Lots of kid stories (but no pictures, sorry)

Ah, my kids.  Sometimes they are completely charming, and sometimes they are the biggest stinkers EVER.  A lot of the difference seems to have to do with my amount of sleep...which doesn't bode well for today, since I'm up with insomnia.

Anyhow, the stinker moments:
Yesterday the girls were going to watch a show while I took a nap.  (Moose was already napping).  Their instructions were, "you can watch a show as long as you are able to turn it on by yourselves, and DO NOT come wake me up."  I napped for about 1.5 hours, and they came in about 4 times because the sound wasn't working right.  The fourth time I was awake enough to tell them that they didn't get to watch a show...but by then I was awake for good.  And quite irritated.

So then they decided to get a puzzle or something out of the hall closet...and were very noisy about it and woke up Moose.  who went out into the living room and opened up a bunch of dvd's and made a big mess.  I told the girls to clean up the movies and shut the cabinet (which locks), but they didn't.  So now they are grounded from any shows for the rest of the week.  And the rule is that if you wake someone up from a nap (primarily another child...maybe I should include myself in the rule) then you must take a nap yourself.  So after they cleaned up the movies, they both were sent to beds...Chick in her room, and Monkey in mine (otherwise they'd just goof around in their room together).  I gave Monkey strict instructions not to touch anything, since I'd been preparing for preschool in there the night before and hadn't put away the materials that could be potentially damaging.

A few minutes later I thought, "I'd better check to make sure Monkey isn't getting into anything."  She wasn't on the bed..."Monkey, where are you?!" She answered from the side of the bed. I walked over and asked her what she was doing..."Nothing."  Then I saw the big black sharpie pen...that she was using to color on the side boards of my bed, and a little on the mattress. 

I am grateful to Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser, because it just might have saved my child's life.  The mattress still has some marks, but not too bad.  The bed frame was more important to me and that came completely clean.

to transition from stinker to charmer:
Yesterday morning Monkey came in and woke me up by asked me to tie something for her.  I looked, and she had on Chick's fanciest Sunday dress.  I told her that it was not hers, and it was a Sunday dress anyhow, and how did she get it out of the locked closet anyhow? (yup, we've taken to using tension rods to "lock" the closet shut because Moose likes to pull everything out and Monkey likes to change her clothes several times a day).  Evidently Daddy unlocked it the night before while I was out visiting teaching, and forgot to relock it.  I told the girls to go clean up all of the clothes.

Then I heard Moose in the kitchen.

(once again, we're locking the kid out of things: we put gates at the entrances to the kitchen because otherwise he'll get into the fridge, or there will be toys on the kitchen floor, or kitchen gadgets on the living room floor, and I just couldn't stand it anymore.  I have always been pro-letting kids explore their enviroment, but I can't keep up with the chaos that it was creating.  And Moose is starting to sound like a little terror in this post, but really he's just almost two.  He does throw some impressive fits sometimes, but generally he's a good kid.)

Ok, anyhow, I heard Moose in the kitchen.  One of the girls had gone into the kitchen and had left the gate open, and I could hear the clank of glass.  So I hurry in, and he'd gotten into the dishwasher and gotten out three of their favorite drinking glasses (dirty, but nevermind about that), then he'd gotten into the fridge and gotten out the bottle of juice.  He'd put everything on the table, and taken the lid off the juice.  BUT he didn't try to pour it...instead it seems that he just waited for me to come, and then he asked me for some juice.  I was so happy that he hadn't tried to pour it himself that I gave him some. 

Then I checked on the girls.  And wonder of wonder, they really HAD cleaned up all the clothes and had gotten themselves dressed in appropriate clothes : )

So it turned out to be a good morning, despite some ominous beginnings.  Then we had preschool here, which went so great, and I'll post about that later.

Another cute thing: when I was napping on Sunday (I promise, I'm not always sleeping.  Like now...not sleeping.) Chick decided to make bread.  HH did some overseeing of the process, but not any directing...he just let her do her thing because she told him that she knew how.  The secret recipe? 
crushed tortilla chips, oats, and milk. 
mix all ingredients in a cereal bowl, and place in the freezer.
look dismayed when it doesn't magically turn into bread.

Oh, but one of the interruptions to my nap yesterday (you know, one of the four), was Chick asking if she could melt a little bit of butter that I'd put into a ramekin.  They were having plain popcorn and wanted to butter it.
"How will you melt it?"
"In the microwave."
"How long will you set the microwave for?"
"Half a minute."
"How do you set it for half a minute?"
"I'll push the 'add 30 sec' button."
I love when my kids learn new tricks.  I let her do it, and all went well.  The popcorn was all eaten when I came back out.

On Monday night we made "get well cards" for our neighbor who has been in the hospital with double pneumonia.  Monkey asked me to draw "a crack in the wall" on hers.  HH and I exchanged looks...what?  Then Monkey said, "like in Madeline."  OH!  In the Madeline book she goes to the hospital to have her appendix out...
"and a crack in the ceiling had the habit
of sometimes looking like a rabbit."
So I asked her to bring me to the book, which she did.  And she found the picture for me, and then I drew the rabbit on her card, and wrote the story in the card for the neighbor.

Another cute Moose thing:  He always gives me a hand to help me up when I'm sitting on the couch or laying in bed.  Such a little gentleman.  Also, when he wants me to read him a story: he'll sit down in my lap, and then take my hands and place them on the edges of the book. 

And all of the kids have been making a game out of quoting the Madeline book,
"and to the tiger in the zoo,
Madeline just said pooh-pooh."

They also seem to be working on Memorizing the Fancy Nancy book and the Edwina the Emu book.  Have you read Edwina?  If you haven't, then you definitely should.  Edward the Emu is also pretty great.  We checked them out from the library, but I definitely need to buy copies for us to keep.

Ok, that's it for kid stories.  Now I'd better get back to sleep, if I can, or the stories from today will be more stinker than charming.  (and I don't want to have to report on stinker Mama stories!)