Pageant Babies

At our Christmas Eve church service, kids dress up as any nativity character (or animal) that strikes their fancy -- some years we have three Mary's and nine Joseph's and thirteen wise guys. You know, whoever shows up. And at the end, all of the babies get plopped on the stage, too. Sophie was an angel for the third year in a row. Jameson was a shepherd (but Sophie and Laney herded him in and out of the manger). The Stephenses joined us and I wish I had pictures from the church -- Laney was a gorgeous pink and purple fairy angel. Jameson said UH-OH! really loudly when his headpiece fell off. Sophie smashed it back on his head, he pulled off, she put it back, he pulled it off, then a wise man shushed them. It was AWESOME. I took a few pics when we got home:

WASTED!

This is what happens when you stay up past your bedtime (drinking cocoa and looking at Christmas lights with Brian Uncle and Kavita Auntie). When we got home, I told Sophie to go pick out some books and wait for me in her room while I put Jameson to bed. When I went in to read to her, she was already crashed out in the rocking chair.

Walking on the Wild Side

We're reading short stories from a Christmas book each night this month. We've been reading three of them each night, but last night one of the stories was really, really short. I asked Sophie, "Do you want to read one more?"

Her response, "Do you think we can handle it?"

Status Update

You know the not-so-great thing about Facebook? I post quick snippets of our lives on FB and then just send them out in a little binary data packet -- never to be revisited. And because I put something out there, because I had my Doogie Howser reflective moment with my computer screen, I don't necessarily pop over here to the blog to update. But it occurred to me today that this blog IS my baby book, our story of life-as-we-know-it when our kids are so little and changing every time I blink. This is the record I check when someone asks me when Sophie first had teeth. And when Jameson finally utters a sentence, I will capture it here.

So, sorry I've been neglecting you, Blog. Here's a status update on the kiddos:

SOPHIE IS more challenging than ever, and funnier than ever. She can be a total turkey lip (whining, stomping, manipulating her way around the house), but she still loves to cuddle and she says stuff every day that makes me laugh. If you ask her how old she is, she'll say "four and one quarter," her favorite food right now is edamame, she prefers "twirl up" dresses to pants, we have started reading chapter books at night and she really listens (even with no pictures!) and can repeat the detailed story to someone else, and her favorite play, movie, book, and CD are all Annie. She wants nothing more than to be an orphan. For record-keeping purposes, I will note that she still wets the bed at night, unless I wake her up at midnight. When she does make it through the night, she demands two jellybeans: one pink one and one green one.

JAMESON IS a man of few words. The typical word count for an 18 month old is 10-20 words. He says:
Momma
Dada
JJ (when he looks in the mirror)
Bah (ball)
Bah-bah (bottle)
Mi (milk)
Ruff ruff (dog)

He's got about ten days to learn at least 3-13 more words before his 18 month milestone. He said "light" a long, long time ago (his first intelligible and totally parroted word), but he doesn't say it now. He has said Uh-oh a few times, but not consistently. He understands EVERYTHING, though. If I tell him, "Carry your plate to the kitchen, put this wrapper in the trash, and then go into the bathroom for your bath," he can follow ALL of those instructions. When we look at books and I say, "Point to the dog, point to the giraffe, point to whatever...he knows all of them. He waves bye-bye, he makes smacking kissy noises when he's saying night-night to Sophie, he says "Awwww" after we kiss. He has 12 teeth, a head full of wispy Linus-like hair, and a cowlick that makes everyone laugh. He loves the bath and banging anything hard against anything loud. He is a bit of a bruiser, smacking his sister to hear her squeal, then immediately leaning against her for hugs and kisses when we tell him "Say sorry!" His favorite food is fruit, especially berries. Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries. He can open the fridge, pull open the crisper, find the berries, hand them to you, then run to his high chair.

He is a BOY. He grabs our pole light and shakes it. He bangs the strings on Frank's guitars like a little punk rocker. He likes to play in toilets, and on three different occasions I have interrupted a game we call, "Chunk the glass jars of spices onto the hard tile floor." It took me 45 minutes to write this post because 1) It got too quiet so I went to find him...he was unloading knives from the dishwasher, and 2) He stole two potatoes from our tater bin and was running with them through the living room, then he crashed and bonked his head on the corner of a hutch. That said, anyone who spends any amount of time with Jameson says, "He's really laid back, isn't he?" Yeah, actually. He really is laid back. In a lumbering, crashing, cackling bruiser-boy kind of way.

And the rest of us? Oh, Frank, Callie and I are just fine. Trying to take it all in, and write a little bit down every now and then so we can pour over these sweet memories when the kids turn into teenagers and we're ready to sell them to the circus.

The Pumpkin Bash

A few of our favorite Halloween moments, including Sophie's school party, the neighborhood Halloween picnic, and the traditional (SO MUCH FUN!) Lamer/Tamer Pumpkin Bash with all our Ditchdirt breeder friends.

