Fabulous fluke (aka potty talk)

So my 20 month old found a book that goes along with the training potty. She recognized the picture as being a potty, so I took out the chair to show her it (it's been a few months since her first/last time since she saw it). She seemed interested in sitting on it and reading books. Quite a while later she actually used it and cheers and a treat followed (yes, I believe in bribes). Although there are plenty of kids out there who are progenitors in this sort of thing and get potty-trained early--I'm assuming this was a just a fluke, but one that makes me smile.

Recent events

When the kids go off upstairs, what do they do?

We've been working hard (notice the boy doing dishes and the other cleaning out the vaccum.

And we've been playing hard. Here's Punkie playing with her pumpkin at Family Home Evening.
Here's Red hard at work making his two-faced pumpkin.

The finished results: Mom & Dad's Ghost/tombstone (traced pattern), Red's face (he wanted triangle eyes, but drew trapezoids instead), Chief's two-faced (could be in a Batman movie), and Rachel's ghost (Mom used a pattern too).

21 week old fetus

No, this baby isn't ready to be born, but here is an amazing picture of a baby holding the doctor's hand during a surgical procedure. Check it out at : http://www.michaelclancy.com/
It's life a miracle?

Oooh, Aaahhh, Ouch!

So we went to the Pumpkin Walk today. That means we got to go walk along a park pathway and see displays, made with pumpkins, following the theme of "Heros in our lives" or something like that. At least--it's about heros. Anyway, people who seem to have time on their hands come up with some cool ideas on how to transform pumpkins and a bunch of materials (whatever they can come up with) to fit the theme. They are pretty cool and fun for the kids. At least, most kids. Somehow, halfway along the pathway, suddenly Punkie started screaming, crying, and throwing herself around my arms. Apparantly a bee had crawled inside her shirt (and the sweater she had on over) and had stung her on the chest. Someone thought they had seen the bee fly off as I took off her sweater. She kept grabbing her shirt and whimpering for the rest of the tour. It makes you feel bad for your kids when something happens that hurts them. We had already had Punkie to the doctor a couple of days ago for a painful problem (let's just say I've never poured antacid in a diaper before this week). But it's good that kids, and adults, can learn to adjust and move on from bad experiences.

Weekend trip

Okay, so my hubby took me this weekend up in the forest to try something he enjoyed before he met me. I'll give you a hint as to what:

Here's my hubby and then me using a fence to cross a stream. Don't worry, I don't have any offensive pics to share. We were looking for male bucks, and only saw one female deer. So in essence, what we actually ended up doing was taking a two day nature hike :). It was great! Two days of communing with nature, seeing beautiful mountain areas, getting great exercise, sleeping in a heated trailer (thanks PIL!) and the children were being watched at home by first my cousin, then my PILs.

Did I mention what a great time we had?

Punkie likes to dance

Here's a short clip of Punkie dancing. Anytime she hears music she starts to boogie on down. Besides liking to dance, she likes to watch herself dance.

Vent-a-blog

My hubby has been listening to some podcasts for a class of his. One speaker theorized that people are more accepting of bad news than good. I disagreed. Then I realized that most of my blogs are about the things the kids do that make my hair turn gray. I almost never write about the heart-melting warm fuzzies that they do or say. I suppose that either the speaker is right about people preferring to hear the things that go wrong, but maybe I just like to vent. Just so you know, my kids aren't necessarily the devils I make them out to be :). Of course, occasionally they do act like fallen angels {sigh}.

Nursery Bully

"Excuse me Sister, but we've been having a problem in nursery. You see, it's your child...she's a bully."
Don't worry, Punkie's teachers haven't told us that...yet. But we found out about it by good old observation. When I found out that the nursery sub was by herself with her 6 month old, I sent my hubby in to help out with the young ones. That's when we found out that our "stinker" has no problem standing up for what she wants. First of all, it was about a baby (it always is with her). She had one and she wanted another from another little girl. That was broken up quickly. Then later, after playtime, Punkie still had a doll--who could take it away from her without a problem?--and when she put it down the other girl picked it up--creating a tug-of-war between the two. The doll was taken away from both, but Punkie wasn't through with the issue yet, she proceeded to slap the poor little (older) girl more than once on the back. And this is from my sensitive little girl (who has gotten beat up by other kids in the past).
Which is worse: to have the bully kid or the kid picked on?

Dorie says: Keep on swimin'...

I guess I thought that if I didn't blog, it would be because I forgot--not because I got too busy. But things are going well. I got through one of my immediately busy things to do and have plenty more to keep up with (lessons to prep, people to visit, places to go to, fairs to help at). I keep forgetting to bring my camara too.
We went to a police station today. We visited with a detective for our city. He talked with the kids about stranger safety (what they're learning in preschool) and showed them his car. I'm not sure how much was learned. My son kept interjecting his two cents worth, somewhat embarrassing me when he told the officer he already had the cool pencil he was giving them (and the booklet, and the sticker...), but also making me smile.
Chief's school had a field trip today too. I wish I could have been to both! It's hard when you have to pick and choose between which children you will spend time with or do things for. I suppose a good balance is what it is all about!

Conference Weekend

This is always an interesting weekend. How do you "attend" four hours of church two days in a row without going insane? There are bonuses: you don't have to dress up (unless you want to pursue the right frame of mind--which is sometimes easier when you dress appropriately for this occasion) and you can snack like sometimes your kids do in church. But you have a tightly controlled time limit in which your kids can be noisy and work off all the pent up energy they have. Our plan was simple: travel to the houses of family members who have t.v. reception (easier to sit around than a computer), have the kids be in the room watching conference while keeping hands busy doing appropriate activities, and make the kids run around the yard inbetween sessions. Unfortunately, I did forget the "busy" activities I was going to bring the kids (a matching card game of the prophet and apostles that gives a little info on each so they can get to know them better). My mom saved me with puzzles and our lincoln log set, and my in-laws saved me with an appropriate sticker book, another scripture hero book and we brought our logs to their house. As for the working energy off---didn't really happen. I wanted to go to Costco for garbage bags and batteries between conferences on Saturday (I miss Costco!!!), so the kids were just in shopping carts the whole time and on Sunday, we did jump some energy off on the trampoline for a short while until they came in to play inside. They did simultaneously work off the sugar they consummed that evening during a joint family b-day dinner. It's impressive to watch how much energy kids can have from sugar. I think my in-laws still have footprints on their walls.
P.S. Yes, we did enjoy conference and we did hear most of it :).