Nik names

Niklaus is almost two. He can say a lot of words now, and he repeats almost everything you ask him to say. However, if he's not ready yet to say a new word, he stubbornly refuses to say it, or he substitutes it with his OWN word. For instance: for the longest time he called all the other kids "guys". It was just his blanket way of addressing them until he could form his little lips around their real names. He knew who they all were, he just chose not to refer to them individually! He got Weazy first. He started by shouting after her, "WEAS!". Next (just about 3 weeks or so ago) he started to call Matthew "Matty". On Friday he hit a major milestone. He started to call Katrina by her name, "Trina"! Until Friday, Matty would test Niklaus like this:
Matty: Niklaus, say "car"
Niklaus: car
Matty: say..."boat"
Niklaus: boat
Matty: say..."water"
Niklaus: water
Matty: say "trina"
Niklaus: guys
He never skipped a beat. He KNEW what he was doing because he would laugh hysterically every time he did this! On Friday it just slipped out and he actually said, "trina" for the first time and he's been doing it ever since.
He still can't say the word "yes" appropriately. But now we've gotten really good at determining what "no"'s actually mean "yes". Still, we try and teach him:
Mama: Niklaus, do you want more cheese?
Niklaus: No
Mama: Say "yes", Niklaus
Niklaus: Yesh
Mama: So, do you want more cheese?
Niklaus: NO! (still, actually means yes)
Mama: (sigh)

Chairs...not just for sitting!

This was a nice, relaxing weekend. The weather was perfect and we had a lovely time at Nick's for Ani's birthday party. Auntie Anna went back to school so Niklaus will be sad and ask for her, I'm sure. Grandma Sue and Grandpa Harold stopped by with some kitchen chairs. One chair mismatched all of them and I put it on the porch. Three of the chairs matched eachother, but one had arms and the two others didn't. One of the matching chairs with no arms was broken beyond repair and Matty eyed it with much glee. Instead of making Grandpa load it back into the truck, I gave Matty the ok to destroy it and he ran looking for a hammer. For the next hour or so he mutilated the chair beyond recognition. It was a thing of beauty to see that boy swinging away. At one point I asked him if it would be easier to separate the legs from the brackets by using a screw driver and he looked at the hammer, looked at me, and sighed saying, "But Mama, the hammer works soooooo much better!". There were some spindles and bobbles that he worked particularly hard at not destroying, saying that he was going to "do something" with them later. When it was all over and he sat in the middle of a splintery mess, he begrudgingly but dutifully filled Niklaus' wagon full of the chair remains and brought them down to the fire pit and swept up what was left. Later on he brought his treasures over to me and said that he would like to make them into something. He thought they would make good back massagers! I told him that all the pokey splinters sticking out of the ends might make that a bit uncomfortable. When I went to bed tonight and after all the kids were settled, I looked at my night stand and saw that he had laid all the spindles there with all of the ends meticulously covered in duct tape! I can only assume he made them for me and Butch and I explained what they were to him. We both had quite a chuckle over our crazy destroyer/builder boy. We also cleaned the garage today and Matty got a special place for his "inventions", two drawers and the top of the little two-drawer dresser that Trina told us wouldn't be big enough for his awkwardly shaped, sometimes huge creations. I'm starting to think that we will need a wing of the house to keep up with that boy. His desk is littered with so much scrap and clutter from his inventions: little chunks of plastic, rocks, circuit boards, buttons, gears, rubber bands, old pieces of phones, bionicle pieces, etc. that there's no room for things like books and pencils and paper and all of the reasons I gave him the desk in the first place!!! If I ever try to throw away one of his thingies, he looks at me like I'm cracked and says, "MAMA! THAT'S my special invention!". Oh well, I guess it's a good thing he doesn't ask me to put them on the refrigerator!

