The Logic of Children

Am I the only mom who takes advantage of the fact that her kids logical reasoning skills are not fully developed? Seriously, sometimes it seems so easy to "trick" my kids into doing what I want them to do that it's scary.

Tessa is a good example. She's three, which is an age I find difficult. She often says "no" to pretty much any question that I ask her. "Tessa, are you ready to get dressed?" and "Tessa, do you need to go the the bathroom?" are regularly answered by "No." Even when I don't phrase things in the form a question, as in "OK, Tessa, it's time to get dressed" she'll say "No" and run away hiding. However, if I say (in practically the same breath) "I'll race you upstairs", she's up and running upstairs as fast as she can move. Then it's easy to get her to get dressed. As long as it's a race, I can get her to do pretty much anything (put on her shoes, go potty - the list is endless).

William is the same way. He has started asking to take what he calls "early baths". Normally his bath time is 7:45, which leads to him getting into bed around 8:00 pm. But he'll ask to take a bath soon after Tessa is done, like at 7:20 or so, and ask if he can "stay up until 8:00", like for some reason he's pulling one over on me and getting to stay up later than normal. But it's a pretty small thing that he asks and it makes him happy - as long as he's bathed and in bed around 8 pm, I don't really care what the order is, you know? But I feel a little guilty, like I should let him know that he's really not staying up any later.

Tessa I don't feel guilty about, though. Whatever gets me through the day with her is a valid parenting technique in my book. It's a good thing she's so cute (in the picture she's holding her princess music player - Bibbiddi Bobbidi Boo just never gets old).

Wide Open Spaces

We rearranged things in our family room a bit today to accomodate our new couch. We've been wanting a new one for a while for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that the furniture that we had there had basically gotten beaten up - it wasn't the best quality to begin with and after many years of service (8 years for the love seat and 15 years for the chair) and three kids, they looked pretty bad. We also didn't like that we didn't have room for our entire family to sit and watch TV or just hang out. So we bought a new sofa today. It looks nice - it's black leather and we can all sit on it at the same time if we squeeze. Jay can even stretch out all the way, as you can see in the picture. It's quite a bit bigger than the love seat, so we decided not to get a chair; we might supplement with some big pillows or a bean bag chair or something for extra floor seating. But for now we're good.

It's amazing how much roomier the family room looks now because we don't have the chair angled in toward the TV anymore. The black color looks nice as well; it blends with the area rug that we have and with the other colors in the room. We really liked a dark walnut color, but it was quite a bit more expensive so we went with black. We figure black will be fairly versatile for future changes that we want to make to the room as well.

After our foray to the furniture store we took the kids to Sizzler for lunch. William and Henry both had coupons since I joined the PTA at both their schools so we thought we'd take advantage of the free kid's meals. I love their cheese toast; Jay jokes that they should have a cheese toast meal deal just for me. Our waitress was nice and brought us enough cheese toast for several families. I tipped her $5.

The Harvest

Last night for Family Home Evening we cleaned out the garden. A big winter-type storm is supposed to blow in tonight, dropping temperatures drastically, so we figured we should get everything out that we didn't want to lose.

We were mostly done anyway. We haven't had corn or onions for a while. I don't know why we bother with the carrots - they don't seem to get that big and then we've wasted a whole row of the garden with them. But we did pick two grocery sacks full of tomatoes and about three sacks of peppers. We left the pumpkins, since they like the cold, and will pull them up in a week or two as we are decorating for Halloween.

I don't think we'll do as many tomatoes next year (we had 5 plants). We like having fresh tomatoes for salads and salsa and whatever, but we just ended up so many tomatoes by early September that we ended up giving quite a few away so that they wouldn't go to waste. I did, with substantial help from my friend Nicole, can 6 quarts of tomatoes, but it seems like a whole lot of trouble that doesn't save you that much money, since you can buy tomatoes fairly cheap if you catch a sale. Maybe I'll change my mind - we'll see how much we use this winter. We want to do more onions next year and maybe try some beans and lettuce. But for now, gardening season is over.

The Sam Books

I just realized that I haven't blogged all week. I wish it was because I've been so incredibly busy doing something important like finishing Tessa's baby book, but it's not. All my free time has been taken over by Lego Star Wars. OK, not really. But Henry and William both like me to play with them sometimes and the next thing I know, it's an hour later. Plus, not that much has been going on. Jay has been incredibly busy at work, so I've been on evening duty by myself and by the time everyone is in bed, I'm tired.

William's kindergarten class had a Family Stories and Snacks day on Thursday. All the kids introduced their families by displaying a family banner, we ate doughnuts, and saw a magic show. It was cute and fun and I did take the camera but never took it out of my purse.

