Multiple Moms

This morning Rebecca wanted to sit in my lap while she ate her waffle, Benjamin was screaming about something, and Rachael wanted me to do something-or-other with her.

Rebecca said to me, "If you had a hundred arms, you could do all these things at the same time."

I said, "Yeah, I know! I think there just needs to be some copies of me. One copy for you, and Rachael, and Benjamin. And one for cleaning."

Rachael didn't seem to like that idea. "But how would we know who the real you was?" she asked. "We would want the real you to do things like tuck us in."

"Yeah," Rebecca said. "And write letters on our back."

Popcorn Man and the Attack of the Salt and Butter

Rachael came home from a friend's house today and handed me an envelope addressed
"FOR MOM AND DAD FROM RACHAEL."

Inside was this story. The above is the title page.

*************************************************************************************

Popcorn Man and the Attack of the Salt and Butter

One day Popcorn Man was popping in the microwave. He couldn't wait -- he was going to go out and see the whole world for the first time.

Then, when the microwave stopped and the door opened, all the popcorn exploded out. When he landed on the floor he crawled over to the table and crawled up the table leg. Then, when he got to the top, the only things on the table were the salt and butter.

The salt started talking and he said, "You look like we could attack you!" Then the butter came over to popcorn man and started to rub his body on Popcorn Man. "Stop attacking me!" said Popcorn Man, and he ran off the table.

Then the butter and the salt jumped off too, and they ran around the kitchen chasing Popcorn Man. Finally the salt and butter attacked Popcorn Man and Popcorn Man said, "You feel good! I think you should live with me."

And that's how people first found out about having salt and butter on popcorn.

Having kids makes for a weird house

I never know what I'm going to find in and around our house.
I found this in the sink a few weeks ago. This was a Rebecca creation.

It had something to do with Ariel. Maybe it's her grotto? Her party?
I already can't remember, and it was about a month ago.


In this picture you can see one of the Care Bear bubble baths is wearing Doggie's dress.
Also courtesy of Rebecca, of course.

Brother and sister

Rachael and Benjamin are such good friends!




She is six and he is one, just like Robert and his older sister.
It will be interesting to see what their relationship is like as they get older.

Rachael is the one we can always count on to cheer up Benjamin or get him to laugh, and she knows it!

Rachael's birdhouse

Catching up on dowloading some photos ...

A couple weeks ago it was cold and Rachael wanted to make a house for the birds.
She put some Chex cereal in the green cup and taped a roof on top and decorated it.

She wrote some words on it too, something telling the birds to come, but now I forget
exactly what it said. See how quickly this type of stuff gets forgotten if you don't write it down?

Lammie getting dressed!

A few weeks ago Lammie found Baby Ben's clothes on the floor
and had to try them on herself.

Tea party!

Not sure if this was an official "event" or not, but I saw this tea party going on in the Baby's room a couple weeks ago and had to take a couple pictures.

Rebecca is dressed as Minnie Mouse. Rachael is in one of her "Alice" outfits.

Doggie's birthday

This morning I was informed that it was Doggie's birthday and that she was five and we needed to bake her a cake.

I had no frosting or powdered sugar in the house, so I looked in my cookbook and found a recipe for Pound Cake.

Rebecca (and Doggie) helped me make it. Rebecca's pretty good at baking for a four year old; she cracked all the eggs herself and even measured and leveled the flour and baking powder.

Rebecca put five candles in the cake and got out plates for everybody, and we sang Happy Birthday to Doggie.

Math Facts

The girls recently got a gumball machine which takes any type of coin, so of course we put pennies into it.

Today in the car Rachael (age 6) announced, "If I found a dime, I would trade it into Mom and Dad for ten pennies, because that would be a fair trade, and then I could get ten gumballs! And if Rebecca and I each found a dime, we could trade them in and get twenty gumballs!"

A few seconds later she started informing me, "Five times four is twenty. And five times two is ten. And five times three is fifteen."

A week or two she had said to me, "Two plus three is the same thing as four plus one, and that's five."

It's always nice to hear that they so confidently know and understand things that I don't even think I ever taught them!

