Author Archives: Kathleen

Candy Confessions

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I just can’t bring myself to allow my kids control over a large supply of candy so this is  what I do:

On Halloween I usually confiscate all of the children’s candy within an hour of our arrival home.  I allow them a small amount of time to gorge, but I start to fret about 3.23.08 Isaac (3)them eating too much candy and remove it as soon as I can manage.  I put the candy in a container and they earn pieces for doing chores at a rate of one candy for every 4 chores.

On Easter I do the same thing, I remove it as soon as I possibly can.  One time I was so reluctant to give them candy throughout the year, that when the next Easter rolled around I still had candy from the previous Easter.  I actually reused the candy and then reconfiscated it.

I have even taken away candy that they came home from a birthday party with and then made them earn the candy back at the rate and in the manner listed above (4 chores =1 candy).

For the last few months, I’ve even made them earn their fruitsnacks?!  Have I become overcontrolling?  Or do other moms do this too?

Posted in General

A Conversation with Charlotte

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I decided to make this a separate blog post because I didn’t want to make an 11.16.08 Charlotte (1)excessively long blog post.

Here’s some of the conversation Charlotte and I had as she fell asleep in my arms this evening

Charlotte:  "I’m Charlotte."

me:  "Yes, you’re Charlotte."

Charlotte:  "Nicole is not Charlotte.  Nicole is a baby."

me:  "Yes, Nicole is a baby."

Charlotte:  "Mom, I’m not bad, bad."

me: "You’re my good little girl and I love you."

Charlotte:  "My eyes open and close. . . Mouths open and close. . . .Eyes open and close. . .but eyebrows don’t open and close. . . and doors open and close. . .Boys don’t open and close."

me:  "Do girls open and close?"

Charlotte:  "no"

me:  "Girls open and close their mouths"

Charlotte:  "Mom, I’m Charlotte"

Posted in Kids

I’m Charlotte

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That’s her favorite phrase.  Throughout the day she’ll just say "I’m Charlotte."  During dinner, when she plays, as I hug her good-night.  I wonder how much of her behavior iP1030970-1 s because she’s Charlotte and how much of it can be attributed to being 2.

I love her dearly, but she is the most stubborn, strong willed little girl that I know.  The other day she turned a 2-minute time out into a 20 minute time out because she refused to say sorry.  After the timer went off, I asked her to say sorry.  She refused.  I told her if she said sorry she could come down.  She only said "I want out of time out" (notice how many more words that is–sorry would have been much shorter).  The conversation continued in this way.  I periodically checked to see if she was ready to say sorry and it was about 20 minutes later when she finally mumbled a barely audible sorry.  The next time she earned a time out, she did the exact same thing.  Luckily today she apologized much quicker.

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Posted in Kids

Miscellaneous Cat

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Isaac saw this kitten through the glass door in the kitchen and asked if he could pet it.  I P1030956 told him it wasn’t a good idea since we didn’t know the cat.  He told me that he wanted to name the cat Eustace.  I said ok.  He asked "now I pet the cat?  Because now I know the cat."  The cat looked friendly.  It was rubbing up against the glass and was not frothing at the mouth, so I let him go outside to pet the cat.  He said "Mom, lets show that cat how I ride my bike."    Since we had to leave soon I dissuaded him from that idea and we went inside.  His next comment was "that cat is cold, we should use my map book to take the cat to it’s home"  (his map book is a small Rand McNally road map of each of the United States).

Here’s an unrelated question from a few moments later:  "Mom, is a hospital a kind of dentist?"  This comment is way out in left field, we hadn’t been talking about hospitals or dentists.

Posted in Kids

To Cousin Joshua

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The kids got a letter from their cousin today.  Isaac was excited to write back.  Here is what he said and the responses from his sisters:

Dear Joshua-

I want to tell you about everything that we do. Like when we made a sugar mess today. We were spilling it. Mom was not happy.

I like big boy legos. I maybe would like different little blocks. I like to help my mother. I want to write all the things we do, me and Charlotte. . . play with big boy legos. . and playing with the building set. . .and um watching Nicole and. . um doing everything that I do.

I want to write about I can come there. I can’t get out the door without my P1030881mother. I can’t put the big boy legos on the floor.

I want you to write all that tigers do. They do. . Killing things, and eating the things that they killed, and kill things for dinners, and wake up in the nighttime and eat kids when they are naughty in the night and how they do everything that they do. How they get on trains is by scratching and breaking them. Tigers swim in water. Kids can’t be awake in the night. No letting Joshua go out of his bed in the night and his mom will look at this letter and not let her kid not to, not let her kid not to do that.

Lets tell them the mommy and daddy part about you guys. Tell them about when mom P1030850 and dad got married and how Nicole looks at everything and how Nicole touches the floor sitting like that and how she plays with the toys on that and how she does everything and how she bees nice to Zebras and nice to Zebras like that. The Nicole part is talking about how babies do and the Nicole part is how much babies do.

