"that relative on the syrup bottle"

oh, dear (wipes eyes)

"Mom, do you like apartment living?"
"Well, sure, but I also like living in a house where we have our own yard"
"But, don't you like to share, Mom?"

Forget the elephant. It didn't do much for that kid. :)

Every few days, he says, for no reason that we know of:
"I don't need my bwood".
When asked why or what it is about he just looks at you blankly.
It FREAKS my dad out... I LOVE it!!!

Not sure if I already posted this:

Mom: "Jamey, we should go through some of your toys and determine which ones you want to give to needy kids."

Jamey (walking out of his room with his hands on his hips): "Mom, I don't want to give my toys to meaty kids!"

God forbid I have five minutes to myself to cook dinner and put away some laundry. I could hear the dull sound of the riding lawnmower outside. Soon that sound is accompanied by others - the sound of Rob's voice... and then the sound of The Girl's. I figured it was the usual conversation between them when they did yardwork together - she's lazy and he has little patience. So I walk to the window of our bedroom on the second floor to see what kind of damage control I'm going to have to render, when look down to see Rob stopped on the mower, and The Girl standing next to him screaming her little head off.

Then I notice the bloody leg.

Approximately 1.29745 nanoseconds later I had leaped across the bedroom, across the house, flew down the stairs, and just as I opened the door, in walked The Girl - crying, hysterical, and with a bloody gash down the side of her leg.

me: "What happened?"

The Girl: "Rohimwfrok"

me: "Huh?"

The Girl: "Rob hit me with a rock"


At this point, I'm thinking WTF, why would he hit her with a rock? Why social services gotta be knocking on my door later???

And then the light bulb went off.


me: "Now this is very, very important, and I need you to think about your answer to my question very carefully. Did Rob hit you with the rock, or did the lawnmower hit you with the rock?"


Rest assured, it was the lawnmower.

!!

Is she ok?

The other night my thelittleguy was sleeping in our bed due to giving up his bed for the night to visiting family. He came downstairs about 15 minutes in and, looking like he is about to cry, says, "Mom, I need a tissue." My wife took him to the restroom and noticed he had blood on his lip. She asked what happened and he just started crying. "I don't know," he said. She called me in and his upper, front gums are bleeding like mad. We keep asking what happened and he kept saying he did not know. So, we decided to go back up to our room to discuss it and see if he will tell us.

Back up in our room, he kept saying he didn't know what happened to every suggestion I threw out. Hit face on headboard? Hit face on nightstand. Then, it hit me. "(Thelittleguy) were you maybe jumping on the bed?" He said, "Well, maybe." "Were you jumping on the bed and fell off?" "Well, maybe." Then, he looks at my wife and says, "One little monkey jumping on the bed. The monkey fell off and bumped his head." He then tells me that, "Maybe I fell off and hit my face on the floor. Maybe."

I cracked up. It seems he was jumping on our bed, in the dark, fell off onto the floor (on his face). He didn't want to get in trouble so he climbed back into the bed (I know this since there was blood on the sheets) and didn't come down until he was really, really in pain. Keep in mind, we are dealing with a 4 yr old here. I am not sure why he was so scared. He doesn't get spanked. He very, very good kid who rarely gets in trouble. I may be in trouble when he becomes a teenager.

Aww!

I think he just really doesn't want to disappoint you. By the fact that he didn't deny jumping on the bed, I would say you are doing a good job. Sounds like it was difficult for him to tell the truth, but he still felt compelled to do so, even though he might have thought he would disappoint you.

Wow. Your kid probably weighs what, 35 pounds? And he fell from the bed to the floor upstairs, and you didn't hear the thump? I want to live in your house. We can hear them wiggling their toes in their shoes in this house.

The jumping on the bed reminded me of a good kid story from years ago.

A good friend (who has since passed) who was a really funny guy, dry humored, and smart. He was telling us his boys were jumping on the bed and he called their names and told them to stop. The oldest boy looked at the younger boy, rolled his eyes, and said "we better stop, I'm sure dad knows someone who died doing this."

