Just falling from my head...

Today at the Children's Museum Robin and Dallas were playing with these two other boys who were about 6 and 4 who were being a little rough. Warren really wanted to be in the tent with them and older boy wouldn't let him in. Robin and Dallas got out and said "This is Warren and he's our brother. If you want to play with us, you have to play nice with him." They started playing again and went back into the tent and the other boys both start pushing pillows at Warren to block his entry. I hear Robin from inside the tent "Maybe you didn't understand me." He crawls out and the boys follow. "This is Warren, he's my brother. I'm Robin and that's Dallas, he's my brother too." pointing to Dallas who chimes in "I'm Dallas" then points to me "and that's our Mother."
Robin starts again. "We play together so if you want to play with us, you need to be nice to Warren too."
Warren was standing there looking at them smiling and nodding. These boys also have a younger brother, a bit younger than Warren and he's in the corner having a snack with his parents who are just as curious as I am, watching this interaction. The other boys introduced themselves on their parents prompting and they all started to play again.

There was a time the boys got too rowdy close to Warren and he ran scared behind Robin and Dallas stood in front of them and said "I'm Dallas and this is Robin and Warren. Don't forget to be nice cause he (Warren) doesn't like that." Then everyone went back to playing.

Eventually Warren went to draw and Robin and Dallas got hungry so everyone went their separate ways, but we were in there together for nearly an hour.

I found it interesting how they handled the situation without any intervention with a formal introduction. Robin and Dallas were playing with the boys for quite a while before Warren wanted to join and no names were needed before that point. It's as if Robin was saying my brother is little but he's a person with a name. That's certainly what his body language and tone said. Except for Dallas pointing me out as part of their family, then never needed to look to me for guidance.

I feel really proud of how they handled it. It could have gone so many different ways. This was a herd of boys romping roughly together. Although all good kids it could have turned physical just by the nature of how they were playing or most likely I would have though Warren would have been left out. I was prepared to step in and redirect him to another activity where he was less likely to be hurt but I never needed to. I guess I'm just in awe of my children's maturity today, combined with the love and respect they showed for each other.

I'm laying in bed watching Warren sleep. He's having a dream and twitching a bit when all of a sudden with the stealth of a ninja, he sits up and let's out a battle cry while attacking my arm with two hands, he pulls himself to me and tries to bite, almost before I realize what he's doing. his eye were shut the whole time. Just after I dislodged him I he babbled something that sounded like "and don't try that again!" then went back to sleeping. It was amazing the speed and purpose in which he moved. I'm sure it was a victorious dream.

I was reading a book to the boys called "Animals Nobody Loves". This book is about scary creatures like sharks, cobras and spiders. Between each two page spread, the kids would act out the creature and even Warren was getting into it. When we came to the cockroaches, for some reason, my near two week sleep deprivation caught up with me. I was out for less than twenty minutes, and it was when we used to have nap time, a few weeks ago when the kids thought sleeping was cool. When I woke up Warren was climbing on me, he had colored his hands and belly and markers were in a pile next to me. Robin and Dallas were snuggled up to me, trying to wedge themselves under me. They told me that we were baby birds and they were trying to sleep under me. Robin added that Warren just wanted to nurse because my boobies were the pouches I kept the bugs in and Dallas confirmed, "Yeah ,like ants Mama!" Warren just bounced up and down on me. After feeding Warren, checking my face for pen marks Robin brought the book to me and asked; "Can we hear about the crocodiles now?"

Now anyone who really knows me, knows I can't say no to a pet. Doug can so we aren't totally drowned in animals, we can still come up for air, some days. I digress. Here's the conversation:

Robin: "Mama? If we had a long neck dinosaur, would we still have any shade?"
Me: "What do you mean Robin?
Robin: "Well, would he eat all the trees so we wouldn't have any shade?"
Me: "I'm sure he would, those dinosaurs get pretty big and need to eat a lot of trees. I don't think we would have enough."
Robin: "We could just get a baby then."
Me: "Babies grow into big dinosaurs. What would we do with him then?"
Robin, as if a light bulb above his head had turned on: "We could butcher him!"
Now, This was a very serious conversation up until this point but Doug and I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the thought. As if taken over by the giddy teenagers inside us we both started listing dinosaur meat food items: "Dinoburgers!" "Dinostew!" "Dinosteaks!" "Dinoballs! Oh wait, maybe not."
You could almost see the lightbulb disappear in a puff of smoke as he thought about eating a dinosteak as he said: "Well, maybe we shouldn't get one after all. We really don't have room for it."

The kids have not been 100 percent this week. I didn't want to believe they were actually sick though. My head was buried firmly in the sand and only an over flow of poop could bring me out.