(Click on the photo or on this link: HALLOWEEN 2009)

The World According to Sophie

A couple of conversations I've had with Sophie lately...(I posted these on Facebook, but I wanted to be able to go back and re-read these later. Four year old's are brilliant, I think. And really funny.)

1) Eating Thai noodles together...
Sophie: These noodles look like worms.
Me: Sophie, don't talk about that at the table.
Sophie: Why? It will make the noodles upset?

2) A Science Joke
Sophie: What makes salt? Me: Um...the ocean. Actually, I know this! It's a compound of two elements: sodium chloride. Can you say that? Sophie: sodium chloride (a few seconds pass) Sophie: Mom, do you know what salt makes? Me: No, what? Sophie: Salt makes edamame taste good!

3) More About Salt (another hypothesis, a couple of days later)
Sophie: Do you know why the ocean is salty?
Me: Does it have something to do with edamame?
Sophie: No.
Me: Okay...I think it's because of salt deposits in the water.
Sophie: Actually, no. It's because the whales suck up all the water and then spit it back out again. And it's salty inside a whale's tummy.

Into the Woods

Well, it had to be attempted. Frank and Sophie would camp again in a heartbeat. Jameson had a middle-of-the-night, cold-as-an-icesickle seizure-esque moment during which I know he doubted our parenting skills. I have flashbacks to changing a nasty diaper on the floor of the tent, trying to rationalize with a toddler about why he cannot leap into the campfire, and I retain a slight scent of smokiness in my hair. The final verdict? It was actually really fun -- we had a great time with good friends -- I'd do it again. Red wine would have helped a bit.

Click here to see the pictures of Sophie, Jameson, Eva, and Ellis: CAMPOUT PICS

The State of Health Care

Tonight, Sophie was playing in our little breakfast room and I got invited into her imaginary world for a moment.

Sophie: And what is your name, sweetie?
Me: Mrs. Lollycolly.
Sophie: Okay, Pollypolly...and what do you need today, honey?
Me: Um...I don't know. What are we playing? (If it's restaurant, I typically ask for eggplant parmesan. If we're playing airplane, I definitely want more peanuts, honey roasted, please. If it's school...well, I don't wanna play that one. I'm thinking of dropping out.)
Sophie: I'll fix your nose, Mrs. Cauliflower. Bing! You're fixed!

And then she started "typing" into the cash register. And then she demanded money from me. Ten dollars.

Turns out we were playing doctor's office. Or, more accurately, billing department. That's okay -- I prefer her copay and the bedside manner was quite nice, too.

Belated Birthday Post

There are good and bad things about being born on August 19th.

The PRO's: great (albeit hot) weather for outdoor parties; no obligation to invite every kid in the class, especially since class has just started and your mom doesn't have everyone's address yet; no other holiday in the month of August -- so you don't have to share your day

The CON's: if your parents are teachers, Aug. 19 falls in the middle of a very hectic beginning-of-school week; you'll always be the youngest kid in the class; you don't get the full birthday hooplah at school because the teachers are still figuring out what the plan is for the new year (and your mom is a rule-follower, so you get to bring birthday watermelon even though October kids' moms bring cupcakes); it takes your mom almost TWO MONTHS to post the pictures from the party!

But one more PRO: Because your parents feel slightly guilty about making you postpone your party for a week, you get to have a special adventure on your real birthday, and then a big party 10 days later!



Click on the photo (or this link: BIRTHDAY BASH) to see the party pics!

The Scott Saga

So, we bought Sophie a fishtank for her birthday. She got to go to Petsmart to pick out her fish, and while I tried to point her in the direction of this $5.99 puffy-looking fish, she was particularly drawn to the 27 cent variety goldfish. And she had her eye on a CERTAIN goldfish, which the nice Petsmart employee dutifully caught for her. As soon as he was plopped into the bag, Sophie named him SCOTT. Petsmart Guy lifted the bag and looked at the...I dunno...fishy parts, and told her that it was a girl. She said, "That's okay, his name can be Mrs. Scott." And we took him (her) home. And we loved him/her very much. About three weeks later, he (perhaps she) died.


Hello, my name is Scott. Mrs. Scott. And I am dead...caught in an endless sidestroke beneath my crappy filter that was not strong enough to siphon out my bacteria but seems to enjoy the deathsuck it has on me now.

Not ready to launch into the Circle of Life lecture, Frank and I negotiated the details of the great fish-switch caper, and I returned to Petsmart to search out a Scott look-alike while Frank cleaned out Scott's tank (Scott, of course, was "napping" in the cup waiting for his water to be clean.) And Scott 2.0 became a beloved member of our family. By the way, I asked the Petsmart Girl if the new Scott was male or female (just out of curiosity) and she told me it was very difficult to tell. I agreed, and I did not tell her that Petsmart Guy was a far superior ichthyologist.


