Some More Funnies

Do you believe I could write a post like this every day? Really, our days are full of so many funny moments that get lost amid all the other things. A couple from this week:

 

I broke a glass while I was cooking. Bill was sweeping it up and asked Sandy to stay back. She kept trying to get through his arm that was holding her back and finally he asked her what she was doing. “Trying to step on that glass so I will have glass slippers.” We’d read Cinderella that day, but still, that seemed like quite the logic jump until we realized that as Bill was sweeping up he had said, “Careful, girls, we don’t want you stepping on this glass and getting glass SLIVERS.”

 

Yesterday we had the most snow we’ve gotten all winter and the girls wanted to build a snowman. We went outside and built a pitifully small snowman. But they had fun.

 

Of course, they lost interest in the snowman and the snow quickly. All they really wanted to do is play in the water from the downspout:

 

So while I was still trying to do the snowman, they went inside for bowls and spoons and had a blast mixing snow and water:

 

Today we had some friends come play. Sandy was so sad to see them leave. After spending the better part of February home with colds, they have really missed their friends. So after they left, Sandy dug deep into the cupboards and pulled out an assortment of snacks and made them a treat bag.

 

She’s really not supposed to get into the cupboard and get into stuff, but she was so excited. I get excited about putting treats together for people, too. In fact, we went to Junky Monkey for the first time today and my exciting find was these cardboard popcorn bowls. Won’t those make some cute treat buckets? I’ll have to post about what I do with them once I figure it out:

 

Sandy insisted on decorating her treat bag. She requested flowers, but I had some foam heart stickers handy and she was happy with those:

 

We took a walk to deliver the treats. When we came back the girls had a blast with the foam heart stickers.

 

I’m not sure why putting them in each other’s hair was so funny, but apparently it was.

Funny Day

Sandy had a friend over this afternoon and we decided to make a cake. The girls had so much fun helping. Sandy’s friend is stirring the dry ingredients, Sandy is stirring the wet ingredients, and Abby is stirring a bowl of just plain water (and tasting it).

I should catch up and post pictures from the last month or two since I posted – and hopefully, I’ll get back to do that – but I had to write some of the funny things that happened today before I forget.

As Sandy’s friend was leaving, I’d just combined both bowls and came back into the kitchen to find Sandy chewing something. I asked her if she’d eaten from the bowl (we have a firm rule that if she puts her hands in the bowl or tastes anything while she is helping me cook that’s it, she’s done helping). She said she hadn’t. I was pretty sure she had. So, not thinking of the years of therapy this might cause, I said, “Good thing you didn’t eat that because it had raw eggs and if you eat raw eggs you can get salmonella and die.” She didn’t say anything until Bill got home and then we had an evening of tears with Sandy sure she was dying. I spent the night trying to do damage control and explain that I really exaggerated, most people don’t actually die from salmonella, but they can get really sick. And Bill and Sandy negotiating who would go with her if she had to go to the hospital.

 

Earlier today, I was downloading pictures for something for church and Sandy saw this picture of President Monson:

 

Sandy: That’s President Monson! Why is he wearing a purple tie?

Me: I don’t know, maybe he likes purple.

Sandy: Can we call him and ask him if he likes purple?

Me: I don’t know his phone number. Do you?

Sandy: No, but let’s go to his house and ask him for his phone number.

Me: I don’t know where he lives.

Sandy: Daddy will know. When he comes home I will ask him.

 

She recognizes pictures of President Monson and President Uchtdorf  -  and says their names really well. She knows who President Eyring is, but for some reason she has a lot of trouble with his name. She always gets the “Ring” party, but then with strange things thrown in. One of my favorites from today was President Ringcicle.

 

Not to leave Abby out of the stories… Abby has started biting. So far, she hasn’t actually bit anyone’s skin (keeping my fingers crossed!!), but she has started biting people’s clothes. I’ve been trying to get her to stop, by saying, “We don’t bite people, we bite apples.” and offering her an apple. So now, she’ll walk up, bite my shirt and say, “apple! apple!” So have I conditioned her to bite to get an apple? Maybe I need to rethink my approach. I hope this phase goes quickly. I’m also really trying to get her to stop hitting. The funny thing is, with Sandy it was so effective to just leave whenever Sandy hit or bit. She hated leaving and it worked pretty well. Abby seems to hit when she wants to leave. Today we went to story time at the library with the slide. The girls were playing great and going down the slide and getting along well with the other kids, until all of a sudden Abby started hitting. I told her no and redirected her twice, then the third time decided it was time for us to leave. So I picked her up and hauled the kids out to the car. Abby seemed really happy. She fell asleep on the way home. So, maybe we just need to leave at the first sign of hitting because it’s her signal that she is done.