Mama-o Andretti

OKAY, before I tell you about the latest zinger from Trina, I feel it's necessary to give a little background info. Every time Butch and I are in the car with or without the kids we do this bicker thingy about how I think Butch drives too aggressively and doesn't know how to:
A. NOT stare at just the road ahead of him
B. NOT listen to country music full blast
C. have an actual conversation while driving (I know he is a man and therefore incapable of multi-tasking, so I'll give him a bit of a pass on this one on account of his handicap which is quite generous of me, don't you think?)
D. wait patiently for someone to move into the slow lane without going right up to their bumper
E. Observe interesting things along the chosen route of the moment (i.e. hey Butch did you see THAT? NO)

The main complaint I hear from him about MY driving is that:
A. I drive too slow, then too fast
B. I go RIGHT up to the stop sign and THEN SLAM on the brakes (this must really happen because he dramatically braces himself every time he sees a stop sign ahead even though NOBODY else in the car does this, hmmm)
We usually bicker about all of these things until we get where we are going and the kids have heard this enough to where they have started to join in and take sides. At first they used to think we were fighting, but now they know that it's more like a sport with us and they laugh and think it's funny.
ANYWAY...
Yesterday we decided to take Papa's boat out to BB lake and do some boating with the kids. On the way to the lake, Butch was wondering out loud how we would get the boat in and out of the lake with all of the kids with us etc.. I don't know how to drive the boat and he thought he'd better teach me so I could move it out of the way fast when we launched and drive it up onto the trailer when we landed. I told him I didn't care to learn how to drive a boat because I was wary of a vehicle that doesn't actually come with BRAKES. He sassed me by saying something like, "Well, we ALL know that brakes are something you don't use until the LAST SECOND anyway, so it should be no difference to YOU!" We got into the old argument again and the kids perked up and joined in. After a few minutes of this, Trina settled once and for all the question of who was the better (on the road) driver...

"HEY! Mama, Daddy can drive a boat, but YOU can drive a CAR!!!!"
Butch just sat there with his mouth agape while I hooted with laughter and slapped him on the arm while gasping for breath.

I always knew that girl was a genius.

Future Big Screen Blockbusters

The Kids and I were on our way to Janene's to swim today and we were listening to Laura Ingraham on the way. She was interviewing a Hollywood screen writer and they were asking listeners for movie plot "pitches" and they were critiquing them. I didn't think the kids were listening, but when that segment got over with, I turned down the radio and asked for some ideas for some future movies from the kids.

Katrina: Ummm, I haven't had time to think about it...probably a love story drama thing.

Weazy: I would make a movie about Polly Pockets that come alive...and grass!

Matty: My movie would be about Adventure, Fighting, and NO ROMANCE!!!!!!

Sibling Gender Review

I was visiting with the kids at my friend, Theresa's house. Weazy was outnumbered 6 to 1 by the boys, but managed to have the following conversation with Theresa's 3rd child who is age three and a half: (as reported to me by Weazy on the way home)
Nicholas: "Is he (pointing to Niklaus) your little brother?"
Weazy: "Yes."
Nicholas: "My little brother is a boy. Is your little brother a boy?"

Theresa's 4 boys have more zingers than I can remember, I hope she starts her own blog soon. It would be a DAILY read for me!

Speaking of China...

The three biggers were thrilled with Papa's selection of fireworks that he is amassing for the big Fourth celebration. On our way home from Papa's yesterday, Matty was commenting on how EVERYTHING is "made in china". "Those stupid fireworks...almost everything is made in CHINA! My bionicles are made in china, our toys are made in china..." Weazy chimed in, "Our Polly Pockets are made in China!"
Matty: "Except our plastic cups...they're made in Taiwan."
Trina: "...and you know this because...?"
Matty: "...because every time I take a drink my eyeballs are looking right at those words!"

Modern Art?

I was watching a news item about an art gallery in Chicago that helps underprivileged youth to express themselves better and learn how to market their art. For a moment, examples of their artwork flashed on the screen and the kids were in my bedroom getting ready to read and settle down for the night. One of the paintings was a side view of a woman tastefully done and kind of ambiguously nude. Trina said, "eww, gross, that picture had a NAKED person on it!" I said, "That was ok, it's just art!" Trina said, "MAMA, art is NOT naked!"

New Name for Old Object

We went out of town this weekend and we left a few things behind. Auntie Anna brought them over when she dropped off Roman while she went to the dentist. The kids were playing with something from the bag of forgotten items. They were putting it on each other's heads and laughing and giggling and being silly. Matty and Trina said something that I heard as, "Ultra Lord Double Barrel Slingshot!". It was something they had heard on the cartoon "Jimmy Neutron". It was then that I realized they were referring to, and playing with my bra that I had left up North! Later on, I took a shower and I shouted down to Matty, "Matty, could you toss up my...Ultra Lord Double Barrel Slingshot?" He said, "Sure, Mama!" and he made a perfect fling up about 9 feet and I got what I needed. I have a feeling that if I would have asked him to toss up my "bra" he would have said, "ewwwww, gross, no WAY!"

