Fold My Laundry Please

My daughter has become quite the chatter-box lately.  She walks around all day long singing songs, telling stories, holding conversations, and, sometimes, berating us.  Most of what I can interpret is talk about ponies (her latest obsession) and her Bunny Baby.  But a lot of it is still hard for me to figure out.  Fortunately for me, she rather likes the sound of her own voice, and so doesn’t seem to mind that I understand less than half of what she says.  

But now I know why I don’t understand what she’s saying.  Sure, there’s the toddlerese aspect to her speech patterns that make it difficult to get.  But she walked past me the other day and said, "Ni-hao, Mommy!"  And suddenly it clicked.  Chinese.  She’s been speaking Chinese.  Other words that I had assumed to be toddlerisms began to come clear to me.  Zai-jian (goodbye).  YeYe (grandpa).  Ping-guo (apple).  The list goes on.

You see, Aurora has become a big fan of "Ni-Hao, Kai-lan" on Nick Jr.  She knows how to hop on the computer and find the Nick Jr. website all by herself and she watches episode after episode of Kai-lan, YeYe, and her little friends Tolee, Hoho, and Rintoo.  I sat down and watched a few episodes with her.  It’s kind of like a Chinese version of Dora the Explorer.  Only cuter.

That reminds me.  She also speaks Spanish.  

Gracias, Dora. 

And so because of television, my 2 (almost 3) year old is multi-lingual.

And because of singing time with Mommy, she also walks around singing this song.

Viva la semi-educational television! 

Do I make you feel like dancing?  Good!  Because I still haven’t gotten your video for our Dancing People Video Project!  Or whatever I end up naming it.  Just send your video to foldmylaundryplease@gmail.com by July 20th and put the words, "Where On Earth", in the subject line.  Don’t make me go to your house and film you myself!  Dance like no one’s watching indeed! 

Donde esta el amor?

Before our second child was born, Andrew and I spent a lot of time throwing name ideas at each other.  Our conversations on the topic went something like this:

"How about Manheim?"

"Uhhh, no.  How about Frederick?"

"Hahahaha!  No."

It wasn’t until we were reading our scriptures one night and came to the Book of Judges (Old Testament) chapters 6 and 7 that we saw the name Gideon.  Something sparked and we knew it was THE name.  We had varied reactions from people when they heard our choice of names, from the not-so-subtle, "Well that’s…..unique.", to the enthusiastic, "What a fantastic name!"  But it didn’t matter what anyone else thought, our boy hadn’t even been born yet and we knew his name was definitely Gideon.  When we looked up the name in the baby book, it said that Gideon means "warrior".  Now that we’ve had some time to get to know his personality, it’s as though this name was invented just for him.  Warrior is putting it mildly!

So today in church we listened to a youth speaker.  She stood up to the podium and nervously adjusted the microphone.  "Today I would like to talk to you about my favorite prophet.  Gideon."

As soon as she said that, my little warrior looked at me, his eyes opened wide with wonder, and asked me, "I’m a prophet, too?"

Then he looked at his feet, shook his head and said to himself, "I am REALLY busy!" 

Humor-Blogs.com is more interested in profits than prophets! 

Gideon:  You have to give me your candy.

Aurora:  No way, dude.

Gideon:  Yes.  I need to eat it.

Aurora:  No way, dude!

Gideon:  Okay, new rule.  When you say, "No way, dude!" it means you are saying, "Yes."  Now give me your candy.

Aurora:  No way dude!

Gideon:  *takes candy* Thank you!

Aurora:  *roaring and tearing candy out of Gideon’s hands* NO!  WAY!  DUDE!

Humor-Blogs.com never takes no for an answer.

Is there anything more frustrating than having written a long post and happily going to hit publish, but inexplicably closing the window instead?  Wait!  There is something more frustrating!  Realizing, as your efforts disappear from sight, that you ignored your better instinct when it repeatedly whispered, "Make sure you’re saving your progress."  *sigh*  So there was supposed to be a wonderful post for you to read today, but I’m retarded.  And trust me, it was hilarious.  You’re really missing out.

So intead,  I’ll share a cute story about Gideon from this morning.

I was going about my morning business when Gideon bounced over to me.  "Mommy!  Mommy!  Come see what I did!"

"What is it, love?"

"Look!"

He had been playing with the magnetic letters and numbers on our dishwasher and had put several numbers in order.

"See, Mommy?  I know my numbers!"

I saw that he had put them in the correct order and was properly impressed.  We are missing a few numbers  from our set and he had even found suitable substitutes from the letters, so the sequence went something like "1S3456ED".  "Good job, dude!  Can you tell me what numbers those are?"