 

Abby is talking up a storm! Every day she says so many new words. I am constantly amazed. Also, in the last couple of weeks, she started saying colors. And, she’s right most of the time. She’s pointing out pink, blue, purple, black, orange (which can be anything from yellow to red), yellow (which is often green), and occasionally green. I guess she just picked it up as I’ve worked with Sandy. She can also point out the letter S (the letter Sandy and I find the most often).

 

But the absolute best part of my day was watching Anne of Green Gables with the girls. Sandy and I read a young reader version of the book. It was her first chapter book. It took us quite awhile to read it a chapter at a time. It was so much fun to share one of my favorite childhood books with her. It was also fun to watch the movie and see her connect with what we had read.

February Recap

Today, Sandy got into some 24-hour color stay lipstick before church. She put it all over her leg.

Want to see a close up of the leg?

When I asked her what she was doing with my makeup she said, “I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was mine.”

Anyone want to write a caption for this picture?

Valentine’s Day flowers from Bill:

Abby’s Valentines (for playgroup, although we didn’t go because the girls were sick):

Pinterest-inspired Glow in the dark necklaces that say You Make My Heart Glow, Valentine.

Sandy’s Valentines:

Butterfly suckers:

We also made Pinterest-inspired love juice:

A water bottle with a drink packet and a paper straw tied on. The paper straws are very cute, but after using them, I understand why the world switched to plastic straws:

A couple of random shots of Abby from a birthday party for Julie and Ginny. I would post pictures of Julie and Ginny with their cakes, but Bill only took pictures of them blowing out their candles. Mid-blowing out candles is not a flattering shot of anyone. You are welcome, Julie and Ginny.

Abby is putting on someone else’s shoes. This girl loves shoes. We go to the McDonald’s play place and she doesn’t care about the slide or ball pit, she wants to stand next to the place where the kids leave the shoes and try them on. (yes, I do my best to stop her.)

January Recap

A walk in the snow…

Matching Valentine pajamas from grandma:

Random pictures of Sandy wearing her dad’s sunglasses upside down:

A trip to Colorado to see Grandma Gingie and Grandpa Pete:

A movie afternoon. Sandy was the ticket taker, wearing this cute craft apron my sister-in-law Heather made me.

We watched Rio and there were fun snacks: swedish fish, popcorn, red vines, and drinks:

Sunbeams

Sandy went to Sunbeams yesterday! She was so excited. We practiced singing Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam all week. I glued pictures of her, her teacher, and the other two kids in her class on popsicle sticks and we practiced going to Primary all week.

Abby was sad that Sandy wasn’t in Nursery with her anymore. I’m glad they had two months in there together.

I didn’t take a single picture yesterday. In fact, I didn’t even think about it until I saw a friend blogging about her cute 3-year-old’s first time in Sunbeams.

The girls were extra tired yesterday, which might explain why we had the WORST. SACRAMENT.MEETING.EVER. We battle with the girls every week trying to keep some semblance of order, so it might seem hard to tell which week is really the worst. This one had the added embarrassment of a wardrobe malfunction. Near the end of the meeting, Bill stood up to take Sandy out for making noise. Abby started to cry so I stood up to take her out. My heel got caught in my skirt and when I stood up, my skirt ended up on the floor around my ankles. I sat back down and Abby screamed through most of the closing hymn, but I wasn’t standing back up again after that. I did manage to pull my skirt back up. Someone came up to me afterward and commented on what a rough day it looked like I was having and I burst into tears.

New Year’s Day is a hard day for church. We got the girls into bed at 8:30 (just an hour later than usual), but the fireworks in our neighborhood woke up Sandy. She came running out of her room demanding to know why someone was banging on our door.

I wish I knew what to do about Sacrament Meeting. I found this post online yesterday and laughed and cried while I read it.

Seriously, though, getting to church on time isn’t usually a problem. We sit in our bench a few minutes before Sacrament Meeting starts. The girls can look at a Gospel Art Picture or an issue of the Friend until after the Sacrament. We usually make it through that first half hour okay – not to say it doesn’t take a fair amount of effort and reminders to keep the kids quiet, but we manage. It’s the remaining 40 minutes of the meeting that are impossible. It doesn’t help that Bill stands up after the Sacrament to go count attendance and I’m left wrestling two girls that don’t understand why daddy gets to walk around when they have to sit still.

