new "hobby"

I have started a second blog (don't worry, I won't be abandoning this one) for my newest interest.  I got inspired by a segment on Rachael Ray featuring a woman who wrote a cookbook for things that you could find at the 99 Cent Store.  I remembered how, when I lived in Florida, I used to put together various little gifts using things that I bought at the local dollar stores.  I really haven't put too much into household decorations, so I challenged myself to a bit of "dollar store decor" for the various seasons.  The web address for my new blog is dollardecorating.blogspot.com or you can click on my profile and it is listed there.

my little literalist

Diva never fails to give us something to chuckle about, and I needed the chuckle after the heart attack she gave me this morning when I caught her pushing Bubba in his baby swing so hard that she nearly made the swing fall apart.  But, that's not the topic of this post.  Instead, I thought I would share her interpretation of a conversation a little later in the day.  Since we were out running an errand around lunch time, I made the "executive decision" that we would get lunch at McDonald's and bring it home to eat.  While we were waiting in line at the drivethrough, "Auntie" (their favorite aunt) made some remark about eating McDonald's for lunch.  Diva, in a concerned tone, said that we couldn't eat McDonald's for lunch.  When we pressed her for a reason, she said "You can't eat a building!"

the moon followed us home

Diva spent some time at a friend's house this evening.  When I picked her up, it was already dark out and Diva promptly noticed the moon shining brightly.  She seemed to forget about it on the way home, but when we pulled in the driveway and started getting ready to get out of the van, she looked out the van window and commented "Look, Mommy, the moon followed us home!"

kid-speak

I was working with Diva this morning on her new AWANA verse.  She was SUPPOSED to say "all He had made was very good" (Gen 1:31).  Her version, which I have to admit, had quite a bit of merit to it, was "all He had made was very important!".

She brought another smile to my face earlier this morning, too.  I'm learning to be more spontaneous with her and go with her ideas instead of brushing them off just because I don't feel like doing it right then.  She came up to me this morning while I was feeding Bubba and said "I want to send a Happy Mother's Day card to your mommy."  Her children's church class had made Mother's Day cards back in the spring when it actually WAS Mother's Day and apparently that was a big deal to her.  Every now and then she'll bring up the subject totally out of the blue.  I really didn't feel like putting forth much effort on anything extra today and could have produced any number of excuses to validate a "no" answer (headache, tired, etc.).  I thought about it for a minute and then figured that Grandma would probably enjoy it, so I told her to go ahead and get a piece of paper and make a "card" for Grandma.  She did that while I finished feeding Bubba, then we got an envelope for her to stuff the paper into, and I do mean stuff - she didn't do the greatest folding job on the paper :-)  I addressed it and put the stamp on, then let her trot out to the mailbox and put it in.  It didn't take a whole lot of extra effort on my part but it meant something to her and I'm sure it will make Grandma smile when it reaches it's destination.  I still have my moments when I just can't motivate myself to either stop what I'm working on or put forth the effort to humor all of her little impulses, but I am learning to put my own things and my own feelings aside more often and listen to the thoughts of a child.

"And a little child shall lead them"  Isaiah 11:6

memory making moments

Sometimes it's just fun to be a little spontaneous.  Besides, who knows what blog fodder the girls will give me. :-)  Tonight I decided that the girls and I were going to have a "pajama party".  There was no occasion, no special reason - it's not even the weekend.  I just felt like doing something out of the ordinary.  Around 5:30 we got cleaned up and ready for bed, all three of us in our pj's.  After that, I put the girls in their room with some toys they don't play with very often and I started making "pancake cookies" for our dinner.  Pancake cookies are just small, cookie-sized pancakes that can be snacked on like cookies and don't have to be eaten at the table.  When I had enough made to get them going, I had them pick up the toys then come out to the couch.  They got to watch an Elmo movie while they ate their dinner.  

By the time we were done with that, it was almost dark.  Since one of the parts of the Elmo movie was talking about stars and constellations, we went outside to watch the stars come out.  Imp had given up and gone back inside with Daddy, but Diva and I stayed out for a little while.  At one point, I decided to have a "teaching moment" and asked her if she knew what the time of day when it wasn't quite all the way dark, but it wasn't daytime anymore was called.  She said "yes", so I asked what it was.  She replied, "the big difference!"  I was going for dusk, but that works. :-)  I think she meant to say "the Big Dipper" because we had been talking about that particular constellation.  Oh well, she gave me my laugh for the day.

too smart for her own good

On the way home from AWANA, I was talking with Diva about her night. I asked her if she enjoyed "circle time". She said "Yes, but it was an oval". She's 3! How does she even realize that?

We must be doing something right . . .

This morning I decided to do something new with the girls and made them puppets out of brown paper lunch bags. Diva took two of them, declaring one to be the Daddy puppet and one to be the Mommy puppet. She then had one of them say "I love you so much!" and put them together like they were kissing. I just had to laugh. I guess if that's her perception of Mommy and Daddy we must be doing something right.