How much does it cost to pay attention?

R and I stayed home to take care of mountains of work (which I am currently hiding from hoping it will somehow dissapate while I play) while S, K and hubby went to Omaha so K could try out for American Idol. It's also a mini-vacation for them all and I am glad they are enjoying the company of friends out there.

R and I were talking about politeness and how you should pay attention to your hosts and hostesses so that you don't intentionally give offense to them. But R wasn't paying close attention, and asked, "How much does it cost to pay attention?" :grin:

I told her it doesn't "cost" anything except our time and focusing on what people are saying and doing, like when I tell her to listen in church.

Our elderly neighbor called late this morning. She was quite agitated and immediately went into a tirade about a phone call she received late last night that she supposed was from one of my older daughters. The caller had told her to turn her TV off, close her window and go to sleep. The caller also chided her for watching whatever was on the TV. Our neighbor when on for about 4 minutes before I shouted over her to tell her that our girls were in another state! This took a while to sink in and our neighbor was telling me she didn't want trouble with her neighbors and it couldn't be the neighbors on the other side because she's never had trouble with them.

Until this neighbor called, we did not have her phone number. I suppose we could have looked it up in the phone book, but we haven't needed to so far. Our very limited contact with her came in the form of checking on her after the blizzard last October and subsequent heavy snowfalls for which my hubby shoveled for her. The girls also brought her some home-baked goodies at Christmastide.

She repeated herself several times and after finding out that I agreed with her that she should be able to watch whatever she wants on the TV as well as keep her window open, she apologized and invited me over for coffee.

Proving again, that it just takes time and focus to *pay attention.*

Of wedges and wedgies

Those vowels become important when communicating!

Tonight K went shopping with her Dad, spending her b-day money as soon as she could! (She'll be 16 on Sunday!)

Anyhow, she was talking on the phone with her friend while shopping and said, "I bought some wedges." Since they had previously been talking about CDs, her friend thought she has just bought a new CD and the band was called "Wedgies."

So, we are laughing about this one.... hope it put a grin on your face, too!

Computer's Frozen! AGAIN

So, earlier today the computer froze on me for the third time. The kids were all around, and so I had to be careful in expressing my frustration.

I blurted out, "Evil, nad, basty, twisted!" Boy, did that make them laugh!

Their laughter lightened my frustration at the wonderful technological wonders at our fingertips!

:-)

Ding Bats

It was lovely to be able to spend some time with my niece and her family today! They are stationed nearby so I look forward to seeing more of them while they are here.

Anyway, her 4-year-old son was jumping around on some bean bag chairs with our 7-year-old daughter. As he joyfully jumped around he called the bean bags at first "ding bats" and then "ding bags." It was funny, and still makes me smile when I think about it.

Oh my he is a smart young man! He is blessed to have two of the most loving parents I have had the privilege of knowing.

And his younger brother -- of my! What a joyful, curly-haired lad he is. This is the first time I've seen him.

Thank you, Lord, for bringing them all so close!

Dirty Clothes

So, we were shopping at the local Goodwill store yesterday as R has outgrown most of her pants in the last four months (when we last got her pants because she had grown taller).

R was full of questions. First she asked me why babies have blood on them when they come out of their mommy's tummies. I told her it was just part of the process of birth and that there were lots of fluids that came out of mommies when babies were born. She then asked me if it was the baby that was bleeding. I assured it was the mommy, but it was ok because that's how God designed it.

And then R asked me, "Why don't babies come out with their clothes on?" I responded, "They don't need them in their mom's tummies."

She thought about this and then responded, "Is it because they'll get too dirty in there?"

A lady who was looking nearby squatted down and began laughing as quietly as she could.

And I tucked this precious moment in my heart for pondering later.

Oh, how I love these moments with my kids!

Releasing your inner ape

So late last night, S, K and I were playing mexican train while catching up on the day with each other.

It was late, and we were a bit silly. S made herself some hot chocolate with mint M&Ms.

Well, at one point somebody said something and I went into my famous (among close family and not others) laughing fit until I can't breathe, only to breathe for a second and return to the land of dimming lights due to lack of oxygen, then compeletely recover and start it all over again. The fun thing about these laughing fits is that they ALWAYS make everyone else start laughing until they can't breathe too!

With colds and such making the rounds, the lack of breathing happened quicker than normal, followed by a coughing fit, if the laughing had subsided -- which it had not -- so the laughter continued along with a pressing need to cough.

So I began beating my chest with my open hand in an effort to either spell the coughing need or to force air into the lungs.

To this, K replied, "Well go ahead and release your inner ape, Mom." Of course, being late at night and high on hot chocolate, this produced another round of the laughing fits with more need to inhale oxygen than before.

This isn't the whole story... because during this laughing fit, S snorted an unmelted M&M from her mouth into her nose and it came out the normal way. Melted chocolate was being blown out for about an hour afterward.

Moral of the story -- do not consume hot chocolate with melted, either partially or not at all, M&Ms while having a laughing fit and playing mexican train late at night.

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

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.