My Kids Say the Darnedest Things

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Dec 102012
 

Henry and Eleanor play with Legos
ELEANOR: (rummages in bin) And Henry! THIS one  is called the Big Lego Bin of Deepness, because it’s biggest and stuff.

•••••

at supper table, talking about what we saw at the Jingle Rail exhibit
JENNIFER: …and there was Old Faithful, and the Golden Gate Bridge, and Mount Rushmore.
ANDY: Do you know who’s on Mount Rushmore?
HENRY: Phineas and Ferb.

•••••

kids play outside, Jennifer works inside
*doorbell rings*
JENNIFER: (opens door)
HENRY: We’re playing Power Rangers, so can we call you Zordon?
JENNIFER: Um, sure?

•••••

watching TV, “every kiss begins with Kay” jingle plays
HENRY: (singing) Every poop begins with me…

Guess Who's Back, Back Again

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Dec 032012
 

We joined the whole elf-on-the-shelf brouhaha last year, and Henry and Eleanor loved it. They had fun searching for the elf every morning, and randomly named him Ted.

They’ve been asking if Ted was coming back this year. Yesterday Andy told them that they could ask the Christmas tree, that Santa could hear them through the most Christmas thing in the house. I wish you could have seen them standing two inches from the tree, asking Santa if Ted could come back.

And voila! Ted made his triumphant return this morning, bringing a treat for breakfast with him.

I love this age, where they’re so smart about so many things, but also so quick to believe. Eleanor’s asking more questions this year (“is Ted just a toy?”) but still trusts our answers or makes them up herself (“he looks like a toy but changes into a real elf after we’re asleep”). I know we don’t have many years of this left. At some point the questions will overtake the faith in the answers. So for right now we’re trying to soak it up as much as we can. Because two five-year-olds’ excitement over elves who deliver Pop-Tarts? Pretty magical.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

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Nov 272012
 

I didn’t post much of substance last week, was too busy with Thanksgiving prep and celebrating. So why don’t I go back and tell you what I did?

Thanksgiving prep was a couple days of cleaning, which is boring to tell you about. I scrubbed my kitchen floor on my hands and knees! I think I just won a blogging award for that story!

My parents and aunt and uncle came to Indy for the holiday, which was great. Having them around bumped me down to “kid” level, which means my contribution to the Thanksgiving meal was a veggie tray. Score!

The long weekend was packed and went by quickly. Thanksgiving morning Andy and I did the Drumstick Dash (more on that Friday). That afternoon, the whole family ate ourselves silly at my cousin’s house. I wasn’t going to do much shopping, but somehow found myself at Target late Thursday night, and out at Macy’s and Kohl’s and the mall for most of the day Friday. On Friday night Andy and I took advantage of free babysitting and snuck out for dinner and a movie. Saturday entailed one last round of shopping while Andy and my dad worked on stuff around the house. So in a nutshell, Thanksgiving = eat + shop.

Also in a nutshell, Thanksgiving = I didn’t really need to be there, when my kids and my parents are together they don’t need anyone else. I love the Constant Admiration Society the four of them have formed. As my parents packed up to leave, it dawned on me that we took zero pictures of their entire visit. I think that’s a first for my family. I quickly moved a stool out into my garage, threw a black sheet at Andy and instructed him to “go stand back there and hold this up,” and snapped a few photos before my parents left. So no action shots of Thanksgiving, but that’s okay, it’s the people we celebrated with that are important. And these four are really important to me.

HOO HOO HOO MERRY CHRISTMAS

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Nov 252012
 

We ended our whirlwind Thanksgiving weekend tonight with segueing right into Christmas. The tree went up, the stockings went up, too.

It’s SO FUN to see the kids so excited for everything. Henry and Eleanor could barely stand waiting for Mom and Dad to get the tree set up and ready for decorating. They hung most of the ornaments themselves this year. Eleanor in particular flitted about, wanting to get out every! single! thing! in the storage containers and talk about where it should go and place it there herself. There’s a reindeer candelabra on top of their play kitchen, and a stuffed snowman perched *thisclose* to the edge on the top of their dresser, but that’s where she wanted them so that’s where they’ll stay. She even drew a picture to add to the decorations, complete with Santa’s HO HO HO, that she wrote without any help.

Maybe Santa’s an owl? It’s the cutest thing ever, so nobody tell her it’s wrong.

After decorating, we had hot chocolate and cookies while we played games and talked about our Christmas lists. Henry and Eleanor were so fired up, over the hot chocolate, over the toys they want for Christmas.

Since Henry and Eleanor’s toddlerhood, every holiday season I start out feeling Scrooge-like and then they get all excited which makes ME excited. I can’t wait to plan a fun month for these two.