I bring them each a sippy cup of water. That does seem to help. We’ve gotten rid of snacks. I’ve gone back and forth on that, but I’ve decided the mess, noise, and fights over the snacks outweigh any benefit. I give them a snack right before church.

I try to bring a couple of quiet toys. Fewer toys seems to work better than lots of toys. I have boxes and boxes of  quiet toys to choose from– books, quiet books, dry erase books, magnet dolls, finger puppets…. However, Sandy can turn any quiet toy into a noisy toy. For example, we brought lacing cards a couple of times. She laced the string through three or four times so it would stay, then cast it like a fishing pole onto the bench in front of us (no one was sitting there). When she got in trouble for that, she dangled it over the bench, but swung it into the bench in front of us. Then it got taken away. After a talk about how to play with them correctly, we tried it again another week, but the temptation was too great and it got taken away again and hasn’t been back to church since.

Coloring doesn’t entertain my kids for long, and our chapel is sloped so if I bring crayons or colored pencils, they all seem to get dropped and roll to the front.  I’ve tried giving Sandy just one pencil and that works, but she gets bored really fast. That reminds me that one of my sister-in-laws got her daughter to color longer by having her make a picture for her teacher or friend. Sandy was a little young when I heard that, but maybe I should try that for next week.

It seems like it always becomes a battle of wills between Sandy and I. For example, on Sunday, she was singing…”All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel. The monkey thought twas all in fun, then pop! goes the weasel.” She was singing quietly, but she was singing. in church. when everyone else was trying to listen to the speaker. So I told her to stop. She looked right at me and sang louder. So, I picked her up under one arm, Abby under the other and out in the hall we went. Into a chair she went with strict instructions that she wasn’t to move off the chair until she could show me she could go 1 minute without making a sound and then we could go back in. So what does she do? Sit on her chair and sing. I ignored her, she eventually got bored and gave me the one minute of silence and promised to be good and back in we went.

Abby takes every opportunity to dive under the bench. If I can focus on Abby, I can keep her pretty under control but it takes a lot of effort. But then Sandy seems to get jealous of the attention Abby’s getting and starts acting out.

If I felt good about giving the girls my phone to play games with the sound turned down, thing would go a lot more smoothly, but letting my kids play electronic games during church makes me feel like a horrible mother.  Bill’s not sure about it, but he doesn’t seem to have the same amount of guilt either way. Of course, having disruptive children in church makes me feel like a horrible mother, too. I can’t believe how much guilt and frustration comes in this one hour. As a friend of mine says, “It’s the worst hour of my week. Isn’t it supposed to be the best?”

Merry Christmas

Opening Presents

We celebrated Christmas Eve on the 23rd (Friday night). The girls opened pajamas from Grandma Sherri.

Saturday morning (the 24th), we opened presents. Apparently I don’t have any pictures of that, although we did get it all on video. The girls were excited to see that Santa had come. Sandy got everything she asked for (a dog dolly, pretend makeup, and pez for her pez dispenser) and more. Abby didn’t ask for anything, but seemed pleased with her presents.

Christmas Day

Abby and Sandy wore their new Christmas dresses from Grandma Buhler to church on Christmas Day.

 

Nativity

The Thursday after Christmas, we went to the extended Buhler family party. It is traditional to have a live Nativity play by the children; Sandy was Mary this year.

Abby was an angel:

 

Abby didn’t make it to the end of the play. She was sad and came and sat with me.

 

The girls had cute matching outfits on, but I didn’t think to take pictures until we got home and, by then, they were tired.

Some funny stories

We went to the post office this week. I was carrying Abby and a box, so Sandy was holding onto my shirt as we walked through the parking lot. She said, “Mom, you need more arms.” I said, “Yes, I could really use a few more arms.” Sandy said, “Then you would be an octopus.”

On the same post office trip, Abby took off while I was in line. Sandy went after her. I went after them and then we had a talk about how they need to stay right with me so someone doesn’t try to take them. Sandy said, “Because your heavy.” I said, “What?” She said, “Because I’m little and Abby’s little but  you’re heavy mom, so the bad people can’t take you.”

Abby has three new words: yum, gum, and bum. She really enjoys saying them. She calls anything chewy, like taffy, gum.

Let the Christmas Season Begin

We went to breakfast with Santa Claus this morning.

I've been working on some visiting teaching snowballs for my ladies. I found the idea and directions here, but I changed it up a little bit and one of my changes is I used a balloon filled with candy for the center. You can see my visiting teaching ideas for this month here. Sandy and Abby have been helping me make them and they absolutely LOVE the balloons filled with candy. In fact, Sandy's quote was: "This is my favoritest kind of balloon ever!!"