Dinner Conversation

My boys had the following conversation at dinner tonight and I found it quite entertaining:

I: George, what if you had to dance with a girl?

G: Eww! I would yell, " Iyah help me!"

I: (Giggling) What if a girl tried to hug and kiss you?

G: I wouldn't let her. I would run away.

I: What if she chased you and hugged you and kissed you?

G: Then I would beat her up. I will never let a girl hug and kiss me.

I: Yeah. We don't like girls.

At this point mom jumped in

M: I hug and kiss you and I'm a girl.

G: But you're in our family. We don't want princesses hugging and kissing us.

Good to have that one clarified. And obviously mom hugs and mom kisses are still OK. That makes me happy.

We did it Daddy!!

After much convincing, bribing, teasing, etc. George finally agreed to let me try to pull out his tooth. I got on the internet to learn how to tie a slip knot with dental floss and we set the time and place- after dinner in the family room. When the time came George slipped quietly upstairs for a minute. When I asked him why he said he went to say a prayer to help him to be brave. However, bravery has never been his strong suit. The minute he re-entered the room he was freaking out. I finally got him to "just let me see if I could even get the string around his tooth." However, once the string was set he decided there was no way he was letting me yank that thing out. He covered his mouth with his hands and was screaming! Iyah was covering his ears and Ella had her face in the couch and was rocking back and forth. It was very dramatic. At this point I don't think I could have gotten that string off if I tried. So, after practically sitting on George and restraining his arms under my legs, etc. I gave it a yank. He was yelling, "Don't pull it out, don't pull it out!" as I calmly walked into the kitchen to get him a paper towel. When he staunched the bleeding and calmed down he told me again, "I don't want you to pull it out." At which time I presented him with his now detached tooth. His response? "Oh." I asked him if it hurt. He shrugged. Geez. One down...how many to go?

One more quick story. Ella is always loosing her "better" baby. Whenever I can't find it at bed time I try and substitute the "other" baby. She doesn't like that very much. "Me not like that one!" she tells me. Well, today when I was picking up her room guess who I found in the garbage? You got it..."other" baby. I guess she'd had enough substitutions.

Climbing Trees

Iyah (up top) and George (Down low)

Iyah's new hobby is climbing trees. I don't know how it started, but he is really very good at it. I think part of the reason he likes it so much is that it is one thing that he does better than George. I have to admit that it scares me to death! I turn into the super paranoid mom, "You'll fall to your death!" or "We're going to end up at the hospital!" I can practically see him rolling his eyes at me. He says, "Mom, I can do it, I'm a monkey!" Then he asked me the other day if we will have lots of trees for him to climb at our new house in VA. All I can say is...mom hopes not.

Our Last Week

Baseball Boys

T-ball ended for George this week. Unfortunately it rained on his last game, but the kids didn't mind one bit. George liked t-ball a lot more than he liked soccer so we were glad to finally have a successful sport experience. I think it helped that dad was the coach! Isaac was especially excited that he was able to play in a couple of games, filling in for missing players. He hit as well or better than some of the kids, but he didn't quite get the running the bases part. All in all a great season and very happy boys.

Little Miss Ella got a new hair cut. This picture is her cheesing it for the camera. I told her we needed to take a picture to show her grandmas and she said, "Okay" and then stood there smiling until I went and got my camera. She knows she's pretty darn cute.

This is our last week with Benji and then he heads down to VA to start his big new job! We are very excited to start this new phase of our lives, but we are going to miss him super lots. Hopefully we can join him soon!

Boys

Iyah showing off one of his caterpillars

It is caterpillar season in NY. These little buggers are everywhere and Iyah is obsessed! He finds them everywhere and walks around with them crawling all over him. One even crawled up his shorts yesterday. He had a moment of panic before he was able to locate the runaway. The worst part is that he is constantly trying to sneak them into the house. He put one in his shoe to try and get it past me and accidentally squished it. Bleh! I feel bad for the ones the boys catch because they really get put through the wringer. The poor little caterpillars have been buried alive in the garden, given swimming lessons in a wheel barrow full of water, sprayed with the hose, stashed in sock drawers and dropped more times than I can count. And those are just the things I know about! I'm never sure when I should put my foot down on the torture of caterpillars. Do I let the kids experiment and explore, or do I save the poor things?

Can I just say before I'm done that I love it when my kids play nice! Yesterday Iyah and Ella played upstairs in their rooms for over an hour without any fights, breaking anything, or making a huge mess. It was WONDERFUL! I wish they did that every day. Packing up a house with 3 enthusiastic helpers, on the other hand, is a different story entirely.