"I'm NOT grumpy"...and neither am I

So, I know my wife is so funny...but I thought I would share this one. The regular act will be back soon.
Last night, I was trying to get Abigail to bed (yes, after doing 'something special' and staying up later reading or something as my wife has pointed out in previous posts). Abigail was throwing a bit of a fit over something, and so I explained we could not read any story tonight because "you are being grumpy." And then she got the look on this video below and said, "I am NOT grumpy. I'm never grumpy." She was sticking to her guns, so I thought I would take out my smart phone and take a video of her. This time with a bit of a smirk. Here it is:

People keep saying that Abigail is just like her mom...but could I just get one attribute that is like me? The grumpy one?
It reminds me a bit of the Christmas gift my parents once got me with a scroogey like duck on the front and the words, "I don't have an attitude." Never wore it out, though I did wear it as pajamas for a few years.
The next year, I thought it only fair to give my dad "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." He didn't think it was that funny. Maybe I got the grumps from him. But we all know where Abigail got it from...yours truly. (The stubbornness and persistence are from mom).

5 things about 4.5 year olds

Perhaps 4.5 year old girls in particular. These are things we read in a book about 4 year olds know by experience.


But first of all, let me say that today is Good Friday. The day about 2000 years ago that the Good and Righteous God Man sacrificed himself for us, in love for us. Why did He have to die? Well, I heard a sermon this week that addressed that very question and I thought it was pretty good. It is about 20 minutes long if you want to listen to it, I hope it will bless you. Click here to listen. Click here to download it for your mp3 player.
It is called "Reflections on the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ" and is preached by Jake Hanson.


Back to 4.5 year olds...

They are old enough to:
1. Fill all the plastic Easter eggs for playgroup all by themselves.
2. Draw beautiful pictures of Easter eggs, all out of their heads.*
3. Convince their father on almost any night of the week to do something special- like play wii or go to the park or get a treat (donuts, ice cream or hot chocolate in particular) or just stay up late reading together.
4. Go put a letter in the mail box at the post office while their mom stands in line for other other postage. (Yes Grandma, within sight the whole time!)
5. Work the system to their advantage.*

They are not old enough to:
1. Remember and see the caterpillar box on the floor where they just put it, right where they are about to walk.*
2. Remember to pick up off the middle of the floor (right where their parents walk) their very special shell that they tenderly wash and love every day.*
3. Keep one outfit on the whole day.
4. Know they shouldn't ask a grown man, who is not their father, to tickle their mother.
5. Lose gracefully.*

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The Fine Print

2. I admit, this is one of those unabashedly "look at how smart my kid is" proud moments:

 5. To be explained in a later post... as if it needed to be. But it does have to do with this:

1. Somehow Abigail knocked over the caterpillar cage when it was on the floor. The cage is almost as tall as her knees, so I'm not quite sure how it landed upside-down with enough force to crack the top in several places and spread dirt all over the floor and a little bit on the table and chair. This all happened just outside of my view and very quickly. It was followed by a brief moment of silence than then huge tears of worry for the little caterpillar, who somehow survived it's bath and had made itself a cocoon on the roof of the cage. Abigail is old enough to lie to try and stay out of trouble, but not old enough for us to not be able to tell by her eyes. She sticks to her story and the CSI team cannot put the pieces together. I guess it will be a cold case. In the mean time, we're not sure of the effects on the caterpillar/moth. We'll have to wait the three weeks to see if he comes out.

2. Said shell came from her archeological endeavors at my parent's house. It is frequently washed, along with several plastic gems and a marble, with soap and water- ever since Abigail found out about jewelry cleaner and I wouldn't let her use it for her gems. Unfortunately one parent, who shall not be named, stepped on the shell and broke it during one of our 18 hour power outages these past two weeks.

5. A bit competitive, I think. ANYtime she loses, she whines, "AHH! I NEVER win!" We're trying to fix that attitude...

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Jonathan came over one afternoon and they had fun playing together again. Jonathan looks suspiciously taller than Abigail in this pictures, but I'm thinking he had his shoes on and Abigail didn't.

