Goals, Snow and Comments from an Angry 2 Year Old

Lots of catching up to do. I'll start with...

Goals
Sophie's school has something called "student-led conferences". According to the paper they sent home, it's a time when "parent, student and teacher are able to work together for your child's education!" When I saw it the first time, I thought it was interesting, but I assumed it was for the older kids. I was wrong--even the kindergarteners are supposed to "lead" their parent teacher conferences. Anyone who has a five year old in their life knows how that will turn out...

Sophie: I'm really excited about my student led conference!

Me: I'm glad.  I'm excited too.

Sophie: Except I don't really understand it.

Me: Well, when we get there, we can explain it so you'll understand what we're supposed to do.

Sophie: Well, I understand the goal...and, Mom, it's not like a soccer goal.

That's right. And hopefully they won't have those really loud horns either.


Snow
In the end, it snowed here--enough to shut everything down for a couple of days--and the student led conferences were postponed. But the kids in the neighborhood had an awesome time playing in the snow. Sophie, Ava and Lucy geared up at the first flakes...

I love the purple marshmallow

Day 2: midget snowman

After about three days, Sophie had had enough. We were in the car driving to pick up a pizza after ballet class. She was disgruntled about having to put on clothes over her leotard...

Sophie: Mom, some day I think we should move.

Me: Okay. Where would you like to move to?

Sophie: Hawaii.

Me: Well, we probably wouldn't move to Hawaii.  I love it there too, but it's really far away and it's hard for moms and dads to find jobs there.

Sophie: Well, I really don't like having to put mittens on.

Me: We could move to southern California.  It's warm and sunny there too, and then we'd be closer to our family.

(Sophie considers this for a few moments.)

Sophie: Nah.  It's not as good.


Comments from an Angry 2 Year Old

Ava is a more terrible two than Sophie was. She's hot headed and she's very, very loud. These are some of her favorite protests:

Maaa Muh! (this is said as two words, usually in total exasperation)

Mama, why you do dat?!?!?! 

YOU...Mama! (like, "No, you go to bed, Mom." this is sometimes said in jest)

and, of course...

NO!!!!!!

She's also cultivated a very loud roar that we're used to, but that alarms other parents.Two nights ago we were having cocktails with a group of neighbors and the kids were all downstairs playing when Ava roared. Conversation stopped and the is-everything-okay-or-did-someone-accidentally-amputate-their-own-arm moment started when KC said, "Oh, that's just Ava. She's being scary." (Let it be known that Ava is the youngest child in the group with Sophie as the next youngest.)

I also recently had a friend and her two kids over, girl is Sophie's age and boy is 3. Ava was roaring at him and I overheard my friend saying to her son, "You need to use your words to let her know that she's scaring you."

I, too, am afraid.

Angry Birds and Boogers

Angry Birds

We've discovered Angry Birds at our house. If you have an iphone and you don't yet have it...I can only say that I was up until 2am last night playing.  It's goooooooood. And it's also fun for the whole family...

Sophie: I'm going to make a new version of Angry Birds.

KC: Oh yeah?  What is it?

Sophie: Well instead of the birds and pigs, it's going to be me and Lucy [who lives across the street]. It's going to be Jewish against Catholic!

I actually think Sophie's concept would outsell the original. Rovio, you are about to be usurped.


Boogers

Ava is a savage. She does every gross thing that Sophie never did (note that we've had 2 more poop smearing incidents since the one I wrote about a couple of weeks ago). Among those gross things is booger eating. I am constantly telling Ava not to eat her boogers. Most of the time she looks at me and says, "Yum!" but yesterday we made some progress...

(Ava is sitting on my lap, facing me, while I play Angry Birds. She picks her nose and eats it.)

Me: Don't eat your boogers. Yucky! Do you need a tissue?

Ava: No mama. (She digs in for round 2, holds it out to me and then wipes it on her shirt.) There!  All better.

