Spring Tea Parties and Things My Kids Say

A conversation at the lunch table:

Joshua: "I haven't met the girl I'm going to marry yet."

Me: "No? It's possible you've already met her and you don't know it yet."

Emmy: "I'm going to marry Landon and live with Joshua on their cowboy ranch."

Elayna: "And I'm going to marry Roan." (giggles)

Me: "What about Lily, Joshua? Since the girls plan to marry her brothers?"

Joshua: "Lily's too old for me, Mom! She's THIRTEEN."

Me: "How about.."

Joshua: "No! I'm not going to marry Elliana either!"

Me: "Okay! Well, what about Gracie?"

Joshua: "Gracie doesn't believe the same things we do. I can't marry her."

Elayna: "I'm going to marry LEVI!"

Emmy: "You CAN'T marry your COUSIN, Elayna!"

Me: "What about Bri or Devon? or Lexi? You remember Lexi, right?"

Joshua: "No. I have no idea who you're talking about. Well, I remember them a little bit, but I don't know       them well enough to marry any of them. I just haven't MET the girl I'm going to marry, mom!"

Me: "You never know, son. A lot of things can change in 15 years."

Elayna: "Okay. I'll marry Landon."

Emmy: "NO! YOU are going to marry ROAN because I'M going to marry LANDON."

Me: "Oh-Kay then!"

Fly Friends:

It was a little too quiet upstairs the other day, so I headed up to check out what was going on. In Emmy's room I found two little girls with flies crawling on their hands. I asked them what they were doing. "Rescuing flies.", Emmy replied. Rescuing flies from the window sills of our old, old farmhouse has been a passion of hers since she was a tot. God gave her a heart for ALL His critters, what can I say? 

"Okay, go let them outside, then. And wash your hands."

"They can't fly, so they'd DIE if they went outside mom! That's why we're feeding them."

"What exactly are you feeding them?"

"Blood."

!!!!

Grabbing their little hands, I quickly scanned for new wounds. (That WOULD be right up Emmy's alley. She's tough as nails when she wants to be!) Infinitely relieved to not find any fresh blood, *cringe* they were marched downstairs to set their friends free...outside. Of course, they washed their hands after, but immediately went outside to find more germs to replace those ones.

Emmy came in later with her first WORMS of the season.

Collections

I collected books as a child. I didn't collect worms, rocks, stamps, tree branches, or any of the other weird and not-so-weird things kids sometimes collect. Just books. I was a constant reader. Books were my friends. Books make excellent companions when all you have is brothers to torture you.  Maybe that's why Joshua loves books.

At any rate, my oldest daughter did NOT take after me in that area. 

One morning when she woke up, she came downstairs and, in the early morning light of almost-sunrise, she found the *ahem* tip of Oddball's torn ear, which had fallen off sometime in the night. She came running to me in the kitchen with it, proudly holding it up for me to see. 

"Mom! Mom! I found Oddball's EAR! Look at this! It's all fuzzy and cool and I'm going to KEEP it! I'm going to keep it somewhere safe and the next time an ear falls off I'm going to keep that one, too! I'm going to have a DEAD EAR COLLECTION, MOM!"

And with that she ran off to show her siblings her treasured new possession. 

Spiders

Spiders are a fact of life here. I've mostly gotten used to it. I have my moments of being terrorized by one in the shower (WHY do they prefer their victims naked and helpless?) but usually I kill them and don't lose any sleep over it. Emmy, in her bug-loving little heart, doesn't scream when she sees one, though she'd rather not rescue a spider like she does all of his creepy friends.

Evelyn, however, does not share her sister's love of creepy crawlies. She screams for Emmy to come rescue her when she sees a ladybug.

Emmy always comes to the rescue.

A few weeks ago as I stood at the stove in the kitchen making breakfast, I heard a blood-curdling scream from the living room.  I ran, thinking the worst had happened and that someone had fallen onto the wood stove. The screams increased in volume and intensity in the few short seconds it took my adrenaline-pumping body to get to the scene of mass....confusion?

No blood. No burns. No gnarled bones sticking out of skin.

Just two screaming girls with tears streaming down their faces. Evelyn stood on her chair at the table, Emmy stood about 2 ft away, a look of absolute horror accompanying her shrieks.

"What happened?! What IS it?!" I yelled over the din.

"A SPIDER!!" Emmy screamed, her eyes glued to her baby sister.

