Dentists, Fasces, and Bribery

The boys finally made it to the dentist.  Henry had never been, unless you count the dentist we saw when he lost his teeth, but that was really just an obscene medical bill, not a dental "check-up."  Fortunately, Josiah went first and we all got to watch him be brave.  Henry kept getting close to Josiah's mouth, watching, and asking, "Does it hurt?"  Josiah answered in the negative in the best way he could with his mouth open and the hygienist's tools inside of it.  Five seconds later, "Does it hurt?"  Thank goodness, Josiah always told him it didn't hurt.  Henry got up there (reluctantly) and got his teeth checked out.  He did really well and we discovered that he already had two of his 6-year old molars coming in.  The same molars that have cavities in them in Josiah's mouth.  (Although, we were told this wasn't our fault - cavities in these particular molars.)  We actually take care of their teeth pretty well - floss daily and use a fluoride treatment, so it's hard to not feel a little defensive when they get cavities.  This particular dentist had a treasure box for the kids to pick out a small trinket after their appointment.  I think they'll be more than happy to go back in six months (except Josiah who has to get those cavities filled next month).

Henry is quite the comedian of the household.  He has that special character trait that brings laughter to others.  His joke du jour is:
Knock, Knock
Who's there?
Interrupting Cow.
Interrupt--
MOOOOOO!

Sometimes he changes it up:
Knock, Knock
Who's there?
Interrupting Gorilla.
Interrupt--
OooooOooooOooo (or whatever sound a gorilla makes)

There's Interrupting Truck, Interrupting House, and the not-so-surprising thing is, they're all hilarious.

Caroline has her own line of jokes that often contain the word, "poop."  She knows her audience.  At dinner one night, while listing the days of the week, she said, "Saturday, Poopday."  The boys couldn't contain their laughter.  It is one funny word...

No one can convince us that boys and girls are just alike.  Case in point:
Caroline had an accident and wet her pants.  She did this upstairs while I was downstairs.  I was only privy to this information because she pulled her entire dresser drawer out on top of her feet/legs, was stuck, and called out for help.  Upon entering her room and seeing her dresser drawer on her very naked bottom half I asked her what was going on.  She mentioned she peed in her pants.  So, after putting the drawer back in place (she was surprisingly unscathed by it), I went to the bathroom to clean up her mess.  I went to both bathrooms and saw no evidence of an accident, so I cautiously asked her where she made the mess.  "In the boys bathroom," she said.  I inquired further and she said she cleaned up the mess.  I asked where her wet clothes were and she had already put them in the laundry hamper.  So, our two year old daughter had an accident, completely cleaned it up, put her clothes away, and was getting new clothes out.  She did this all on her own.  And yet, just the day before, I had to get on Henry for the umpteenth time for peeing all over the toilet seat, which I happened to notice that particular day because Caroline was sitting on the grossly wet seat and needed help in the bathroom.  I don't know how he does it sometimes.  It's like he temporarily loses his sense of vision when he uses the bathroom and just aims where he thinks the toilet ought to be.

Hands off ladies, Josiah informed me after Awana that he now had two girlfriends.  They are the two ladies that work the check-in desk for his class.  One is definitely grandma-age.  The other is closer to my age.  This is not the first time he's gone for much older ladies.

For school we have finally moved on from Ancient Greece (can I get an "Amen.") into Ancient Rome.  We made a Roman fasces one day.  The kids all had fun stripping the leaves off the branches and tying them in a bundle.  They had a hard time understanding that a fasces was an emblem of official power, not an actual ax to use.

We made a Roman aqueduct out of legos as well.  It is amazing all the different resources we use for homeschooling, but we love us some You Tube for things like this.  There was a short video from the History Channel that took us on a virtual ride down a Roman aqueduct.  So cool.

All the kids participated in Henry's school assignment of stringing a Cheerio's necklace.

