Cindy and 'Roo

D-D has been tickling our funny bone the past few weeks.

She loves dressing up as Cinderella...being good old "Cindy," pretending that Cinderella is her best friend, talking to her on the phone, pretending that mice sleep with her at night and that they sing her songs, etc...etc...etc...

A little over a week ago, D-D was talking on her Cinderella cell phone (it's a toy) TO that very princess. "Hi, Ci'ella...how'r you? (pause) I'm good. Can you come play at my house?(a little longer pause)Ci'ella?---HEY!!! Are you wif Pwince Chahming?!!!?(selah)OK--Bye! I luf you!!" Then she turns to me and says, "Ci'ella dwives a twuck, Pwince chahming dwives a van. Yeth! And they are coming to my house!"

"They are? Is Cinderella going to help me clean the floors?"

"No. They are going to play wif me."

"Well...they will have to wait a little. We are going to WalMart for some groceries."

"I don't wanna go to Wah-Maht!!! hmmph!! I know---Ci'ella can go wif you and Pwince Chahming can stay wif me (that last part was said in a "wahka-wahka-wiggle-of-the-eyebrows" sort of voice)---*sigh* He is soo-oh-oh sweet!!!"


We did not get to go to get groceries that morning...soon after that she touched a red burner on the stove and we went to the doctor instead. She is fine and her finger looks great---but she told the doctor who was coming to our house, what princesses drive and what prince charmings drive and, not knowing her very well, he did have a difficult time understanding her.




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I have found that the more organized our toys are, the more likely the kids will play with them. If it is all a jumbled mess, they tend to leave the toys alone (and then tell me they are bored, asking me what they can do). This morning, I pulled out our Little People toys and helped D-D set up a little "village." She was playing a long time with the construction crew and moving boulders, so I got to get everything else set up, including the ark and the animals marching in two by two. After it was all set up, D-D had a good time playing all over the room. At one point, she was putting the animals into the ark making each one squeal in a high pitched voice, "Oh, no!!! Her-we, her-we---quack, quack, quack---the wain is coming!!!" Animals were being thrown in the ark when she stands up, looking all around the ark, and says, "Mom!!! We've got to be quack!! (--gasp--) Where's the kanga-roof?!!?"

Southern Confusion

Though I have always considered myself as a southern girl, I am coming to the realization that there are different levels of southern-ness. Especially in regards to the pronunciation of words. I am writing this, not to make fun of any of our friends we have made while down here in the deeper south, but to share with you our funny misinterpretations and the confusion that happens from them.

Some of you have heard our first experience of confusion. This real life event happened a few weeks after we had moved here. After worship service and Bible class, we all piled into the van. One of us asked the kids what they were taught during Bible class. M-G looked a little confused, but E replied, "We learned about a woman who was swallowed by a whale."

Dana and I looked at each other with a "HUH?!!?" expression on our faces and I asked, "Do you mean JONAH and the whale?"

"No. Not Jonah, MOM!!!! This was a new story about a woman. It was a really confusing story." M-G, our quickly-growing-up daughter said.

"I do not know the story about a woman with a whale. Was this in the Old Testament...before Jesus?" Dana and I are wondering what story did we forget from childhood...is this one of those stories that we heard and just forgot? This is all really new to us!!!

"No," laughter from the kids. "Jesus saw a woman with a whale and he saved her!!!"

"Do you mean, " Dana asks, trying not to laugh, "the woman at the well?" The kids began to argue with us, very adamantly, that the teacher did not say "well", but "whale". After a little explaining, and retelling of the story, the kids learned that in this deeper part of the south "whale" and "well" are pronounced the same, and both as a two syllable word (Way-yull).

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This past Wednesday night, the kids learned a new song (for them it is new, for Dana and I, an old one) called, "I'm a Hard Fightin' Soldier.." This was a fun song to sing and I loved the tune as a kid. It is not my fav. song now, but...we'll leave that for some later discussion---maybe. :)

For those of you who do not know the words, here is how I remember them:

I'm a hard-fightin' soldier and I'm on the--
battlefield (repeat 2 more times)
And I'm bringin' souls to Jesus by the service (or spirit) that I yield.