No deaths, but my cousin broke her collarbone jumping on a bed when she was about 5 or 6. I'm sure my kids are quite tired of hearing about it . . . .

I broke my collar bone around that age too. My mom was trying the "we'll sit here all night until you eat that" tactic at dinner. I fell asleep and fell out of my chair and <snap>. It was totally worth it...

That sounds like something my daughter would do.

Actually, he barely eats and only weighs about 30 lbs. We were also laughing it up with company at the time.

SonofV has been increasingly proud of his muscles. "Look at that!" as he pumps up his bicep. So, in fun, we were arm wrestling the other night, and he was gamely battling to a draw. I raised my eyes up and over his shoulder and said "Hey, look at that!" When he turned his head to look, I pressed his arm down to the bed. Upon realizing he'd been tricked, he said "No fair! My arm was gullible!" :P

I have to admit (I might be biased), but he really is a great kid. He listen well, has his own opinions, and loves humor. He started getting sarcasm at an early age. We knew we were in trouble then.

We have a hanging pan rack in the ceiling right beneath the "hitting floor" point for the bunkbeds in the boys bedroom. They still seem surprised that we know they're out of bed......

special parent super powers

yes, she's fine, thanks for asking. It's hot here, our blood is thin and tends to look worse than it is, I suppose.

lol, I've tried that with my daughter, and she does the same thing... though without the broken collarbone. Now, I give her 20 minutes to eat, and what she doesn't finish gets served up for breakfast - cold.

I never said I wasn't a mean mama.

I gotta try that, smurf...20 minutes and then it is in the fridge until breakfast. Wow. Pickiness is a pet peave for me.

Sounds like a good kid. Sounds like good parents.

So far, it's the only that thing that has worked. Letting her go hungry didn't work - she just whined because she was hungry later. Making her eat everything didn't work because she either tried to make herself vomit, or would fall asleep at the table and still not have eaten.

And it gets super frustrating to constantly get on her case during dinner, which is the only time all day long we are all together with 100% attention on each other. So far, ti's working out quite well. Only had to enact the cold-dinner-for-breakfast twice in the last 6 months.

Mom-1
Girl-0

Heh...extremely familiar. "I'll starve if I have to."

"Well, it'll be interesting to find out for sure how many ribs you have, then."

:)

Our son can be a picky eater. We make him try everything on his plate, but he doesn't have to finish it. If he doesn't want to eat it, that's fine. He just won't be eating anything else until breakfast. He goes to bed hungry several times a week. His choice. No confrontation. No power struggle. No fuss.

We only have healthy foods for breakfast and he always eats a big breakfast after going to bed hungry.

I'm not responsible for what my kids eat - just what I make available to them. I don't let them order huge entrees that I know they won't finish at restaurants... but I never make them eat anything.

Isn't it possible that some kids aren't "picky?" Can't our taste buds differ, and for some there is a real reason they don't want to eat it (as in they might puke?) Hardly seems worth broken collarbones or reverse peristalsis. But then again, if they only want yummies and have never tried something maybe you should make them try?

You parents have a tough job!

Mine just plain will not eat. Not picky. Just will not eat much more than goldfish crackers, a few apple bits, and, well, that is mostly it right now. I can sometimes get him to eat half of a pop-tart. Healthy. Thank God for vitamins and minerals in Carnation Instant Breakfast.

how about Cheerios? I thought all kids ate them. They're very healthy too.

Nope. Not even Cheerios. He used to eat them, but has decided he does not like them.

my kid's problem is that if it ain't in the form of deep fried chicken nugget or sugar, it's inedible. which is crap. and I have no problem with the fact I make her eat a square meal and refuse to be manipulated.

Exactly my problem, smurf. If it's a bowl of ice cream or mac and cheese, or a plate of pancakes with syrup it gets gobbled up in seconds. If it is black bean soup or a burrito it is sat over, pouted about and one bite chewed on for half an hour.