Scott 2.0

On Thursday, Scott 2 started swimming diagonally, which seemed like a bad sign to me. By Friday, Scott was skimming the surface, and we decided to tell Sophie that he was dead so that we could get a heartier fish without having to concoct some bizarre story about how Scott had changed color and shape overnight. Apparently, 27 cent goldfish are just not meant to live very long, AND they are very dirty little fish.

Sophie took the news well. I talked about how fish don't live very long, and then told her that Scott had died. Her response: ALREADY??? (If only you knew, Soph....)

We performed the traditional toilet "burial at sea," and she seemed pretty strong about it all. She said a little prayer for him, and told him he had been a good fish. A few minutes later, she asked, "Are we going to die?" Ugh. Why, oh, why did I buy her a stupid fish instead of a Barbie castle or something that would last forever?!? So we had a long talk about how people do die, but they live a lot longer than fish. And when we die, we go to this place called Heaven (and she chimed in with information about God and Jesus, thank you very much Sunday School). We volleyed paradise back and forth -- Sophie prophesies rainbows and purple butterflies everywhere, and she could be right. I told her that the best thing about heaven is that you meet up with everyone you loved on earth, so she would see Scott again, and Gary the Cat (who died before she was two but with whom she is obsessed), and her Nana Jane, and the grandmother she never met. And then, in true Sophie style, she delivered the punchline of our morning mourning.

"But we won't see Scott. Because he is in TOILET HEAVEN." And then she cracked up.

I Always Suspected

Driving all the rugrats to school yesterday, I glanced over at the pile-o-crap on the passenger seat and said, "Oh, shoot!"

Sophie: What's wrong?
Me: I forgot MY lunch. I see the puppy-dog lunch box and the kitty-cat lunch box, but I don't see Momma's lunch.
Sophie: That's okay. You don't matter.


(But just in case you think she is a heartless little four-year-old, I think she meant "It doesn't matter." Because she followed it up with, "Just get a plate and walk around to all your friends and ask them to give you something from their lunch. You do have friends at work, don't you?" Okay...she might be a little bit heartless.)

Your Royal Highness

When Frank picks up Sophie from school each day, part of the routine is to go potty before she's in the car and they're on the drive home or running errands or whatever. Yesterday, Frank had to "go" too, so he went into the bathroom with her at school and closed and locked the door.

Sophie (top volume): WHY ARE YOU LOCKING THE DOOR? WE DON'T LOCK THE DOOR!
Frank: You don't lock the door when friends are coming in to go potty, but when a mom or dad comes in here to go potty, it's okay to lock the door.
Sophie: Why? Because you don't want them to see your hiness? *
Frank: Um, yeah. What's a hiness, Sophie?
Sophie: You know...it's your girl parts!

* The author is unsure how to spell this word that sounds like "highness" but may be a contraction of the words hiney and penis. All the author knows, for sure, is that she intends to call Frank "Your Highness" often. If I can stop laughing.

Fish tale

I was shoving stuffed animals in the closet tonight while Sophie got ready for bed, so I overheard the bedtime story she told to Scott. Her fish. It was a really creative tale about Lava-girl. I stepped out to throw some laundry in the machine and came back in for the tale tail end -- Sophie telling her pet: Good one, huh, Scott?

How I love that girl.

The Naming of Fish

Sophie got a fish yesterday. To put in the aquarium that she got for her birthday. She named the fish "Scott." When the fish guy at Petsmart told her it was a girl, she said, "That's okay. His name is Mrs. Scott."

Back to School!

It was a big day in the Webster household. Frank and I had to report to duty for titillating sessions on tardiness versus truancy, calibration of short-skirtedness -- oh my, a thigh! -- and how to deal with said insubordination, the "love your students but don't LOVE your students" speech, and other such standards -- all accompanied by awesome powerpoint presentations. Handbooks and dirty looks were passed out to the teachers for immediate use in the classroom. Frank created bingo cards for his colleagues featuring acronyms of the trade: IFL, IPG, TEA, TEKS, IEP, ARD, PLC, TAKS, PBS, CAC, CIP and eveything else that helps us teachers take care of TCB. How many can you identify, dear reader?

The kiddos had a big day, too. Thankfully, they are both returning to the same classrooms and teachers they had last year, but we did have a new wake-up time, new clothes, and new lunchboxes. And new attitude -- have we mentioned that?

"Mister J," as his teacher calls him, slept on a mat. On the floor. With the big kids. Well, he slept during his morning naptime. Apparently he flirted with the staff during afternoon nap and played peekaboo instead of sleeping. When I went to pick him up from school, he was flopping around the floor like a grumpus and Miss Lillian told me he was "having himself a drop down." I love her.

Here's Jameson on his first day of toddler class, 2009:


Sophie has been super excited about school and went with me to pick out some new clothes and new shoes. Today she reported that her new shoes were too tight. (Bullcrap, and you're wearing them.) Yesterday she loved her new skirt. This morning she hated it. She proclaimed it "disgusting." I made her wear it anyway. Poor little bowlegged baby.

She did seem to like her new lunchbox. Score one measly point for mom.