FIFTY-TWO

Theodore loves his Papa so much. Every morning he wakes up and the first thing he says is, "Papa!" He also really loves bikes. He enjoyed pretending to ride Matthew's bike when we were sending him off to work. 

2016 week fifty-two

My kids will take any chance to be naked playing in water -even if it's only barely above 70 degrees. 

Family photo on the last day of the year. photo cred: Jacob Cole

In winter, when the days are nice I try to keep my kids outside (and apparently unclothed) as much as possible. When Vera whines about it I tell her it makes her strong -that doesn't win her over. When I tell her she will be able to send her kids outside and lock the door when she's a Mama then she gets a mischievous glint in her eye and happily skips outside. The thought of wielding power over others one day is enough to cheer her right up.

Then the next day it felt properly wintery again. 

My children (and the dog) love that we are dog sitting this weekend. The dog we are watching doesn't know how he feels. The thing he likes most about Frida is eating her food. The thing my kids like most about him is that he doesn't growl at them.

Happy New Year!


Quotes:

"This is TOTALLY awesome!"

Theodore's words: Duh! (done) Papa, eeeEEEh! (lights, shakes heads, I say "It's not hot." Laugh, repeat) Mama (but only in reference to food. As in he will only say my name when I'm in the kitchen, feeding him, not feeding him and he wants me to be, at the table, someone else is giving him food.)

"Oh! My candy looks so good and tasty and thick and adventurous and pretty."

Vera likes to play the rhyming game. She walks around our house rhyming nonsense words all day. Unfortunately it can be kind of funny for us at times, "Kitten, blitten, shitten." "Duck, wuck, f--" you get the idea.

"I can't leave my mermaid in the road or a car might roll over her and break her business."

Matt's little brother Sam and his girlfriend Larissa babysat for us one night to have a date to pick out a new calendar -a simple but very fun date sans children. When they arrived to babysit, Vera ran to the door and yelled, "It's Uncle Sam and Aunt Larissa!" I explained she isn't an aunt, but it didn't matter, as we were leaving I heard Vera saying, "I just love you so much Aunt Larissa." :)

"This is my Elsa licorice medicine. It's snowflake flavor."

My children together make up the many aspects of Calvin's personality from Calvin & Hobbes. Giraffe is Vera's Hobbes without a doubt. She plays with her all day and in every situation. Giraffe has a steady and kooky personality separate from V. V has the precocious loquacity that I associate most with Calvin. And Theodore is the Calvin who is smashing cars together and climbing on the roof to try to fly like a pterodactyl. One day Vera wanted to play with her dollhouse but Theodore kept pulling the furniture out and throwing it. I told her I would block him out of her room so she could play by herself. I put the couch in front of our hall entrance. In about 2 minutes, he had taken his toy airplane and used it as a step stool to climb onto her school desk and throw markers (without lids) everywhere. So I blocked him out of the front room and hallway entirely. In 3 more minutes, he had dragged a basket to the back of the couch, upended its contents, used it to climb on top of the shoe rack and then up over the back of the couch, down over the side and running down the hall yelling and banging his way into her room. But she was already coming out saying that she was too lonely to play by herself. I can hardly keep Theo back from anything. And we wont even go into mealtimes. Mopping is a much more regular occurrence in my kitchen these days.