Conversations...

A recent phone conversation between Jacob and his cousin, Bella.

Jacob:  Hi Bella.
Bella:  My dad is going to take us to a food store all by ourselves.
Jacob:  Do you know what I'm doing?
Bella:  We're going to the food store (restaurant).
Jacob:  I'm plussing.
Bella:  Isn't it going to be fun?
Jacob:  Do you know what ten plus ten equals?
Bella:  He's going to take us by ourselves.
Jacob:  (After some maternal prompting, begins to understand what Bella is saying.)  Wow.  That's awesome.  

Now Bryan comes to the phone and has a conversation with Ian about how they're going to the food store by themselves with his mom.   Meanwhile, Ian is having a conversation about Bryan's trucks.  I love the straightforward self-centeredness of a child.  The grown-up version is more subtle.  Many times, especially early in our marriage, Chris and I have gotten into an argument when the real problem is that he's having a conversation about "trucks" while I'm talking about "restaurants".  It still happens now but with time we've learned to clarify one another's positions before bringing out the heavy weaponry.

Little brothers, being the fourth, five is still little and slackers...

I love watching the big boys with Rand.  All three of them make me wish I had an older brother (not that little brothers don't rock), but each of them interacts with him in a different way.  David is always on the lookout for his safety.  Are there small toys on the floor?  Could he bang his head on anything?  If I leave Rand crying for longer than David feels is appropriate (only happens once or twice a month, I swear), he picks him up and stands beside me holding him until I can get to him.  Jacob is just hugely entertained by him.  Almost every time Rand wakes up, Jacob wants to run upstairs and climb into his crib with him.  He seeks him out more than the other two.  Bryan doesn't pound Rand when he knocks over his buildings.  Given Bryan's age and rage issues, that is pretty impressive.  According to David and Jacob, Bryan is the best angry fighter EVER.  Hopefully Rand won't have to learn that by experience any time soon.

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When Rand is tired, he grabs a handful of my shirt then collapses on my chest and puts his thumb in his mouth.  What a classic youngest child move.  "If I don't grab onto her, she'll just put me down when I start sucking my thumb."  The other day I was delusionally (that's a word, right) trying to keep Rand happy with tupperware on the kitchen floor so that I could finish one last chore before putting him to bed.  I had on long baggy pants.  He kept crawling after me, grabbing a fistful of my pants, sticking his thumb in his mouth and laying down on the floor to try to sleep.  Every time I walked away he would flip out and crawl after me again.  Please don't ask me why I couldn't put him down first and then finish the chores.  Once I've decided to do things in a certain order, it generally takes A LOT more than a crying baby to change my mind.

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We had a busy morning and I found this in the living room during rest time.  Because he has two younger siblings, sometimes I forget how little he still is.

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We were at Target today and Jacob saw gift bows.  

Jacob:  Wow Mommy, can we get those sometime?
Me:  What?
Jacob:  Those things.  They're supposed to go on presents.

It took a few minutes to really hit me - buying the ribbon and intending to tie bows on their gifts is different than actually tying bows on their gifts.  Is this one of those things my future daughter-in-law will pity him about?

David's heart and power tools...

We had a great time with Chris' dad a few weeks ago.  He came out to do all the home improvement projects that we hate.  Even more than the home improvement, which is awesome, I loved watching the boys interact with their grandfather.  David in particular really bonded with him.  There were several power tools involved in the projects.  Ron explained how everything worked and even took David's suggestions a few times.  He also got some scrap wood and let the three big boys use his staple gun, nail gun and drill.  Really, I think it was life-changing for them.   They weren't wild.  They were serious, as men with power tools should be (except they also wanted to be video taped). 

I don't understand it.  It's not the way I work, but something about all those tools grabbed David's heart.

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You've never seen cool til you've seen a baby with an "I love derivatives" shirt.

The subtle art of practical joking...

We have a child who has a hard time recognizing appropriate boundaries when he's trying to be funny.  For instance, the first time you throw yourself in front of the door to try to get Daddy to stay home from work, it's sweet and amusing.  It becomes a problem if you're still clinging to the door when the amused note in your parents' voices has been replaced by something decidedly less friendly, and you try the same thing every morning.  Sometimes we forget that he's not trying to irritate us.  He needs some help in figuring out boundaries that are naturally recognized by our other children.

