Games children play

We got the kids a Wii for Christmas, and it has provided them hours and hours of entertainment and distraction from homework and chores.

The children have come up with a new game of their own! This seems to be their favorite game, and if I had known earlier how well they played this game and how much they enjoy this game, we might not have bothered with the Wii.

What game is this you ask? I will tell you that it requires much skill, a steady hand and an eye for balancing things.

It is the ever popular game called The Stacking Game!

I'm sure you are just dying to know how to play this game aren't you?

Well, here's how to play!!!

The object of the game is to see how much garbage can be stacked in the garbage can and/or how many dirty dishes can be stacked in the sink before someone else takes out the garbage and/or loads the dishwasher!!

Hours and hours of fun for all!!!

I have to admit that at times it can be quite suspenseful, watching the garbage bag stretch almost to the point of breaking, and seeing the precariously placed glass on top of the stack of tupperware, wondering what the last item placed on the pile will be to finally make it topple.......

I am amazed at how good the offspring are at playing this particular game!

There's got to be some sort of career out there where they can use this amazing skill. Someday I hope it will make them all rich and/or famous!

Safety rule #1 - Do not run around with a garbage can over your head

I took Brielle, Aaron and Max to IKEA today. The boys saw some garbage cans for $1.99 and decided that they each needed a garbage can for their rooms.

As soon as we got home and brought our purchases in the house, they created a new game called "Put the garbage can over your head and walk around bumping into things."

I warned them that this could be potentially dangerous and they should take the garbage cans off of their heads before someone got hurt.

I mentioned this several times.

They ignored me, and this game was great fun until Max bumped into Aaron and he fell over.

"HEY! THAT HURTED!" He screamed as he sat on the floor rubbing his head.

I pointed out to him that this was the very reason that I suggested that they not play this game, but naturally, a few minutes later, they had the garbage cans back on their heads, bumping into things again.

Soon they had another collision, this time sending Aaron's can off of his head and landing on my bare foot.

"OUCH!" I yelled.

Max looked at me and said calmly "Um.....yeah.......I bet that really hurted."

Point well taken

We've recently discovered that Max has an extreme fondness for hot chocolate. Last year we tried to give him some, but he saw the other kids stirring theirs with a spoon and he decided that he wanted to stir it too, but since he had the coordination of a three year it became very messy and we decided that he shouldn't have any more.

This year, Brielle discovered the magic known as the straw. Max will sit and sip his hot (it's actually just barely warm) chocolate through the straw.

He loves it!

We've also discovered that the kid will do anything for hot chocolate.

ANYTHING!

And yes, I'm going to use that little piece of information for as long as it lasts.

Last night I told Max that if he went and got his pajamas on right then, I would give him a cup of hot chocolate.

He was very excited and ran into his room.

A while later, I heard him playing in his room and walked in to find him still in his clothes, and his pajamas still sitting empty on his bed.

"Hey" I said "I thought you were going to put your pajamas on?"

He smiles at me and says "I'm going to do it in a minute."

A while later, I went back to see him still playing with his blocks.

"Max, it's almost your bedtime, please get your pajamas on!"

"OK mom, I'm doing it in a minute."

After about 20 minutes, he came walking into the family room, still dressed in his clothes.

I said "Max, go get your pajamas on now!"

He went back into his room and emerged a while later wearing his pajamas. "I'm ready for my hot chocolate now."

"No Max, I said you could have hot chocolate if you got in your pajamas quickly, but it took you a long time."

"But I said I would do it in a minute!"

"You took way more than a minute, a minute is only a short amount of time."

And then he says to me,

"When YOU say "in a minute," it always takes a really long time!"

Point well taken.

(Don't you hate it when things that you say to your kids come back later to bite you in the butt?)

Max quote of the day:

"If it gets snow on it, does garbage change to garbage juice?"

Kitchen quandary

Yesterday I spent a great deal of time deep cleaning my kitchen. I have come to the conclusion that there are only two ways to keep my kitchen clean.

#1. Follow everyone around, cleaning up after them as they go.

#2. Stop cooking and don't ever allow anyone to go into the kitchen again.

Scientific experiments?