Josiah got a taste of his own medicine when he tried to teach Caroline after his lessons were done for the day.  And I quote, "Caroline is the worst student ever!  She keeps playing around when I'm trying to teach her and she keeps erasing everything off the board."  Karma.  It'll bite ya.

Before parenthood, I had parenthood all figured out.  I knew that I would never, ever feed my children fast food, I would never use bribery as a form of behavior modification, I knew they would be respectful and kind because that's what we would model in our house, on and on and on.  Such ignorance.  Henry has always been difficult when we drop him off at church.  Every church, every Sunday.  The main complaints have been that it is too long and that he just doesn't want to go.  So I came up with a reward system to where he could earn treats if he went into his classroom without any trouble.  Pretty much glorified bribery.  But you know what?  It worked for the most part today.  He went in, reluctantly, but he still went in.  He didn't flop down in the hallway before we reached his room, he didn't cry, he didn't hold onto my arm or leg so that I couldn't leave.  I did ask his teacher afterwards how he did and it sounded like he didn't participate in anything they did either, but he was present.  Hopefully he'll participate more as time goes on.  And you better believe that after church (and lunch) we went to Starbucks and got him a cake pop.  Now he has to have two weeks in a row of good drop-offs to earn his ice cream from Costco.

We have a busy week ahead.  The boys begin a new P.E. class this week, so we are looking forward to that!  Plus I have a mom's night out with ladies from our CC group.  Woo-hoo.  :)

Grandma and Grandpa Visit

Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit!  All the kids wanted to pick them up from the airport on Sunday.  I advised each and every one of them that it would be a long drive (hour there, hour back) just to make sure they were prepared.  They all still wanted to come.  We were sitting in our driveway ready to leave, I turned the car on and Caroline piped up, "How much longer?"  She made sure we knew that it was "taking a long, long, long, long time" to pick them up and get back home.

Having two fresh babysitters on his hands, Josiah couldn't shoo Todd and I out of the house fast enough.  We ended up going to a store and dinner.  A delightful dinner in which we got to eat our food and talk, and we didn't spill any of our glasses, and we didn't crawl under the table to pick up dropped food, and we didn't yell or scream or walk around the table just to "take a lap."  When we got home, we could hear the TV first thing.  Josiah had the volume up to 81 and informed his new sitting duck babysitters that "Mommy lets me do that."  I don't think so....    

Some highlights of their trip included:

All the kids rode Grandma & Grandpa's luggage across our wood floors.  This proved to be quite the fun entertainment...until someone got hurt.  I don't know why?  It seemed like a perfectly safe and wise decision to ride luggage.  (And, yes, I did take pictures before the inevitable injury occurred.)

The kids were all enamored to touch a real-life, fluffy beard.  

The boys showed their bike-riding skills to Grandma & Grandpa.  We also played a lot of baseball in the backyard, until we lost our ball when Josiah hit a home run into our neighbor's back yard.  Hard to fault him, it was a good hit.  

Grandpa fixed our light fixture, which was awesome.  When we bought the house, the previous owners wrote that they wanted to take the light shade in the breakfast room.  Thinking it not to be a big deal we, of course, signed off on that.  And then we could not find a shade to fit that fixture to save our lives.  We have been staring at a naked bulb since June.  Grandpa comes along, we made a quick trip to Lowes, and he had it fixed in 20 minutes.  It could have taken even less time, but he had "helpers" that kept trying to climb the ladder with him.  It's amazing how quickly things can happen when you know what you're doing.

We tried to find a few local antique stores for Grandma & Grandpa to visit.  I found one that was very close to a restaurant where we intended to eat dinner.  So, we made a stop so they could check it out.  From Google, I could see that it was a house that had been converted to a store.  We pulled up and it had the same "Antiques" sign out front.  My parents walk up to the house, open the closed-in porch door, and a woman kindly asks, "May I help you?"  The store closed a year ago.  It might be time to take the sign down.  