Ants, Ants, and Caterpillar

I'm afraid this post is rather buggy.

Here is an updated look at our ant farm (click here for a previous picture, it's at the bottom). For the past few weeks they have made no new tunnels, instead concentrating their efforts on trying to get off the farm. They have spent days trying to cut through the hard plastic at the top corner of the box, to no avail. Yes, it is kind of sad. No, we will not let them go. We got a warning on the instructions that came with the ants saying, "IT IS ILLEGAL TO RELEASE LIVE..*something something*... INTO THE WILD." They're from California anyway, I bet they wouldn't like Alabama. Plus, I read somewhere else that released harvester ants can cause structural destruction to buildings! Oh wait, when I looked today they have started a little side tunnel.

Remember the lame amaryllis that I got from WalMart? Turns out it came with another present. I had been looking up how to take care of amaryllises, trying to decide if I should try to keep it through the year and tend to it carefully enough that it would bloom again at the end of the year or next spring. I think the majority of me knew that it probably wouldn't work out- not only do they take up a lot of room when their leaves grow so huge, but what if we moved? And what about the nasty raccoon that likes to uproot all of our plants outside? But that part of me that admires gardeners, the part of me that wanted to show everyone I could do it and wanted to satisfaction of seeing the beautiful blooms again hung on. So the website that instructed me how to care for amaryllis bulbs sat up on my web browser for several days in silent suspense as to what my decision would be.

In the mean time, we started seeing some teensy ants showing up on the table we keep most of our indoor plants on. We couldn't figure out where they came from. One morning we came down and there were about 75 of them walking around. AHH! So, after sending those little gals to a quick end, I decided it was time to uproot the amaryllises. So outside we went and dumped out all the dirt. Guess what? My walmart Amaryllis, the one with the dried up dirt thing that expands when you put water in it? It came with it's own colony of ant eggs. After we dumped most of the dirt out Abigail said, "Wow, that's full of lots of ants!" I looked at it and didn't see anything, but when I looked closer and longer, the whole thing was crawling with tiny ants! And some of the eggs hadn't hatched yet. I think I made a good decision, but I'm wondering- where did those ants come from, don't they know it's illegal to travel across states like that? Now they live in our backyard! I hope that they don't wreak any havoc.

Abigail and Daddy looking for the penny she buried for him for a "birthday gift" This is where we later dumped our dirt from the pots, so it's not completely random.

We have a new pet at our house- a caterpillar. Abigail didn't learn her lesson about washing bugs I guess, because I came in from outside today to find her washing the caterpillar. Poor little guy. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure it will live through the experience. I hope she understands now that it's not the best for bugs AND we do NOT want her to do it! I believe this is an Eastern Tent Caterpillar, which turns into a moth and is considered a pest.

Oh, and, as promised, here is a link to picture of my dish mat when it still lived at Betsy's house. Isn't it pretty?

Day in the Life of My Sweetie

The little one. This started as a project to give Abigail a visual as to what a 'day' is. She's having problems with that, she feels like the morning and the afternoon are two different days. I guess she just has a problem with the definition of 'day.'

I picked a Friday, which is the day we don't have a weekly activity planned. And the breakfast pic is not the same day, because I forgot to take the breakfast one that Friday :). So she only changed clothes on time that day (normal for her). Click on it if you want to make it bigger!

Our Home

I have decided that the following is true for me.

If one has a small business run out of the home, they can also be a:
1. stay at home mom or
2. stay at home maid
But not both. And I'm horrible at the maid part all by itself anyway.

