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.
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