How to clean a toothbrush

1) Give your baby boy a bath on the bathroom counter

2) Don't completely cover his man parts with water

3) Urination ensues.

4) Thoroughly clean toothbrush. Don't tell husband until after he's used aforementioned toothbrush.

Bad Guys

In Kate's prayer this evening "And please help everyone in the WHOLE world to be safe...except bad guys."

The other day, "Please bless this food to make us healthy, even the unhealthy food to make us healthy."

I wish I would have thought of that one much earlier in life.

Mommy knows all

Kate again learned how much Mommies really know. Kate seems to struggle with washing her hands. The other day she was just finishing up, and Suzy heard the water turn on, and then turn off a second later.

Kate came out, and Suzy immediately said "go back and use soap". Kate, again in awe "HOW DID YOU KNOW!". I think this may be a repeating theme for quite a while (years). How do I know this?

We were eating dinner at a friend's house. The kids were outside eating. One of her sons (8yrs old) came in and asked for some more apple juice. She said "you haven't eaten your vegatables yet". Again the "in awe" look as the child is in wonderment at his mom's all-knowningness.

There was a plate glass window with a clear view of the kids table.

Dough Ray Me

Everyone who's heard me sing knows that concepts such as "on tune" and "rhythm" are only pit stops in my racetrack of song. I'm sort of like a stopped clock, I'm probably on tune or rhythm (maybe even on tune AND rhythm) twice a song. Or maybe it's every two songs. Regardless.

Suzy recently read or heard somewhere that a child's sense of tone, and all that jazz is determined by the time they're some insanely young age. Ever since then, I think she's been pretty worried about our children (see, I used to sing them to sleep, or to comfort them).

Well, worry no longer. Now, whenever I'm in the car and start singing (you know, I just break out in song all the time), the kids immediately say "Can you please put on Safety Kids"? The first few times, I thought it was coincidence. Eventually though, I caught onto the pattern. At least now we know our kids aren't musically scarred for life.

Rainbows, Pirates and Goblins.

Games Kate (and Faith) like to play currently:
1) Princess, Princess, Hero, Bad guy: This usually involves a princess being captured by a bad guy. It used to have a hero come and rescue her, now the two variations are the bad guy turns nice and they fall in love or one of the princesses has super powers and escapes on her own. Sometimes the princess is sold to goblins and then rescued.
2) Mermaid Pirate: A mermaid is captured by a pirate who falls madly in love with the mermaid. At some point another memeber of the crew throws the mermaid overboard because he thinks the pirate captian doesn't like her. Then the pirate rescues her and makes the pirate who threw her overboard walk the plank. Sometimes the mermaid is sold to goblins. Of course, the mermaid escapes.
3) Rainbow flying unicorn (recently Kate watched rainbow brite, now everything is rainbowed). Someone sees a "horse" who is really a unicorn, but guys can't see the horn. The horse is captured and then does lots of amazing things (like winning races, saving a village by purifying the water with her horn etc.) Sometimes the horse is sold to goblins, but escapes.

Just wanted to capture some of these before you guys move on to other games. Also, we get very bored with these games, since there seems to be an endless capacity to repeat these games with only slight variations for hours on end.

Sneakery

Suzy and Kate were playing the kids game "bed bugs". You have to try to get more bugs than the other person. For a while, baby Jace was awake and Suzy was trying to move him to different positions to keep him happy. Kate was winning quite easily at this point. Jace fell asleep and Suzy started to gain back some ground.

Kate (very nonchalantly), "Hey Mom, don't you want to keep Jace awake so he'll sleep better at night?"
Suzy, "You just want Jace awake so I'll be distracted and you can win the game."
Kate (extremely shocked and surprised), "HOW DID YOU KNOW THAT!"

Mommies really are omnipotent.

A Child's Prayer

A couple of experiences:
Suzy put Faith in time out. Usually Faith's prayers are very short and contain the same two phrases (bless the family, help us to sleep well, amen). However, Suzy heard Faith give one of the most sincere and heartfelt prayers ever. "Heavenly Father, please help me get out of time out". Her prayer was answered...eventually.

Suzy was feeding Jace and Kate wanted to watch a movie. The remote wasn't working and Suzy told Kate that maybe she could watch one after she was done feeding Jace. Kate closed her eyes for a while, looking very intent.

Just after that, Suzy had the idea to move the batteries around a bit. Low and behold, it worked! Later, in the car, we were talking about this experience and Kate shared with us that she was praying when she had closed her eyes that it would work, and then it did.