That said, here are five things that you will almost always find in our home if you were to just happen by.
1. A craft or two or three out and in the works, sometimes for err.... weeks (yes, that's my crafts, not counting Abigails)
2. Random stuff on the stairs. These things are waiting to go upstairs to be put away. This habit, by the way, used to drive me crazy when I first met Jake and saw him doing it. It doesn't help that I'm the only one who takes things up the stairs most of time- that means I haven't trained my family members to do it yet. Novel idea!
3. Leaves on the floor. This does bother me quite a bit, but not enough to clean it up every time I see it. With a tree right outside our front door and Jake working hard all day in a job that involves leaves, they always end up in our house. And cleaning them up right away doesn't help because they'll be back a day later at most.
4. Stacks of books/papers. Either on a table somewhere or stacked crazy on a shelf. No comment.
5. Bugs in jars. Contained to the kitchen, unless one sneaks out in a forgetful girl's arms.

The other day Abigail came in from the backyard and asked if she could wash her earthworm. Just a liiittttllle bit, so they don't drown. The hopeful/excited/glee look in her face promised a crushed little girl if I said no. Ahhhh.... I think. One worm? A few drops? "Okay" I say. A few minutes later I start listening to her from the bathroom. "Hush. HUSH! no." Facet turns on, drip drip, turns off. "Hush!" Drip, drip. I start thinking this is something I should see, so I head over to the bathroom to see not one, but 4 or 5 earthworms of different lengths squirming on our hand towel on the floor. I did get a picture of this, but regrettably deleted it when I thought it I had put it on the computer, but hadn't. FOUND IT! It was one of those, ohmygosh how funny and wrong moments where you get the camera, take a picture, and then address how wrong their behavior was. Well the worms were clean, but not clean enough in my thoughts for the hand towel, so the towel went to be cleaned and I explained to Abigail that though it was fun to wash the worms, we weren't going to do it again.

Making Easter (kinda) Cookies

The day upon which I learned that 4 years old is not old enough to leave alone with the sprinkles.

Yesterday we made some cookies. Also yesterday, Jake found a four leaf clover! I can hear you now, "nuh-uh!" To which I say, "Yeah-huh!" We were puttering about in the backyard, I was pulling weeds, Abigail was inspecting all the wonderful little things of this world, Jake... I'm not sure what Jake was doing. Abigail wants to know if this little bunch of clovers is a weed. Jake tell here that yes, they are and starts telling her about four leaf clovers. She says, let's look for one! He's all like, nahh... we're not going to find one. I've never found one in my life. They're like one in a million. She pleads some more. He hesitates and protests. She pleads more. Daddy assesses the situation and sees that there are only about 30 clovers and relents. A second later I hear him saying, I FOUND ONE! I say, yeah right. He pauses and continues, I FOUND ONE! Me: Whatever. But my curiosity kicks in and I go over to look. Yes, he found a four leaf clover in our back yard. Jake and I were all excited, it being the first real one we've seen (yes, we know probably about half of you have found one) and we're taking pictures and stuff and Abigail was watching us trying to figure out why we're so excited- her first experience with clovers is that finding a four leaf one in a tiny sampling is easy to do! So now we are pressing the clover and deciding what to do with it later. That was fun.

That afternoon we were planning on making the cookies, we had made the dough the day before and we were ready to cut them out. Last week my friend Mary gave us a bunch of cookie cutters she didn't need anymore, over doubling our cutter collection. Ever since then Abigail has been very keen on using them. So anyway, we cut out the cookies using a variety of seasonal cutters, including a four leaf clover (how appropriate), snowflakes, gingerbread people, angels, a mitten, several pigs, teddy bears, owls, and some Easter related ones too. Then last night Abigail and I frosted and decorated a lot of them, doing the rest today. I left Abigail unsupervised for some, and those cookies definitely turned into a pile of sugar. But "It's okay, Daddy can eat them."

Making cookies attire. My mom made Abigail this very cute apron that matches the one for she made for me, but is was dirty at the time.

Another shout out- those cookie cutters are drying on a beautiful quilted drying towel that Betsy made me for my birthday. Too bad you can't see it very well... I foresee a picture of the towel in my blog's future.

 soooo excited!

Some of these awesome frosting colors are from the special neon food dye Courtney gave me for Christmas, Thanks Court!

*pile of sugar*