Overheard: Cracked

Tanner: "Hey Mom, I'm in that room in the front. (the formal living room) What do we call that room? The other play room? Anyways, I'm in that other play room teaching myself cartwheels!"

Me: "Oh, that sounds a little dangerous."

Sydney: (perking up) "Yeah, that sounds dangerous. I want to come!"

Tanner: "This is hard stuff, Sydney. You might really crack your head."

Sydney: "Okay. Let's go!"

I am always amused by the kids' sense of time. Tanner will say things like, "Remember when we saw that frog yester-night?" or Riley will say "Did we go to the pool laster-day?" And Bailey thinks that everything happened last year. She'll say things like, "Oh, yeah. We went to the park laster year when I was two" when in actuality we went to the park last week when she was three.

So I guess time really is relative. It goes way too fast for me, but lately the days are dragging for poor Tanner, who has been anxious for his birthday since the girls had their party in April! He has said to me several times over the past few months, "Isn't it August for my birthday yet?!? I've been SO patient!" We kept telling him (for months now) that he had to wait for May to be over and then June and then in July we'd see fireworks and then shortly after that it would be his birthday. So he woke up today and said, "I'm so excited! Today is my birthday!!!" Huh? We finally figured out that he thought it was his birthday literally the day after he saw fireworks. We tried to explain to him that it's still July and that his birthday isn't until August, but he was insistent that August is today. Poor kid! It's going to be a loooooong few weeks for him!

Speaking of Tanner's birthday, I've had this whole pirate birthday party idea planned out for him since like January, and he gets so excited about it. I told him we are going to dig for buried treasure in the sand box and do a pirate scavenger hunt and then "walk the plank", which he has translated into a "pirate walk" somehow. (He insists that we are all going to put on our pirate outfits and hold hands and walk around the block. In mid-August. In pirate garb. Uh, I don't think so.) But he tells everybody we meet about his pirate party and recently invited the dental hygenist who cleaned his teeth to come! She was so cute with him and said she'd love to go because she only has daughters so she never gets to go to pirate stuff, and- I swear- Tanner waggled his eyebrows, batted his lashes, and said, "Bring your girls, too!" (Like, hey baby, what's your sign? Why don't you bring some friends along with you to my party?) What a player!

Scripture study with the kids is interesting lately. We do a "little kid" scripture and then put the four youngest down and do a "big kid" scripture with just Carter and Taylor. The little kid scripture is generally something simple that they all repeat after us like, "Jesus says, love one another" or (my favorite) "Jesus says, honor your father and mother." We have a little scripture/prayer wheel and when it was Tanner's turn to pick the scripture he asked, "How about we do a scripture about Monster Trucks?" When this request was denied, he acquiesced, "Okay, then let's just do a scripture about Transformers."

Following suit, last night Bailey wanted to do a "pretty princess scripture." When we tried to re-direct her efforts, she put her little hands on her hips and said, "I either want a princess scripture or a flower scripture. The end!"

As for prayers, Riley's still take the cake. She says stuff like, "Thank you that we could eat little yummy goldfish, and thank you that my sore neck is feeling all better, and thank you that I can have lots and lots of beautiful crayons... etc. etc. etc." We have to prompt her to finish, or it could go on for hours, which is hilarious considering that she's our "quiet one."