We had better luck the next day and they got to shop a little (and enjoy the quiet) while the kids and I went to the Railroad Museum literally across the street from the antique stores.  It was a very small museum, but really great for the kids.  They got to see all the old railroad equipment.  We were able to walk through a caboose and a fancy Pullman car.  We were even shown the train tower to see how they used to switch the tracks and change the signals.  The volunteer docent gentleman was very nice, but I'm pretty sure the two adults on the tour went away with more information that the kiddos.  

To go along with our Ancient History lessons, Henry found this "computer" hilarious.  They loved pushing the keys and seeing the typebars swing up to type their letter (and, yes, I did have to look up "typebar.").

We ate way too much food as we always do with company.  Henry fell into a food coma at one restaurant.  

Fortunately(??), he perked back up during his ride home in Todd's car.  He informed Todd that the "police pulled Mommy over, but we didn't get arrested."  And so I got to explain that one.  I got pulled over shortly after we moved here because I made a right hand turn on a red light during school zone hours.  Not a rule in Virginia.  And he gave me a warning after first asking Josiah if I was a good driver.  Thank goodness he said yes.  (That was the most nerve-wracking part of the whole ordeal - waiting for Josiah's answer.)

We told the boys that it would be an early morning to drive Grandma & Grandpa back to the airport.  I told them I'd wake them up and they could eat breakfast in the car.  I should have known never to mention such a thing to them.  Josiah woke up at 5:00 a.m. and Henry shortly after at 5:20 a.m., much earlier than necessary.

Josiah has spent some time this week working on his house.  He has made it out of branches and pulled up weeds.  He has a garden and he even paid Henry a dollar out of his own money to clear the weeds out.  

He was not very happy when Caroline sat right on his house.  

Upon expulsion from the library due to excessive noise (according to the parental figures), I took Henry and Caroline to the car to wait for Todd and Josiah to finish up inside.  Henry educated Caroline on the finer points of library etiquette.  "Carwowine, when you're in a library you have to be quiet, you cannot run around, and you have to listen to your father and your mother."  Then he messed with her face and made her laugh.

Of course, you should notice that Henry was in the car with her.  That was because he kept trying to give Caroline a piggy back ride through the library stacks.  He's not capable of doing such a thing, but he sure tried.

It's been cold here - in the 30s and 40s.  We would have loved to enjoy some of the East Coast blizzard - maybe just 6 inches of it, not the full two feet.  

Next week, it's back to reality again.  

Seven Already!

Josiah had a celebratory week this week.  Monday morning, he was all ready to open his gifts.  He opened up his bow tie first and he got quite excited to see it.  "A bow tie!  A bow tie!"  He's our little GQ man.  He also got a Nerf Chewbacca crossbow gun.  When put on correctly, the mask will make Chewbacca noises when you move your chin.  The boys have had trouble getting it to fit properly and when it is on correctly, it is bulky, so it doesn't get worn a lot.  It does get dropped on the ground a lot by a precious little girl.  Quite loud, and heavy enough to probably put dents in our hardwood floors.

We also got him a marble run.  I have fond memories of playing with my brother's marble run growing up, so it was only a matter of time before we got one for our kids.  They like it, but it has been a bit frustrating trying to get them to understand how to build it so it works correctly, not too top-heavy and so it is balanced (equal distribution of weight both top and bottom and side to side).  It's going to take some time.  I convinced them to let me build a model one just so they can understand the concept.  :)

Josiah kept talking about what he could bring his classmates at CC.  He had quite the generous goody bags in mind - Lego kits for everyone!  We went a slightly cheaper route, and brought Dunkin Donut Munchkins for the whole group. Little bites of sweet goodness.

Josiah was expecting that we get him seven balloons since we always get birthday balloons.  He brought five of them up to his room.  Then he performed a science experiment to see what would happen if he turned his ceiling fan on.  The results were clear.  I think he was really looking to get his room cleaned, because while I climbed up on a ladder to untangle all five strings, I noticed the dusty ceiling fan.  So, after the balloons were freed, I dusted the whole fan.  That led to lots of dust falling on his bed.  So, I washed and changed his sheets and vacuumed his floor.  He got a very clean room out of it.  