Fear and Candy

It's been a very Halloweenie time here at the Bonnem/Friedman household. These are the highlights:

La Mariposa
On Thursday, I pulled up to Ava's school only to discover that she was the only one NOT in costume (I am a model parent). I promptly drove to the Bartell's down the street and bought some wings and a wand/crown combo—50% off...bad parenting has its perks. She loved her wings so much, we had to pry them off of her body so she could go to sleep that night.

The cutest princess butterfly ever

Noodle Grave
On Friday I made carbonara for dinner but with insect-shaped kid noodles instead of spaghetti. Ava ate none of it. Sophie at about half and then asked if she'd eaten enough to qualify for dessert.

Me: You need to eat a little bit more.

Sophie: I ate half!

Me: Well if you're hungry for dessert, you must be hungry enough to eat more dinner.

Sophie stuffs a series of bites down her gullet.

Sophie: (Showing us her bowl. She's eaten a trough down the center of her pasta.) There. I made a little grave in my noodles.

So creative!


Fear and Candy
We started the night of Halloween at a neighbor's house up the road and trick or treated our way down the hill back to our house. About half way there we got to one of those houses that was completely decked out—crazy Halloween people. As we were walking up the driveway, a life-sized, plastic skeleton popped up from the ground and made a creepy sound. Sophie screamed bloody murder.

Me: Don't worry.  It's just pretend.

Sophie is frozen in place. I pick up Ava who is getting ready to cry.

Me: Some people like to make their houses all spooky, but they still give you candy.

Sophie and Ava consider this, then...

Sophie: I'm not scared!

Ava: (clinging to me like a cartoon jelly fish) I nah scare!

We go get the candy.

A Pleasant Discovery. A Funny Discovery. A Shocking Discovery.

A Pleasant Discovery
Yesterday, Tyler and Bryce (her fiance) took the girls to the pumkin patch...voluntarilty...on a Saturday. They were gone for like 5 hours and KC and I realized that it was the first time we'd been alone together in the house since Ava was born. It was completely awesome.

As soon as the door closed, I started throwing things away. When you have kids, no matter how anti-clutter you are, crap starts collecting. I have two kids, one of whom is a hoarder, so we have lots of crap and I can never get rid of it without Sophie going ballistic.

I cleaned out all of the junk drawers in the house and in the process I discovered that one of our ovens came with a meat thermometer built in. There is literally a jack in the oven, you plug in the thermometer, hit start and it cooks a perfect chicken. Yes!  A built in meat thermometer! 

What a great day.  The girls had an awesome day too...


I call this, "I didn't have to go to the pumkin patch"


A Funny Discovery
As if 5 kid-free hours in the middle of a Saturday weren't awesome enough, one of our favorite babysitters called at the last minute and asked if we wanted her to come. Hells Yeah!

We went out and saw The Other Guys at the second run theater (wonderfully stupid).  We got home at 11 and the kids were asleep. The babysitter reported that Ava had stripped off her pajamas and refused to put them back on so she put her to bed in a diaper. Who cares? I was just impressed that she got her in bed before 10 (9:50).

When I went in to check on her, I found her buck naked, sprawled across the crib, on top of her blankets, with a diaper wedged in her armpit. It was a funny discovery mostly because it happened before she'd peed.


A Shocking Discovery
Tonight I inaugurated my built in meat thermometer. It was every bit as awesome as I dreamed it would be. We don't eat a lot of "chicken on the bone" because KC isn't crazy about it. So when I started to carve it, Sophie came up and we had this conversation:

Sophie: What's that?

Me: It's the chicken.

Sophie: Is that from the animal chicken?

(As opposed to Robot Chicken?)

Me: What do you mean?  It's a chicken.

Sophie: That's a dead animal? Are those its bones?

(I live in fear of a household of vegetarians, so I hesitate and contemplate lying...)

Me: Well...it is an animal (notice I don't say "dead") and those are its bones.

Sophie: Well I don't want to eat any feathers.

Me: It doesn't have any feathers.

Sophie: Oooooh. (points at the drumstick) I want to eat that piece with my hands straight from the bone.

That's my girl.

Busted! Parts 1 & 2

Busted—Part 1

Last night I did a little bit of work after dinner. While I was downstairs, Sophie came to visit. She was in her monologue mode.