"WHERE?!"

"A SPIDER is ON her!!!", Emmy yelled, then burst into absolute sobs and dashed to the couch where she flung herself face down and cried.

Turning to a hysterical Evelyn, I grabbed her before she convulsed herself onto the floor. Setting her down, I quickly ran my hands through her hair and over her face, then stripped her and inspected her thoroughly.

No spider.

I searched through her clothing.

No spider.

She continued to scream and cry and say "Spider, spider.", so I continued to look.

No spider.

"Emmy, are you sure there was a spider on her?" I finally asked.

"Yes! It was on her arm!", came the muffled wail from the couch.

A shudder ran through Evelyn as she held out her arm and looked it over.

Still no spider.

Clearing the area around us on the floor, I knelt down beside Evelyn and inspected the floor for suspicious movement.

Staring intently, hardly moving, for several seconds, a tiny movement finally caught my eye a few inches from Evelyn's feet. Watching it for several seconds more, a saw a wispy 8-legged fairy no larger than the size of Evelyn's pinky fingernail discombobulatedly turn in circles.

Poor thing.

Poor tiny, tiny, doomed thing.

I pointed it out to Evelyn, who screamed again in response and clung to me as I reluctantly squished it. I mean, I think I squished it. I never could find what would be the itty-bitty remains.

Many kisses and reassurances and some burnt pancakes later, peace was restored to the house hold.

To make Evelyn panic: give her a bug. Or put a spider on her.

To make Emmy panic: Get someone else panicked.




Check back with me in 10 years about how this is going when I have daughters aged 17, 15, and 12.

Should be fun!

Toothbrushes and Toddlers

At the moment I have one child-size toothbrush jammed down the bathroom sink drain, one in the garbage can after being retrieved from the drain, and two just plain MIA. And no, that's not because I haven't thought to replace them lately, that all happened THIS WEEKEND.

What IS it with small children and toothbrushes?!

I'd fare better if I just bought a stockpile of them from toothbrushes"R"us and called it a day. Then they could be really disposable. Use it once, throw it away, kids!

And then I'd get a sharps container like the ones they hang on the walls in the mall bathroom.

That way they wouldn't be fished out of the garbage and used by little miss Babycakes to brush the dog's teeth right before shoving it in her own mouth.

Or brush the dog's fur.

Or scrub the floor/window/toilet/chair/piano/cupboard/stove/what-have-you...

Once I even absolutely insanely bought the kids these cool toothbrushes with suction cups on the bottom so you could suction them right to the edge of the sink - UPRIGHT so no germs contaminate them.

Except that it was much, MUCH more fun to suction them to the MIRROR, then laugh hysterically when the suction failed and they popped off and shot across the room, landing in random places all over the bathroom.

**shudder**

No matter how many times they were cautioned against it, those suction cups were entirely too entertaining to resist, and now and then after the children had all brushed their teeth and gone to bed I'd be sitting in the living room and hear the tell-tale "Pop!" of a toothbrush and the thud of it landing...

**shudder**

Those didn't last long.

At all.

My personal favorite is watching Evelyn get a hold of MY toothbrush and wander around the house with it. It doesn't seem to matter where I hide it or how high up it has been put, she has radar for it.

I thought toothpaste was bad. For a while there the kids would have toothpaste smeared around the sink like a hot glue gun gone wild, until I learned it was best to just hide that, too, and move the hiding place every few days so they wouldn't catch on to where it was coming from when I'd personally line them up and dot their toothbrushes every morning and night without letting them close enough to squeeze the ever-lovin' ENTIRE contents out of touch the elusive toothpaste tube.

I mean, I guess I could start hiding the toothbrushes, too, right? Maybe in a ziplock bag in a drawer in the fridge. Seems to be the only "hiding" place left that hasn't been stuffed full of other contraband not-for-children items until it gets discovered by grubby little hands, decimated beyond recognition, and shoved back into place surreptitiously until I discover the carnage at some later time.

Confession: Usually when I find that one of my hiding places has been discovered, I peek in, grimace and groan, then close it back up, preferring to pretend my house is NOT full of these pockets of disaster clean at all times and well-organized.

Maybe what I need isn't stock in a toothbrush company, maybe what I need is to hire someone to come organize my house (while I conveniently take a vacation, of course).

Then I'll have lots of new hiding places for things again!

Problem solved.