I've (or You've) gotta: walk right and talk right and sing right and pray right
On the---battlefield (repeat 2 more times),
"cause I'm (or you're) bringin' souls to Jesus by the service that I(or you) yield.

Well...E was singing this and when he got to the second verse he sang, "I've got a horse ride..a tall ride...a---"

He never finished the song because Dana and I were laughing so hard. Trying to tell him that it isn't a "Horse ride" didn't help---his logic? "It IS a horse ride...that's how I'm bringin' souls to Jesus, daddy!!"
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After dinner Dana asked E where his plate was. Our boy said, "Over day-yur." We have really been working with him on pronouncing his "th" sound, but this habit, like his thumb-sucking, is a hard one to break. Dana said, "The word is th-th-th-there, not dare...there is no such word as dare---(moment of reflection)---oops!! Well, there is such a word, but we do not really use it very much." Dana began to explain to him what the word meant, but:

"I know how it is used, dad...I hear it all the time. People say, 'Oh, dare.' ...
(long pause as he watches our faces show bewilderment) ... like when someone does something like ride a bike or something, people say that."

Daylight begins to glimmer now...I ask him, "You mean when you tell someone that you might have dropped your drink and then they reply, 'Oh, dare'?" E, with his eyes real big and serious, nods his head yes and I begin to laugh. "What they are really saying, E, is 'Oh, dear!' We are living further south than where we were, and things are pronounced differently. When someone says, 'Oh, day-yur!' they really mean, 'Oh, dear!'."

Look what I can do!

Z is eating pretty well (he is, by far, our messiest eater). He has tried all of his yellow veggies and his green veggies, but I am holding back on the fruit for a bit. He has tried some apple sauce and made such faces!!! And the noises!!! Too funny, but I am not sure his taste buds are quite ready.

Yesterday he began rolling from his back to his tummy!!!!
There are so many things to see and do now for little Z!! If he will only remember how to roll from his tummy to his back, tho! He accomplished that feat and practiced it for a few days a little before Christmas---or was it Thanksgiving?--but now that he accomplished that goal, it appears he has left it behind. I can just imagine him thinking, "I already know how to do that! Why do I need to keep showing everyone that I can?!!?"

And, just today, he sat up without support for a few seconds. Long enough, anyway, for me to snap a few photos.



Here are some pictures of Z after a bath. He is such a happy guy!

I took E and M-G to the library this past Saturday while D-D and Z rested and Dana did some studying and work. The kids enjoyed looking at books and had a difficult time deciding which books to take home. If they could bring the whole library home, boy!! Would they be happy!!!

After the library, we went to WalMart. My kids despise going to the store with me and they really did a fine job showing me just how much they liked it. They acted like they had not had any "jerking up." Exasperated and probably very much over-reacting to their behavior, I looked at E(I had made him ride in the little basket in the cart) and said, "If you're going to act like a little kid (I was going to say "baby" but thought that would be too mean), I'm going to treat you like one!!!"

He looks at me in all seriousness and says, "But mom...I am a little kid."

Situation was then diffused. I laughed, and he was able to FINALLY get down from the shopping cart.

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Over the break, Dana grew a beard. After a little while he said that he was going to shave it off. Since I really like seeing him with a go-tee (goatee?), he sported one of those instead of shaving off all of his beard. All of us got used to seeing him with this goatee. But, this past Sunday, he gave himself a haircut (military style) as well as shaving off his goatee. E was the first to see Dana with his new look and this was E's reaction:

"ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, hee, chortle, chuckle, snort, pfffhhhtt!!!, snicker, snicker, oooh- hooo, hoo, hoo, hoo, heee, hee, hee, hee, ha, ha, ha, ha, baaaah-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha---heee---hooo---a-hem--

-snicker----hmmm---hooooo---sniffle----ahhhh----sigh!!! HAS MOMMY SEEN YOU YET? YOU BETTER SEE WHAT MOMMY SAYS!!!"

His new style does not look bad...pretty much what it has always been. He really looks nice and I think even a bit younger without his facial hair. But it was quite a drastic change.

