Banned!: Light Sabers & Home Tours

With Josiah's pink eye and ear infection we were forced to stay in on Monday.  He walked around almost all day in Todd's pajama shirt pretending to be Yoda.  Henry would usually play along as different characters - Luke Skywalker, Dark Vader (as he calls him), and other Jedi.  Josiah hums the Star Wars theme song nearly 12 hours a day.  He even hums while he eats.  It's a gift really.

Luke Skywalker

Yoda

When they are not pretending to be Star Wars characters, they spent their time pretending to be Fred & Ted from the story books.  They are two dogs, Fred is tall and wears a green shirt, Ted is short and wears a red shirt.  Since red and green are their favorite colors, it was obvious that Josiah would be Ted, Henry would be Fred.  They wore their shirts backwards and Josiah got out masking tape and taped their names to their shirts.  It was pretty funny to hear Josiah call Henry, "Fred," since that is a common name from my house growing up.

Josiah was no longer contagious by Wednesday, so he was able to make it to his Awana award ceremony.  He was very happy to get his ribbon for completing Book 1.  When he finishes all three books, he gets a plaque, so he is eager to earn that as soon as possible.  After the award ceremony, the kids all went outside and got to throw whip cream pies in the faces of three adults.  I'm not sure how that coincides with teaching them Biblical principles, but they had fun.  The fun abruptly ended for Henry who walked through some rose bushes (which are still very small plants) and not only got scratched, but got a thorn stuck in his leg.  It is amazing the healing power of bandaids.  I think that may be my new go-to baby shower gift - just a bag filled with boxes of character/theme bandaids.

Henry's night

Josiah's night

Our house hunting continued this week.  We saw a massive house earlier in the week.  It was our third house of the evening and usually by the time we make it to house #3 the kids have used up all their good house hunting behavior.  This house had a really big carpeted room upstairs and all three kids danced and ran around it, singing, rolling all over the floor.  Josiah kept saying to me, "May I have this dance?"  All three kids left with red cheeks and sweaty all over.  And that was the last house we allowed them to tour.  Since then, Todd and I now go into houses separately while the kids stay in the car.  This means that the boys like to get in the front seats of the car, push all the buttons, and say they are a space ship all while humming/singing the Star Wars theme (at the top of their lungs).

This evening, Josiah wanted to call Grandma.  He went to his room to talk to her and after the phone call I asked what he talked about.  He said he told her all about Star Wars.  We are living and breathing it around here.

One thing I have noticed about parenting is that if the house is clean when Todd gets home from work, it's usually been a bad day.  On Thursday, when Todd came home, I had the dishes done (our dishwasher is broken this week), laundry almost all caught up, and all the white floors mopped.  You know if the floors were mopped that it was a bad day because that means the kids were all sent to their room affording me the opportunity to mop without interruption.  Part of our issue has been light sabers - the use of them almost always causes injury to some party.  I have banned light sabers several times this week.  The boys like to play me for dumb and say, "It's not a light saber, it's a sword." Guess what else is banned then?  Their schedules have been thrown off a lot as well.  We house hunt in the evenings causing them to get to bed later than normal.  

One parenting success this week has been in bug training.  The boys scream like school girls when they see bugs - spiders mostly, but we've had a few roaches.  Caroline was starting to copy them and I was thinking, we cannot have all the kids scream at bugs.  So, I taught her to step on the bug since she is usually always wearing shoes.  She doesn't usually get the bug, but it gives her something to do other than scream.  For the boys, who are usually barefoot, I taught them to get the dustbuster and dustbust those spiders up.  It's helped a little.

Caroline is also Miss. Independent.  She is constantly saying, "I do it." She wants to dress herself, put her own shoes on, put the straw in her juice box all by herself, everything really.  "I do it. I do it."  Even when we were playing outside, she got on the boys' bike and said, "I do it." and there she sat because she can't pedal the bike, but she sure tried.

Mother's Day morning, the boys started the day with a song and dance number.  They told me they had practiced their "routine," but it appeared they were both independently singing and dancing to their own individual songs.  Although, I do have an untrained eye when it comes to song & dance numbers.  Todd got doughnuts which always makes for a happy morning.  On the way to church, Henry said he was glad I was his mom because I have warm arms.  He was wishing for a mom with warm arms.  Then he said he wished he had three moms with warm arms.  He likes the inside of my upper arms - the highly sensitive skin that doesn't often get touched.  He is obsessed with touching it.  He is always reaching up to touch it all day long and especially if I snuggle with him in his bed at night.  Josiah has his puppy that he sleeps with, Caroline has her blanket and her thumb, Henry has my warm arms.

This week we are focusing on speaking to each other with a kind voice. We really need to work on this. We have some voices-with-attitude coming out of little mouths around here. (Big mouths, too, I suppose.)