We just got home from a nice trip to Kansas for a Cousin Power top-off visit to see my brother, SIL, and nephew. This was the first time I’ve gone with all my kids (and Mark and my mom too!) and it was definitely a crowded car! We are also a high-impact collection of guests! We had a great time visiting, going out to a favorite Italian buffet, having an Easter egg hunt, watching movies, going for walks, and just hanging out. Mark and I both really needed some down time from our biz work and it was so nice not to have a to-do list for several days. They planned tasty and fun meals for us and it was really wonderful to hang out together with our babies (though my other kids made the hanging-out-with-babies a little more challenging and chaotic than I had envisioned!)
While there, Tanner used his Cousin Power boost to start sitting up for real! (just turned five months old!) And, Ronan (my nephew) used it to cut his first tooth!
Sitting up like a big boy while sporting his Eat At Mom’s onesie.
He also discovered the fun of playing with a big pot.
I haven’t made a Kidbits post in a long time, so in this post, I’m lumping in some miscellaneous Facebook status updates from the past couple of months. 🙂
The kids dyed eggs with Mark this year for Easter. Alaina said she loves them so much she is saving them for her birthday, upon which she will have an egg hunt (b-day is in Jan…)
Conversations with Alaina:
Alaina: “why is Tanner wearing tights today?”
Mark: “they’re not tights, they’re pants with feet attached.”
Alaina: “weird! I guess we should put a fake mustache on him too.”
~
Alaina randomly while walking through house: “Why didn’t you name me Scorpion Lady?”
~
Alaina while sitting at table and asked for help: “I can’t help you until I finish cutting out more paper dynamite.”
~
Alaina to Mark on computer: “Look up poop!”
[Mark says no]
“Toy poop?”
[no]
“Toy Justin Bieber poop?”
~
Me to Alaina: “we’ll play dolls tomorrow, I promise.”
Alaina: “there’s a catch. I don’t eat raisins. I only eat sunflower seeds.”
Okaaaaay. (We don’t have or usually eat either.)
~
Alaina: “I want to play hide and seek with the baby. He can be hiding somewhere on your body.”
Snapshot glimpse of life
Alaina wants to bring some of her own money to the bowling alley today. She brought it out in a carved wooden box and said that was what she was bringing. We said she needed to choose some money and carry it in a wallet or a purse and not a large wooden treasure box. She came back with a huge pink flowered Easter basket and said she would carry it in that. We said that didn’t make sense and to get a purse or a wallet (she has a large variety of these). She came back with a doll car seat and said she was going to use that. We said no and she came back out with a bug catcher with her money in it. Come ON!
Conversations with Zander:
Zander: what do you think Tanner will be like when he’s Alaina’s age?
Me: probably amazing!
Zander: Mom, none of our kids are amazing when they’re Alaina’s age.
~
Zander: “Hey, mom. This apple only has a little bit of my blood on it. You can eat the rest.”
(*loose tooth. But, geez, kid!)
April Fool’s Day
I dreamed we gave the kids turkey bacon for breakfast and told them it was placenta for an April Fool’s joke. But, in real life we have a tradition of making a “trick” breakfast for the kids on April Fool’s day. Marshmallow and peach half “eggs,” pound cake toast, and turkey bacon this year…
Reality TV?
Mark and I have a joke about being in a reality tv show called The Joke Life of Mark and Molly. We say it when everything is crumbling around us–oven is smoking, oatmeal is spilling, we open the freezer and bread falls out on our heads, our legs get peed on, whatever. A couple of months ago we got an etsy convo from someone asking about casting us in a TV show. For real. She originally found me on my blog and then tracked us to etsy and said she was reading everything she could find about us. We cracked ourselves up imagining what a boring TV show it would be and what they could possibly be thinking?! I imagined writing back, make sure you get a slo-mo closeup as the bread hits my head! And, we laughed over how they’d have to weed through endless hours of pointless poop joke footage to get to the hilarious stuff. Also, intriguing close-ups of my fingers typing yet another blog post…and, inspiring 5:30, “what should we have for dinner?” conversations. Maybe an exciting episode of, “Molly cries because she feels like has too much to do,” or, “Mark cuts firewood at dusk in the freezing rain” or, “both parents yell about fun, enriching project while children long to play Minecraft and wish for the beeswax animal crafting to stop.”
Ooh! “Can they triumph over the laundry mountain!” And, “Watch as they race ahead of the falling tower of recycling attempting to crush them…”
Lann’s input: “Oh! We’d all have to talk fancy [begins vaguely British accent] and all stand in front of a red couch! Or something.” And then, “some people call me Lann. Others just call me The Frog Ninja.”
(I never emailed her back.)
Random word anecdote
My family uses a variety of made-up words based on old family stories. One is “banacheked” (used to mean a combo of abandoned and rejected, based on my grandma’s accidentally replacement of the word “abandoned” with the TV show Banacek). As in, “the baby is over there banacheked on the floor.” A few weeks ago, I accidentally said, “oh, my poor babychecked banny!” So, now there is a new made up version of a made up word. Up leveling.
Love his little tucked-up self!
Talk Birth 