The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Love Me Too

In the car yesterday morning...

"love me too?"
"Yes it is!"
"i wike it!"
"Mommy I love that song!"

Love, love me do
You know I love you
("I wike it!")
I'll always be true
So pleeeeeeeeeese.....love me do
oh-oh, love me do

Someone to love,
Somebody new
Someone to love
Someone like you

"again?"
"Julia it's not done yet"

Love, love me do
"O!"
You know I love you
"I wike it!"
I'll always be true
"Mommy, who's singing that song?"
So pleeeeeeeese -
"The Beatles"
...love me do....
"The Beatles?  Mommy that's  a kind of bug"
"I know, but that's the name of what they call themselves when they all sing together."

"again?"

Love, love me do
"I wike it!"
You know I love you
"But Mommy, what are their names?"
I'll always be true
"John, Paul, George, and Ringo"
So pleeeeeeeeese -
"Mommy is George a girl?"
"again?"
...love me do....
"No, they're all boys."
"They're all boys?"
"Yes"
"again?!!"
"Yes, Julia!"

Love, love me do
"I wike it!"

Logic

On the ride home today:

Alex:  MOM!  Julia said 'shut up!'

Me:  Julia, don't say 'shut up.'

Alex:  (barely audible) ...stupid...

Me:  Alex!  Don't say 'stupid.'

Alex:  If Julia can say a bad word then I can say a bad word.

She's Never Gonna Be a Stupid Girl

A few nights ago we (foolishly) went out to eat after work.  We went to this nice old restaurant that caters to a lot of senior citizens and has really great food.  I picked up the kids after work and Bill met us there.

My kids are actually pretty good though Alex did need to be reminded to use his INSIDE voice on occasion...and then when Julia was done eating, that's when the fun started.  When she's done, she's DONE and she wants to get out of her high chair NOW.  I can't remember exactly what happened, but something like - she threw a napkin on the floor (violently, of course) and Bill reprimanded her and told her "we don't throw things" (HA!) and next thing I knew she was hurling her fork toward the table to our right.  Where there were people sitting and eating, blissfully unaware of the danger lurking nearby.  Fortunately the fork didn't hit anyone, though it came close.  Fortunately I didn't burst out laughing...though I came close.  The woman closest to us (and to the flying fork) was very cool - "I have kids - I've been there, don't worry about it" - but the best fun (as always) was watching Bill hover between embarrassment and fatherly sternness.  The stern thing doesn't work on Julia.  She doesn't give a fat rap.

***

We got home and let the kids run around in the back yard for a minute...and Bill was in the kitchen looking out the window, watching them, and I was bringing in the food we'd brought home...and as I was coming in the door, Bill muttered something in anger and ran out the door and then I heard Alex crying LOUDLY and saw Julia just standing there facing him...over by the asparagus bed.

The asparagus bed.

Last year we had a crop of about 4 asparagus.  Asparagus plants take several years to gain momentum.  This year the crop has just about doubled and it's very exciting.  A few nights prior to this one I we were all in the house when Bill came flying in announcing loudly to no one and everyone:  "I'm gonna buy a gun!"  It's a lovely thing for the children to hear.  But gol durn it, he was all fired up.  Apparently he had been out inspecting the back forty (okay, the 8 asparagus in the far right corner of the yard) and a squirrel or some other little crittur had broken or bitten off the tip of the biggest asparagus.  The varmint must die. 

I was helpful.  I pointed out that a gun wouldn't do much good as he hadn't even seen the animal that bit the thing off....Later on he amended the gun remark and told Alex (who, of course, had been listening closely) that he meant he was going to get a squirt gun...to chase away the squirrel.  Alex helpfully told Bill he could use the squirt bottle that he uses to spray inside the lizard tank.  That's my boy - always practical and resourceful.  Anyway, Bill took Alex outside and showed him what the big bad evil squirrel had done and Alex was equally outraged.

So anyway...back to the night after we went to the restaurant...Alex was sobbing loudly and Julia was standing there and Bill was hurrying across the yard...