Yesterday on the way to Thursday morning Mom's group, Robin threw up in his car seat. He didn't want breakfast and said he wanted to wait to eat until we got there. That's not too unusual really. On the way out the door Dallas saw the vitamins and wanted one of each so we stopped for berries, gummies and bubbles then packed into the car. Since Robin puked a stomach load of vitamins and declared he was fine and wanted to keep going, he got really mad when I turned around to go back home, I was still standing in la la land. I figured it must have been because he had vitamins on and empty stomach because Doug complains about that too. Dallas and I have no problem with vitamins on an empty stomach, I almost prefer them that way. Robin didn't seem too sick the rest of the day. I was prepared for him to lay around and watch some muppet shows but he was up playing and singing all day. I was thankful no one was really sick.

Today I woke up early while the kids were still sleeping and took a shower, then I promptly go on packing lunch for our day out. While cutting apples, the phone rang, Robin rand downstairs and Warren started to cry. I went upstairs to find Dallas sitting up and Warren had crawled off the bed and was making his way to the stairs. He had poo soaked through his jammies.

I changed his very wet and poopy clothes and diaper and went upstairs to nurse. Dallas climbed from his bed and quietly and timidly says "Mama, there's poop everywhere and I stinky." I wrapped him in a towel and set him in the tub. The pants got thrown away. It was that bad. I cloth diaper and I didn't feel I could save these pants. It was bad. The poor little guy was such a trooper though.

Dallas discovered the joy of standing in the shower with warm water running over you. He wanted to stay there after he had been all cleaned up. For several months he would not get his head wet voluntarily and would not let you wash his hair but here he was, completely cured of that fear standing under the shower with water running on his head. I've never been on to like water in the face myself. I don't see how people in commercials can smile with their faces pointed into the spray of water. I can't wash my hair with my head hanging down either but that's what he was doing and he didn't get water in his eye either.

So on to what I'm thankful for. I'm thankful that I was too busy to eat breakfast before the kids woke up. Cleaning up Dallas caused heaving and it would have been so much worse to have to clean up vomit too. I'm thankful Costco sells boxes of exam gloves for days like this when you just can't bare to stick your hands in it. I'm thankful for my children's adaptability since we had a really fun day planned and we had to change gears so fast. I'm thankful for a stocked kitchen since the new plan is to cook with the kids today. I'm thankful for these new lights that I had not previously mentioned because they are really brightening up my day.

I went to find my iPod shuffle and I knew I had dropped it into my purse but I couldn't find it. This caused an impromptu cleaning to happen. I was surprised at what I found when I laid it out an looked at it. We all know the purse is a sacred place. A mystery of what wonders it contains. I'm going to share with you the contents of mine.

The purse it's self isn't huge but it's not small either. It's waterproof inside and out as it's really meant to be a nice diaper bag too.



Now I have said before but I'll say it again, I like to be prepared. In case of emergence, I'm your go to girl. Let's go over the picture.

All this stuff came from inside. It often also holds my D90 but today I had left it out.


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In the left hand corner we see the medicine cabinet. If you have a cough, sniffle, flu, gas, diarrhea, sore muscles, teething, low energy, bad breath, dirty hands, migraine, tummy ache or any other ailment I could probably help you out. These are mostly homeopathic with some essential oils, enzymes and cough syrups in there.

There's a small selection of cosmetics including three lip colors, three hair doohickeys and moisturizer. I'm not sure where the ear plugs fit in.

The right hand corner holds 1 lb dark chocolate covered apricots, half a bar of dark chocolate mint, one sucker, two buffalo bars, i package of baby rice crackers and four chai tea bags (two regular and two decaf. It's all sitting on a baby bib.

Back to the left we have all my tech gear: Macbook power cord adapter, 16g sd memory card, GoWear body monitor, Flip, Shuffle, iPhone, two sets of head phones. Yes, two ways to listen to music. There's also a headlamp that was very helpful in seeing into the bottom of the bag and a polishing cloth for removing finger prints. There is usually a Coolpix in there too but it's out getting charged.

I roll with a healthy assortment of toys such as two baby wearing figurines, a frog, pig and prickly polar bear, a deflated balloon (You never know when your going to have a balloon emergency) and four marbles. There's a roll of golden confetti in case the need for a party arises.

There's the expected purse things too such as keys, coupons, receipts, pocket knife, paring knife and a photo CD. I also had one mini purse, a phone case, wallet, coin purse and folding grocery bag.

Arts and crafts are very important to us. I come prepared with two crochet hooks and and a set of needles. Those egg cartons with the pipe cleaners are barnacles the kids made last week that they keep taking with us and putting back into my purse.

Office supplies are also a passion of mine. Here I have two mechanical pencils, three pens, a highlighter and a binder clip. I'm using a paper planner this year because I'm trying to be a little less techie and a little more tactile.

Then there's the change. That's quite a pile of it. It totals at $5.50 not counting the $3 in bills. When I went to shake the purse out on the porch sixty-two cents came dumping out on to the ground along with enough crumbs to feed at lease a dozen mice really well. It's the magic purse that just keeps giving!

I think what I've learned from this is: change is heavy, carry less change.

I now challenge you to post what's in your purse....