First of all, I need to give a disclaimer for this post. I have spent the last several weeks with quite a bit of work for my business. This is a good thing, however, as I mentioned in my previous post, sometimes a few things around the house will not get done when I am this busy.

Like one of my all time favorite activities........

Cleaning out the fridge.

At this time, I would like to acknowledge Suburban Correspondent who faithfully cleans out her refrigerator every week and then posts pictures of her finds. She is the brave pioneer of posting leftovers, so since I am kind of copying her idea, I will give her the all the credit for this.

I, however, will not be posting pictures.

You're welcome.

Today I cleaned out the refrigerator. I chose today because tomorrow is garbage day and it just seemed appropriate to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we won't be eating.

During this ordeal, I learned many valuable things.

#1. Somebody in our house really likes pickles, specifically the sandwich stacker variety. I found 5 jars of these in the fridge, two brand new, never been opened, two half full of pickles and one with a small half slice of pickle floating around in the pickle juice.

The thing is, I don't like pickles on sandwiches or hamburgers. If I did like them, then I'm quite sure that there wouldn't be that many jars in the fridge. Still, I don't understand why we just can't finish off one jar before purchasing another.

#2. If a bowl of lettuce is pushed to the back of the refrigerator and forgotten long enough, it will completely liquify.

#3. No matter how many times you tell a 4 year old that fuzzy things are cute, he will not fall in love with the leftover casserole that was found under the sour cream on the bottom shelf.

#4. You can most definitely tell when sour cream has gone bad.

#5. Anything left in the bottom drawers and shelf of my refrigerator will freeze. I have adjusted the temperature multiple times and I still end up with frozen celery and lettuce.

#6. For some reason, even though I know we won't eat the leftovers, I will still put them in the refrigerator anyway because I don't like wasting food. I guess that if you wait long enough for food to go bad, it can then be thrown away because throwing away bad food is not wasteful.

#7. My kids only like the top 1/3 of a bottle of water. (I didn't even count how many partially consumed bottles of water I removed from the refrigerator. I do know that three were in the bottom drawer because they were completely frozen)

#8. We have way too many condiments.

#9. Announcing to everyone that the refrigerator will be cleaned out will allow some serious quiet time for mom.

#10. I finally found where I stored all of my missing storage bowls.

Anyway, at this time, my refrigerator is all cleaned out! I now have room for more leftovers.

I guess that means that I have to cook doesn't it?

Three year olds are random

Tuesday is our garbage day and Max's favorite day of the week. I need to open the blinds in Max's room and make sure there is a chair in front of the window for him to stand on. A few weeks ago, I forgot to open the blinds, and we heard the garbage truck on our street. Then I heard Max screaming in his room "IT'S NOT OPEN! IT'S NOT OPEN! OPEN IT! OPEN IT! OPEN IT!!!!!!!!"
I ran in the room, opened the blinds and lifted Max on the chair just in time for him to see the garbage truck. His little heart was beating about 280 beats a minute.
Last week he discovered that if he looked out the kitchen window, he could see the garbage truck on the street behind us.

I've never seen him so happy.

Each day, Max takes his cars and big blocks and puts three of them in front of every door in our house as well as the couch and chairs and refrigerator and dishwasher and filing cabinet and.................well, you get the idea. We have blocks and cars all over the floor.
These aren't ordinary blocks and cars, however, they are "garbage cans." Max crawls on the floor and stops at each grouping of garbage cans, picks one up, lifts it over his head and dumps it then returns it to it's original place. Then he lifts a second one over his head and dumps it, puts it back then moves on to the next pile.
He went around the room doing this and finally I asked him why he was only picking up two of the three blocks/cars (excuse me, "garbage cans") and leaving the third one there.
He looked at me like I was a complete idiot and said "Because I'm the garbage truck and those are also the recycle cans. With I come back later and be the recycle truck and get the recycle cans"

I stand corrected.

Silly me, I don't know why I couldn't tell those were recycle cans.