I also make my daughter at least try some of everything on her plate. If it's something new, and she doesn't like it, she can spit it out into her napkin. Usually, if she balks at what's for dinner, the one bite thing leads to more, sometimes until what was formerly gross, is gone. :)

I have never made her eat her food. She gets no treats the rest of the night, and goes to bed hungry if need be. She also is extra hungry the next morning, so I always make sure there are bananas, oranges, yorgurt etc. for her to eat the next morning before daycare. She gets breakfast and lunch and snacks at daycare, which I have no control over what/how much she eats.

She is 4.5 years old, 50 lbs and 90th %ile for height.

Some of the same aged kids in her daycare are positively skeletal in comparison.

I hope you're not offended by what I said - it's your kid, not mine.... I just don't play that game. I'm the mom, if I don't want my kids eating it, I don't buy or serve it.

My just-turned 7 year old weighs 52lbs and is often mistaken for an 8 or 9 year old.

I feel the same way. It's rare that we do anything processed.

Unfortunately, our kids are in a different household several months out of the year.

Ah, yeah... thats gotta complicate things. Mine don't even go to school, so I have a pretty good handle on what they eat, lol...

Wow and everyone thinks T is huge.

He was 4 in March, is 48lbs and 97%ile for height.

Ad is 2.5 and 35lbs, but off the chart for height.

not at all.

I should have been more clear... I don't force-feed her when she's not hungry, or stuff she doesn't genuinely like - like mushrooms and tomatoes. If occasionally she's not hungry or doesn't like something, that's fine, I'm a little picky myself. I'm thinking of how she'll eat meatloaf for Grandma, but not for me. It's the same meatloaf. That's what I have a problem with. Plus, I don't see what she eats all day long at school - and since she comes home every day telling me about the candy and soda and ice cream they had, I'm not confident she's getting much real nutrition throughout the day, so I do push for a healthy dinner.

But when she says "I'm not hungry" and scowls at the steak and baked potato, and I say "well, we have chicken nuggets and french fries" and she perks up and suddenly is starving, yeah, she's totally full of shit. "No nuggets for you!"

Pfft. My kids change their minds about what they like from month to month, and you can usually count on one of them liking something and the other not--except which one is which changes over time!

Do you home school them?

The Girl: Can I go with my friend Sara to SeaWorld? Her mom got a hotel room with a cajuzzi (jacuzzi).

Me: (lol) No, remember - we're going somewhere special this weekend?

The Girl: Oh yeah - we're going to the astronaut senator (Kennedy Space Center).

My D11 is tiny and always has been. She was born a month premature. She hovers around 10-15th percentile for her age. However, she's healthy and intelligent and developing right on schedule. I don't worry about comparing her to other kids in the 50th or 95th percentile. I feed my family balanced meals which they can choose to eat or not. If not, they go hungry. Commercially made snacks (cookies, chips, ice cream, hotdogs, etc) are limited to one type, per person, per week. Fruit and raw veggies are plentiful and have no limit.

God...that's so cute!
:)

Why is it when I download the digital camera, there's always ONE PICTURE that ruins the whole web album so I can't send the link to my mom???

http://lh4.google.com/ChrissieCat76/...0/CIMG2974.JPG

Damn horn-ball astronauts.

(Click for background, as seen at the Dallas dinner table.)

So I'm sitting at my desk signing some perfectly innocent purchase orders. And my phone rings.

"Umm.. Dad..." [it's my daughter]".....I have a question."

"Yeah?"

"Well, let's suppose we were doing a TV commercial...."

"Wait, does Mom know you're calling me?"

"Umm.. no."

"Where's Mom?"

"Inside doing something."

"Uh... OK... go ahead..."

"Well, let's say we were doing a TV commercial. If we filmed somebody making the ketchup bottle fly through the air, would you be able to take the video and edit out the person so it was just the ketchup flying?"

I think my reply to that would have to be "yes, dear, it can be done the same way i can edit out the person who murders the one making the ketchup bottle fly through the air"

Steve.........well....you can edit out the person. Am I missing something here? Maybe I'm too childlike to get that one.

