Yesterday, while driving to San Diego in the as a family,
Ryan starting singing a song he made up which repeated “obedience” over and
over. Then he asked what the word
“obedience” means. I asked him what he
thinks it is and he said, “sitting still at church.” I said, “That sounds about right”. I figure we’ll just start there.
A couple weeks ago Jonathan was trying to get Ryan to be
good in FHE. Ryan said, “I will be good if
you let me tickle your belly button.”
A few weeks ago I took the kids to the dentist. They may have inherited a number of bad
things from Michael and me but cavity-prone teeth aren’t one of them. It’s nice to go to the dentist because they
always complement me on what a good mom I must be because my kids don’t have
cavities. When the dentist was getting ready
to look at Ryan’s teeth, Ryan tried to get me in trouble saying, “My mom always
reminds me to go potty before I go to bed but she doesn’t remind me to brush my
teeth”. What could I say? Not going potty before bed can result in
early rising and the wiggle bug crawling/jumping all over me. It’s all about priorities.
The boys have been swimming most evenings this summer. The coaches told them they needed to get them
speedo–type-racing suits. Supposedly
these make them swim faster. So they got
new suits and joke about how it’s like swimming in their underwear. One evening a few weeks ago, I was driving
the boys to swimming and Jonathan was complaining about having to swim all
summer and take piano. James joined in
just because Jonathan was doing it. I
think when school ended he must have pictured himself just playing on the
computer everyday, all day for the entire summer. The funny thing about it is that both he and
James actually enjoy piano and swimming so I don’t get why they complain about
it. They claimed that I should see how
dirty the pool floor is, there are beetles in the pool (I’ve never seen any) and
Jonathan gets itchy from the chlorine.
To make the argument even better, James ends up swallowing water while
he is swimming laps so technically I am making him eat beetles. Anyway, he went on about how I was ruining
his life. I replied, “Jonathan, I only
have eight more years to ruin your life.”
As my dad would say, “With a mom like that you don’t need enemies.” I was corrected at church the next week when
the first counselor in the ward gave a lesson on how our calling as parents
never ends…
We’ve been getting ants in the house the past month. It’s been cute to watch my little ant patrol
of Gracie and Ryan finding them wherever they are throughout the house and
putting baby powder or soapy water on them.
Finally I’ve resorted to putting this white ant remover powder around
the outside of the house. We had the
Elders and Sisters over to dinner a couple weeks ago (Don’t ask me why our ward
has us feed the Elders and Sisters together every evening because I don’t know)
and one of the Elders joked about how I was trying to ward off evil spirits
with white powder around the house.
Gracie’s been in and out of eye doctor’s offices over the
past few months. We’ve come up with a
game to fill the wait times where I tell a little story and she stands in a
square and jumps to a new one every time I say the words “hop” or “bunny”. She’s usually such a sweetheart. I’m sad she’ll be going to full-day school
this year and hope I still get enough cuddle-time with her. If she ever is grumpy, I ask her, “Who are
you and where’s my sweet Gracie?” She
likes that one.
A couple weeks ago I was tucking Jonathan in and asked him
about a boy that had been playing in the neighborhood. He described him, “You know, he takes the
Lord’s name in vain a lot and is a lot more cool than our family.” I felt bad that I wasn’t helping Jonathan
feel like he fits in and said, “So he’s more cool than us?” He corrected me, “Mom, I didn’t say cool. I said crude. No ones as cool as us.”