I had my own failed science experiment.  For school we are studying about Ancient America and we had a recipe for pan-fried bread.  Thinking I could let Caroline join in the eating with us, I used coconut flour.  It called for a whopping four cups of flour, so that is what I used, but when I added the water to the flour, it seemed to grow.  Unfortunately, the flour "dough" just fell apart.  I tried to use eggs to bind it together, but nothing worked.  So, we just made it using the normal wheat flour and they turned out pretty well.  Henry was a big fan.  Josiah ate most of his and then said he didn't like it too much.  How can you not like pan-fried bread?

Josiah wanted an all-processed-food birthday, which worked out just fine for me because I didn't have to cook a thing.  Froot Loops for breakfast, Lunchables for lunch, Papa John's pizza for dinner, and a Sam's Club cake for dessert.  We forgot to tell Caroline the rules of birthday candle blowing when it was cake time.  We brought out the cake to Josiah and as we neared the end of our singing, Caroline blew out 6 of the candles.  So, we did a re-do.  Josiah showed his seven-year-old maturity by not freaking out.

We have had some delay in our mail delivery with regards to packages.  That lead to Josiah getting packages throughout the week causing him to enjoy a four-day birthday.  He was quite happy to spread the joy out.  The grandparents all came through with Lego kits, too.  You can always count on the grandparents to get the most favorite things.  Henry had a tough time with Josiah getting all of the gifts.  He was upset he didn't get a Lego kit, too.

Of course, three years ago, the tables were turned and Henry's birthday looked like this:

I like to ask Josiah his "favorite things" each birthday just to see how they change over the years.  This year's career choice was a bit different from the past.  He wants to run a grocery store.  Then later in the week Henry and I were reading a book that had a page with "career people" on it.  Henry was concerned because they didn't have a person who ran a grocery store in the book and that was what Josiah's future held.  Henry's career path wasn't represented either - he wants to be President of the United States and give everyone a Lego kit.  Clearly he's buying his electorate.

Now that Josiah is a mature seven-year old, we made the decision to take away his doggie.  He has a tendency to rely on it a little too much and he could use a little maturing.  So, I told him I would put the dog in his top dresser drawer (that he cannot reach), so he'd still be in his room, just not in his bed.  He cried it out and then handed it over.  The first night went well and he fell asleep with no problem.  Then the second day he called me upstairs and he had opened his top drawer (with a step stool from the bathroom) and he had put a flameless candle in the drawer.  A little shrine to a beloved dog.  That night did not go as well.  He said he was going to sleep with it when he has his own family.  I told him it would be funny if Daddy slept with a stuffed animal and I think he saw the absurdity of that.  I also told him that I would never get rid of it, as I have my own well-loved Cabbage Patch kid in a box in my closet.

This was supposed to be his last photo of him and his dog...

**Update on the doggie.  Josiah ran a fever today and asked for his dog.  How could I deny him that?  So, we're back to square one after his sickness leaves him.

We had Go Western night at Awana this week.  The boys were very happy to dress up as cowboys.  They like to think of themselves as the Cockrell Agents, so they posed as such.  They're a cross between cowboys and spies.

This week Grandma and Grandpa are in town so it'll be a fun week!

Triplets?

It's never a good blog week when I upload the pictures off the camera and I find: a blurry, up-close profile picture of Todd, a video of us eating dinner (Josiah...), two clear pictures of Henry sleeping, two blurry pictures of Henry sleeping, and four pictures of Caroline cleaning a sink.  So, basically two pictures, and that was all...