Just Call Me Mama Scrooge

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Nov 082012
 

This week Henry and Eleanor have been obsessed with marking all the toys they want in various Christmas-related ad inserts.

It’s been so entertaining to watch them for various reasons: seeing what their interests are and how they’ve started to be so very different, remembering my own fun in poring over every page of the JC Penney Christmas catalog and marking all my favorites, too.

So we’ve had a fun week of dreaming about Legos and ponies and looking forward to the start of the holiday season in a few weeks, right?

WRONG! Last night I took away all of their toys.

Yes, really. ALL of them.

For what seems like forever, we’ve struggled with getting Henry and Eleanor to pick up their toys. At school, they’re expected to pick up after themselves, and they’ve never had a problem. At home, though, it’s like they lose all ability to take care of their things. Our house doesn’t have a dedicated playroom; their stuff is housed in an offshoot of our family room. Which means it’s dragged out and left everywhere in our communal living space. And so “picking up toys” gets caught in my endless “clean kitchen pick up toys put away laundry pick up toys clean kitchen” loop that dictates my time at home and makes me realize why all the 1960s housewives popped Valium like candy.

I’ve threatened for months that “if you can’t take care of your things and help put them away, then you won’t have any toys to play with” but never was consistent or followed through. Last night I declared that I’d Officially Had It. I announced to a surprised Henry and Eleanor that I was taking away their toys. I assured them that no, we weren’t going to throw or give them away, but they were getting put away and only one toy was coming out at a time until they could prove to us they could help take care of their things.

After they went to bed, I finished clearing off the bookshelves in their play area, moving everything to the guest room closet. And prepared myself for the Great Epic Meltdown of 2012™ that I was sure to occur in the morning when Henry and Eleanor realized that Mom was for real not kidding.

And then they woke up this morning. And proceeded to be totally okay with it.

I explained the rules to them again: they could each request a toy, but had to clean up that toy and put it away before requesting the next one. Which is what they did all day. And it was WONDERFUL. They didn’t fight or complain about the new rule. They seemed really focused on their activity after having to think about which toy to request. Our family room stayed clutter-free all day. We got to enjoy our time together instead of fighting over having to pick up after themselves (kids) and yelling at them about it (me).

At suppertime tonight, I praised Henry and Eleanor for how well they did, and told them if they kept up the good work for a few more days, we’d increase the number of toys they could have out. And once again, no complaining, just happiness over Mom telling them they did a good job. Honestly, I’m still kinda shocked at how well today went.

Hmmm…turns out if you set boundaries for the kids and carefully explain your expectations, while actually being consistent and following through on consequences, your family is happier. It’s like all those thousands of articles in basically every single thing you could ever read about parenting are actually RIGHT or something.

Voting, schmoting, MY KIDS ARE GROWING TOO FAST, Y'ALL

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Nov 062012
 

It’s been an important day of Instagramming our “I Voted” stickers and choosing our next round of leaders. And no matter what your political leanings, I think we can all agree on one thing: my children are growing up too fast.

How are they old enough to have today be their SECOND presidential election? I swear this JUST happened:

Halloween: We Like It

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Nov 032012
 

I love that we’re establishing traditions with the kids during one of our favorite holidays. The downside is that this post will pretty much be the same as this one. Or this one.

We celebrated the month in our now-usual ways. The Halloween tree is a favorite. Henry and Eleanor loved finding the ornament each day and counting down the days until trick-or-treating.

The kids chose their costumes early on. Eleanor was insistent on being a black cat (her tail and furry shirt are Mom-made, *takes a bow*). Henry’s recent Transformers obsession led him to request a Bumblebee costume.

We did Zoo Boo again. Andy had come down with bronchitis, so this year it was just the kids and me. Not my smartest parenting decision, we went on the most crowded day possible. We gave it our best shot, though, and made some good memories to go alongside all the sitting-in-line ones.

We had pumpkin carving night at school. This time I was sick and it was Andy’s turn to go solo with kids. Henry and Eleanor created their own pumpkin designs:

Henry’s is a clone trooper face, although it kinda looks like he inadvertently designed the 2016 Olympic mascot logo.

We got to celebrate as an entire family at the Irvington Halloween festival. We enjoyed some music (kids), beer (parents), and a costume parade (all of us). Henry was very proud of himself when Transformers fans in the crowd would make Bumblebee comments as he passed by.

Halloween day was incredible fun. I heard Eleanor telling her brother Halloween morning, “Henry! Henry! TODAY we go trick-or-treating!” The kids reported having a great time celebrating at school, “pin the nose on the jack o’ lantern” was a favorite. That evening, Henry and Eleanor were good sports about Mom taking photos before we set out for candy.