I want to do how our family does. Tell how much we do. Tell them that I say what time will it be the last day. Our family does um, our family says different kinds of words. And like to not get sick and fat, but I want candy. And I like to put my fingers like this way right between my buttons (on his computer).

I like to drink water. Now the milk part. That we drink milk at every dinner time. That’s the whole milk part. Then we get out of the milk part. When you’re all finished typing it you will close the milk part.

From,

Isaac

 

Nicole says: “ahhh”. . .drool. . .. squeal. . .smile. . .”grrrr”P1030854

 

Mom: Charlotte do you want to write a letter to Joshua?

Charlotte: I have to close all of them

Mom: Do you want to write a letter

Charlotte: I will close the window like that.

Posted in Kids

The penetrating message of President-Elect Obama

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On election day we walked in the house after voting and Isaac announced with great concern that "the naughty don’t want Obama to vote." We’re not Obama supporters and 11.2.08 Isaac-1we haven’t really been talking politics much around the kids (that I can think of) or listening to much political stuff so I was surprised by the comment.  The next day at the library he pulled a book off the shelf about Kwanzaa, when I asked if he wanted a book on Christmas, he said "no" and insisted we check out the Kwanzaa one.  Are these unrelated? Or has Obama somehow gotten his message to the white 4-year olds from Utah demographic.

Here’s an unrelated but amusing election day quote from Isaac:

I let Isaac and Charlotte help me vote by pushing the correct buttons.  The sticker lady gave me extra stickers for Isaac and Charlotte.  After giving him his sticker, Isaac said "Nicole can’t vote because she would spit up on her sticker?"

Posted in Kids

Prayers

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Charlotte has become more independent in her prayers lately.  10.11.08 Charlotte (6)Instead of just repeating the same phrases over or waiting for help, she has started adding new ones.  Here are a few favorites from this week:  "Bless us to have good dreams.  Bless us to have another good dream."  "Bless that all my dreams will work."

Last week Isaac said "Thank the that I’m not worried that I’ll never see my aunt Krista again."

There are probably more amusing lines, but I can’t currently think of anymore from recent prayers.

Posted in Kids

Pseudostrabismus

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"What it is:  Pseudostrabismus (soo-doh-strah-BIS-mus) refers to eyes that appear to point in different directions, but actually do not."

11.7.08 Nicole (2)-1My mother pointed out to me that in some pictures it looked like one of Nicole’s eyes was turning in.  I asked the pediatrician about this and after examining her eyes for several minutes he determined that she has pseudoesotropia (essentially that nothing is wrong and it’s more of a visual illusion created by her facial structures.)

"In pseudoesotropia, the eyes appear to be crossed but are actually straight. This common condition in infants and young children is generally due to the infant’s facial structures. The wide bridge of the nose and small folds of eyelid skin on the nasal side of the eye contribute to this appearance by covering the "white" of the eye. This especially becomes apparent when the infant looks to the right or the left. As the infant’s facial structures mature, this appearance of crossing will improve and often disappear."

Click here for the source for the above quotations

Posted in Kids

Kindness is. . .

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10.27.08 Isaac, Charlotte, Sam, and LillyWe invited our good friends the Kelsons over for family night.  The lesson was on how  Jesus taught us to be kind and love others.  I shared a story during the lesson about Jesus healing a blind man.  The lesson ended with a paper puzzle covering a picture of Jesus.  The kids were required to pick up a puzzle piece and tell one way they can be kind.  The responses were not what I expected.  Here are the ones I remember:

"not hitting"

"not punching or kicking"

"not poking"

"not making someone blind" by Isaac.  I tried to get him to come up with something you can do instead of something that you can avoid doing by saying "what if a friend was coming over?  Can you think of one thing you could do to be kind to your friend?"  His response:  "not make my friend blind."

Not exactly what I planned to teach about kindness, but an interesting view of the 4-year-old-mind.

Posted in Friends

Halloween

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10.31.08 Isaac (1)-1 Yes, I know I’m behind, but better late then never right.  We had a busy day but it was fun.  I do have a picture of all three of my kids in their costumes, but I don’t think I look very good in it so I refuse to post it here.  We started the day at preschool group then we came home for lunch and naps.  Aunt Krista and baby Paul came over and joined us in a tour of Zach’s office (they always over decorate).  After collecting candy there we came home and changed then headed out to dinner at Tucanos with extended family.  When we finished eating all the meat we could, we came home and the kids changed into PJs and handed out candy before going to bed.

Posted in Kids

Please use the Sink?

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sink It’s a little hard to read, but Zach found this sign on the Urinal at the local Iceberg.  Ironically, instead of referring patrons to the nearby toilet, this sign suggests they use the sink.

Posted in General

Our First Primary Program

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I don’t think my words will give the experience full effect, but they’re all I’ve got so here goes. 

