My Kids Say The Darnedest Things: All-Henry Edition

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Feb 282013
 

in van, kids discuss what Olympic sports they want to play
HENRY: Mom? You know what sport I’m glad’s NOT in the Olympics? Shark wrestling.

•••••

discussing his first loose tooth
JENNIFER: Soon you’ll start getting your teeth in that you’ll have forever.
HENRY: Man, I can’t believe I’m starting to be a grown-up already.

•••••

JENNIFER: What would you do if I just kissed on your face all day long?
HENRY: I’d run away…(in lower voice) into the deep, dark forest.

•••••

during our morning snuggle
HENRY: Mommy, if you were a wall, would your life be really boring?

 

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.

Dancing King

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Nov 102012
 

While Andy and I did yardwork this afternoon, Henry kept us entertained with impromptu dance performances.

“Are those cool dance moves?” he’d ask. Yes they are, kid. I hope you never lose your self-assurance and confidence in your abilities. Plus I have a feeling you’re going to be really fun in college.

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.

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.

My Kids Say The Darnedest Things: Special All-Henry Edition!

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Sep 062012
 

watching Jennifer type on her iPhone
HENRY: Wow, that’s a long passage word.

•••••

kindergarten yesterday, lunch time
HENRY: Mom, are you having fun?
JENNIFER: Oh, totally, Henry.
HENRY: See, Mom? (elbows Jennifer) I TOLD you it was fantastic.

•••••

walking into the bathroom to go potty
HENRY: Calling all systems on Henry! Calling all systems on Henry!

•••••

 playing Mario Kart, Henry attempts to trash talk
JENNIFER: (gets bumped by another car) Dude! Henry, did you just hit me?
HENRY: Yeah, I hit you. For extra credit! For your CREDIT CARD!

•••••

*toot* *toot*
JENNIFER: Henry, is that you farting?
HENRY: Yeah. I’m FARTING FOR JOY!

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