week ending aug 26, 2007:

Conversations with the kids are sometimes interesting and unexpected. On Sunday while we were on our Chincoteague trip Chloe said “I wish we could stay here with Miss Sue and Mr Roger forever.” I said wouldn’t she miss living next door to Pops and Becky and living close to Grammy Carole and Grammy Barb and Natalie? She said “yeah, but they’d live in my heart”. Before I could respond, she went on to say, “Like Great PopPop does. Why’d he have to go to heaven?” I said “because he lived a long time and his time on earth was done”. She responded in that whiny-pouty voice that little girls use when they aren’t getting their way and she said “I wish there could be another Great PopPop!” I guess she believes me that we can’t have Great PopPop back, so she’s trying another tactic by wishing for another Great PopPop.

Earlier in the week we had a surprising conversation with Alex also. The kids typically say “Mom I wish…” and they come up with the craziest stuff. For instance one time Chloe said “Mom, I wish you had 6 hands”. My typical response is “what would it be like if… ?”, in this case “what would it be like if I had 6 hands?” figuring she had some selfish motivation like if I had 6 hands I could help her get her baby doll dressed at the same time that I made her a sandwich. But, her actual response was “If you had 6 hands, you’d have to have a lot of gloves”. The conversation with Alex this week started when Casey asked him what he was doing. Alex said “I’m praying to God for more family”. So I came back with “what would you do with more family?” and he said “I would hug them and show them my bouncy ball”. We never did get to the bottom of why he wanted more family, whether he was lonely or if it was just one of those crazy things that popped into his head like Mommy having 6 hands, but it surprised me to find him praying to God on his own.

We’re making the most of the end of our summer time. We took the kids to the carnival (between rain storms), and I took the kids to the Science Center. At the carnival Chloe loved the parachute ride (that went so fast I wanted to get OFF), and Alex loved the helicopters. At the Science Center they both got brave this time and tried lying on the bed of nails instead of just watching other kids do it. It was all they could talk about for a couple days. The picture this week is off the mess the kids made when I told them they could play with the packing peanuts that came with a part for Daddy’s boat. I was making dinner at the time, so I didn’t realize exactly how much of a mess they were making, all I knew was that they were blissfully entertained for quite a while. After dinner (and before the carnival) they cleaned the whole mess up, so I guess it was a learning experience. If you make a big mess you’ve got to spend a long time cleaning it up!