Cinderella lives here

Rachael is playing at being Cinderella today. She set up a "bed" for herself by the fireplace and is cleaning the house ... sweeping the floor, putting things away, etc, without me even saying anything.

So this is a good game for me! :)

It's also a good game for Rebecca, who gets to throw things on the floor when she's done with them and say, "Cinderella will take care of it."

What's funny is that I'm supposed to be the Evil Stepmother, and it's hard for me to be mean. I keep wanting to say things like, "Oh, thanks, Cinderella, it looks great!" but that doesn't sound very evil, now does it? I keep having to do the George Costanza thing of following the opposite of my instinct.

To use schoolish terms, we've been doing a "Cinderella Unit Study." We were talking about how the Disney versions are different from the original version, and that prompted me to check out a whole bunch of Cinderella stories from the library, including the DVD CinderElmo. (Which has Kerri Russell as the Princess, Kathy Bates as the stepmother, and French Stewart - from Third Rock - as the dog who becomes a coachman.

If you like humorous fairy tale satires, check out CinderEdna and Chickerella.

Alice in Wonderland, yet again!

Imagine It, the Children's museum of Atlanta, had a special Alice in Wonderland exhibit last weekend, so of course we had to go.


Here's Benjamin and his Daddy watches the huge ...uh, ball contraption.


Here's Alice explaining The Hall of Doors.


Here's our little "Alice" in a blue dress, of course, in the rabbit hole.

Monkey Joe's!

We went to Monkey Joe's inflatable place ... I guess a couple weekends ago. I had bought ten passes from someone who didn't want anymore, for only $45. That's much cheaper than it would be normally. (I think on weekends it would have been something like $23 for one visit - yikes!)

Once the passes get used up, I'm not sure we'll ever go back, so we're enjoying it while we can!



Here's little Rebecca bouncing around, with a tatoo on her cheek
and a nightgown on over her clothes.



Benjamin liked bouncing around too, but here he is playing in the photo booth!

Afterwards we all went for chips and cheese dip and margeritas at ... Tijuana Joe's! Oh how funny, I didn't even realize that until now! :)

Rebecca sometimes talks about food we got at "Monkey Joe's" when, in fact, it's from Trader Joe's.

Good Dream Pillow

Last night after the kids were in bed, Robert and I were watching Star Trek:Voyager when we saw Rachael's curly head appear around the corner.

"Bad dreams," she said. "Well ... sort of."

"Bad thoughts?" I asked her.

"Yeah."

I walked back upstairs with her and asked her what they were.

"Falling down the sewer," she said finally.

"Thoughts of you falling down the sewer?"

"Anyone."

When we got in her room, she said to me, "How can I make them go away?"

I started to tuck her into bed and said to her, "Well, sometimes it helps to think of good thoughts .... like the games you and Rebecca were playing today, or how good your favorite food is, or something funny you saw on TV ..."

Rachael tapped her pillow and said, "I think this is the Bad Dream side of the pillow. I'll turn it over to the Good Dream side."

Then she flipped her pillow over and went to sleep.

The Muppets performing Alice in Wonderland

If you haven't already noticed, Rachael is very into Alice in Wonderland.

We recently were able to get all the DVDs of the original Muppet Show. We discovered that when Brooke Shields was 15, she was a guest star and the whole show was various Alice in Wonderland sketches.

The girls have watched that episode again ... and again ... and again.

It's pretty fun watching The Muppet Show again. It's really not even a kids' show, for the most part. I can't imagine the kids get most of the jokes, but Rachael thinks it's pretty funny anyway.

Yesterday I heard Rachael tell Robert, "Kermit the Frog says, 'Why did we do Alice in Wonderland? We should have done something simple, like War and Peace!'" She gets a kick out of that line, although I'm not sure what it means to her.

What's interesting is the list of guest stars ... from Twiggy to Danny Kaye to Victor Borge to Steve Martin to Joan Baez to Paul Simon to

We're hoping to watch The Muppet Movie later this week:

Use it if you need it .... Don't forget to feed it!
Can you picture that!

Yes, I often think the main reason I had children was so that I'd have an excuse to watch and read and do all the Kid Stuff.

Here's a peek at some of the Brooke/Alice episode.