Julia had broken the second biggest asparagus.  Alex had tried to tell her not to but she wouldn't listen, and she broke the tip off anyway.  And then Bill got there, assessed the situation, and told her (sternly, I'm guessing) "NO JULIA!  WE DON'T BREAK ASPARAGUS!"  and Julia calmly bent down and broke another piece off the asparagus.  Bill picked Julia up and stalked back across the yard, all the while talking sternly to her.  I picked up Alex, who had tears streaming down his face over the poor asparagus victim (cut down before it's prime)...He (Alex) was distraught.  I carried him into the house telling him over and over "it's okay" and wiped the tears and dirt off his little face...and meanwhile Bill had put Julia in time out (like she cared) and was busy (already) sauteeing the broken pieces of asparagus in some butter.  So there. 

***

The next morning, obviously affected by the events of the night before, Julia threw a full (plastic) bowl of oatmeal onto the floor because no one cleared it off her tray fast enough.  It landed upside down, of course.

We don't throw things, Julia.

***

Yesterday I was in the kitchen and I heard Julia go upstairs.  (She has mastered the stairs and so we've taken down most of the barricades because she'll just move them or climb over them anyway.)  I stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up so I could see the door to our bedroom.  We leave the kids' bedroom open, but we shut the bathroom door so she won't play with the plunger or the toilet brush...and we close the door to our bedroom so she won't pull the iron off the ironing board and down onto her head. 

The bedroom door was closed...but there she was, all her attention focused on trying to work the doorknob.  I boomed "JULIA!" and she froze.  And then she turned.  Slowly.  With her sly, smug, you-know-and-I-know-I'm-not-innocent-so-why-pretend-otherwise smirk on her beautiful little face.  "Hi Mommy!"  "You don't go in my room, Julia" I said, in my best stern parent voice.  She just stared at me, clearly waiting for me to go away so she could get back to work on the doorknob.  I got comfortable and stared back.

There's a stack of books outside our bedroom door (this is how great a housekeeper I am) - maternity books and baby name books and the like...which I haven't needed in nearly 2 years but haven't figured out who to give them to.  Julia picked up the top two books and lifted them above her head, preparing to hurl them down the stairs.  I spoke sternly again and said "We don't throw books, Julia."  She thought about that for a moment and actually accepted what I'd said.  She sat down and opened one and began to read aloud:

"A B C D E F G....H I J K LMNOP..." and so I went back to the kitchen.

I came back to the foot of the stairs to check on her a minute later - and she was still sitting there, engrossed in the books with no pictures.  I went back to the kitchen.  I had the monitor on so I could hear if anything crashed in her bedroom...but nothing seemed to be going on.  I continued to do whatever it was I'd been doing...but...it occurred to me that I wasn't hearing ANY noise...and that was unusual.  So I went back to the foot of the stairs to look - and the books were there, but Julia was not.  Our bedroom door was still closed, though, so I figured she was in her bedroom silently pulling clothes out of the bureau drawers.

But after another minute or so of complete and utter silence, I got a little suspicious.  I ran up the stairs and opened the door to our bedroom.  And she was standing right there.  RIGHT THERE.  Next to the door.  Waiting.  With a huge grin on her face.  My alarm clock/radio was on, so she'd had time to toddle around to the far side of the bed and hit the buttons first until the noise came on.  Then she'd gone around to the other side of the bed to wait.  For me.  Grinning.

She had not only opened the door - she had known enough to close it behind her to throw me off and buy herself some time.

We are doomed.

***

This is Julia. 

She is eating sand. 

Because I sternly (foolishly) told her not to.

***

And this

is a recent shot of Alex.

With a trout.

That we had for dinner that same night.

My little man.

***

They make me smile.

they grow up so fast

At the breakfast table this morning:

Alex is sitting in his seat wearing nothing but his spiderman pull-up.

He has requested yogurt for breakfast.

He has recently discovered the kind of yogurt in a tube, that you squeeze into your mouth to eat.

This is what he would like.

I scramble eggs for Bill and Julia and bring them to the table.

I bring Alex his tube of yogurt while he sits there, uncharacteristically patient...a little skinny wiggling blond guy with a superhero undergarment.

I peel the plastic where the little arrow is at one end of the tube.

And Alex reaches for it, saying:

"Mommy, I want to eat it like a man."

This morning

while I was upstairs getting dressed for work, this is what I heard Alex singing (at the very top of his little lungs):

"Casey Joonyah's comin' down the track/ comin' down the track/ wiv da smokey snack!"

(from the hideous-but-with-lots-of-elephants movie "Dumbo"...)