We trick-or-treated as a large pack with the other families on our street. Henry and Eleanor adore the older kids in our neighborhood, so once again, we mainly saw the backs of them as they ran off to keep up with the crew.

We roamed the furthest yet this year in our quest for candy—all the streets in our immediate area, plus a few houses in an adjacent neighborhood. The kids’ pumpkins were filled to the brim, at one point Henry requested I carry it for him (“my muscles are tired, Mom, I’m out of Energon”).

Henry also declared, “I love Halloween! This is the best day ever!” Andy and I tend to agree. I don’t know what it is about trick-or-treating, but being out in a group of families, watching our kids having fun, brings out the “I can’t believe this is our life” feeling we still get after our years of struggling to have a family. That feeling’s better than any treat.

Kindergarten: We Came, We Saw, We Do It Again Tomorrow

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Sep 042012
 

So, the first day of kindergarten happened, and we survived. Henry and Eleanor LOVED it! I only cried once!

They got up this morning, got dressed in their new back-to-school outfits, gamely went along with Mom’s insistence of “just one more photo.”

They rocked out to the White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army in the van (Henry on air guitar, Eleanor and Mom on air drums), and then breezed right into school like rock stars.

As she settled into the classroom, Eleanor turned to smile and wave at me. My heart jumped into my throat and I *almost* lost it. But I held it together, thankfully sparing myself from being known at school as That Weird Mom Who Started Bawling and Yelling MY BAAAAYBBBEEEEEES.

I came home and allowed myself a few tears, because, well, KINDERGARTEN, but also celebrated the return of Time To Myself by blasting Kanye on the drive back to school.

Henry proclaimed that kindergarten was “fantastic,” and that he wants to be a teacher when he grows up. When Eleanor got mad at him interrupting her kindergarten stories, he told her, “I’m just too excited.” He proudly showed off his stamped name art and said he loved playing Star Wars with his friends.

Eleanor proclaimed that kindergarten was “great,” and excitedly told me that “there was a paper with our name on it, and we wrote over it, and then you know what we put on it? GLUE! and then you know what we put on it? BEANS! Like, the beans you don’t cook.” She loved playing dress-up princesses and wearing a headpiece with ribbons all around it.

To say they liked it is an understatement. To say I’m proud of them is an understatement, too.

One More Sleep

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Sep 032012
 

This past month has been a steady stream of getting-ready-for-school activities. Class meetings and orientations, our teacher home visit, settling into my new class rep duties, shopping for school supplies and backpacks and new clothes. We’re staying at our co-op for kindergarten, so no biggie, right?

Wrong. The inside of my brain looks like this at any given moment:

How did they go from stem cells to students in what feels like two blinks?

Henry and Eleanor, for their part, are fired up for kindergarten. They felt like such Big Stuff choosing their backpacks and going outfit shopping with Grandma and Grandpa, and have been asking, “how many days until kindergarten?” for at least the past week or so.

And Andy and I, for our part, are fired up for it, too. We’re excited for them to have a great teacher that will encourage them, and to watch them learn and grow and explore. And, truth be told, I’m also a wee bit excited to have time to myself most days of the week (I can finish a thought! I can pee in solitude!). But that hasn’t stopped me from random bouts of tears over KINDERGARTEN HOW DID THIS HAPPEN.

I know that at this point, I should just go ahead and add a Jennifer Is Freaking Out Again Over How Fast Her Kids Are Growing Up category to this blog, what with all the whining I do about it. I mean, I started crying about kindergarten in JANUARY. I’ve figured out by now that this growing-up stuff happens too quickly for all parents, so I should just get over myself about it. But I don’t think I’ll ever have an easy time accepting it. The beginning of their school years means the beginning of Henry and Eleanor not 100% belonging to us any more. And with twins, this transition is going to hit us all at once. They’ll be spending more of their week with their peers, and will start to have more influences from outside our family. Which is, like, the whole point of growing up, but who knew that watching it happen could be so hard?

But as wistful as I feel as we move out of Little Kid Era and into School Kid Era, I feel so grateful to be along for their journey. Even after five years, I still have a hard time believing they actually happened. Blessed doesn’t even begin to describe how Andy and I are.

These two? Are gonna ROCK kindergarten.

And their mom? Couldn’t be prouder. Really. Henry and Eleanor are terrifically wonderful awesome children and I know we’re in store for a great year. And I promise I’ll quit crying about it. Promise. Eventually. Kindergarten, man, KINDERGARTEN.

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