days of nuwanda

Nutritious dinner

My kids have always loved green beans, and we eat them frequently. Last night at dinner Harrison made a major discovery--green beans have "bones" inside of them. I did my best to explain they were seeds, but he wouldn't hear of it. He stacked his "bones" on his plate proudly. What little boy wouldn't think bones for dinner were cool?!

A small dose of quotes

I know, I am terribly behind in the land of kid quotes! It's not a lack of material, that's for sure. So here are some very recent quotes...

Mom to Grace: "We need to trim your hair. You've got split-ends."
Grace: "Yup, my hair is getting pretty rusty."

Harrison to Mom who was attempting to sleep in on Saturday: "Mommy, wake up! [opening the curtains] The sun is up, Mommy!" Who taught that kid about the sun anyhow???

Jacob to Mom: "I miss the old days!"
Mom to Jacob: "What are you talking about? You don't have old days yet--you're only 8!"

While driving home from Bible study one night, I heard Grace crying in the back seat, so I asked her what was wrong. "I don't wanna get married and move away from you, Mommy!" I assured her that she had lots of time before marriage to get used to the idea, and that she would surely change her mind in 20 years or so.  :)

Grace to Mom after watching Star Wars: Episode 6: "Who's the guy I'm in love with again, the one that saves Darth Vader?"
Mom to Grace: "Ummm, Luke?"
Grace: "Oh yah that's it. I love him!"

Grace: "Can we go to that full moon place and have cat food for lunch?"
Interpretation: "Can we go to Half Moon restaurant and have catfish for lunch?"

Harrison in his best tattle-tale whiny voice: "Mom, Grace has an attitude!"

Harrison still seeking justice a few minutes later: "I want Grace in time-out!"

Grace to a flock of birds flying overhead: "Hurry, get out of the way before Mommy runs you over!" I still haven't out-lived the infamy of the bird incident. Ugh.

Harrison's question one morning as he rolled out of bed: "Can I bite your pants?" Ummm, not even sure how to respond to that, except w/ a definite NO.

One Sunday morning we hurried to get ready b/c Hubby was flying out so we needed to go to the early service at church. So I said, "We gotta get moving--we're going to the early service," and Grace got very excited and said, "We're going to the circus???"

Quizzing Harrison...
What's your name? "Harrison"
How old are you? "Two fingers"
Where do you live? "In the back yard"

Smiling munchkin

 

Back when there was just one munchkin running around here, I used to blog all the new words and  phrases and keep track of everything, but somehwere between 3 kiddos, I simply lost track. So suffice it to say, Harrison talks from the moment he wakes up until the moment he crashes at night. Kinda like his sister. :) He amazes me w/ his complete sentences and vocabulary, and the moments where we can't understand him are rare anymore. He's at the age where he's starting to realize what things are funny, and he and I tease each other by calling the other Fred or Ted. If I call him Fred, he'll say, "No, I'm Ted." or "No, YOU'RE Fred!" 

He also loves to pray at mealtime and bedtime, and we love the surprise of what he will pray for today. Usually something like, "Dear Jesus, thank you for the food [no matter the time of day]. Thank you Mommy is crazy. Thank you Thorny is crazy. Amen."

 
He's very opinionated and  has hit the age where kids want to exert some control over their surroundings and start to care about which shoes they wear or which chair they sit in. He cares very much about these details now. He also loves to help around the house, especially feeding the dog. He's adjusted to Grace being gone to school in the mornings and plays by himself just fine, but when brother and sister are home, you can bet he is right next to them. Literally. 2 year olds have no concept of personal space. :)

A while back a friend of ours commented that Harrison seemed a little OCD, and I thought he was joking b/c he's such a laid back kid. But the reason was that as the kids were running thru the house and playing, Harrison noticed the living room rug was messed up and kept stopping to fix it each time he went thru the room. None of the other kids noticed the rug, but it was as though Harrison couldn't help but bend down and fix that rug every time. I had never noticed that before, but since then I've found him fixing and straightening all sorts of things! Even one night when he was half asleep, he wouldn't lay down on his pillow b/c the pattern on his pillowcase was upside down. What 2 year old notices that kind of stuff and can't go to sleep until it's corrected?  He also is obsessed w/ having clean hands. I don't really worry about him making messes w/ dirty hands b/c generally he washes them all on his own before I even know they were dirty.

 
 
I'm so behind on kid quotes, but here is a recent one. Jacob and I were teasing each other, and I told Jacob, "You're going down!" Jacob replied, "No, YOU'RE going down!" and Harrison chimed in, "I'm going up!" I love this boy. :)

Jacob's House Rules

My 7 year old wrote this list of rules and brought them to me. I haven't yet ratified them, but Hubby and I are deliberating...

1. No humming.
2. No yelling at night.
3. No girls shopping on Sunday
4. Pizza on Tuesday.
5. Chicken on Thursday.
6. Play outside from 5:00-5:30 on Wednesday.
7. Shrimp on Monday & Wednesday (except Mom who doesn't like shrimp--she can have a hamburger)
8. Jacob gets $2 to spend once a week.
9. Grace gets $1 to spend every two weeks.
10. Play inside from 1:00-3:00 every day.
11. All of us go shopping once a week.

I wholeheartedly agree with #'s 2 and 11, but what's up w/ #1 and #3? CRUELTY! And how do you like the cash distribution between Jacob and his sister? :) I served chicken casserole for dinner last night (a Thursday) and Jacob announced to everyone that "Mom gets an allowance for following the rules." I do my best! But which cash plan do I follow--the one he outlined for himself or the one for Grace? HA!

The band

Jacob & Grace came and got me yesterday afternoon for a "concert" that they performed. They put on their costumes (soccer uniforms, for some odd reason), sang to the CD player (Kutless & NeedtoBreathe songs), played their "instruments" and danced. Absolutely hilarious! BTW, the name of their band is the "I love rock-n-roll" band.

Jacob w/ his lightsaber=guitar and Grace w/ a duct tape microphone

Grace w/ her lighsaber=guitar

 
Jacob played the keyboard on the stand. Grace calls it a "compuno"

Jammin'!!!

After their performance, Jacob said, "Mom, if you print out one of the pictures you took, I'll sign it for you!" So I got their autographs as well.

 

My sentiments exactly!

After having about enough of her little brother's 2 yr old shenanigans the other day, a very frustrated Grace looked at Harrison and said with her hands on her hips, "Harrison, GO TO YOUR HAPPY PLACE!"

I ran out of the room laughing hysterically. Aunt Mel would be so proud; she's a true believer in happy places. :)

BTW, as far as I can tell, Harrison has yet to find his happy place. And FOR REAL, he needs to get there quickly! I love my little man, but I'm running out of my own happy places to go to when he's in one of his two-yr old moods.

One super-sized stash of kid quotes coming up!

Jacob while playing a game online: "Hey Mom, I got a little psychic now."
Mom: "A psychic?"
Jacob, realizing his mistake and grinning: "Oh I think I meant sidekick..."

Grace while playing w/ Grandma and holding her so-called GPS in her hand: "Ok, now it's my turn to get lost!" and ran off, waiting for Grandma to find her. The meaning of a GPS seems to be lost on her, no pun intended. :)

Grace to Mom: "Can you get the pizza off my pizza?" She hates tomato sauce and wants me to get it off the rest of the good stuff. Not that easy to do! 

Grace to Auntie Mel over New Years: "Do you wanna play a game?"
Mel, putting her head down: "I'm playing the sleep game."
Grace: "Is that a two-player game?"

Harrison loves to share my iPod earbuds w/ me and listen to some tunes. One day I had my earbuds in and I was also wearing some sweatpants, the kind w/ the ties on them, and he grabbed one of the ties, thinking it was an earbud, and put it in his ear. He was very disappointed, and handed it back to me and said, "It's not working! Turn it on?" I laughed outloud, and he just stood there looking at me til I gave him a real earbud. :)

We found some preschool books in the store, and Grace picked one out. When I explained it was a handwriting book, Grace responded, "Oh, I don't need it. I already know how to draw my hand."

Grace to Harrison while he was coloring: "You're doing great! You're doing good, too."

Grace w/ a wand made out of K'nex: "The only way to get one of those wands from Harry Potter is to BE on the Harry Potter movie, so we have to pretend."

During bedtime prayers, Harrison looked at the dog and asked, "Thorny pray?"