(sort of)

New Teacher

Just got home from work and from picking the kids up at daycare.  Alex had his first full day in the preschool room today, and I asked him if he had a good day, what he did, etc. 

And then I asked him who his teachers were...and he couldn't think of their names, so I prompted him with one of them, and then he said

"And Miss Brabra." 

"You mean Miss Barbara?"

"Yeah, Miss Brabra.  There's TWO Miss Brabras!"

"Wow..."

"There's two (girl's name) too...the other one is pretty."

The Way to a Man's Heart

Alex will be in the preschool room full time starting next week.  He's been spending part of his time in early preschool, and part in preschool, so I should have realized they were transitioning him.  The teacher told me on Friday that they'd put the transition notice in his folder - I didn't see it if it was there. 

But anyway, the early preschool teacher had gathered all his artwork and other stuff and put them in a folder for me to bring home on Friday.  When I got home and got the kids settled, I looked through the folder...a construction paper "chocolate chip cookie" that I remember seeing on the wall of his room recently...a construction paper owl...and - this startled me - little kid writing paper.  You know, the kind with lots of space between the lines, and that dotted line in between the main lines to help you practice your lower case letters...

So there they were...some pages of this paper.  One has a big scribbled bunch of colors that the teacher titled "A lion."  (I misread that at first and thought it said "Alion" and since I had no idea what that might mean, I decided that the teacher hadn't known how to spell "Alien" and they had been drawing creatures from outer space that day.  But no...it's a lion.

And another page has his name written out (by the teacher):  A L E X in all caps.  And a shaky little penciled tracing of those letters, and then the letters copied in pencil below.  I don't think Alex formed the letters on his own...I think the teacher helped him.  But still.  How weird - to see the first example of his handwriting...

And the other page - my favorite one - is this:

  (It's easier to read if you click on the picture first...or, if that doesn't help, it says:  I love my family because...we eat.")
 

      And of course, we do. 

I'm just trying to figure out what meal he was illustrating...must have been from the tail end of summer, when we had blueberries and raspberries ripening.

Not my table

Yesterday morning at some point Bill and I were in the kitchen and Alex and Julia were downstairs getting their weekend morning movie fix of Brother Bear, and all of a sudden, through the quiet, came the call of a little manly man voice:

"I need some toast down here!"

Young Love

Alex has a huge crush on one of the teachers at daycare. 

I went to pick the kids up the other day...got Alex first, as usual, and then got Julia.  Came out of Julia's room with Julia, her lunch bag, a bag of her clothes that needed to be washed, and my car keys, thumb all ready to press the remote unlock button.  I had Alex's lunch bag over my other shoulder and took Alex's hand as we went down the hall and turned left to head out the door. 

But then he broke away from me.  And raced all the way to the other end of the hall.  Looking for her.

"I find Miss Teffy!"  he shouted determindely.

Her legal name is not Teffy, but this is what the kids call her.  She's very nice, good with the kids, kind of quieter than some of the other teachers...and my son would propose to her if he was tall enough to apply for a marriage license.

He raced to the end of the hall and peered into the room that he thought she was in, while I followed along behind, Julia and bags in tow.  "Come on, Alex, time to go home!" I called, encouragingly.  It's really hard to chase him down when I'm carrying all the other stuff (and Julia).  I knew I could do it if I really needed to.  But I was hoping to just convince him that going home without a fight would be a fun thing to do.

Ha.

When he didn't find her at that end, he decided, just as I reached down to grab his hand, that perhaps she was way at the other end of the hall, where we had just come from.  So he took off again, laughing like a maniac.  I lumbered along after him.

Of course she wasn't there.  So I got him by the coat this time and we marched, once again, toward the door. 

But Cupid was conspiring against me.  There she was.  Miss Teffy.  Coming from somewhere down the hall (the other end) and, with a smile and a wave at Alex, disappearing into the office.

The office area has a little reception area that is visible from the little entry hall.  Off of that, to the right, is the main office, with a few desks and computers and so forth.  You can see whoever is in there through a couple of windows that look out into the halls.  And also off of the reception area, to the left, is the break room, which you can see through a window in the foyer.