Future Shopping

On our way into Target yesterday the kids had this following conversation:

Katrina: "I only want to spend ten dollars today. I'm gonna make ten dollars this week babysitting."

Weazy: "How do you know?"

Katrina: "Well...I'm going to babysit...I mean, I'm PSYCHIC and that means you can tell the future!"

Weazy: (after a short pause while she was thinking) "What's CHINA doing???"

Interesting Inspiration 

"Monkey Food"

Last year when we went on "vacation" (I put quotes around it because it was about a 4 hour drive with just me, my friend Janene, her daughter and my four kids to a place in nowhere'sville WI and Niklaus cried almost the whole drive and when he wasn't crying, the kids were bickering, and I was threatening, and basically the kids had a blast and afterward, I NEEDED a REAL VACATION!!!!) I bought these Gerber snacks for Niklaus for the drive. After a while they were being pitched all over the car for entertainment purposes and the kids still talk about the "chicken puffs" (so named, because matty thought they tasted like chicken flavor) and laugh at the memory of trashing our suburban with those things. I never did buy more of them until last week when they were on sale in three packs at Target. Niklaus didn't show much interest in them, but it has got the biggers giggling again about last year's adventures. They made up a jingle and I heard them singing it the other day...
Monkey Food
by Trina, Matty, and Weazy...
(all three of them sing...)
Monkey Food, Monkey Food,
OH, so nummy and CHUNKY too,
Monkey Food is YUMMY!
For your TUMMY!
(then Weazy yells in a commercial-ish fakey-happy voice) ... "For BABIES!!!"

When I asked them why do they call it "monkey food" now, instead of "chicken puffs" they said it was because of the new, disgusting banana flavor. Today, Niklaus was begging for it when he saw the canister I had put in the burb for emergency purposes and he was really cowing them down. I wonder if he was convinced to try them after repeated performances of the new "advertising" campaign by his siblings?

Prettiest Heart, by Analise 

Number 7, by Trina 

Oops, I forgot...

..."bubboos"which is Nikolese for "bubbles" the things he thinks are integral to the bath which he shares with his big bro and sis on a regular basis. They all have to wear swimming suits because GOD FORBID we don't ever want to see each other naked!!!! (Who the heck knows where they get all that modesty, certainly not from me or daddy!) Every time they hop in the tub, Nikerbocker says "bubboos!" and points to the button for the jets. They then have a discussion and a vote on whether or not they should have bubbles and at what intensity. Usually Nikerbocker casts the deciding vote. Then they swim around in their own dirt for a half an hour and get "clean" (ahem). I usually hear at least once during the bath, "MOM! Niklaus is drinking BUTT WATER!!!!!" and loud laughing and screaming which makes for an entertaining morning, to say the least!

Words and Phrases

"I wa rye", "where's Anna", "Where's Papa", "duece"(=juice), "no", "mama", "dada", "tractor"(multipurpose word meaning anything that has four wheels and goes brrrrrrrroooom), "hi", "byebye", "birdy", "huh huh"(breathes hard like a panting puppy, means "puppy"), "ewwwwww", "uck!", "uh-oh", "up"(means "up", also means "down"), "keykeykey"(=kitty), "baby", "bite"...for the word "yes" he grunts like a caveman and the kids know for sure that he means "yes" because his "no" is so very clear. This is a pretty good vocabulary for a one and a half year old, I think. The biggers get such a kick when he comes up with a new word. Weazy and Niklaus were in the bike trailer tonight and Trina was rollerblading along side us. The dolly was in there, too, per Niklaus' request. Weazy noted that he was getting quite good at taking care of "baby". She said he wanted baby by HIM and he had his arm around it and was kissing it and petting it so sweetly. I told Weazy that he was practicing being a big brother someday. Weazy mulled that one over for a while. I can't imagine Niklaus being the youngest forever. I can't wait until the day he gets to be a big brother...someday!