Counting my Blessings

1. Dallin:

Here's a little conversation I had with Dallin on Sunday:

Mom:  Okay, after lunch we are having quiet time.  You can read,  you can draw, you can write in your journal, you can play quietly, but you have to be quiet.

Dallin:  Can we watch a movie?

Mom:  You can watch a church movie

Dallin:  Can we play on the computer?

Mom:  No.

Dallin:  Come on, Mom.  Couldn't we play on church.com?

He's a thinker that one. 

2. Daphne:

Daphne has a sweet tooth.  Well, let's be honest.  Everybody in this family has a sweet tooth.  Sean and Daphne will frequently ask me to bake cookies, not because they actually want the cookies, but because they like picking in the cookie dough.  (I still can't figure out how the recipe says it makes 5 dozen, and we only end up with 3 dozen.  Do we really eat that much dough?)

So the other day, Daphne and I made cookies, and of course we ate lots of the dough.  I watched her take a ball of dough that was the size of a cookie and pop it in her mouth.  I told her that was QUITE enough cookie dough for today and she'd be sick if she ate more.

Sure enough, a little while later, she was holding her tummy and couldn't even be tempted by dessert after dinner.  I said, "Well, Daphne, that's what happens when you eat too much cookie dough.  Next time, we should probably hold back a little."  

She said, "Mom, how do you know it's the cookie dough?  Do you know everything?"  

I said, "I sure don't know everything, but I know an awful lot about cookie dough tolerance because I've been eating it for a lot of years.  And I know that when you eat too much, it makes your tummy feel bad."

Sometimes if you really go crazy, you might have to call your friend and cancel your outing because you feel too sick to go.   And yes, that happened this year, not when I was five.  

3. Sean:

So I've been potty-training Sean in some degree or another since August.  That's right.  It's been eight months.  Now maybe I'm just spoiled, because my first two got the hang of it in a week.  But doesn't 8 months seem like an extraordinarily long time to be potty-training?  Tonight it seems especially long because I just stepped in a puddle urine (on the tile--counting my blessings) that Sean failed to tell me about.  

He did tell me about his accident earlier today.  He was wearing Lightning McQueen underwear and we had a long talk about how if he wanted to be friends with Lightning McQueen, he should go potty in the toilet, not in his McQueen underwear.  He was in full agreement.  Well not too long afterward, he came downstairs and said, 

"Mom, I go'ed pee and poop in my pants.  

And now Lightning McQueen doesn't want to be my friend."

sigh.

He totally knows how to do it, he is just too lazy to stop playing for a minute to take care of business.  I'm about out of ideas.

4. Hayden:

This guy really keeps me on my toes.  He's into the basics- unrolling all the toilet paper, or paper towels, coloring on the walls, dumping out the family bean jar--(not sure how he got it down) and crawling on the table, which means if I am not on top of clearing the table, this is what I find:

Busted.

5.  Actually, my #1 blessing is Arthur.  (Save the best for last, right?--no offense, Dallin.) He is a rock and I would be lost without him.  He's so good to hold his tongue when he gets home and the house looks like we took a grenade to it.  And he's awesome about coming to the rescue when he comes home from work and I still don't have a glimmer of an idea of what to have for dinner.  Oh how I love this guy.