A recent conversation:

Child 1:  Would a saw be a good joke?

Me:  Do you mean would it be a good joke to pretend to cut someone with a saw?

Child 1:  Yeah.

Me:  Well that depends on whether the other person thinks it's funny or is scared.

Child 1:  So if I was holding a real saw it wouldn't be a good joke, right?

Me:  Exactly.

Child 1:  And I definitely shouldn't say, 'I'm going to cut your head off,' right?

Me:  Right.

Child 2:  And you SHOULDN'T say, 'I'm going to cut off your wenis.'

Me:  Do you mean penis?

Child 2:  Yeah.

Me:  Yeah buddy.  That's exactly right.

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This week someone in our house

1. Had a meltdown when his silly band broke, someone touched something he built three hours ago, couldn't see the pictures on our book, ...
2. Had rapidly deteriorating body parts at clean up time.  First his legs hurt, then his stomach hurt, then his neck hurt and finally he was TOO TIRED.
3. Played Christopher Robin with his stuffed animals and played Celts vs. Huns with anachronistic weaponry.
4. Got schooled by a much younger person at Memory.
5. Functioned as the baseball bat in some game loosely resembling baseball.
6. Desperately needs a new belt because he's losing his pants.

If you can match each number with the correct Brothers H household member, I'll send you an email telling you that you're very smart. 

*I wanted to include a chainsaw picture at the top.  FYI - if you google 'chainsaw images' you see some pretty disturbing stuff.  File that under things I really shouldn't have had to learn by experience.

In which the brothers h wear Rainy Day clothes...

It's a rainy day.  It's comforting.  We can stay home without feeling like we should be somewhere enjoying something.  I looked at Rand in his footy pajamas and decided that we all needed Indoor Clothes which must be worn on a Rainy Day.  Can you tell what book we're reading?  The more it RAINS, tiddely-pom...

Junior psychologist and a rowdy grammar lesson...

We read Noah's Ark by Peter Spier (which I highly recommend) this morning.  One of the illustrations shows Noah trying to pull a belligerent donkey into the ark...

David:  Why doesn't the donkey want to go into the ark? (He's particularly confused because a later picture shows animals outside the closed ark and wanting to get in.)

Me:  Donkeys are just that way.  Even if you try to get them to do something they like, they always fight it.

David:  Maybe he just wants to decide to go in for himself.

Me:  (Inner dialogue) You are your father's child.

A linking verbs lesson gone awry...

"Mommy is tooting thunderously loud."

"David's spanking was thunderously loud."

Great Falls and the C&O canal...

We visited the C&O canal on Saturday, and I was reminded of a quote from an Asian pastor touring American churches.  It was something along the lines of 

"It is amazing what the western church can do without God."

The canal is very cool.  The most interesting part is watching the operation of the lock.  They pull open the doors to the lock and water rushes in lifting the waters of the canal.  It's interesting.  It made me pause and say, "Huh, cool."  If you were looking for Great Falls, you might think, "Well, there's rushing water here.  It's close.  It kind of reminds me of a waterfall."  Though innovative and interesting, it's entirely explainable, manageable.  When you take a closer look, you notice that the water is stagnant and the banks are clearly man-made.  It did nothing for my spirit. 

Off to the side, there is a path that leads to an overview of Great Falls.  It is not in the same category as the canal.  It is Other.  There are rapids, waterfalls, boulders, ...  There are some pockets of still water but nothing stagnant.  It's scary.  The current is swift - treacherous.  It is a thing of God, not of man.  

There were kayaks putting in at Great Falls.  It looked scary but EXHILIRATING.  Other.  There was a boat ride at the canal.  It looked BORING.  

The night before this excursion, Chris and I participated in a meeting at church.  We're planning some things we'd like to do as a church - important Jesus things.  Reflecting on the canal, I want to be so careful and prayerful.  I want to kayak Great Falls and not sit on a boat in the C&O Canal.

*  Note - the C&O Canal was rendered obsolete before the project was even completed.

** This was a really great outing with the kids.  They loved the rock scrambling.