Are you kidding me?!!!

As if to prove that Friday night's slip up and trip to the ER was a fluke, Johnny has been pushing his luck more than ever. Every time I turn around he's saying "look, I not fall!" and he's balancing in some odd position. So far he's said it while standing on top of the steering wheel part of the "Sit and Spin", doing the splits between two chairs, hanging upside down from the bar, on top of a tower of laundry hampers and jumping down the stairs. Does this kid have a death wish? He must be Brad's offspring. I feel like he should be wearing a helmet all day long. Make that all night too because he has fallen out of bed a couple times this past week. I want to bop him on the head myself, he's driving me crazy!

By the way...

By the way...Johnny is fine.

By the way...Johnny is fearless and makes Adults nervous with his climbing and crazy stunts.
By the way...Johnny likes to do something he's told not to do just to prove that he CAN do it.
Johnny: "no see look, my not fall!"
By the way...Johnny sits in time out a lot for not doing what he's told.
By the way...a toddler chair that sits a foot off of the ground is still a dangerous height for a child to fall out of if it is sitting on a tile floor.
By the way...Children's cries are very specific and parents can tell by the specific sound, exactly what kind of attention it's going to need. You can tell if it can wait until they come to you or if you need to rush to their side.
By the way..."Head wounds bleed a lot" this is what Brad tells me so I won't panic and think it's worse than it really is.
By the way...according to Alex it isn't fair that Johnny doesn't have to sit in his car seat on the way to hospital. Apparently she'd rather be the one bleeding with no car seat.
By the way...when you rush into the ER with your precious child bleeding from his head, trying to keep the pressure on with one hand and holding him up with the other, be prepared to have one hand free to fill out forms first.
By the way...(this one is for the husbands) don't come up behind your wife while she's watching the staff not rush to her son's aid and tell her to "knock it off" because she's welling up a little and you don't want her to make a scene. You'll probably just make her start crying and turn it into a scene.
By the way..."Head wounds bleed a lot" this is what the nurse tells me as I'm checking in meaning "don't panic, it's probably not as bad as you think it is".
By the way...if you ever run out of the house on the way to the ER and forget your wallet with your insurance card in it, you don't have to run home and grab it, they can just give you a form to fill out and mail back to them later. We found this out after Brad arrived back to the hospital with his wallet.
By the way...it was just a little wound and it only took one staple to close it back up. Johnny was ready to go as soon as they applied the numbing gel.
By the way...hospitals have shirts donated to them to use in the case that a patient's shirt is just too dirty for them to ride back home in.
By the way...it's not fair that big sisters don't get a free shirt too. They don't see the fact that it isn't fair to their little brother that his shirt is too dirty to wear back home.
By the way...Johnny is fine, but we will have to push our swim day that we planned for this week out another week until the staple is removed.

Favorites

The other day I was upstairs on the computer and I heard a knock at the door. I headed downstairs to find the stairs roped off and obstacles in my way but no one at the door. After I closed the door I heard giggling from around the corner. The kids had been watching Scooby Doo and decided to set a trap to catch me (apparently I'm a bad guy?). Then Alex knocked on the door and they hid around the corner. It made me start thinking about how it's so funny that they watch and like shows that I watched growing up. Then I started thinking about how their favorite things change so quickly and if I wanted to remember them at this stage I had better write some of them down. So here it goes.
ALEX'S FAVORITES:


Color: Red

Shows: Scooby Doo, Trasformers, Ben 10, Tom & Jerry, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Breakfast: Waffles

Lunch/Dinner: "Curly pasta", meat (of any kind), Pepperoni pizza

Song: "Called to Serve" (learning in Primary this year) and "Rock and Roll" (by Eric Hutchinson)

Phrase: "Can I play with a friend?"

Toy: Games, puzzles or whatever Johnny is playing with

Misc: Wearing mismatch shoes or PJs, all things related to art, dancing, all things pink and sparkly and girly, being tickled.


