Alright - no serious parenting issues today, I promise. Just light-hearted cuteness. After all, with 3 kids - 2 of them under 5 - the adorable factor in my house on any given day fluctuates between 80 and 95 percent. Gotta share just a few of the latest cute things happening around here:
Good Morning - Most days after I get Tyler off to school I get a few precious moments to myself before Riley wanders out of bed. He usually announces his presence by telling me 'I waked up' like his sweet face before me isn't obvious proof of that. On rare occasions, Scooter is up first and beats him to the punch. As soon as Riley walks in the room he'll say 'Riley, I woke up first'. Sometimes this gets a drawn out yes from Riley but most days it kicks off the first of many differences-of-opinion of the day. No, I woke up first - No I did. I love mornings though, the kids are so snuggly and soft and slow. They haven't kicked into high gear yet and they are happy to just be near me and let me love on them. I always ask if they slept good and I almost always get a yes. They spend time petting the dogs and hugging them. They'll sit in my lap and ask what we are doing that day. And then five minutes later, they are off and running and the marathon begins again.
Y'all - Even though I have lived in Texas for 30 years now and my speech is well peppered with southern idioms including 'y'all', it still weirds me out sometimes to hear the word coming from my little guys mouths. They both say it, but it's really starting to become a serious part of Scooter's vocabulary. It catches me off guard to hear it coming from him. I guess in the deep recesses of my brain, I still expect my kids to be yankees even though they were born here. Strange, but very cute.
Star Wars - The Star Wars obsession has hit my house again, but this time it's twice the fun since Scooter and Riley are both now watching the movies and running around play acting the characters and swinging plastic light sabers. I think Scooter has the best sound effects I've ever heard for his light saber battles, but Riley can hold his own. Scooter's totally got him though on the sounds and facial expressions for 'forcing' with his hand and shooting lightning out of his fingertips like the Sith Lords. And Riley has some serious ls moves. When Tyler plays with them, he can disarm Scooter in seconds, but Riley keeps his ls with no problems whatsoever against his big brother. What amazes me is how fast they pick it up, and how it's the same things we went through with Tyler all over again. For example, the kids were fine with a blue light saber and red light saber to play with right up until they watched Return of the Jedi. Then Scooter needed a green light saber so he could be Luke with his new ls. They call the Emperor 'The Boss' since he's Vader's boss. They run around asking 'Who Goes There?' to everyone they meet. They change characters easily and like being the bad guys as much as the good guys. Last night, Scooter told me 'Join me on the dark side or I will bestroy you (no that's not a typo)'. When I said I would never join the dark side, he chopped off my leg, but then immediately replaced it with a new robotic one. Sometimes I get the grand honor of being 'the princess' and luckily this role doesn't require any action on my part - just being here. They run around fighting bad guys and Riley says 'Don't worry princess' over and over again in an effort to protect me. Scooter's got the imagination and changes their challenges and story lines constantly while Riley runs behind him and plays along with whatever scenario Scooter comes up with. I have my neice's old Chewbaca costume and Scooter puts the furry hat on and runs around here confusing the dogs. They like playing with Tyler's SW legos too and their favorites are the little lego men with little lego light sabers and little lego helmets and guns. They love the Bobo-Fet one the best, but call him something like 'Bumbo-Gel'. I have recently scrounged up a couple of safety pins to aid me as the kids ask me over and over again to help them use their blankets as Jedi capes. Just this morning Riley gave me a run down while holding the coveted green ls that went something like 'I'm Yuke. Yuke has a blue yight saver and Yuke has a green yight saver. And Dark Bader has a red yight saver. Dark Bader is a bad guy, but he's nice too.' When Riley is playing a bad guy, he tucks his chin down to his chest, scrunches down his eyebrows and looks up at you with something resembling a frown, but he's so darn cute it's hard not to smile at him anyway. It cracks me up to be walking through the house doing laundry or something and hear them playing. My personal favorite is when I hear Scooter saying something like 'I'm your father. I'm Darth Vader and I'm your father. Join me.' and then flipping over and saying 'I'm Luke, your Darth Vader and you're my father.' They don't really get all the intricacies of the stories, but they get the basics. Good versus Evil. Evil can sometimes turn back to good and sometimes it just stays evil. Good wins though in the end, no matter how bad things get. I can deal with that.
Riley - Sometimes when Riley is talking to you, you aren't sure if you are looking at a 2 year old or an old man. Last night we were all outside on the porch, talking and playing, and Riley kept opening the door from the inside and yelling out 'What's goin on out here?' and it was strangely reminiscent of my Grandpa Eugene. He transitions between a still babyish banter to very clearly spoken full sentences. He has an adorable way of nodding when he's talking, trying to ensure that you will agree with him. He'll throw out stuff like 'I neber seen that before' or 'I like that. It's my faborite.' and I just want to giggle. I wish I could record everything he says because I don't want to forget how it all sounds. The other day he had a cut on the bottom of his foot and he told me 'I have a boo-boo. It really hurts. We need to go to the doctor.' I fixed him up, of course, without medical intervention, but it sure was cute. He's very sweet and solicitous. Since I am one of the least graceful people you will ever meet, I am constantly stubbing a toe or knocking my knee into something. When he hears me say ouch, Riley will come running asking if I have a boo-boo and offering to kiss it for me. Every single time someone is leaving our house he'll say 'I wanna walk you out' and will follow you to your car and shut your door for you. Brian (Tyler's dad) likes to joke that Riley doesn't like him and just wants him to leave, but he does the same thing for Scott and I. He's almost 3 now and growing up too fast. At Monday's soccer practice for Scooter, one of the moms asked me how old was my little guy with the amazing motor skills and great hand-eye coordination. After all, he was running around through practice, kicking his own ball with better skill than most of our 5 team players. When I told her, she said he was like a little Pele. Maybe, or maybe it's just sheer determination to do whatever his big brothers do. He just moved up to the 3 year old class at day care and I already see changes setting in. He spends time playing on the computer at school and started doing tumbling with Scooter yesterday. He's maturing quickly and the baby part of my baby is racing away before my eyes. Every day he is more like a little boy and less like a baby or toddler. So sad, but fun too. And he's still my little loverboy. He's so snuggly and loving. He's happy to just be with me and close to me a lot of the time and he still needs me a lot, so I'll cling to that for as long as I can get it.