Anyway, Miss Teffy disappeared into the breakroom and I thought we were home free.  We almost got to the big glass front doors, but then Alex wiggled away from me and raced into the reception room.  He's gone in there before to say hi to whoever's working there.  No one was there today, and he kind of hesitated, and I thought I could grab him, but he darted to the right - into the office, where the owner was having some work-related conversation with one of the teachers, and the office manager was at a computer typing something.  When I got to that doorway, Alex was getting a hug from the office manager.  I called to him - with good-natured mommy-patience (because I don't want to look like a banshee who can't control her toddler...though that's what I was starting to feel like) "Come on, Alex, let's go home and see Daddy!" 

He headed toward me - and ran past, into the break room, where Miss Teffy had gone.  I followed, "Alex, Alex, come on!" and saw him race down a hallway that I didn't know was back there.  I thought she had gone into the bathroom, and I was afraid he'd try to follow her in there, but he didn't.  He turned right down another hallway and ended up out in the main hall where he had tried to find her the first time.

I had no idea where she had disappeared to, and I hoped she'd stay hid, wherever she was.  Alex had paused, undecided about where to go next, so I got his arm and started to pull him gently in the right direction, but he spun away from me and lost his balance and landed on the floor.  So of course he started to fake cry.  Which brought another teacher running from the room.  She picked him up and transferred him to me...and that's how we ended up leaving the building - me with a kid in each arm.

My left arm - the Julia arm - was numb.

The next morning on the ride in, when we were almost at daycare, Alex announced "I go see Miss Teffy....I like her!"

Well, she wasn't there when we arrived, much to his disappointment.  But that afternoon when I got there, she was one of the two teachers in his room.  He came to give me a hug, and then began the mating dance.

He just started running from one end of the room to another, with a goofy grin on his face.  It was not just an "I'm-going-to-make-Mommy-work" kind of running to and fro.  It was more than that.  He was performing.  He was demonstrating his speed and agility.  He was showing that he could outrun all the other two-year-old boys in the room and was therefore most worthy of Miss Teffy's attention.  The other teacher just watched him go and looked at me and laughed.

He beamed at Miss Teffy and raced around the room again, this time shaking his head so all his straight blond hair flew away from his head like one of those pencils with that fluffy stuff at the eraser end, the kind that if you roll the pencil really fast between your hands the fluffy "hair" would stick straight out...I hope you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, in order to help me escape the building, Miss Teffy came over, smiling at Alex, and asked him if she could zip up his coat.  He just beamed at her, googley-eyed.  She asked if he wanted her to give him a hug, and he smiled even bigger and goofier, and moved toward her in a trance.  She zipped his coat up, and picked him up and gave him a big hug.

I saw his face.  I think he nearly fainted from joy.

On the ride home, I knew for certain that she is the ONE.  He started singing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" - which really means he wants me to sing it and he will tell me what animals Old MacDonald has.  It goes like this:

Alex:  "I wanna sing Oh-BaDonno had a farm ee-i-ee-i-oh and on that farm he had a Alex the lion...say that."

Me:  (singing) "Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-oh.  And on that farm he had a Alex the lion, ee-i-ee-i-o, with a roar roar here and a roar roar there, here a roar, there a roar, everywhere a roar roar - "

and then Alex typically interrupts with the next animal - "(some other family member) the (some other animal)" and I launch in to the next verse.

Well, one of the new animals on Old BaDonno's farm is now "Miss Teffy the kittycat."

Ee-i-ee-i-oh.

Morning Poetry

Rock a my baby

A treetop

A cradle rock.

Carnivores R Us

Last Friday morning on the way in to drop off the kids at daycare and then go to work, I was trying to figure out what to have for dinner, and I knew I didn't want to put much effort into it...but I couldn't decide what I was in the mood for.

So I asked Alex.  "What would you like for dinner tonight after school?"

(Silence)

"Alex!"

"What?"

"What would you like for dinner tonight after school?

(Silence - but a productive one)

"...We only eat cows," he said.

I do not know what he meant - I didn't pursue it.  But for the record - we also eat chickens and ducks and turkeys and sheep and pigs and creatures from the sea...along with all kinds of plants and their byproducts.

We do not ONLY eat cows.

But then again, as I think about how he said it - with absolutely no emphasis on any one particular word - might he have meant, just in general, that we only eat cows, as opposed to utilizing them for any other purpose?

I don't know. 

But this is the sort of thing Alex makes me think about.