He pointed at each letter with his cute chubby little fingers as he named each one.  "One, two, three, four, five, six…and these two are my level 14 blood elf and my level 8 orc."

I’m thinking maybe I need to cut back on the computer time a little bit.

We were all sitting at the dinner table the other night, eating a yummy meal and talking with Ethan about what he’s doing in school.  The discussion went on for most of the meal until a certain nameless little girl stood up in her chair, waved her arms wildly in the air, and screamed, "MEEEEEEEEEEE!" at the top of her lungs!  Needless to say, discussion stopped and all eyes turned towards Aurora (oops, she was supposed to be nameless, wasn’t she?) whereupon she flashed a big smile and stood there twisting back and forth.  Apparently, there is a time limit for activities not involving my daughter!  I feel sorry for the man who decides he wants to marry her someday.  She seems to be a tad bit high maintenance!

I think the thing that bothers me the most about Ethan being at school, is that I have absolutely no idea what happens while he’s there.  When I picked Ethan up from school this afternoon, I waited just long enough for him to get buckled up before I began my regular interrogation.

Me:  How was school today?

Ethan:  Good.

Me:  What fun, fascinating things did you do today?

Ethan:  Nothing.  It was all boring stuff.

Me:  Oookay.  So what boring things did you do today?

Ethan:  The usual stuff.  We learned how to fix lights, how to take down old signs and put up new ones, and how to clean toilets.

Me:  How to clean toilets?

Ethan:  Yeah.  But I already forgot how.

As the Church Lady would say, "Isn’t that conveeeenient?"

Last night, Andrew and I sat down to watch the movie, "Across the Universe".  It was really pretty good.  It was an artsy type of movie chock full of psychedelic imagery and Beatles songs.  It was enjoyable and disturbing at the same time.  I would definitely recommend checking it out, if only for the music.  And for Bono, who plays Dr. Roberts, because Bono is one of the coolest people in the world!  I do want to point out that this movie does have quite a bit of nudity and images of drug use and that it is rated PG-13 because of this; so if you’re a sensitive movie watcher, you might want to skip this one.

We watched this movie while the kids were still up and Ethan ended up parked next to us throughout much of it.  He kept asking questions like, "Why are they doing that?" and, "How come it the pictures are so weird looking?"  All of this prompted a discussion about making bad decisions in life and about the harmful aspects of drug use.  You know, one of those discussions you shouldn’t have to have with a 6 year old.  Finally he was quiet for a long while, watching the movie.  But he had one more question before the film was done.

"Is there a test to become an adult?"

You know, there probably should be.

Ethan got a little digital camera over the summer.  It doesn’t take great pictures, but he buzzes around with it all over the place, snapping away.  The excitement of Christmas has gotten to him and he has spent the day documenting our decorations.  His favorite thing to do has been to get up close and personal with our Christmas ornaments on the tree.  He says things like, "I’m trying to take a picture of my reflection in this ornament," and, "You can use these pictures on your blog if you want." 

Since I have his permission…

We seem to have a lot of red on the tree this year!

Aurora was walking around with a toy phone pressed to her ear chit chatting away with people.  She would pick it up, say, "Hello?", nod her head a few times and say, "Uh-huh", and then say goodbye and set it down.  She did this over and over again, because she is very popular and has many invisible friends.  Either that or one very, very needy invisible friend.  After doing this a few times, she decided to get proactive and make her own phone call. 

"’Lo?  Sanclaus?  Me.  TOYS!!!!  MEEEE!!!!  K, lubyou, bye!"

All the children had been put into their jammies and were waiting for me to finish changing Aubrey’s diaper so that we could all go to bed.  Ethan and I were reciting nursery rhymes to Aubrey to keep her still during the change.  After a rousing round of Hickory Dickory Dock, we had this conversation:

Ethan:  My teacher knows how to do her hands for Hickory Dickory Dock. 

Me:  There’s hand movements for that one?

Ethan:  Yep.  And my teacher knows them all.

Me:  Impressive.  She sure must know a lot of things.

Ethan:  Yes.  She’s a little bit smarter than you.

Me:  Oh, really?

Ethan:  Yeah, but you’re a whole bunch smarter than she is.

Me:  Nice save young man.

Ethan:  My teacher has a little baby, too.  Just like we do.

Me:  Is that so?

Ethan:  She brought her baby to school one day for show and tell.  My teacher does a show and tell every week just like I do.

Me:  That’s nice that she shares something about herself with you guys.

Ethan:  We always have to put our show and tell things in the sharing basket during class, but don’t worry, Mrs. Teacher didn’t put her baby in there!