William has hit a milestone that is noteworthy, however. He has started bringing home books to read. We call these The Sam Books. They are short little books with a few words that he is supposed to read three times to either Jay or I. We sign a paper stating that he's mastered the book and he brings home the next one in the series. They are silly little books but perfect for kids who are beginning to read. Henry brought home the same books in kindergarten, although he didn't start reading until after Christmas of his kindergarten year. William has been sounding out simple words for a while now, though, so it doesn't surprise me that he has started officially reading.

My favorite thing about reading these books with him are his expressions of exclamation points. He is reading along very nicely and calmly and all of the sudden bellows "Sam! Sam!", as if Sam the lion is standing across the street and he's very earnestly trying to get his attention. It's cute and fun and nice that he's started reading.

Somebody Stop Me

The boys have been anxiously awaiting their copy of the Lego Star Wars computer game. It was $19.99 on Amazon, so I told them if they agreed to forgo their October allowance (they'll still pay tithing and get their savings, just not their $5 spending money) I would pay for the rest of the game. They mulled it over and decided a fun computer game would be worth missing a month of buying baseball cards, so we ordered it. And it arrived on Friday.

It's a fun game. I like it because both kids can play at the same time. Henry is a little impatient with William ("William, quit shooting me!") but they do OK playing it together.

Unfortunately I am becoming a little too interested in it. I spent 40 minutes tonight playing with Henry and trying to unlock another level. Part of me wants to keep playing once he's in bed, but I will resist. It reminds me of a Tonka truck game that William got for his 4th birthday. He could do the game fine, but all the free play areas had to be unlocked by completing the other areas and some of them were a little too hard for him. I distinctly remember spending hours on that stupid game, trying to unlock the free play areas for William to play. He would ask me every morning if I'd done it and look at me with keen disappointment when if I said no. It took more time than I care to admit, but I finally did it. Then he lost interest in the game and in construction trucks in general. Of course he did.

Anyway, I need to find something else to occupy my time. I already finished reading Dan Brown's newest book, The Lost Symbol (a good read, by the way). I guess I could work on Tessa's baby book. {cough, cough}. Anything to keep me away from Lego Star Wars.

Let's Hear it for the Boys!

Kids can be hard. And sometimes as a parent you wonder if the lessons that are really important are sinking in. It's nice to have solid evidence that maybe, just maybe, you're doing an OK job with them.

Today I had a PTA Meeting at Henry's school. After a quick snack, I let Henry take William and Tessa out to play in the playground. Unfortunately, they got locked out of the school (oops) and were let back in by a teacher, thank goodness. Anyway, while I was busy with my meeting, Tessa apparently confided in Henry that she needed to go to the bathroom. And, being the good big brother that he is, he took her. To the bathroom. By himself. He can be incredibly helpful sometimes and today was one of those times. Thanks, Henry!

William had good news to report as well. Today he helped a girl in class. She sits at his table and spilled her crayons all over the floor. He decided to be a good friend and got up and helped her clean them up. He's been listening during our nightly scripture study,apparently - the other night we had a scripture about setting a good example and the ways that we can help people in our lives. Jay and I specifically brought up ways that the boys could be good examples at school - helping someone who has dropped something or fallen, sharing, inviting someone new to play with them at recess. William said that "he felt happy" when he helped his new friend. What a good boy!

It almost makes me forget about all the arguing about baseball cards, the tackling in the living room, and the karate chops that went on around the house this evening. Almost.

School Days

Why is it that the only one of my children who is enthusiastic about doing homework is the only one who is not required to do any?

Henry treats homework with polite indifference. It's almost beneath him to sit down and do his homework, but he does it to keep the peace. William is slowly adopting a better attitude about homework. The key word is slowly. Jay and/or I still have to sit with him every second and monitor what he's doing, but he doesn't whine quite as much about practicing his handwriting. His favorite thing to do for homework is cut out letters of the alphabet, put tape on the letters, and go around the house looking for items that begin with said letter. My favorite was the day he had to find something starting with the letter B - he taped a piece of paper on Henry (for boy and brother). The hardest so far was O - we finally settled on orange juice, the "on" light switch, and an "open" door. We thought of alot of O words, just none that were on hand and ready to label. Too bad we got rid of our pet octopus.

This exercise is what has inspired Tessa to start doing homework. She loves to follow William around as he labels household items with the letter of the day. Jay made her an additional copy of the letters and she did the same thing. But she took it further. She spent at least half an hour glueing shapes that Jay cut out for her onto a random piece of paper. She cried when it was William's turn to use the safety scissors. She actually begged for more homework, so I googled "preschool writing practice" and printed off a few pages with colors and numbers on them. She proceeded to massacre them with her scissors.

Is this a girl thing or a youngest child thing? Maybe both. I guess it's too much to hope that this fondness for homework carries over for a few more years.