We get asked constantly if the boys are twins.  Just about every time I take them out to a store, someone will ask if they're twins.  Once I even got asked if the kids were triplets, but that was when their three car seats were all in a row in our car and the window was down.  I don't know how aware the boys are to people asking if they're twins.  I always thought it was "cute" and kind of funny. But as they've gotten older, it tends to bother me a bit as I do not want Josiah to be insecure with his stature.  And then we went to Sam's.  We went to order Josiah's birthday cake, but we picked up a few more items as well (the all important coffee creamer).  As we were walking down one aisle, a woman looked at our cart and asked, "Are they triplets?"  I laughed and said no.  A few minutes later we were walking up another aisle and I could see a mom with her teenage daughter at the end of it.  The mom just kept looking at our cart and smiling, and you could just tell she was going to say something about the kids.  And she did, "Are they triplets?"  She asked it with such expectation.  "No," I laughed again.  I think Caroline must trip people up with her missing front teeth.  It adds a good two years to her age.  :)  Fortunately, the kids thought it was hilarious when they asked what triplets were.  They couldn't believe three babies could be born at once.

Henry does seem to be growing a lot lately.  I think he may have caught up with Josiah in height, or at least he is very close.  He had a power sleeping session starting at 5:00 p.m. Saturday and ending at 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning.  I've always heard that means they're growing.  And here's picture #1.

Noticing the height similarities happened again when we visited a new church this weekend.  The lady helping us asked if the boys were close in age.  At least she phrased it that way.  Technically, they are close in age if you compare them to each other as opposed to comparing them with our ages.  Henry enjoyed the new church because, "it was short and he had more time to draw," as well as the fact that the pastor used the word, "poop" in his sermon.  He was retelling a story of what some kids had thought was on Noah's ark.  Henry is all about the potty jokes and potty talk right now, so he thought it was just great to hear it from the pulpit.  Thank you, Pastor.

Josiah is into Classical music right now.  He had asked about some of the composers that we learned about last year and when I mentioned the names of some composers I knew, he said, "Oh yeah, I know Beethoven.  He's on 'Peg Plus Cat' and Schroeder likes him."  I know studies say that classical music is great for children to listen to, good for the brain, but for an easily distracted child like Josiah, it is not good to listen to when doing schoolwork.  We put Beethoven on while he was doing his math and he missed 8 out of 10 problems.  Usually he misses 0-1 problems.  He also wanted to listen to Tchaikovsky.  We listened to several pieces from the Nutcracker Suite and later I found a Nutcracker ballet on YouTube.  The boys sat and watched it for about 30 minutes.  Caroline kept watching snippets and saying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, they doing this." And then she'd jump or do the splits or something equally endearing for a two-year-old trying to do ballet moves.  Henry asked if boys could dance and said he wanted to do ballet.  Don't worry, Todd, it'll help him with his football moves.

I finally got Caroline's pronunciation of Henry correct.  "Har-wee."  Just a little fun fact.  

Todd and I spent six years discussing the finer points of how to teach our kids about money, do we pay them for chores, do we give them an allowance.  We never reached any settlement.  We still don't totally agree, but have decided upon a method that's working okay so far.  They have everyday tasks (make bed, brush teeth, bring dishes to the sink, etc.) that they are responsible for because they are part of our family, and then they have one assigned chore a day and at the end of the week they get paid for those assigned chores.  We wanted them to be able to earn money somehow so we could teach them to tithe 10%, put 10% in the bank, and then use the 80% for saving up for something they want.  It started out with lots of enthusiasm.  Now we get the, "I have to do a chore every day?!" whine.  I like to respond with, "Do you like to eat breakfast/lunch/dinner every day?  Do you like to wear clean clothes?  See, we all have to do work every day."  All that to say, here's my second picture of the week, Caroline cleaning the bathroom sink.

Josiah's birthday is tomorrow.  He keeps telling us that he hopes we got him a Lego kit.  We did not.  He does not know that the theme for seven-year-old birthdays is "disappointment."  Better luck next year, kid.  I clearly remember my second grade birthday slumber party.  We had a competition of who could put their puzzle together the quickest.  (These types of competition were all the rage in the early 80's.)  I thought I had it in the bag since these were puzzles from my house that I had been doing for years.  Clearly, I would win.  And would you believe it that some party-goer beat me?  I don't remember who...my eyes were filled with tears.  Disappointment.