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D-D has been working on her ABC's. She can sing most of it, but really can mess up the order. The film clip below is from earlier in December...when she really began to notice the alphabet and that there was a song we sing with it. This is her first attempt at singing them by herself. We have another clip of her dancing and singing her alphabet, but it is way too huge to put on here...I tried. After 40 minutes of uploading, my site still did not have the full clip...so I just stopped it and decided to let you just watch this first one. Her order of singing the alphabet now is as follows: A B C D E F G H I J LNOP R S Q V W X Y Z.

We're gettin' there!

Happy Everything!!

Dana is a man who can do just about anything. Just call him Superman!

Our new house is very nice and we are enjoying a lot about it--the trees in the yard, the extra bedroom, lots of space---but the tiles in the bathrooms are not our favorite. So, the day after Dana was done with tests and classes and office work, he came home and sat for a few minutes. After that long period of rest and slothfulness, he got up and took a sledge hammer, a drill and some other tools into our bathroom and busted up the tile, sending white dust flying through the air to settle on his hair, the counter tops, brushes and towels...and even into our bedroom, though the bathroom door was closed. After lots of scraping and bags and bags of busted tile and dust were taken to the street, he looked around the bathroom and made a seemingly small decision. He decided he would like to re-texture the walls and repaint them before he put the new tile down. All of the walls in the house were repainted before the former owners put the house on the market, but the bathroom walls were pretty banged up and sad looking due to some drywall coming off when the wallpaper was taken down. AND, not all of the wallpaper made it off of the walls. This had begun to peel and some of the paint had begun to chip off of the walls in our bathroom. This seemingly small decision avalanched into a huge do-it-yourself project!!!

So, Dana scraped the parts of the wall that needed scraping. After he did this, he decided that the mirror should come down and maybe changed a bit. The frame around the mirror was in sad shape...lots of chips and scratches. He textured the walls (which was a new experience for him), put a new frame around the mirror, and then we went to visit Mandy's parents while the plaster dried on the walls.

We got back a few days after Christmas and Dana, with E's help, painted the bathroom. E got to paint the wall behind the toilet. At one point he said, "Uh-oh!"

Dana, thinking E might have painted the cabinet on accident, said, "What happened?"

"Look, dad" he said. "I accidentally painted a dinosaur." And, sure enough, there was a green dinosaur on the wall.

here is Dana's dad telling us what to do next---ha, ha, ha

After the paint dried, Dana and his dad cut and put down the new tile, installed new light switches and outlets, put in a new light and new towel bars, and put up new baseboards, as well as laying down a new transition/threshold piece of marble between our room and the bathroom. Dana then retouched the frame around the mirror and the baseboards with paint, and he and his dad re-installed the toilet.

Dana, also in his role as Superman, cut down one of our pine trees (which landed about 5--or less--feet from our house), painted the light fixtures in our other bathrooms, replaced several more light switches and light plates and outlets, installed a new garbage disposal and put our new microwave above the stove in our kitchen.

So...Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Anniversary, Mother's Day and Valentine's Day to me!!!

p.s. I love our new bathroom!!!! and new microwave!!!!

Goose Egg

M-G had a bit of an adventure this morning. She was wearing E's Batman cape backwards and was spinning in the kitchen watching her cape fly out. Spinning and giggling when,

*!THUMP!*
!!!CRASH!!!!!
!#*BANG*#!

She lost her balance and fell into the kitchen counter top...face first.

She now sports a nice little goose egg (about the size of a robin's egg) and bruise on her forehead, along with a colossal headache!

The best part of this whole episode was when E helped Gi-Gi explain to Dana what happened:

"She was spinning around when she hit her head on the kitchen counter and cabinets." Grace (a.k.a Gi-Gi) explained.

"Yeah!!" E put in, "She lost her bounce!!!"


Here is a poem written by my cousin after reading about M-G's little mishap..hilarious!!! Thanks, Raynal!!:

I lost my bounce and so I fell

There’s really nothing more to tell

Surely you’ll ask the reason why

Maybe you should ask E

No need to talk about it more

I hit my head and now it’s sore

I have a bump – I have a bruise

I was simply trying to amuse