Sophie: (pacing in circles and occasionally rifling through the things on my desk) ...We're going to put on a play and I need you to sew me costumes that are Chinese or Asian and there should be one for me, one for Lucy and also one for Ava plus there will also be snacks and the twins will come but I'm going to tell them that they can't talk or the play will have to stop and one time they tried to hit me with their sword but it's only plastic so it wouldn't hurt but they're not supposed to hit people with things, right? And I want to get Squinkies to use in the play because they'll be pets, like little pets and we should sew them costumes too...

Then I let a teeny, tiny fart.

Sophie: Squinkie costumes will be Chinese too and we'll have to make them a bed where they can sleep and maybe we should get the Squinkie house too and you need to say, "excuse me," because I heard it.

BUSTED!!!


Busted—Part 2

This morning when we got to Sophie's school, Hazel (our ancient, evil dog) made a jail break. She has been coming to school all year and has never once tried to get out of the car. Today she went running around the parking lot and made a beeline for the playground. She totally ignored me—because she's both insolent and deaf—and then proceeded to take a giant poop on the school's grass. Thanks Hazel.

I left it there, raced Sophie to her classroom, and cleaned it up later with a spare diaper. Hazel then passed noxious gas all the way to Ava's school. It was so bad that we had to ride with the windows down even though it was about 50 degrees outside. By the time we got there, I was ready to hurl and I was a little bit afraid of what would await me when I got back from taking Ava to her classroom.

Me: I hope Hazel doesn't fill the car with her toots.

Ava: Hayo toot in tar. (Hazel tooted in the car.)

Me: I know.

Ava: Hayo poop Fifi tool. (Hazel pooped at Sophie's school.)

Me: She did.

Ava: DAT NAH NIE!! (THAT'S NOT NICE!!!)


Ooooooh...Hazel gets schooled.

Tuna for breakfast

This morning Sophie ate a tuna fish sandwich (on a mini bagel) for breakfast. The sandwich part was my idea. The girls slept so late, that I wanted to make them something they could eat in the car on the way to school.

Me: I'm going to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Ava: PEANUT BUTTER!!!!!

Sophie: I don't want peanut butter and jelly.

Me: Well what do you want?

Sophie: I want tuna fish.

Me: I don't have any made.  I'll have to make you something else.

Sophie: Dad made some for me yesterday.

Sure enough, there were the dregs of yesterday's tuna fish in a bowl in the fridge. I made her a sandwich and she ate it.

The other day she had a slice of cold pepperoni, mushroom and onion pizza for breakfast. Later in the day, in front of our new Tuesday/Friday nanny, we had this exchange...

Sophie: You never gave me breakfast this morning!!

Me: Yes I did. You had a piece of pizza.

Sophie: That wasn't breakfast!  That was just a snack.

And then I realized there was no point in trying to defend myself since what mother feeds their child a slice of cold pepperoni, mushroom and onion pizza for breakfast before kindergarten?

The same mother who feeds their child day-old tuna fish on a mini bagel for breakfast, that's who.

Poop Smearing and Disco

Sunday night, while Sophie was having her "potty sit" and I was hanging out with her in the bathroom, I heard this:

Ava: I have poo poo too.

KC: You do?  Did you poop?

Ava: I HAVE POO POO!!!!

Then I hear the unmistakable thwrip of diaper tabs being torn open followed by some yelling and scuffling about by KC and Michael (our friend who's the lucky house guest that got to witness the smearing).  Then I see Ava's 2-year-old tush pass by, covered in poop, as KC tries to wrestle her to the changing table.  Then I hear this:

KC: Don't touch it.

(Some complaining by Ava.)

KC: Don't put your hands in it!

He cleans her up and they head back into the living room.  Then I hear this:

Michael: I think she' might have smeared some on the chair.

KC: EEEEWW!!!

Then I went in and cleaned up the chair, KC put Sophie to bed and I tried to put Ava to bed in her new toddler bed.  Her initial excitement turned to panic and I had to retrieve her about 30 seconds after I left her room. She wouldn't go to sleep,  stripped off her PJs and then this happened: