One story about each kid

As summer winds down, I find myself ready for a change in the weather.  I’m tired of being hot! Fall is my favorite season. Fall means cooler weather, and it also means football. I love both of those! At breakfast this morning, my 6-year-old happily announced that tomorrow is the first day of fall. Then she and her brother got into a heated debate over whether or not that was actually the case. The seasons may be changing, but the breakfast bickering is here to stay. To celebrate the start of fall, I thought I’d share one recent story about each kid that really highlights their personality:

6-year-old

On Sundays I do a bunch of the prep work for our dinner meals throughout the week. This saves time on busy weeknights and makes it more likely that we’ll actually sit down to a decent meal rather than eating mac and cheese and chicken nuggets four out of five nights. Anyway, I was doing the dinner prep and the 6-year-old was listening to Taylor Swift songs on an old iPhone. She had dragged a dining room chair to the space opposite the kitchen sink, so I could see her perform to each of T. Swift’s songs. These performances involved her standing on top of the chair and gyrating wildly, sometimes in rhythm to the music, sometimes not so much. She was having fun, though, and she was out of my way.

At some point she stopped her performance—mid-song—and announced to me, “Mom, I sound just like Taylor Swift. Like, you can’t even tell that it’s not her singing. But it’s not.  It’s me!”

I nodded in agreement. Because what else was I supposed to do—point out that the neighbor’s dog was howling in response to her rendition of “Bad Blood”?

I really hope that she always keeps this outstanding level of self-confidence.

5-year-old

The 5-year-old and I had the following exchange as he sat on the toilet:

Me: Are you finished going potty?

Him: No. I have more poop.

<toots>

Him: Oh! There’s the poop horn!

This happened awhile ago, but it’s still a good representation of my guy and his love of poop/toot jokes.

2-year-old

Last week the 2-year-old came home with “homework.” Her teachers were asking that we fill out an “About Me” page, so they could hang them on the classroom wall and get to know all the kids better. Of course I forgot about it over the weekend, so on Monday morning, as everyone was eating breakfast (and bickering, you can be sure), I sat down to ask the 2-year-old some questions about herself.

There were the typical “about me” questions—name, age, favorite color, favorite food. She answered them all correctly and with little flair.

But then things got interesting. 

“What do you want to learn about?” And without hesitating, she answered, “Frogs and chicken nuggets.”

Obviously.

“What makes your family special?” Again, she didn’t hesitate to answer, “Pink pizza.”

I’m not even sure what that means, but she said it so I wrote it down. And it made her older brother and sister laugh (they had momentarily stopped bickering to listen to her answers). And because it made them laugh, she stuck with it and would only answer “pink pizza” from that question forward.

Also, she refuses to eat unless the plate from which she’s eating matches her shirt.

Oh, and she counts to eleventeen.

7-month-old

Funky B turned 7 months old last week. She eats all kinds of foods now. She doesn’t seem to like peas. She HATES having her nose wiped. She stands up whenever possible. She only needs to steady herself with one hand when she’s standing. What I love the most about her right now is that whenever I lay her on the changing table, if she’s in a happy mood, she will wildly flail both her arms and legs, moving them in and out and up and down as fast as she possibly can. I don’t know what she’s so excited about, but it never fails to make me smile to see her be so genuinely happy.

So, in a nutshell, that’s what we’re up to around here!