Two wheels at last!

Me:  "It's your decision, but you just road with the training wheels barely touching.  I think you're ready."
Grace:  "K.  Let's do this.  Daddy, go get your tools and take 'em off!"
Me:  "Yes ma'am"

She then walked the bike mid-way down the street and boldly road all the way up on two wheels her first time.

Our first toothfairy visit...

... will be tonight!  John's been wiggling that tooth for weeks now and just came excitedly up the stairs to proclaim his loss.  He's real happy and immediately wanted to eat foods of different textures to see how they feel:)

Problem Solving Strategies

The other day we made some homemade vanilla ice cream after a day of playing outside.  We put the ice cream in the freezer to harden up while we ate dinner and let the apple crisp cook.  

After dinner I teased the kids with "Daddy already ate the ice cream... you didn't really want any, did you?"

John takes the news slowly and harshly... "you didn't really eat it, did you?"... "why did you eat it when you knew we wanted some?"

While I was having fun teasing John, Grace was just staring at me with a blank face, listening to evaluate the severity of the situation.  After surmising it to be true, she takes action...  she never said a word, just marched right upstairs to the authority figure and declares "Mommy!, daddy ate the ice cream and didn't leave us any!"  I didn't get in any trouble - as the ice cream was still safely tucked in the ice box - but I enjoyed watching the different strategies for dealing with their dilemma...
 

Want a knuckle sandwich?

I hear this conversation as I'm walking up the stairs...

John: "Grace, do you want a knuckle sandwich?"
Grace: "Umm... sure."
John: "Peanut butter and jelly or cream cheese and jelly?"
Grace: "Umm... peanut butter"
John: (holding his hand to her mouth) "Hows it taste?"
Grace: (fake chewing) "Mmmm... that good John"

I think I got screwed, this is not at all how I remember "eating" knuckle sandwiches from my older brother...  strange.

Random Kid Stories

"Thanks my dance class, amen"
-- Grace, prayer

"Thank you for gravity, all the wonderful things on earth and baby Jesus, amen"
-- John, prayer

Mommy says, "Grace, stop eating the dough."
Grace grabs more dough to eat.
"Grace, *stop* eating the dough!" says Mommy in a stern tone.
Grace grabs more dough.
Mommy says, "Grace, look at me, didn't you hear what I said?"
Grace says, "yes" - as she grabs another glob
"Then why do you continue to eat the dough!?!" asked Mommy, nearing frustration
"'cause I like eading da dough" says Grace matter-of-factly
-- Grace & Mommy, cookie making dialog (while daddy diligently contains laughter)

Taste tester extraordinaire

So I frequently get asked about "kid stories" and never come up with anything.  It's not that they aren't doing funny/cute/adorable stuff all the time; it's that I'm not sharp enough to remember any of it.  Occasionally, I'll even think about writing it down but then think - hey, there's no way I'm going to forget that.   So, some small tid-bits of the day:

• I was baking a carrot cake for dessert tomorrow and Grace was my little helper.  She stirred the dry ingredients for me as I creamed and mixed the wet.  Every ingredient we'd add (cinnamon, flour, freshly ground nutmeg, etc.) she'd stop me and say, "taste."  I now know to just offer a taste of all ingredients prior to adding them.  When it came time to do the cream cheese frosting I was tweaking it a little because I wanted the cream cheese to be more apparent than the sweet.  So each time I'd stop the mixer while I was making it she'd yell "Taste test" (I'm fairly confident where she got that from).  Then after a while, as if sensing it was about to end - she would say "one more taste test". 
• After working hard at the carrot cake, Grace and I sat down on the sofa - each with a little bag of Dorittos (her with Cool Ranch and me with Nacho).  I was tired and not paying much attention apparently.  She was eating out of my bag - "tasting" them I suppose.  It's been a while since I've had a Cool Ranch dorrito so after mine were gone I reach over and grabbed one of hers.  It tasted funny, bland really.  I tried another.  Same thing.  Then I sat back and watched her "eat" her doritto.  Her process involved sticking the doritto in her mouth, sucking off all the flavor and sticking it back in the bag.  I love Grace, but I doubt we'll be sharing a bag of chips any time soon.

