Little Squirrel Nutkin

The Prince that won't eat his food has found something at daycare that he loves to chew on and he is driving his teachers crazy. He chews on (acorns)! He packs his cheeks full of them until he looks like a hamster planning to run away from home at night fall. When you go to hug him at school acorns pop out of his mouth like he is a gumball machine that someone just put some money into. Even when they go inside from the playground and should be in an acorn free zone, the boy still manges to find at least one acorn to pop into his mouth. We have tried everything to make him stop putting acorns in his mouth, they are after all a choking hazard, but he won't stop. I got the brilliant idea to make a container that he could collect them in, but after he pushed the acorn through the top he couldn't get them back out. The other kids loved collecting acorns and pushing them into the special container, the Prince still preferred popping them into his mouth best of all. I'm not sure what we are going to do with our little Squirrel Nutkin, but I did make sure that all the teacher's have a current CPR card at the daycare, just in case!

To Eat or Not to Eat That is the Question

The Princess is a "foody". Grandpa cooks for the whole family nearly every night and Grandpa is a very good cook. Tonight he made a recipe with a special kind of goats cheese and the Princess flat out said "that stuff stinks!" Now she eats very well for a three year old and is not the least bit fat because she bounces, jumps, and talks all her extra calories off. And when she likes something every one knows it because you can hear her saying mmmm, yum this is so good, or this is delicious. Yes, she does use the word delicious because she is after all a 3 year old  foody. I couldn't even tell you her favorite food because she loves so many things, (yet another sign of a true foody).
    Her brother, the Prince on the other hand hates everything. He approaches each meal as if he is entering an enemy camp. His fork is held tightly in his hand incase he has to kill something or quickly flip something on to the floor, not because he intends to eat with it. Occasionally he will decide to eat something on his plate, but ALL the other things on his plate must get off  before they contaminate the CHOSEN ONE. So he takes one finger and flips all the things he feels he would never eat, not even if he were a starving child in Africa, quickly on to the floor. This is aggravating to us, but a pure joy for our 4 cats which know this rain of food happens at least 3 times a day and all they have to do is sit and wait for it to begin. A friend of mine suggested a cook book that tells you how to make food that has nutrition hidden in it. Such as vegetables in hamburger patties. I laughed and said if they don't tell you how to hide nutrition in a McDonald's chicken nugget Happy Meal then that book won't help us at all. I often wonder how can two kids from the same parents be so different?

Laundry Disasters

CW was feeling bad today because she had a small laundry disaster. She washed her new red sheets with a couple of white towels and a t-shirt. I told her not to feel bad that nearly everyone has a laundry disaster story of their own to tell. When I was a young newly wed I had a love affair with bleach. My husband was in the restaurant business at the time and I was determined that his white pants and shirts would always be crisp and clean. What I didn't know was that it only takes a small amount of bleach to accomplish this and I always thought more was better until one day when my husband put on his work pants and they literally disintegrated as he zipped them up. I also had a few bad accidents with getting bleach on things that weren't white, which is never a good thing. At one point my husband actually told me not to wash his work clothes and to please not touch the bottle of bleach ever again. I actually often look at the bottle of bleach still to this day and think I wonder what would happen if I poured a little in with my underwear or my sheets and then I reach for it and a little voice inside my head says NO DON"T DO IT!!! So I usually don't touch it thank God I have recovered from this terrible affliction enough to put the bottle down. My sister also known as Aunt B says one of her worst laundry disasters was when she accidentally washed a disposable diaper in with her baby's clothes. She said it came apart and turned into sticky lent that would not come off the kid's clothes. She also said that she hates that you don't know that you have washed crayons with your kid's clothes until the clothes come out of the dryer, and then you know you have a big problem. She had a laundry disaster recently that was caused by her potty training 2 year old. He went to the men's room with his dad and experienced a urinal for the first time. Later that day Aunt B put clothes in the dryer and when the clothes came out of the dryer they all smelled like urine. The 2 year old admitted that he had peed in her dryer. And here is one last laundry disaster story told to me today by a friend at work. She said that this past winter that she had purchased 3 lovely white super soft throw blankets for her family to use. One day she decided to wash them and she threw them in with a batch of white towels. She didn't realize that she had a laundry disaster on her hands until her husband dried off with one of the towels and ended up looking like the abominable snowman. He was covered in white lint from head to toe, it was even stuck all in his whiskers on his face. It was kind of funny to her, not so much for him. As I told CW everyone has a laundry disaster story.

Screaming With Cats

If you have been keeping up with my blog you might have read about the super powers of toddlers, and  you might recall that the Princess has the super power of THE SONIC SCREAM. Now that she has turned three, I must say that she has nearly perfected the SONIC SCREAM. I am sure you have heard kids scream before when they have wanted something they couldn't have or things didn't go their way, but those kids usually scream words like "I WANT IT" or "IT'S MY TURN". Our Princess uses the SONIC SCREAM to punctuate her demands or commands and there is no words involved. She sucks in a deep breath and then screams in a high octave that nearly shatters glass, for longer than a well trained opera singer could ever hold a high note. IT IS KILLER on the eardrums. I actually kind of envy her. How many times in your life have things gone wrong and you just wish you could scream at the top of your lungs  for a few minutes. We might all live longer if we did. The Princess did learn one valuable lesson this past week, and that is that screaming with a kitten in you arms is a really bad idea. Princess holds one of our new kittens so much that she sort of forgets that she has her in her lap. This week while holding the kitten she asked her mother for something and was told the dirty 2 letter word that the Princess never wants to hear, NO! So she repeated her request and then punctuated it with the SONIC SCREAM. It scared the heck out of the sleeping kitten and sure startled the Princess when those claws went up her front and down her back. I think they call this in child development a natural consequence. I wish I could report that as a result of this event that she has stopped screaming, but she hasn't. I wish I could  tell you that she at least learned not to scream while holding a cat, but she did it again yesterday. I will tell you that we send her to her room when she screams and after a short while in her room she always strolls out looking fresh and completely composed and says "I am OK now guys.  I usually respond, with something like, well thank goodness I was really worried about you. As if she was recovering from sort of out break. Some days it's hard not to laugh.