Welcoming in 2016

Poor Henry had a rough start to his week.  He had gotten in trouble and was sent to his room.  I went up to talk to him and he just had a total meltdown.  It was so sad to hear him.  He said that he wanted to be 7 and older than Josiah.  School [in general] was too long and he didn't like it.  He doesn't want to do a lot of school like Josiah has to do.  He doesn't ride his bike as well as Josiah does.  Josiah never likes his Lego creations.  It was really sad.  So I told him how much we loved him, how much God loves him, how special he is.  I told him how all his teachers make mention of how special he is.  I think by the end he was feeling better.  Then he had me just hold him for a good 20 minutes.  By the time he got up, he was all smiles again.  Later I had a talk with Josiah about being a big brother.  Henry admires him so much and takes what he says to heart (like criticisms on Lego creations).  So, I asked him to be more encouraging with him.  I gave him the example of how he is encouraging with a boy in his CC class and he smiled and seemed to "get it."  I have heard him use some encouraging words since then, so that's a plus!

Tuesday we got a new couch!  We haven't had a real couch since we moved to Texas, so we love having it.  Josiah has taken to sitting on it and turning on the t.v. in the mornings.  I came downstairs the other morning and he said, "At first I was watching the news. There was serious damage to houses in Oklahoma."  Then he went back to his cartoon.  Just a little public service announcement.  (We've since established rules of watching t.v. in the morning.)

We finally made it to Second Baptist Church and saw their Christmas train display.  It was quite large and really neat to look at.  They had different neighborhoods of sorts - Americana buildings, Frozen scenery, Bethlehem, etc.  All with model trains riding through.  We saw one mom chasing a little boy around saying, "[Child's name!] it's not going to stop!"  He was chasing the train in a giant circle.  :)  They did have a card with pictures of different buildings or features for the kids to find.  That made the whole thing much more fun for the boys.  At the end they got a lollipop each for finding everything.  On the way home, Josiah asked a general question about gum and what you're supposed to do with it.  I gave my explanation and then said, "Why? Did you swallow it?" Well, yes.  He's never had gum before.

Enjoying the "bubble" 

The boys spent another afternoon talking about marriage.  They both wanted to marry Caroline, but after explaining that they couldn't marry her (for the umpteenth time), Josiah got the utterly brilliant idea.  He suggested to Henry that they play Rock, Paper, Scissors for whom they could marry.  Henry won the first three girls, Josiah got the fourth.  So, watch out ladies, my boys have an amazing vetting process for future spouses.

Cheers! We figured out our future spouses!

We got a little more Texified this week, too.  Todd took Caroline to the boot store and got cowboy hats for all the kids.  They were all just super cute in them.  We couldn't stop taking pictures.

Henry was swinging his invisible lasso.

We finished up the year watching fireworks from the boys' room.  We learned that Texans love their fireworks.  We had neighbors on all sides of our house (not directly) shooting off fireworks from 7:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. (at least, that's just when we fell asleep).  It was constant.  From the boys'  room they had fireworks coming from three different areas, so for about an hour we were all in there just looking out for them.  It was fun, but I'm glad I don't have to hear that for 5+ hours all that often.  :)

One last school project.  We made Ancient Greek paper doll figurines.  The boys colored their figures, clothes, & accessories.  Henry cut his out.  Josiah wanted me to cut his out because he prefers perfectly cut items.  Then they put the clothes on their newly named figures - Helen, Zeus, and Poseidon.  Henry did not quite get Helen's dress on her.  When Josiah pointed this out, Henry said that she was showing off her muscles and that the wind was blowing.

Henry's Helen in the wind.

Unfortunately, Todd has to go back to work this week.  It was a good two weeks of having him home. We are going to try to start off this school year/semester with more enthusiasm and a bit less complaining.  We are all a work in progress!