The kids have been supplying a veritable maelstrom of anecdotes that are just begging to be shared, so without further ado, here they are, in no particular order.
1. Noah crank called 911 from a neighbor's house who had very generously invited our family over for dinner. We found out when their 5 year old daughter came upstairs, crying and terrified that the police were going to come. We assumed that Noah had just been pretending that he was calling 911, until the phone rang and it was the police, asking us to please teach our kids that 911 was for emergencies only. I was ready to unleash the furies of hell on Noah, but I found him downstairs sobbing. This family's kids tend to take rules very seriously, a theory that my kids have written off as not worth their time, so the 5 year old had told Noah that she was never going to play with him again because he called 911. This was so upsetting to Noah that I decided that peer pressure was probably the best learning tool that could be employed in this case. I doubt he will ever call 911 again, even if I'm bleeding to death on the kitchen floor.
2. Zack is rather exuberant when he is, shall we say, in his birthday suit. I had just gotten Darcey out of the tub and she was laying on a towel on the floor when I was refilling the water for Zack. He was bouncing all around the bathroom, and had stopped just above Darcey's head, when he decided to pantomime one of his newly discovered potty-related talents. "Look, Mom! I'm peeing!" I was then forced to say one of those sentences that you never dream would have to come out of your mouth: "Don't pee on your sister!" Fortunately for all involved, there was no actual pee, he was only pretending.
3. For Noah's homework yesterday, he was making "long i" words - he needed to write about 20 of them, and after the first 6 or so he was stumped, so I gave him some clues to help him think of words, like 'the car has a flat what?' Tire! He had gotten mike, mile, tile, and file, and I was trying to get him to say "smile" so I started singing the song from Annie:
Me: You're never fully dressed without a ...
Noah: Hat?
Brad and I fell over laughing, but I decided that he needed more, and with Brad as my backup singer, we sang:
Me: Who cares what they're wearing on Main Street or Saville Row - it's what you wear from ear to ear
Brad: Ear to Ear!
Me: And not from head to toe that ma-ha-ha-tters. So Senator, so janitor, so long for a while! Remember, you're never fully dressed, though you may wear your best, you're never fully dressed with out a ...
Noah: Shirt?
Apparently he hasn't watched Annie enough. Zack could have gotten that one, no problem. And he doesn't even know what a long i word is.
4. Zack continues his bathroom related humor with this funny anecdote. His friend Jonathan was over to play and I left them watching a video while I went upstairs to feed Darcey. I swear on my life that they had been almost comatose in front of the television, and I was only gone maybe 10 minutes. Which means that when I found them naked in the bathroom, dancing around with toilet paper shredded on the floor and the shower door covered in brown marker, you know they must have concocted this plan a while ago and were just waiting for the right moment of weakness on my part to implement it. I handed each of them their pants and underwear and sent them to separate bathrooms to use the potty. When they came back, I handed each of them a Lysol wipe and had them start cleaning, which they did with just as much enthusiasm as the previous Bacchanalian debauchery.
5. This is a continuation of the previous incident, but is so egregious as to warrant a separate entry. Later that afternoon, Zack announced that he had marker on his bottom. I don't know how many times I have told my children not to draw on themselves, which must be such a confusing message because I keep dragging them back to the Sharpie-wielding employees at Costco. Curse them. So I peeked at the aforementioned body part, and found that it was completely marker-free. I told him there was no marker on his bottom and he said, now brace yourself for this, that yes, he did draw on his bottom with brown marker but did it real deep. I decided that this was one piece of artwork that was better left unseen.
6. Darcey seems to think that there are not enough bodily fluids going on in my life, so has decided to add hers to the mixture. About two weeks ago, she had some kind of stomach bug that caused her to throw up for roughly 24 hours. One time I was holding her and had just picked her up so that she was facing me when she puked all over my neck/chest area with enough force that the spray from it went all over my face. My mouth was open at the time. Then today we were walking down the stairs when she magically timed her spit up so that it landed on the floor one split second before my foot stepped right in it. There is no dignity in motherhood.
7. There have been all manner of workmen in the house over the last month, and watching them build and fix and construct things has given Ryan the idea that he can do it, too. Which is great, I'd love for him to be one of those handy guys that can fix stuff, because I tend to be the one to have to call a plumber when there's no water coming out of the faucet, only to be told that the washer needs to be changed and he'll do it for $35 each. But if history has any bearing on future performance, this not be the last that Ryan fixing things gets mentioned in the blog. He claims that the workmen left a bottle of testosterone on the counter. I hope we didn't have to pay extra for that.
8. We got a phone call from Noah's teacher last week, letting us know that he had been caught giving kids the finger during class. Yes, THAT finger. His teacher was very kind about it, because she knew he was a well-behaved kid - she had even nominated him for an Ace Award two months in a row for his good behavior. Apparently what went down was this: A bunch of kids were sitting around and another kid stuck up his middle finger, which must have gotten some kind of reaction because Noah decided it was a good idea to do it, too. Then a third boy, the son of the PTA president and a stake high councilman, one of those families that just seems so perfect that you know their worst day includes when they can only have family scripture study for half an hour before it devolves into a group tickle-fight and they tell each other how much they love each other over homemade dessert (yes, I'm jealous, can you tell?) anyhow, that boy tells Noah that it isn't right to stick up your middle finger, but Noah is not swayed by this argument and keeps doing it, until the teacher sees them and stops it. I explained to Noah that the middle finger is the same as saying a swear word, a bad one, and so he wants to know what the bad word is. Now he's got me, because I want to tell him the truth, I want him to know, but at the same time I really don't trust him not to say it. So I told him that at 6, he's a little too young to know what the swear words are, but that in a year or two I'll tell him. Maybe not my finest parenting moment, but I was trying to avoid the future teacher phone call, the one where she tells me Noah's been saying the F-word and telling everyone that his mom taught it to him. Self-preservation, I think.
So that's all of them, for now. Life provides a person with a never-ending series of events that make you want to scream and pull your hair out, unless you can somehow see the humor in it. Brad doesn't have as many of these stories anymore because any story that has the potential to be funny (i.e. making him say words like "blue" right after he had some cavities filled and his whole face is numb) end up being embarrassing to him and end with him sulking for several hours before he finally tells me I hurt his feelings. Plus also there's that moratorium on embarrassing Brad stories in my blog, per his request. I'll just leave him out of this for now. But don't worry, I'm keeping my eyes open for more incidents from all of the kids. After all, the only way I'll stay sane is if I laugh.
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