I randomly ask my kids what they want to be when they grow up, and see their ideas grow and change over time. Jacob's answer this time showed his understanding of limitless possibilities: "I'll have to wait til I'm 15 to answer that question b/c that's a hard question!"

Grace must have been paying attention in Sunday School. She has been asking one question regularly of everyone she meets: "What does it mean to be a good neighbor?" When I ask her, she has some great answers about being nice and sharing toys.

During our Wednesday lunch w/ Grandma one week, Grandma was asking Harrison who everyone was. When she pointed to me and asked who I was, Harrison said, "Dee-Dee's Mom!" I guess he doesn't claim me as his own! :)

Another random lunch conversation. Grace: "Mom, you are the perfect Mom b/c you don't like snakes."

Last week Auntie Mel's home was broken into, and the burglar took a bunch of her electronics. It was awful for her! Mel visited us just for a change of scenery, and the kids talked incessantly about the bad guy who stole her stuff and what was stolen. Grace pointed to Mel's overnight bag and joyfully said, "Hey Aunt Mel, you still have this stuff!"

Grace running thru the kitchen: "Excuse me, Mom, I have a bad dragon to catch!" She didn't need to tell me who--I heard Harrison giggling. :)

After the dog's seizure and vomitting incident, Grace informed me that Thorn looked shorter, "b/c when you puke, you get shorter. So stop puking, Thorn, or you'll get too short!" And she was dead serious.

And Jacob and Grace came to me one afternoon looking very serious and explained, "You and Dad are our STEP-parents. Our REAL parents were spies and they died on a mission a few years ago. So now you guys take care of us." Then they ran off. I love the randomness of moments like this. For the record, this was completely new info to Hubby and me. We have always felt like their REAL parents. I wonder if Harrison is also a step-child???

I feel safer already

The other day Grace bought me a bowl filled w/ LEGOs. Now I am accustomed to receiving odd trinkets and strange gifts at the hands of my children, and usually Grace brings me bowls of soup that she's mixing up, but this was no ordinary soup. She set the bowl of tiny toys on my desk and informed me they were "my powers to keep aliens away" and then she ran off, as though this were a perfectly normal exercise. I did keep the bowl on my desk for the remainder of the day, and to her credit, you should know, I had zero alien attacks that day.

It's begun

Jacob's starting to figure things out, much to my dismay. As we sat having lunch at BK the other day, two teenage girls and their Grandma sat at a table behind us. I didn't even know Jacob had noticed them until he said, "Harrison, look--GIRLS!"

Oh. My. Word.

A lot of nonsense, but exactly what you've come to expect

Grace in the car: "How do you turn on the wind?" meaning, how do you open the windows.

Conversation after seeing Santa...
Jacob: "He's not real, Grace."
Grace: "Well that one is real--he's sitting right there....[thinking and looking around]..but he doesn't have his flying machine."

Jacob: "Hey Mom, you do NOT want to have a staring contest with my snake. He doesn't blink for a LONG time!" Indeed he blinks very rarely, given the fact that his pet snake is stuffed.

Grace explaining that we need hooks in her closet to hold all of her purses: "We need to get a lot of hookers, Mom. We just need more hookers." I asked if we could just call them hooks, and she said, "Sure!"

Grace protesting the idea of going out to eat: "But if I eat, then I won't be hungry!" I cannot argue with that; her logic is sound.

Grace wielding a lightsaber: "Dad, if you wanna get killed, I can whack you with this." It's good to know there are options, but she seems a little too matter-of-fact about it for my comfort.

Harrison missed his sister one day when she was out with Daddy. He looked up at the artwork on the wall, sat down with the crayons, tears streaming down his face, and said, "I want Dee-Dee color!" It's not fun coloring by yourself, I guess.

Grace's request for dinner one evening...
Grace: "Are we having honey bones for dinner?"
Mom: "Ummm, what are honey bones?
Grace doing exaggerated motions with her hands and speaking slowly to make sure I got it: "Bones with honey in them." DUH!

The kids colored pictures for my Aunt who was sad after her dog died. Grace brought me two pictures and explained: "This one is for the dog."
Mom: "But the dog is dead."
Grace: "But everyone knows dogs always love pictures."