From the Mouths of Babes

I've just gotta shake my head at what these kids say sometimes....

Back in the day Gabriel was almost done with a cup of applesauce, I noticed and asked if he needed help scraping the bottom. The next day he was eating applesauce again and I hear him yell from the table, "Mommy scrape my bottom please." Garrett has since picked up the phrase. If they didn't talk so darn loud it wouldn't be so bad, but two little boys in restaurant yelling, "can you scrape my bottom" gets some weird looks.

They were playing in Garrett's room a couple days ago with their tools. Gabriel had pliers and Garrett had a screw driver. They were chatting away while fixing their toys. The next thing I heard was Garrett saying, "I screwed you." I had to laugh.

Gabriel was in a BAD mood at dinner last week. He's in a bad mood much of the time these days. Stephen called on him to say the prayer. He started his prayer with the normal Thank you for this day, Thank you for the food, etc. Then he got toward the end and was asking for help with different things. He ended with, "Help Daddy stop making me mad and stop making bad choices!" Naturally he said the entire prayer with attitude, and got to then talk about reverence when we're talking to Heavenly Father and Jesus. We have no idea what to do with that kid.

Garrett came in a while ago while I was nursing Lincoln and petted his head. He looked up and said, "Baby Winkon so cute, why he's in ours house?" I said, "He lives here with us." Garrett said, "Ohhh". He's asked that question several more times in the last few weeks.

I love that Garrett started calling Lincoln cute wittle fehwah (cute little fella) all on his own.

Gabriel kept hitting Garrett. Once we got to the end of our rope we asked, in exasperation, "Why do you keep hitting your brother?" He looked at us so seriously and said, "He's not a baby anymore, he's a big boy." Once Lincoln was here Garrett became a big boy just like Gabriel so, of course, he became fair game for fist fights.

We played at the park for awhile tonight and I heard Garrett call to Stephen, "Push my bottom." He always lays on the swings on his tummy then wants Stephen to swing him. Once he's swinging at an acceptable height he yelled, "Get away from me."

I was nursing...again...Gabriel came in and said, "He's so precious." I agreed. He petted Lincoln's little head and said, "He's cute Mom. When can we have a sister?" That kid soooo wants a sister. He accepted my answer of let's let Lincoln grow for a while first, but he obviously wants a sister. Hope a girl is in the plan for us.

Gabriel was eating a hard boiled egg for lunch this week. He got to the yolk and made a funny face, picked it out and set it on the table. Garrett asked for a bite. Gabriel sweetly looked up and said, "You can have my yolk if you want it." Garrett was so excited and agreed to eat it. I just sat back to see what would happen. Garrett put it all in his mouth and gave it a valiant effort. He chewed for a good minute, then all of a sudden it all came out and he said, "I don't like that." Gabriel looked pretty smug about it all.

The boys were playing with a little keyboard in Gabriel's room a couple nights ago. Garrett came running out whining that Gabriel hit him. We took care of that. Two minutes later Garrett came running back out crying and said, "Gabriel told me to shake my bootie." I cracked up laughing and told him he was fine and to go shake his bootie to the music. He left laughing too.

We're trying to potty train Garrett. He doesn't care, and never tells us when he needs to go. Stephen noticed he'd been dry for quite a while and took him into the bathroom to go. He came running out so proud to have a dry pull-up. He ran into the Family Room and announced, "My pull-up dry, I have money??" He gets two pennies for dry pull-ups. He'll either be materialistic or a great businessman. Bribing with candy didn't do much for motivation.

I was getting Garrett dressed the other day and he looked up at me and said, "I a man." Two hours later he climbed up on my bed and said, "I awesome!" I hope he always knows he's an awesome man.

Any time Gabriel sees a picture in a store of a girl in a bikini or the pictures in the bra shop he looks and yells much louder than I like, "HERS MADE A BAD CHOICE, MOM!" I was so embarrassed when he looked up at the girl ahead of us in the Wal Mart check-out line, whose boobs were hangin' out, and asked, "Mom why did her make a bad choice?" How do you answer that? Explaining that she has agency to make choices doesn't seem appropriate.

Stephen plays basketball 4-5 times a week at 5:30 in the morning and watches sportscenter while he gets ready to go. We're bad parents and taught Gabriel how to turn the TV on and watch it till the rest of us are ready to get out of bed. One morning Stephen forgot to change the channel to PBS before he left. When he got home Gabriel greeted him with, "Daaaad you forgot to put it on a kid show I had to play quietly." He was full of exasperated indignation.

During breakfast this morning Gabriel was served his dinner from last night that he had refused to eat. Oh, that made him so mad, but I'm not going to raise food wasters so I didn't care. He pitched a fit and picked out the parts that he wanted to eat. Finally, he annouced that, "He was was mad at everyone in the whole world....except Nanny." Hmmmm, Nanny is the one that taught my that trick. I remember being served the same plate of nasty mac and cheese with green beans for 3 meals, or maybe it was for 3 weeks, or 3 months. I don't remember, but I ate that stuff for a long time. :-)

Stephen is good to me and lets me sleep in as long as possible every morning. I came stumbling out of the bedroom one morning to Stephen laughing at something Gabriel had just said. I looked at Gabriel's clean shirt that was now all dirty. Stephen explained that he warned Gabriel to be careful so his clothes didn't get dirty. Gabriel replied, "It's ok Mommy likes lots of laundry." Every time a mess happened I'd said (very sarcastically!) "Oh good I love laundry." What a literal kid. After Stephen had been working outside one day, and was filthy, he came in and excitedly said, "Look I made more laundry for you, I know you like it so much."

We have a bucket of toy guns, and other weapons that boys like to play with. Garrett had the bow and arrow and was shooting Samuel the Lamanite. I said, "Hey you can't shoot Samuel the Lamanite, you're a lamanite, don't shoot your own people." He got so mad and said, "I not lamanite, I shoot Samuel the Lamanite with my arrow, but not hit him." Then he was off shooting everything he could manage to hit.

This one isn't that funny but I want to remember it.
Right now Stake Men's Basketball is going on. Lincoln hadn't been born when it started, so we loaded the boys up to go watch. The game started and I looked down and made an observation/realization; I used to be married to the baby on the team. Now I look down and see that Stephen is the oldest one on the floor, and the only one with kids. Of course, I had to make a grandpa comment to him during the half time break. To which he made some comment about not being as old as his wife. During the second half both boys really got into cheering. From the side came, "Go Dad! Shoot it Dad. Oh man, you missed Dad. Go Dad Go Dad Go Dad. Yeah, 3 pointer. (even when it was a lay up) Good job Dad." It was cute to see them so excited, and since they were the only kids in the whole gym everyone could hear it, and since they both are spittin' images of their Dad everyone knew who they were talking to.