Perhaps we should have taken him to the church ahead of time so he could 9.21.08 Isaac and Charlotte (9)discover all the workings of the folding seat before the program started, but who knows if we could have ever satiated his interest in this particular type of seat.  He sat in one of those chairs where the seat automatically closes when  you stand up and he wiggled and played with the seat for most of the program.  He was so distracted by the seat that I couldn’t make eye-contact with him to tell him not to play with it. 

The best part of the program came when they started playing the intro to his favorite primary song "I love to see the temple" he looked and me and said in a  surprisingly loud voice "Mom, it’s my favorite song!"  then he proceeded to yell the words of the song as loud as he possibly could.  I laughed so hard that I cried and everyone I looked at was laughing too.  He yelled so loud, that you could hear him clearly above all the other children’s voices.  For the rest of the songs I only heard him yell an occasional word because he only knew parts of the other songs.  He yelled most of the first verse of "I am a child of God," but he didn’t yell that one as loud.

Posted in Kids

The Singeing

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Well, it’s come time to blog about the event that family insiders 10.20.08 Zach's singed hair (3)-1have referred to as "the singing."  You’ll have to ask Zach for more details if my description is lacking, but here’s how it happed from my perspective.  Zach was starting up the gas grill on Monday night as I was playing with the kids in the backyard and he came around the corner saying something about losing an eyebrow.  He was laughing when I looked up to behold a spectacle of singeing expertise.  He must have leaned over to see why the grill wasn’t lighting only to be surprised with an explosion of fire which singed his eyebrows, eyelashes and hair.  Check out more pictures here.  I can only hope that this event is recorded in the family history as the time I ran out of gas on I-15 and had to call for help was recorded and perhaps it will overshadow the day my hair caught on fire as I was blowing out my birthday candles.

Posted in General

When the weather is nice . . .

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10.20.08 Isaac and Charlotte (2)I just love to be outside with my kids.  I can’t stand to be outside when it’s too hot so there are probably months in the summer when I don’t take the kids outside at all, but on days when it’s nice, I just can’t stay in.  These are the days I neglect all my housework and spend as much time as I can outside.  We started our day with a wagon/bicycle ride to the local old folks home where we participated in a Monday RS meeting program, then we 10.20.08 Charlotte and Makenna (3)rode home, did a few chores then it was back outside for a picnic and play.  We invited the neighbors over to join us.  Charlotte had much fun playing ‘ring-around-the-rosie" with Makenna.  they’d fall down before finishing the song and then kick their feet in the air and laugh.  After a haircut and a trip to the grocery store we spent some time outside at Grandma Cochran’s house (beware an upcoming blog involving a gas grill and someone’s hair!) 

Posted in Friends, Kids

Time to Cry

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When Isaac was 6 months old the Doctor asked me if he was sleeping through the night.  When I told him ‘no’ he advised me to just let him cry when he woke up in the  night.  The first two nights were horrible and he cried and cried, but after getting up 4-5 times a night for six months, I was ready for sleep and thus willing to give it a fair shot.  10.9.08 Nicole TV-1The third night he slept all the way through and has not had a significant issue with sleep since.  I think there were a few times he cried in the night after that where we had to let him cry himself back to sleep.  I tell myself that this is not just me selfishly ensuring my sleep, but that it’s also good for the kid to learn to put himself/herself back to sleep on his/her own.  Nicole is not quite six months old, but I’m sitting here at my computer listening to her cry and watching her on my baby monitor–I’m ready for full nights of sleep, sorry Nicole.  At least she’s not crying as long as Isaac before falling asleep and I can actually see her little face to make sure she’s ok.  (I purchased a neat little camera earlier this year which is hooked up to my TV so I can see her, it’s even got great night vision, the pic above is with no lights on, click here to see a pic with some lights on).  Perhaps making all the sleep hyperlinks helped, because now she’s sleeping peacefully.

Posted in Kids

Bad Hair Day

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P1030709-1 Charlotte woke up one morning with particularly bad hair.  I honestly didn’t tease it or do anything to make it look worse, she just woke up with her hair looking like this and when I saw it I was amused and had to take a picture and today when I saw the picture I decided that it was hair worthy of a blog post!  It actually looks much like my hair looked after giving birth to Isaac.  You can check out another great angle by clicking here to see the other picture on flickr.

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My Little Guinea Pig

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Nicole participated in a study on Thursday at the BYU infant development lab.  image0-1They’re studying different auditory-visual responses in 5 month olds.  Nicole’s test involved wearing this lovely electrode hat and watching a video.  She did rather well and proved to have a good attention span, but was not well pleased when they placed the wet electrodes on her head.  She began to squirm, but resisted the urge to cry.  Personally, I think this picture reminds me of the old days when my mother would give me a perm at home.   It reminds me of the way one looks with perm rods in one’s hair.

Posted in Kids
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