Around the House

I've been feeling so uninspired lately that Dave actually questioned why something he said this very week wasn't reported here. The answer? I guess I haven't been paying enough attention. He followed that up with this classic last night when talking about his recent illness.

"I wonder if it's because I've been wiping [Luke's] nose with my fingers and then getting a dip of Skoal?"

Um, yes? Probably so? Don't you know that's what t-shirts are for, provided there are no tissues or wipes? And there are tissues and wipes, and you know it, because you make fun of my roll of toilet paper in the kitchen all the time. But you are using your fingers to wipe his nose? Then getting Skoal without washing them first?

Sexy. Almost as sexy as the sound he makes when he hacks up his spleen coughs. But enough about that. I am just relishing the fact that the last two times the kids have been sick, Dave has been sick with them, not me. Is it possible that like an ER nurse or a preschool teacher, I've finally conditioned my immune system to fight off their little nasties?

Back to the topic at hand, if there is one, after he said that gem about snot and Skoal, I decided to ignore the voice in my head rushing them all to bedtime pay attention and take some notes.

Dave fixed the supper plates last night and put all the stuff away while the kids and I were eating. As he was closing the package of tortillas, Ella asked him what he was doing. He said, "Closing the tortillas," but he pronounced it like "tortila" - without the double "l" that makes the "y" sound (there's your Spanish lesson for today). Immediately, Ella attempted to correct him, except she mixed up the syllables and it sounded like: "Teetoras."

While Luke adds words to his vocabulary on a near-daily basis, he does not yet have the words to say, "I want to put my own sprinkles on my cake!" We know this because as Ella was sprinkling her cake last night, Luke was yelling at us every time Dave or I tried to say anything. Yelling. Each time we opened our mouths. I couldn't figure out what he wanted and I finally let him down out of his booster seat. He went straight to the cabinet, got the last can of sprinkles, climbed back in his chair, and proceeded to sprinkle his cake. I think we got the message.

The sprinkles are in the same cabinet as the onions and garlic. Lately, since he discovered the cabinet and dumped a box of baking soda on the freshly mopped floor (this is why I hate to mop, it invites mess) over the weekend, Luke goes to the cabinet to get an onion and throws it around the kitchen, yelling "Ball!" He might be even more ball-obsessed than Georgia right now. Case in point: As he ate his chicken tacos last night, he held up each little black bean or corn kernel to tell me, "Ball," before he would eat it.

From there we proceeded to bathtime, where we now keep a schedule of who gets to sit in the front of the tub on which night. It's only fair. I know this because I always got to sit in the front of the tub when my sister and I were little, and the few times I was in back, it sucked. (Sorry, Rebecca.) Finally, after Luke tried to drown himself, brush his body with his toothbrush and throw it in the tub, contort himself like he's been travelling with Cirque de Soleil while I put on his diaper and t-shirt, he was ready for bed. Ella put on her own clothes (!) and once Luke was asleep, I went to her room to lay down with her.

When I walked in there, Dave said, "Tell Mommy about your fella, Ella." And she did. A little boy in her class is her fella. They play together every day. Cars and sometimes babies, and he takes care of the babies like she tells him to.

I opted to respond with, "It's good to have all kinds of different friends to play with. That makes school more fun."

I'm also thinking we didn't start reading Amazing You: Getting Smart About Your Private Parts a moment too soon. Think I'm wacko? Guess how old I was when I first chased a boy around the playground trying to kiss him?

Three.