Scooter - My favorite part of Scooter's personality is his sense of humor and ability to smile. I've never seen a newborn smile the way Scooter did on his first day and he's still that kid. You can get him out of a funk or a bad mood pretty easily by making a joke and making him laugh. He runs around making up jokes and trying to get you to smile. Just as Riley is leaving babyhood for little boyness, Scooter looks less like a little boy every day and more like a big boy. He is getting longer and leaner, baby cheeks fading more all the time. His memory amazes me. He shocked me the other day when he was talking about finding a certain toy in a certain place that we had located there over a year ago. He takes forever to talk to people, but he remembers who they are, where they live, what they wore and what they did and said. Might have a bit of his Grandma MJ in his blood, really. Lately Scooter has been trying to get down the days of the week and what order they go in. He asks me several times a day what today is, what tomorrow is, what yesterday was, when the next school day is, when the next soccer game is. When it's my turn to put him to bed at night, he loves to have 'our talk' and it's really a fabulous time. Sometimes he just wants to know something like how coffee pots are made and how they work. Other times he wants to discuss his next birthday or starting school in a year. Sometimes we just revisit the things he did that day and others we talk about what's happening the next day or later that week. Last night we talked about Toy Story 3 and how we were hoping that it would be released on DVD in time for Christmas. And then maybe Santa would bring it to him. 'I love Santa, and I love the tooth fairy.' he told me. Not that he's had a visit from the tooth fairy yet, but he gave me a run down of how it works. We talked about Christmas and decorating the tree. We talked about how our tree had been a mess last year and gotten thrown out and how we'd have to get a new one. He told me he wanted it to be just like the other one with lights already on it, but maybe we could get purple lights since that's his favorite color. He wondered if we still had the red bag to store the tree in. He wanted me to remind him what the name for ornaments was. He wanted to make sure we got candy canes for the tree which we could eat, but we had to suck on them hard and not chew them fast. And maybe, he said, Santa will bring me the little tire things (he means the little tire-jack bobcat type things from the CARS movie, the main characters pit crew at the beginning) that go with Lightning McQueen and say 'You need tires, you need them' (the line is actually 'You need tires, you idiot' but Scooter still gets this wrong and I love it). A $5 toy if I can find it - the green and blue ones are widely available, while McQueens pit crew is scarce. That's all he wants. Oh and he wanted to put the tree up at Halloween (smiles) and then immediately transitioned to what we were going to dress up as for that particular holiday. I am dreading the day he goes to school next year. I will really miss all the times we have together during the day while I watch him figure out the world and how it works. But for now, I just enjoy listening to him and he is never short of things to talk about - kind of like his mom.
Tyler - I know I spent a lot of time yesterday complaining about Tyler's recent antics, but like I said he's a really good kid. Since he's ten, we don't have as high a frequency of verbal gems from him anymore, but we still get some good stuff occasionally. When we went to tour the AFB in NM this summer, he picked his favorite collared golf shirt to wear instead of a tshirt because he wanted 'to make sure that I am respectful to the officers and the base, mom'. When he finally got over the hump at six flags and hit the big roller coasters, he kept saying to me 'I can't believe I did it. I conquered my fears.' When Scooter got a David and Goliath puzzle for his bday, Tyler helped him do it the first time and then later that day I found him reading from the Bible on his own. I asked him what he was reading and he told me that he liked the story of David and Goliath and had seen the verses printed on the puzzle. He wanted to read the whole thing from the Bible directly instead of just a Bible Story. He loves to learn about stuff, in general, and will decide to research about things like origami or constellations on the internet on his own. He loves art and making things with his hands. He likes to try to invent new contraptions for him and his friend to play with. He still loves legos. He absolutely, positively loves to read. He's a really awesome big brother and even though some times he doesn't want the little ones in his way, he usually plays with them a lot - teaching as he goes. Just an all around great kid, slowly morphing between child and teen, growing like a weed lately. I can't believe he's not really a child anymore - not a little one anyway. Big Kids are pretty fun and I am enjoying this stage a lot.
I really love being home with my kids and hearing them play together. Having the two little ones so close together has been rough at times, but I know that I have given them eachother as best friends and that is priceless. It's hysterical to hear the 3 of them interact sometimes, but it's my favorite thing to do. Last night Scott and I sat on the porch with Scooter prancing before us, talking to us a mile a minute, changing the subject every two seconds and telling us 'You two can't hear me when you're talking'. Scott looked at me and said 'Who needs cable when you've got one of these in the house?' I have to agree. It's all the entertainment you could ever ask for sometimes!
Thanks and God Bless!
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