Aaron and Brielle are now off track from school and won't go back until January. This means that Max has two friends to play with, who NEVER annoy or tease him.
Several times yesterday, we accidently bumped or kicked one of his rows of cars/blocks, and this brought Max running from whatever far corner of the house that he was collecting garbage "NO! NO! NO! YOU ALSO LEAVE THE GARBAGE CANS ALONE!! YOU NOT MESS THEM UP!!!!" Then he would very carefully line them back up in the proper place, and his heart rate would return to normal, until the next time that one of the kids would move them, then it would start all over again.

Multiple times.

Each day.




Yesterday we had Christmas music playing on the radio all day. When it was time to get Max ready to go to preschool, I asked him to come into the bathroom to get his hair combed. He stood outside the door, shaking his hips to the music and said "I can't. I'm dancin' "
I said "Do you think you could come dance in the bathroom so I can comb your hair?"
"Nope" Max said as he boogied away "I'm still dancin'."

He went to school with messy hair.

When we picked him up from school, I asked him what he did in school (as I do every time I pick him up) he said "We got to watch room five's Christmas program, and they also watched our program."
"How fun!" I said "What kind of songs did room five sing?"
And Max replies "They singed too much songs!"



Last night we attended CJ's band concert (which by the way was fabulous! The band is great) Max did pretty well at the concert, but we got home later than his bed time, and he'd had it. We decided to have some ice cream as a treat, but only after everyone had their pajamas on.
Apparently, Max didn't feel the need to put his pajamas on but still expected to get ice cream. He threw such a fit that he got put in time out.
I won't go into great detail, but eventually he got the pajamas on, but he didn't get his bowl of ice cream until after everyone else had finished theirs, and he was sad.
I hugged him and we talked about it."Max" I said "the reason you didn't get your ice cream sooner is because you were having some issues with pajamas." and Max says "I not did! I have issues tomorrow!"
(Yes, I'm looking forward to his "issues" today)

In the end, he took one bite of ice cream then decided that he would rather have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Imaginations run wild and the power of a cookie

A few nights ago as I was getting Max ready for bed, he started wincing and grabbed his elbow. He was quite agitated and kept looking at his bedroom door and saying "Oh no! Oh no!"

Me: "What's wrong Max?"
Max: "The monsters are also
getting me!"
Me: "Max, there aren't any monsters here."
Max: "Yes there are! Big scary monsters!"
Me: "What color are they?"
Max: "Purple!"
Me: "Well then you don't need to worry, purple monsters are nice, it's the green monsters that are mean."
Max: "THEY'RE GREEN! THEY'RE GREEN! THEY'RE ALSO GREEN!"

I reach into my pocket, take out an imaginary can of monster repellent and hand it to Max.
"Here Max, spray this on the monsters and they will go away."

Max has had the monster repellent in his pocket for the last few days. Periodically we will hear "Psssssssssssss" as Max is spraying the imaginary monster repellent on the monsters.
Or on his siblings if thy start to bug him too much.

Tonight as I was helping Max into his pajamas, the monsters returned.

Max: "They're getting me! They're getting me! The monsters are also getting me! Now they're also getting our garbage! The monsters are getting into our garbage cans! The monsters are eating our garbage!"
Me: "Well Max, if they get in those big cans and start eating our garbage, the lids will close on them and they won't be able to get out, then Tuesday on garbage day the garbage truck will come and take away the monsters and they will never bother you again."
Max: "Will the green monsters go in the recycle can and will the purple monsters also go in the blue garbage can?"

I told him yes because the recycle can sounded like an appropriate place for the "green" monster.

Then Max said "What day is it today? Is it also Saturday?"
I decide to tease him a bit and I say "No, I think it's Valentines day."
Max: "No, it's also Saturday."
Me: "Or maybe it's President's day."
Max: "NO! It's Saturday!"
Me: "Or possibly St. Patrick's day?"
Max: "NO! It's also SAT. UR. DAY!"
Me: "Memorial day, that's it, I'm pretty sure it's Memorial day."
Max: "NO! With it not also be that! School is closed today! It's Saturday!"
Me: "School IS closed on Memorial Day. I'm pretty sure it's Memorial day."

I could tell I was about to cross the line as Max started to say "NO! IT ALSO IS SATURDAY!"

I said "Hey Max, do you want a cookie?"

Max stops for a moment, immediately calms down and says "OK."

Chocolate chip cookies. The bringer of peace.