What We Hear!

So S and K share a bedroom. It was S's turn to sleep on the top bunk. After getting all cozy and snuggled into her bed, she realized she needed to apply some chapstick. So she said, "I need some chapstick," and leaned over the bunk to her desk below and grabbed the chapstick to put on. K, from the bottom bunk, said, "What did you say?" And S repeated, "I need some chapstick." Now that is what S said... but K heard, "I eat chipmunks." Peels of laughter rang out and they giggled much longer into the night. However, the first bits of laughter from S sounded something like a garbage disposal as she was upside down trying to suck air into her lungs.

Sometimes it isn't what they say, it's what they hear. And I think most moms can relate to that selective hearing that children exhibit from time to time, but this is another ball game altogether. Perhaps children aren't ignoring us as we believe during those selective hearing times, perhaps they aren't quite hearing what we are saying.

Peace to all!
the Amused Momma

FREEDOM!

With two older sisters, R is exposed to more mature matter than her older sisters were at the same age.

A favorite movie of our family's is Braveheart and we recently let R watch it on TV for the first time. It's a rather long movie, and so there were lots of commercial breaks.

A few days after watching that movie, R broke out into an appeal of "Freedom" just as the character William Wallace does near the end of the movie. We all looked at her in surprise, and then, R being the ham that she is, started singing one of the commercials from that movie watching... "I'm free to do what I want." (Which is from a credit card commercial.)

I find such enjoyment in the connections that the minds of the children in my life make.

Word Usage

It's funny to me the way R chooses to use her words sometimes. So amusing to this joyful Momma!

We've been studying the human body via the five senses. R is soaking this up and at her age is, of course, very curious about how the body works.

Anyway, overheard today as we were preparing to go to the library, R said, "I've got to go unfull my bladder."

I like it and think it will become part of our personal family vocabulary lexicon.

Here's a sampling of some of our personal family vocabulary:

Toys For Us (from S, and not very original as lots of kids have used this and I think it may have been intentional on the part of the store in their clever pick of a name)

Mogurt (from R from when she was learning to talk and wanted more yogurt)

Bacuboom (from R again when she was learning to talk. It means vacuum)

Turktoise (from K when she was about 4 and we were buying our one and only new car and she expressed her desire to have a turquoise colored car)

There's more. But that's enough for now.

Feel free to share your family's personal vocabulary in the comments section!

Peace to all!

Bumping into Prayers

Some good friends of ours found out today that their ten-year-old dog has heart failure, is in significant pain and won't survive long. So, they've made the difficult decision to have their dog "put down," which will occur sometime tomorrow.

So, R spoke to the mom of that family this evening on the phone, and after tearfully telling our friend to please say good-bye to their dog for her, R said, "I'll be bumping you into my prayers tonight."

I am impressed with R's standards for prayer, even if it sounds like I'm bragging about my child. She's bumping this family, with their palpable sorrow over losing a member of their family, right up to the top of her list of prayers.

I'm writing this after R has gone to sleep, so I can testify that she did indeed "bump" them to the front of the line and prayer for them first!

With apologies to Veggie Tales...

From last week, this report:

R was playing with her little buddies by the front door, preventing escape via that route, when we heard her say...

"My mother was a catepillar, and my father was a burp. My mother gave birth to a very large burping burp.

Then she preceeded to demonstrate. Blarp!

And the father was very pleased!"

This she repeated in Khalil's accent from Jonah eventually morphing into "my mother was a burping cow."

This entertained us for hours. Good thing we are so easily amused.

Smelling Phones and Songs and Dogs

Yesterday, R, our 6 year old, was playing Barbies while I was having a conversation with our oldest, S, who is 17. I remarked to S that the banana bread in the oven smelled really good and that the chicken soup in the crockpot also smelled good. Then I asked S where her cell phone was so I could call her dad. That's when R piped up and said, "I smell the phone ringing!" We laughed a long while over that.

S thinks that this is a new feature that will soon be coming forth from Japan. A smell phone so as not to interrupt as ringing phones do!

This all reminded me a conversation that occured many moons ago when my niece, who was then 14, was in the back seat of our Mustang II along with one of the guys who was a groomsman at our wedding (he was then 17). The two of them had a short attraction to each other that began at our wedding. Anyway, along with my husband, we were all in the car heading to Pueblo for a stock car race, and the song "What's that Smell" by Lynyrd Skynard came on the radio. My niece asked, "Who smells this song?" We all laughed so hard. And we still tease her about smelling songs.

This morning, as K, who is 15, meandered from her bedroom into the living room, her mangy mutt followed her as she's never far away from K if she's home. Anyway, the MM hasn't been groomed in quite some time and when that's the case, sometimes she has a problem with completely eliminating and things stick to her behind. Well, when the MM came close to me, she stank -- oh man did she stink! So, I in all my grogginess of pre-tea moments in the morning, said, "Smell that dog's butt!" What I meant to say was, "Look at that dog's butt!" Turns out the dog just smelled and didn't have unwelcomed additions.

So, go forth and smell, or not.