JOHNNY'S FAVORITES:

Color: Green

Shows: Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo, Word World

Breakfast: Pancakes or Oatmeal

Lunch/Dinner: Taquitos and french fries, Any vegetable I put on his plate

Song: "Popcorn Popping"

Phrase: "Huh?" (After every thing I tell him) or "Like this!" (Usually accompanied by actions)

Toy: Ropes, Transformers, or whatever Alex is playing with

Misc: Shooting fire out of his hands like the Avatar, playing with ropes (for fishing or lassoing), Playing with his cousin Ethan, or proving that he "really is big enough".

Preschooler

Johnny's feeling pretty big today with his big kid backpack, heading off to big kid preschool.
This is what he did yesterday while buying time until Alex was out of school. Playing with her "off limits to Johnny" toys in her "off limits to Johnny" room in his pjs with his new backpack forever on his back. He also felt inclined to give himself a new haircut for school yesterday because it wasn't long before I found hair all over him and the bathroom. Luckily he's a boy and the solution is just to bring out the clippers and cut everything shorter.

When Alex started school almost 2 weeks ago, we made a chain to help Johnny count the days until school started for him. He goes Mondays and Fridays and since this Monday was a holiday he is starting school on a Friday. Kind of strange but it's all the same to him. So this morning we watched Alex take off on the school bus and then headed out for Johnny's first day of preschool. I probably could've put HIM in the backpack and carried him to school but I guess some day he'll grow into it. He has grown 1.5 inches since his birthday in June. Not too shabby.

And that about sums it up...

When Alex first started school it was hard for her to remember anything of significance to tell us when she got home. Either she is doing more at school now or she is better at remembering the details but I wanted to write down some of her feedback for her to look back on some day.

"I sit at the blue table with Emma and two other boys. Maddy sits at the yellow table"

"We went to exercise class and just sat there."

"The computer called my name but it didn't work so I didn't get computer time."

"The computer called my name and it worked and told me to 'press the green arrow'."

"We had apples today AGAIN. We had to use the leftovers from yesterday all up."

Me: Ok, then I won't make you eat the apples I cut up for lunch. You can have carrots instead.

"We had carrots today too"

Me: I don't think so.

"Well we had one carrot.

Me: I don't think so.

"Well the teacher said that we're going to have carrots tomorrow"

Me: I don't appreciate being lied to Alex.

"I was just joking"

"At recess the first thing I do is go and find my friends and then when I go to use the bathroom I'm the last one and the line is really long."

"The teacher did something really funny today...she put a pancake on her head. It was really funny."

The third day of school Alex brought home a yellow card.

"It's because I was trying to wake up the boy next to me who was sleeping."

Now she's collecting 20 green cards in a row for a special treat.

On her homework page where she had to draw a picture of her at Kindergarten she drew a picture of her holding a green card. That's my girl.

"Today for chores me and the shark boy had to pick up all the name tags and put them away."

Me: Why do you call him the shark boy?

"Because he pretends he is a shark and does this (she makes a weird hiss/growl noise)"

Me: Oooh, does he ever do that to you?

"No"

Me: Good

"Today I sat on the bus next to Abbey. She's the friend I made at the park but she's not in my class. But I played with her at recess. The other days I sat next to my other new friend who is in 1st or 2nd grade. I can't remember her name."

Me: Have you ever sat next to a boy on the bus?

"No...Oh ya once, but we didn't talk. Then we saw another bus and he said 'let's race!' and the other bus went the other way and he said 'yes! we're winning!'"

"I drew a picture for you today on the back of my apple paper but we had to glue it onto something else to put up for everyone to see so you can't see the picture."

"I need 5 pieces of paper and 5 envelops to draw pictures for my friends."

Me: How nice, you have 5 friends huh?

"I have a lot more than that but I will have to draw them pictures tomorrow."

There is so much more but those are a few highlights that stuck out in my mind. She is liking this Independence and likes walking to the bus stop on the corner by herself. Johnny and I watch her from her bedroom window and call out I love yous as she walks down the street. She likes school but already looks forward to the weekends when she "gets a day off" and can't wait for summer to come again. Is she mimicking what she hears the older kids on the bus say? Who knows.

Well, that about sums it up!