Grace's costume...

In response to Gwen's comments/questions, I figured I'd post them here. Grace had a tail and some ears to be some sort of last-minute rodent - but she had no interest in wearing them. Her napping was just off on Halloween (making her grumpy) and truth-be-told, she doesn't yet get Halloween, pumpkins, or costumes. Anyway, she stayed home with me passing out candy to various kids that came begging in funky garb. For her efforts, she learned a valuable lesson: "She who passes out the candy eats the most."

Maybe next year Gracie;)

I should have known...

... that, when given a choice, John would choose the most difficult pumpkin to carve. Truthfully, I actually enjoyed the challenge and was glad about his selection. Knowing his love for pirates of late, I offered three pumpkin options - two pirates and one "smiling Jack". He quickly decided on the more difficult of the two pirates and I began carving. Fortunately, I helped steer us towards a whopper of a pumpkin earlier in the evening that served as the canvas for this adventure - a 35 pounder to be exact;)

Anyway, bad pictures, but here's a look at our final result. First with flash to appreciate the overgrown squash.


Now, without flash, to appreciate its spooky goodness.

and again... just for fun...

John will be a great (albeit incredibly expensive) pirate for Halloween this year - I'll try to get some pictures of our human and squash varieties together.

More Sweet Music...

As Gwen eluded to in her comments, John received another harmonica yesterday in the mail. We told him that we could look at exchanging it for something else if he wanted. He was having none of it though - "take it out". We took it out of the package and he bounced around the room blowing and sucking into his new harmonica as if it were his first one. We played harmonica's most of the evening yesterday. I was flipping through a book and trying to read how to play Jingle Bells and John just looked at me, shook his head, and began to play - sounded much closer to Jingle Bells than my version that had benefited from the reading. He has enjoyed both of his new instruments and seems to give them equal playing time;)

Sweet Music...

John got a harmonica from his last doctor's visit - after hitting his head in Little Ninja's;) He's had a blast playing it, but the sounds it produced were, ehem, rough. Worse than that, he gets absolutely worn out playing it. He'll play for a few seconds and be out of breath - because of the force of air required to make a sound from it.

Fortunately for him [and Becca and I], he's just received a really nice harmonica in for his birthday. He's so used to the effort required by the other one that he can play this one for extended periods. The music it produces is sweet. It just came yesterday, but I love watching him play the "real" one - his head bounces around and his fingers flutter likes he's playing a horn. Becca and I just sit back and enjoy his sweet music...

Helmet Head

John occasionally asks to wear my helmet as I mostly leave it sitting on the dining room table. He'll walk around hearing himself talk while raising and lowering the face-shield. He finds it amusing. Here he is taunting Grace with his "greetings Earthling" look.


I reckon the other day he didn't feel quite safe enough with only a helmet so he wanted to go in full gear. He actually tried my boots too but found he wasn't getting anywhere.


I found this amusing;) He'd trip if he took anything more than a baby step - good thing he had gear on.

Lions, tigers and clams?

One thing I didn't expect didn't expect with parenting is some of the odd middle of the night conversations I might be having. John has been waking up lately in the wee hours of the morning with irrational fears - apparently not extraordinary. They typically range from a man out of his window, to Santa Claus, to aliens - not sure where he picks up some of this stuff as we've not seen Dora or Blues talking much of aliens these days. Anyway, though I'm not sure if it definitely falls into the irrational fear category or half-dream/half-awake category, last night was particularly odd I thought. I walk into his room and he's sitting up in straight in his bed and looks at me immediately and declares:

"Daddy, I don't *like* crayams!";
Me: "Huh, you don't like crayons?"
John: "Daddy, I don't like *crayams*!"
Me: "Oh, you don't like (I had another guess last night but don't remember what it was now;)"
John: "Daddy, I don't like *crayams*!"
Me: [fully aware this was my last opportunity to guess before melt-down] "Oh, okay buddy, you don't like clams."
John: [calmer now] "Yes Daddy, I don't like clams"
Me: "That's okay, buddy, I don't like clams either. As a matter of fact, I don't think thing Grace or Mommy like clams either."
John: "Daddy, let's leave the clams at the clam store."
Me: "Um... ok buddy, no problem, we'll leave them at the clam store."
John: "Ok daddy."
Me: "Ok, let's get back to sleepy time."
John: [rolls over]
Me: "Sweet dreams"
John: "Sweet dreams daddy"

There was really more to the dialog than this but I can't remember it in full. It was odd to be talking about clams at 2 in the morning with a 2 year old though.

John the artist

John is very artistic. He loves to play with clay, markers, water paint, finger paint and crayons; our refrigerator proudly displays his work. We've got tons of coloring books and stacks of construction paper to support him whenever a creative moment strikes. Sometimes, though, I'm not impressed. Let's critique this latest work, for example:


I know, your thinking, wow, that's good stuff. From the spiral elements on the left to the short aggressive strokes on the right - it's powerful. What's not to like? It's not the color selection, not the strokes, in short, not the art that failed to impress me - it was his choice of canvas! Below... his creation again in context:


One wall apparently wasn't a large enough canvas on which to express himself so it turns out he expanded to the other three walls in the room as well. Fortunately, Becca too knows a thing or two about paint brushes.

My "first" birthday party

Yesterday I came home to the best birthday surprise. When Rebecca
told John it was my birthday yesterday, he was so excited and
immediately began planning. He told her they had to get me birthday
balloons, birthday streamers and birthday cake. She apparently took
him to the store to by all of those party ingredients while I was at
work. I arrived home with yellow and blue streamers over all of the
chairs (done by John himself) and hanging around in other low-lying
areas. He was apparently upset when he realized he'd forgotten the
happy birthday candle for the cake, so yesterday I celebrated my first
birthday (from a candle left over from Grace). Two and 1/2 and I
think he's got better party-planning skills that Rebecca and I
combined.

Thanks John [and Rebecca], it was the best birthday party ever;)

Being different only okay so far...

One of the books we've been reading at bedtime lately is a Todd Parr book on "being different." The book is well illustrated but, I think, poorly written and no fun to read. Anyway, this is a story about John, not a book review. So for whatever reason, John likes the book. We read pages like the following:
"It's ok to have missing teeth."
"It's ok to have no hair."
"It's ok to be small, medium, large, and extra-large."
"It's ok...", Ok, you get the idea.

So John is all smiles through the most all of the book, enjoying the illustrations and such.

Then we come to a page that reads, "It's ok to eat macaroni and cheese in the bathtub," and John looks at me every time and says, "No way, it is *not* ok to eat in the bathtub. You eat macaroni and cheese at the table Daddy."

2 and a half years-old and he's clearly a lot brighter than this Todd clown.

Boxes, bubble wrap, and real presents

We received a rather large box from the post office the other day. It was addressed to John and Grace from Grandma and Grandpa Williams and we told John he could open it with Grace after dinner. So dinner came and went and we gave him the go-ahead. The box was wrapped with packaging paper on the outside and John opened it like a present. He got a couple sides opened so that the box was now exposed, stopped, and in wide-eyed excitement looked at us and said "it's a Box!". It took some convincing that there might actually be something in the box worth taking a look at and finally he allowed me to cut through the tape so that he could open the inside. He then proceeded to pull the flaps back, reach in to the box, and grabbed out a folded up piece of bubble wrap. He pulled that bubble wrap close to him and gave it a big bear hug and tells Rebecca and I, "it's so cute!". Go figure.

P.S. He did like the robot once he made it there;)