Bloody Feet

Recently CW and our Son went to Epcot Center. This was a behind the scene tour that was work related for Son, but he was welcome to bring CW with him. He told CW that there would be a lot of walking involved and that it would be hot. When it was time to leave their hotel for the tour CW came down stairs in high heeled shoes. My Son said honey go up stairs and put on some different shoes, or you are going to be miserable. CW said, "I am not changing my shoes, I will be fine, Let's just GO!" So off to Epcot they went. After about half an hour CW started to quietly grumble that her feet hurt. After about an hour she was desperately trying to find some place to sit down every few feet. After 2 hours she said I can't walk any more in these shoes. Son said, Oh do your feet hurt? Well that's too bad. After 3 hours she begged Son to buy her a different pair of shoes to wear. He said if we can find some that aren't too expensive I will get you some. Then he offered to take off his socks so she could try wearing his socks to keep her shoes from rubbing on her feet. Needless to say the whole time she is suffering Son is delighting in it because CW is always extremely hard  headed and doesn't take advice from anyone usually. Finally, after about 4 hours she tried walking in just the socks with her shoes off. She had blisters the size of large grapes popping up on her feet and she was beyond cranky. They wanted to ride one more ride before leaving Epcot and while standing in line a young zit faced  Disney employee that was in charge of the line for the ride told CW to put her shoes back on.  CW said, my feet are bleeding and I am not putting my shoes back on! The park employee threatened to call security if she didn't put her shoes on. CW glared at the punk and said when you call security tell them to bring something to take me out to my car because I am not walking if I don't have to. AND you better go back to your little line leader job before you get in trouble. As they were leaving the park they saw a stand with flip flops and CW got an over priced pair of pink Minnie Mouse flip flops. Hopefully, she learned a lesson about being so hard headed, though I highly doubted it!

NEW KITTENS

We had a sad thing happen in our family recently. Our 16 year old cat got cancer and when it got bad for her we had to have her put to sleep. She was my son's cat and he had her since he was about 10 years old. He was heart broken over the whole situation. He couldn't even bring himself to deal with it when the time came to put her down. So his dad and I took care of it. However, I thought how sad it is to leave with a cat in the pet carrier and then come home with it empty, so I brought home a kitten that the vet had rescued from under a dumpster. He was a pitiful tiny fellow that really needed a good home so I took him to our home were kids and cats rule. Now, some people think we should have taken more time to grieve over the loss of the old kitty, but we had been sad about her the whole time we watched the cancer take its toll on her and I felt it was time for a new kitty. When CW saw the new kitten she complained that she wanted a kitten too. CW had been wanting a kitten or a puppy for sometime now, but none of us believed she would take care of it. We asked her if she were to get a kitten, did she promise to take care of it and clean up after it and of course she said that she would. BIG SURPRISE! So we went to the local animal shelter and adopted another kitten. So now we have 2 new kittens. I really don't believe CW is going to clean the litter box twice daily as a matter of fact we have had the kittens for a few days now and she already can't seem to remember to clean it. Maybe I can teach the 3 year old Princess to do it for her. The Princess already keeps her room cleaner than her mom's. Who knows maybe the Princess is responsible enough to take care of a kitten.

Off To School?

Today was the first day CW and Son had to get up and on their own get both kids ready for daycare and themselves ready for work so they could all get out of the house by a certain time. Up to this point the little Prince has not gone to daycare (Grandpa or a babysitter has taken care of him at home) and all summer Grandma has taken care of both kids. Grandma is a teacher and alas I must go back to work.
Aunt B. gave CW a little advise over the weekend. She has 3 young children of her own to deal with every morning. She advised CW to get clothes out the night before including shoes, get up before the kids if you need time for yourself, to blog, look at Face Book or mess with your hair and have anything that needs to go out the door with you in a bag or in back packs by the front door, She said, "You have to be organized!"
Well, I will give CW credit for this she is consistent. She consistently has shown over and over again that she will not take advice from anyone. To her credit they were all up and dressed in plenty of time this morning. She didn't however put the 3year old I spent all summer potty training on the potty and she left her in her pull up from bedtime. Then I heard CW yelling because she couldn't find the Prince's shoes, and then after they were all loaded in the van it occurred to her that for the Prince's first day of daycare he might need a few things so she runs back in the house and frantically started collecting things like diapers and a sippy cup. Luckily for her I came around the corner in time to tell her that I had already taken everything the kids need at daycare to the daycare last week. All they had to do was drop off the 2 children!
Now I will add that Son isn't perfect either. I have told him for several weeks that we have an issue with who has the 2 vehicles with the car seats. I need one because I do pick up from daycare every day and I am the one in town closest to the kids in case of an emergency, but they both work out of town now and the car they like to drive doesn't have any car seats in it. So at 7:00 AM on Monday morning Son says there aren't any car seats in the car we usually drive to work. Well, DAH!!!