The battle in my brain and other assorted happenings

There is a constant battle going on in my brain.  It's a battle over domination.  You see, the kids are in two distinct camps as to their listening preferences.  My older children, heavily influenced by their father, have been listening to and repeating (ad nauseum) a rap about two economists.  Yes you read that correctly.  It's called "Fight of the Century" and it's about the dueling views of economists Keynes and Hayek.  No gangsta rap here, this one's about global economists. Oh I know I should be thrilled about my children's cerebral choice, but when you have four people singing the refrain over and over and over...well, too much of a good thing is no longer good.

In the other corner we have the WT's favorite CD.  It contains top hits such as "Bananas in Pajamas," "Hokey Pokey" (which Micah calls the "Funky Monkey"), and...wait for it...the timeless wedding favorite..."The Chicken Dance."  Kara calls the CD "I'm a little teatot." By the way, what is up with "Gooy Goosy Gander?" Part of the song involves an old man not saying his prayers so someone throws him down the stairs and his back goes crack.  Wow, that's the stuff of nightmares.

So at any given moment while I'm working away in the kitchen or cleaning (which is pretty much every minute of the day, except now), I either have "more bottom up or top down" going through my head or (and I defy any of you to hear this and not have it infiltrate your brain to your extreme detriment) "Wiggerly Woo."  This is hardcore warfare.  Not even YoYo Ma seems to help, it's that bad people.

I know no one wants to hear me blab without pictures, so here we go:

The twins decided to have their own church service complete with preaching,

(Hmm, what do you think the title of that sermon should be? "I am the chief of sinners?" )

 singing, (those are hymnals that they have before them),

and of course prayer (hopefully there's a lot of repentance mixed in).

If you ask Micah to recite Ephesians 6:1 to you, he'll say "Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right."  Now at first glance that seems to be impressive that this 2-year-old can recite Bible verses.  Just keep in mind that that verse gets quoted to him every time we have a "talk" and he has to get "corrected."  So you connect the dots, why does he know that particular verse so well?????

This is my poor oldest son who has found a new way to contend with his frequent bloody noses.

Before I show the next set of pictures, let me just say that I used to think that putting your children on "leashes" was horrible.  I said I would never do that to my kids.  (I said a lot of things before the WTs, like "I am a sane and competent woman").  Then the WTs materialized and I invested in "harnesses."  Truth be told I really only used them once when I took the WTs to visit our friend Mike in the hospital.  I will say they did come in handy.  Since then, the only use they get is from the WTs playing with them (perhaps snubbing their noses at my attempt to restrain them).  So anyway, here is a game they enjoy playing with the harnesses.

Here's the front view.  You can see cute little paws from Micah's monkey and Kara's puppy.

What they'll do is they'll hook the end of the "leash" (or should we say implement of guidance? Sounds so much more PC) to a doorknob and then try to get away. 

Great little game.  We all enjoy it.  Self-restraint is a good thing.

Happy weekend, all! (And another shout out to my Norwegian readers!)

Non-update update and keeping humble

What is the non-update update? Nothing has moved in our journey to LB since November.  We haven't even received confirmation yet that China has received our paperwork and has logged us in.  We assume, but it sure would be nice to get a definite yes.  We know God has a plan in this, so we remain impatiently patient.

I forgot to mention last month that James and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary on Dec. 9.  For years James couldn't remember if our anniversary was the 9th or the 7th (Pearl Harbor Day).  He says that both dates are known for a Japanese invasion of some sort. 

The kids cleverly helped us celebrate our anniversary by building congratulatory Lego structures.





Their teacher asks you to ignore spelling errors



The twins get credit for helping by not helping.





Speaking of the twins (as I so often do), they wanted to relive some of the "good ole days" by getting into the kind of trouble that has become rare around here:

Those are sunflower seeds. The kids had scraped them off a big sunflower.  They were in a container that had no lid.  That there is an invitation for trouble.


When I asked the twins what happened, Micah blurted out, "It's not Micah's fault! Kara did it!"  To which Kara retorted, "Uh uh, Micah do it!"  Hmmm, fruit from the forbidden tree anyone?



The twins proudly showing that they can get their own cereal.  To their credit, they did not make a mess.



Have you ever heard the expression, "Hanging off the rafters?"  Well this is Micah hanging off the gutter.  James had lifted him up to see something, Micah grabbed on to the gutter and refused to let go.  We think we have a future rock climber here as he hung there for quite a while before we got a chair for James to stand on and get him down.

 Micah likes girls.  We are glad of that, but he is an incurable flirt. He also lets us know when there is a girl that has caught his eye.  His current crush is on a girl that appears on the kids' Latin DVD.  Micah asks often if we can watch Latin.  When we do, it certainly holds his attention.  We think Kara is watching just to see what the big deal is all about.

I was having a conversation with my friend Pam about an article we had read.  The article warned parents not to take too much pride in their kids' accomplishments.  I can see that as a possible pitfall for Pam (not that it is, she is a very humble person).  After all, she has four grown children, each very accomplished in his or her own right.  Her kids are musicians, athletes, preachers.  Me? I have three kids accomplished in their own way and...a pair of streakers.

Kara decided to show her wares one day at church.  Yep, there I was standing in the narthex chatting with someone after church, when I saw Kara come around the corner sans anything from the waist down.  Moving faster than the speed of light (or wishing I could), I scooped her up to take her to the bathroom.  On the way there, I found her underwear and pants.  She had had an accident and dropped her drawers outside the secretary's office. I guess she figured since "Aunt Carol" does everything around the church, she might as well do laundry too.

Micah must really be a night owl, because he sure seems to love "the moon."  One day my friend Jesi came to me and said, "Uh, Micah just mooned me.  He took his pants down, diaper down, and smiled like it was funny."  Now where would he get that idea?

On New Year's Day our family went to my mom and dad's house to eat some traditional Japanese food.  As I, my parents, my sister, brother-in-law, and my sister's friend sat at the table engaged in conversation, Micah entered the room, dropped his drawers and bent over.  As the room erupted in raucous laughter, I hastily escorted him out of the room to "talk" about this unacceptable behavior.  When I told him that what he had done was inappropriate, he responded, "But the girls laughed!"

Micah and Kara are both interested in certain body parts.  Kara went through a phase in which she would ask women (pointing to their chests) "What's that?" I told her that she was not to touch ladies there to which she will now ask, "You la-ley? You have la-ley? No touch la-leys?"  Micah is interested in "belly bellies."  He informed me that, "You don't put up your shirt and show your belly belly.  It's immodest.  (smiling) I like belly bellies."

We often have mysteries around here.  Some are not solved, such as, "How in the world did playdough get into my rice cooker?"  Others are solved via self-incriminating evidence.  In viewing pictures on my camera, I noticed that I had a series of pictures like these:

 After a while I found more pictures like the one above, just random shots of things.  We knew one of the twins had to be behind this, but had no evidence until we saw this picture:

Those legs could only belong to one chunky monkey...

Yes, the twins can be crazy as usual,



but we also get moments like these:

Oh yeah, back to body parts and the like, here's a closing quote from Micah:

"I burped in my pants.  Ew, that's gross.  But I liked it."