It's cute that there was a special phone call made about though. Very important question. *now that's cute*

This thread is starting to get to me. I am not going to have a kid...you guys have to stop this!
:)

The other day thelittleguy and theotherlady were in our local drugstore. My wife saw a little boy that appears to be adopted from a latin american country. As we are nearing the end (hopefully!) of our very long adoption of a little boy from Guatemala, she points him out to TLG and says, "You see that little boy over there? He looks alot like TLG2 will look." TLG takes a few minutes looking him over real well. My wife says it was really cute and she can see the wheels turning. TLG has seen many photos of our new son and even some webcam footage on the last visit. After several minutes he turns to her, and very loudly asks, "You mean brown?"

Long story short: we've been using account passwords that the kids don't know to regulate how much they're on the computer. We recently discovered my daughter (the main computer user) figured out how to change her brother's password. I found out what it was by using a password cracker, and casually mentioned the password to her.

Her: "Oh. Well, I'd like to know how you found that out."
Me: "I have ways of finding these things out."
Her: "I guess you're smarter than I gave you credit for."

I was waiting in line at the bank a few weeks ago and there was a woman in back of me who was having problems dealing with an impatient child. The child was complaining that he was bored and demanded that his mother bring him to Burger King for lunch. The mother tried several times to explain that the line was moving and that they would go to lunch after she completed her transactions, but he wouldn't relent. Finally, the child loudly announced that if his mother didn't bring him to the restaurant immediately that he was going to tell Daddy that he saw Mommy with Uncle Peter's penis in her mouth. The woman grabbed the kid and dashed red faced out of the bank with most of the patrons laughing hysterically.

My sons have had an ant farm going over the school holidays (vacation) and my oldest son has been recording observations over the last week or so. These are the first couples of days worth. Some of the phrases were pretty funny to me and hubby. I don't know if they'll be as funny to you guys, but I thought I'd share.

Ant Colony Diary

Sunday 30th Sptember 5 pm:Green ants started digging colony. Aprox 20 ants.

Day One: Only got four hours to record. In four hours the green ants dug three cm down in ant gel.
Reflection: I was very suprised at how far down the ants dug because the people at the shop said it will take weeks for them to start digging. But they were black ants at the store and we are using green ants for this experiment.
Notes:The ants have created some sort of condensation on the inside of the container just above the line of ant gel.
Conditions: It was a hot day and we had the air con on.They have made it big enough for two lanes one down and one up.

Day two: I had a whole day to record. In one day they had dug about three cm down and two other tunnels.
Reflection: I was suprised when I looked at it because I thought the ants would have went to sleep but they didn’t which I thought it was weird.
Notes: Nothing really happened that day but i noticed that every time I opened the lid the ants would go crazy and try to escape.
Conditions: It was a hot day once again but we did not have the air con on and there was no condensation stuff. I kept on knocking the container over and that might have changed the way they acted.

Day three: I got a whole day to record again and in that day they had made alot of new tunnels and they are touching eachother. The ants have been busy on the third day.
Reflection: This day of my experiment was the most productive day of all three days so far. I think they have made about five more tunnels and they are all touching.I am very happy about how much has been done today and the last few days.
Notes: The ants have created a heap more space to move for themselves.
Conditions: Once again it was a hot day but no air con and also no condensation.(Which I think is a good thing because the condensation might have done something to my ants). Today I have tipped it over a few times again.

Thats cute Ali.

ToGgie...I didnt know you were adopting?

After dinner at my parents the other nite, ferel#1 (T) heard me say "see ya, Dad".

I was trying to explain that Poppie was actually my Dad, Nannie was my Mum, etc etc

T pipes in with...."My Daddy is a really naughty one isnt he?..he never came back", (talking about the fact that he left and hasnt been seen since)..."Can you get me a new Daddy?"

To which I muttered I would see what I can do.

T then asks in an excited voice..."WOW....will he be a PINK one or a YELLOW one??"

Yep. Very exciting and very frustrating. I might post about it at some point.

My kids didn't have nearly as much trouble understanding this as they did that Mom and Dad were once little kids too.

My stepdaughter really didn't understand the concept of "before you were born" for a ridiculously long time. We could show her pictures of her father as a boy with a young Grandma, and she would completely get it--and then later bust out with, "Yeah, I was just a baby then."