will spent nearly all of his time playing outside, usually naked and holding a sword. He had a fascination with oars, probably due to their swordlike nature. he had his own mini-paddle that he hauled around with him and used when he and grandpa pretended to take the canoe out. Also there were a couple of toy oars that he liked to use to splash in the water (which sometimes resulted in splashing mud)...

We saw our share of wildlife. In addition to all the awesome fish we caught, there were eagles, loons, snakes, and this big dang snapping turtle which was hanging out by our firepit one evening. Grandma and Will discovered him.

This is Grandpa's Mario Car (Will named it). It is red like Mario's car in Mario Race. It's a large four-wheeler that Gramps got primarily for hauling boats and equipment (snacks) to and from the lakeshore. But as a bonus, it is also fun to take it on adventures through the forest. Will got to go on a few forest adventures as rewards for peeing on trees.

We didn't spend all of our time outside. There was some Wii playing. Also Will had to occasionally put on clothes, such as this hat and mittens Grandma worked on for him. He got some sweet new socks too.

(this picture on the right is one of my new favorites, poor Hallie is so mad because it isn't her turn to play...)

Will got his own big boy bed (his own room, in fact) to sleep in. Grandpa and Grandma and AJ read him lots of stories before his naps and bedtime. Grandpa also gave him this headlamp to wear so he wouldn't be scared at night.

Look closely at the picture below, announcing the return of mom & AJ's favorite inspirational singer (he inspired Will anyway).

We went out to eat one night at the "Black Bear" - a local backwoods tavern. It's a great place, very comfortable and authentic (they have bears inside). Also it has a playset in the back, and since we ate outside, Will got to climb on it quite a lot while we ate.

Our friends Joe and Sabina joined us for dinner and were kind enough to hold the baby while the rest of us ate Will's dinner. They are expecting their own baby soon!

The drive home was fun. I was pretty sleepy but AJ and Will acted like goofballs all the way back to the Lodge...

if you have to pee, pee on a tree!

We were making some serious progress several months ago in our potty-training adventures with Will. Then Hallie was born and he has regressed somewhat. Despite a promise to go to the donut STORE and pick his own donut if he poops in the potty, he has not done so in several months. Peeing is getting better though, often he can go almost all day without peeing in his diaper except while he's sleeping.

Well, as you may have guessed by the post title, we tried a new technique which was championed by Grandma Susie and her depth of potty-training wisdom. During the week we were at the Lodge, Will spent most of his waking hours running around outside, and when it was warm enough, he was usually completely naked, or naked+boat coat (+ sword).

He was entertained by the rhyme: "if you have to pee, pee on a tree" and when we asked him if he had to go pee, he frequently did and would deliver (he also got a candy for doing this, just as if he peed in the potty). First, Grandpa and I had to help show him how to "point and shoot", but he got the hang of it pretty quickly.

We were fishing a lot and there aren't many trees in Grandpa's boat. One time this resulted in him peeing right on the floor of the boat. We didn't have any great rhymes (though in retrospect, "for goodness sake, pee in the lake!" would have worked well), but eventually he learned to pee off the side pretty well, and even preferred the lake by the end of the week, probably because he spent so much time in or on it. Also, he doesn't have to aim (notice the "hands free" technique in the picture on the right).

As I mentioned, I think the pee potty-training is much improved, but poop is a different story. For example, he was walking around the cabin diaperless (I think he had shorts on but no dipe). There was a bit going on - I think we were all working on dinner or something. Suddenly, Erin walked into the living room and saw this on the ground: do not click this if you are eating or are easily grossed out. Her immediate reaction was confusion, and said aloud: "What the heck is this?". Will, without hesitation and matter-of-factly: "it's poop, mama!"