yellow (a memory)

There are moments of my children's lives that are still with me years later, but I can't be sure they always will, so as I remember, I'm trying to write them down.

Babs was about two, and we were sitting in church. No two year old is easy to keep quiet-ish in sacrament meeting, and she was no exception. So anything that would buy us a few moments was fair game.

She had a yellow crayon, and started to color on my face. I figured that had to be fairly harmless, everyone knows you can't color on yourself. It kept her busy for quite a while.

When we sang the closing hymn I turned to my husband and asked, "Is my face yellow?" because, well, what if you could color your skin with a crayon? At first he shook his head, thinking my question didn't make sense (it didn't), then his eyes grew wide, and he said "Yes."

Apparently if your face is oily, as mine is, you can color on your skin.

I'm glad she chose yellow, and I'm equally glad it wiped right off.

gentlemen prefer blonds

This is my girl Babs. As you can see she has super long straight blond hair. Every one comments on it. Last year when someone said "your hair is so long!" she replied "Everybody tells me that." This year she has moved on to "I know." (But really, what is the right response to that comment?)

A few weeks ago, I was at a parents' meeting at the school, and figured out that the lady sitting next to me had a little boy in Babs' class. He actually sits across from her. (The conversation, always, goes something like this: me: "Oh, your child is in Ms. C's class? What is their name?" other: "blah-blah, and who is your child?" "Babs." "Oh! we hear so much about her." All the parents know of her.)

"I think your daughter is the reason I have blond highlights," this mother (of middle eastern descent) tells me.

What?

Apparently her boy has told her all about Babs, and also begged her to get blond hair. He promised to not need anything else in life, no toys, no games, just he needed his mom to have blond hair. After explaining to him that her hair wouldn't do blond, and much more pleading, the father just told her to get highlights. And so now she's (partially) blond, because of my daughter.

(While this story cracks me up, I have not told my daughter. There is just too much she wouldn't understand. I'll tell her later. Much later.

bucket minus "k"

My boy loves trucks. My boy LOVES trucks.

He discovered his first car at around age 9 months, lurking in the bottom of the toy bins. We had some because I was an equal opportunity parent, girls can like cars too, except they didn't. My girls never touched the five or six small cars we had lying around the house. But when the boy showed interest, they tried to claim them: "That's my car!" And I quickly told them no, it's his, because he's the one who cares about it.

Fast forward two years, and he is patiently trying to explain to me as we head to the library that he needs books about trucks. So I ask the librarian, who guids us to the easy reading non-fiction selection, where there are short books about every type of truck you can imagine. Bucket trucks, skid steer loaders, snow plows, cranes, earth movers, etc. And our life has never been the same.

First, we never go to the library without checking out at least five books on trucks. Second, when we read one book about trucks, we read all of them. And third, we now know a lot about trucks. A lot.

Booms, dippers, tracks, wheels, front-loader, we've just all learned a lot about trucks.

When we are out in the car, when we see trucks, the boy will identify them for us.

Except he can't always use the "k" sound. If a word starts with "k" then he'll replace it with "t" (like "o-tay." But often in the middle of the word, he just leaves the sound out. (He can use it at the end of the word though, for words like "truck".)

So he shouts things like "look! that truck does have a bu-ut!" I try not to smile every time.

(And at least one of my girls has learned to play with trucks.)

should it stay or should it go

We were going to get rid of a bookcase, then I suggested to my husband that we move a bunch of unloved toys out of the girls room, and put the bookcase in instead. It would be perfect for paperbacks.

Except the bookcase doesn't have a back. He joked that we could staple some cardboard on it.

I seriously replied "Yes! And we could let the girls decorate it first, then we could feel like we were letting them be creative and involved!"

He replied, "You worry about things I have never even considered..." 

That's because men don't worry about this stuff, I thought.

that was long...

When we returned home from vacation in early August, we realized that we had a slow leak in a water pipe, which had destroyed a wall, and water was under all of our basement flooring. AUGHH!

Ten weeks later, after being gutted of our stuff and the flooring, our basement is finished. We actually changed the color of the room, the floor, and it is beautiful. I'm so grateful that it's done.

It looks so good I'm just a touch reluctant to fill it back up with my stuff...