Random Moments

"Oh really?" Afton yaps. A lot. Nonstop. Pretty much all day long. And when you have a child who talks that much you tend to tune it out at times. Apparently whenever I go into "tune out mode" I say, "Oh really?" over and over again. Afton has recently caught on to this trend and has determined that what I am really saying is, "I'm not listening to you" (she's correct). I am therefore banned from the use of "Oh really". Acceptable responses now include "Wow!", "Neat!","Cool!"

And lest you think Afton yaps nonsense all day long, last week at breakfast she randomly blurted out, "You know what I love about you Mom? How you are a nice mom." Melt my heart child. Melt my heart.

Speaking German While living abroad Afton absolutely refused to speak German. It's not like I expected much from her, but I did expect her to say the basics, you know, "Danke" and such. However whenever a stranger would try to speak to her in German she would yell back things like, "It's not danke! You say thank you!" Charming, I know. Now that we are back in the US the girl constantly asks me how to say things in German. Some things I know, some I don't. She did ask me how to say "I don't know" the other say, which was an easy one for me- "Ich weiss nicht". I said that one a lot.

Getting Physical I recently bought Jillian Micheal's Body Revolution program. I've been trying to knockout the workout in the morning before the kids go to school. A couple of days ago while I was doing one move that makes your backside shake (a lot) Sam sat behind me saying, "Ewwww, Mom! Look at your butt! Ewwww! Grooooosss!" I wanted to kill him.

Birds and Bees As a form of punishment for the above comment I decided to shock Sam with a discussion on the birds and the bees. No, this talk was really overdue. I kept catching the kid kissing the air pretending that it was his "imaginary girlfriend". All things considered he took the talk really well- his eyes only got wide during one part- you can guess what part that was. Why didn't Andrew have this discussion with the boy? Because when I first broached the subject with Sam, Andrew was in the other room and started yelling, "No! No! He's too young! It's too early!"

The Spelling Test  When Luke started kindergarten we discovered that he needed additional resource learning. He has had a hard time learning to read, and often struggles to retain information. We've been really blessed to have extremely supportive schools and teachers who know that Luke is a smart kid. However, now in the 1st grade, Luke is given a spelling test every 2 weeks. It's been a little disheartening to see him get most of the words on the test wrong and know that the next week the words will only get harder. BUT for the last list I tried orally telling Luke how to spell the words. He retain the information much better and received A 100% ON HIS LAST SPELLING TEST! I was so proud of that kid that I cried.  He was so proud of himself that he jumped up into my arms and gave me a huge monkey hug.