The other day I got an email from my friend about an unusual request she had.  I found the email quite amusing, so I’ll share it:

Our almost 5-year-old Sammie is the firecracker of the group.  She likes to be the one to stir things up, and she sometimes has some crazy ideas.  My mom sent me an email with the following video and a message:  “I’m surprised Sammie hasn’t tried this.”

I can’t imagine what those poor parents were going through.  First I’m sure horror and panic set in as they worried their little one would get injured or stuck in there – notice they wisely killed the power to the crane game.  Then, once she got out, they were probably extremely embarrassed!  I half expected to see them spank her little butt when it was the only part of her sticking out!  Not that I condone spanking really, but you know how extreme relief often gives way to anger, especially when kids are involved…  I’m certainly glad it was their problem and not mine.  I know I will not be showing this video to Sammie nor any of my kids for that matter – they don’t need any more “good” ideas!

I was musing today about something…

Sometimes my son gets this look on his face where he looks more like a kid than a baby.  He’s 9 months old, so he’s still very much a baby, but more frequently I can see on his face how he might look as a toddler.  It’s hard to explain, but my husband feels the same way.  The bottom line is, time flies when you’re having fun, and I’m having the time of my life watching my kids grow up!

I got a little overtired and frustrated with them once during our last road trip, and I was thinking to myself, ok, no more doing this for at least five years.  Then it hit me – in five years, my kids will be 14, 10, 7, and 5!  No more little little ones, in just a short half of a decade!

So I asked my husband the question – why is time flying so fast?  Does it fly faster as I get older?  More quickly when I have more kids?  Is it just because our youngest is a boy and we’re used to how girls grow up after having 3 of those?  I just don’t know, but as hard as the work is with 4 little ones, 2 still in diapers, I still wish they’d stay little longer – I really do.

Sunrise, sunset, quickly flow the  years…

Enough said.

With the return of warmer weather comes the return of our locally famous wagon o’ cuties:

Except what’s that in the wagon, a little red elf?  Now I might be biased here, but that is the cutest elf I’ve ever seen!  This is the first time I put that little sweatshirt on my son.  I wish I had found it in time for Christmas last year – I don’t think it’ll still fit him by December for next Christmas.  And it seems the kids are starting to overflow the wagon…  Might be time to make our oldest walk or ride her bike…

My son is crawling – uh, oh.  I don’t remember what his 3 sisters got into when they started to crawl, besides trouble, but my son’s favorite things seem to be dog toys (and the dogs’ food and water bowls, what a mess!), tablecloths (which he yanks on – I’m going to have to remove the one in the living room before he yanks it and pulls the heavy computer right down on his head!), and wires (I don’t think I need to explain why he shouldn’t be pulling and chewing on wires.  If I do, let’s hope you don’t have any kids of your own).  He smiles so sweetly when we say no-no; I think he likes the attention.  A more stern NO just makes him grin widely and start waving at us.  So how do you discipline someone so incredibly cute?  I can’t help but smile back when he grins – he’s so cute with his little toothies sticking out from his bottom gums.  Could you say no to this face?

When I stopped at the gas station the other day to get the kids a snack, there was a “little person” working the counter – is that the preferred term these days for someone with dwarfism?  I certainly don’t want to insult anyone, so pardon my ignorance…

So anyway, I decided to give my kids a talk about why it’s not polite to stare at people; I was especially targeting my almost-5-year-old since she is very curious about people and the differences in the way people look, that sort of thing – and she’s not very discreet about her curiosity.  So I was explaining to her about why we shouldn’t stare at people, and she had a sincere question:  Is it ok to stare at broccoli?

I told my husband this story when we got home, and he was wondering if she was joking, but no, her tone was indeed sincere.  My eldest daughter and I laughed when she asked it, but not AT her, we only thought it was cute and silly.  But like I told my husband, I really don’t think she was trying to be silly.  Like us, my husband knows by now that Samantha is a very unique individual, and she just has strange questions sometimes.  She was more than a handful as a two-year-old, but the further away we get from that stage in her life, the more we can enjoy her very individualistic personality and free spirit!

SAMMIE

About a year ago, I had a blog post called “The Mayor And The Macarena”.  It was about my family’s first roller skating outing (it was a birthday party for the Girl Scouts organization), and my post was so titled because our county’s only roller skating rink is owned and operated by the town mayor.  Not quite being fully assimilated to small town living, I guess, I got a big kick out of watching the mayor play DJ; especially when he spun old has-been but essential tunes for us to dance to on our roller skates like “The Macarena”, “YMCA”, “The Chicken Dance”, and “The Hokey Pokey”.  So it’s that time of year again – Happy Birthday Girl Scouts! – and we attended the birthday party at the roller rink again on Sunday.  That reminds me, did you know that the infamous chicken dance now has lyrics?

“I don’t wanna be a chick,
I don’t wanna be a duck,
I just wanna shake my butt”
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

Well, that was news to me because as far as I knew, the chicken dance was just that – a dance with motions and no lyrics, but I bet you can guess which word the kids absolutely LOVED putting the emphasis upon…  ah, kids!

Coincidentally, our Girl Scout’s younger sister was also invited to a birthday party at the roller rink on Sunday.  Which meant 5 straight hours of roller skating!  After 5 hours, the girls had showed so much improvement!  We even got skates for our 2-year-old, but those skates were practically bigger than she was, and they were so heavy, she didn’t have a chance:

But like I said, after a few hours on the skating floor, the older two really got the hang of it, despite a few spills and some breaks, err, rest periods, not broken bones, thank goodness!

The girls’ baby brother even had a great time singing and bopping along with the music…

A great way to cap off an extremely busy weekend… we had so much fun, I think we’ll make a few more trips over there even before the Scout’s party comes around again next year!

Today my son is 8 months old – how time flies!  Gone are the days when I could cradle him like a newborn baby and sing him to sleep.  There is no better way to relax than that, and I really miss it.  Yesterday when I was in Walmart, I literally almost cried when I  saw the itty bitty baby outfits.  Why do they grow so fast?

So anyway, today is Christopher’s 8 month birthday, and he’s been growing by leaps and bounds lately.  He popped his first tooth a few weeks ago, and I swear, every day that tooth gets a little bit taller.  He just has the one tooth so far, like a snaggletooth, so we’ve been calling him “snagglepuss”.  I don’t think that nickname will stick though, it’s not quite as cute as his nickname of “Beeber”, which is how our 2-year-old used to say Christopher.

Here is “Snagglepuss” – note the little tooth on the bottom:

And he is finally sitting up!  A little late, but  it seems as if now he’s doing everything at once!  He can scoot on  his tummy, roll from his back to his tummy and his tummy to his back, and he can also sit up by himself when he’s laying down.  Now that he’s sitting, he can be busier because it’s easier for him to play.  Here he is sitting up:

And of course, after all of this activity, he gets tired, and sometimes, he doesn’t quite make it up to bed:

HAPPY 8 MONTH BIRTHDAY CHRISTOPHER!!!

I had to share this funny little story because something our almost 5-year-old daughter Sammie said the other day had my husband and I in stitches.  She calls out from the bathroom – “Dad!  I have to go poop but I can’t…    Oh, nevermind!”

Hmmm, now that I’m reading it, it’s not quite as funny.  I guess you had to hear her little 4-year-old voice call it out.  Kids are so adorable with their bluntness.  And I’m just glad that Sammie was able to solve her own problem!