Heard Around The House

Cole: "I know how to make a chicken bomb! You take a roast chicken, and put some dynamite inside..."

Sorry, folks. He walked out of the kitchen after that. You'll have to imagine the ending on your own.

Still Learning Tact

Reuben: "Mom, it's after lunch, can we eat one of our candies?"

Mama: "Can you wait for a little bit please?"

Reuben: "Why?"

Mama: "Because Sean really needs to have a nap today, and it will be easier for me to get him into bed if you and the boys haven't pulled your candy bags out. So wait for just a few minutes and I will put him down, and then you may have a candy."

Reuben goes downstairs to play; he and Sean are swinging on the rope.

Overheard:
Reuben: "Seanie! Go see Mama! She wants to give you ICE CREAM!"

Mama: "Reuben, come here right this minute please."

Reuben (tromping up the stairs): "What?"

Mama: "DO NOT tell Sean I am giving him ice cream, you know that is not true! You are telling Seanie a LIE. Do you know what happens if you tell lies?"

Reuben: "I get into trouble."

Mama: "You get into BIG trouble. Lying is not permitted in this house. Do not do that again, please."

Reuben goes back downstairs.

Overheard:
Reuben (in his best sing-songy voice): "Seanie! Go see Mama! It is NAPTIME! Well, I mean, not for all of us. JUST you. It is just naptime for you. You are going to go to bed and then all of us are going to EAT CANDY!"

Mama: "Reuben, will you come back up here please..."

Lunch Conversation

Cole: "So, Mom, how do staffs work, anyway?"

Mama: "What do you mean? What kind of staffs?"

Cole: "You know. The ones with crystal balls on top. I mean, I know they need magic to work, but I also know the STAFFS don't have any magic inside of them--it's the guy holding it that makes it work. So if the guy is the one who has the magic, he doesn't really need the staff, right? I mean, instead of using his magic to TURN THE STAFF ON, why doesn't he just use it for whatever it was he wanted to do, anyway?"

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The calendar may have flipped to a new year, folks, but nothing much has changed around here. It's life as usual. Just in case you were wondering.

Heard Around The...Christmas Tree

Reese: "Hey-stop that right now! I'M fighting the soldier. You fight the angel!"

Heard Around The....Volvo

Pulling up outside the Bellingham Amtrak station (Reuben got to go on a REAL train ride with his daddy for his 4th birthday):

Reuben: "LOOK, Mama, a NAZI!"

Mama: "WHAT? Where?!"

Reuben: "Right over there. A Nazi, Mama, look! Right there in front of the station!"

Mama cranes her neck to look around and sees no Nazis.

Reese: "Reuben---do you mean a taxi?"

Reuben: "Yeah, Mama, a taxi! Look!"

Reubenisms

My favorite thing about three-year-olds is the way they say the most random things---with absolutely no context whatsoever. In honor of Reuben's upcoming birthday (and knowing it means he will outgrow this stage soon), here are a few I've heard lately--completely out of the blue:



"Do you want to look in my belly-button?"



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To Sean (shouting): "SING THE BARBIE SONG!"



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Running into our bedroom first thing in the morning: "I asked God to give me a dream about caterpillars, but He didn't. He gave me a dream about bees."



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Crawling into bed, whispering: "God, I don't want to have any dreams. Don't give me any, okay?"



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"Ella has nice teeth."



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"I'm a human."



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(holding a cup of water): "I am NACHO LIBRE. Remember? He has water?"



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"When I was a baby, what did you call me?" ("We called you Reuben.") "OH."

Next day, looking worried: "When Ari is all growed up, what will we call HIM?!" ("Ari.") "Oh."



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Wide-eyed, walking out of the bathroom wearing only a teeshirt: "I'm 'posed to have underwear on but I don't. IT'S MAGIC!"



Reese (bored): "You peed them dead."



Reuben: "No, I didn't."


Reese (moving on to something better): "You shot them right off."



Reuben: "No!" Runs back into bathroom and emerges holding the elusive spiderman pants.


"Here them is! THEY WERE IN THE BATHROOM!"

When Daddy Cooks Breakfast

Cole says: "This tastes halfway like heaven. I think that heaven will be just like earth, but with different colors and missing some things."

Mama: "Oh yeah? Like what?"

Cole: "What do you want to know about? The colors, or the missing?"

Mama: "The missing."

Cole: "Well, I don't think there will be any ambulances, or fire engines, or police cars."

Mama: "That's probably true. But what do you think heaven will be like? Do you think there will be foods there that you have never seen before?"

Cole: "You mean like MOON CHEESE?!"

Heard Around The....Volvo

Oh, the things one can hear on an innocent drive around town.

Are you ready for this?

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Reese: "Hey Cole? When our new chickens die, do you think we will bury them in the same place as the old chickens?"


Cole: "Well, here's what I'm thinking." (Mama is cringing.) "I love them SOOO much, and I think they're SOOO pretty....how about if we cut off their heads, and keep them? You know, like in a glass box? With their eyes open?"

Heard Around The House--Thomas The Tank Engine version

Mama and Reuben are sitting on the couch (yes, other posts have started this way). Enter loud, scary tooty sound.

Mama: "Reuben! What do you say?"

Reuben: "Toot toot! TIME TO LEAVE THE STATION!"

Heard Around The House (the Who Are You version)

Cole: "You know, Reese, sometimes I can't tell if you are Cole or Reese."

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Reese (sigh): "Cole, do you know what I wish I was?"
Cole: "What?"
Reese: "Human."

Baby, Daddy, Fat, Old

Our breakfast conversation this morning:

Reese: "So Mom, does it go: 'Baby, Daddy, Fat, Old'?"

Mama: "Excuse me?"

Reese: "Does it go 'Baby, Daddy, Fat, Old'?" (I love how they always repeat it verbatim...as though there is a CHANCE I might have the slightest idea what they're referencing)

Mama: "I'm sorry, Baby, I don't know what you're asking."

Cole (desperate to help): "You know, Mom, like living? Like the way we live? We start out as babies....then turn into kids....then daddies" (DOT DOT DOT)

Reese: "Then it goes to that other stuff...right?"

Now how would you have answered this question?

Belated

Around here we are

Finally home from our 8-day Thanksgiving
Finally healing
Finally beautifying the breakfast nook/homework table
Finally (already?!) digging through the Christmas decorations
Finally digging through the photographs of Reubsy's third birthday to share

so until the next installment, here's a fun conversation from yesterday:

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Cole: "Mom, all I want you to make me is broccoli and carrots, for the rest of my life."

Mama (proud and scared): "Oh? Why is that?" (cringing)

Cole: "Well, because broccoli makes big toots, and Olivia says that carrots make you see in the dark. So then I could see big toots in the dark."

Reese: "Me, me too!"

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Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

Heard Around The House....TODAY

Cole: "Mom, I think you get more wrinkles every day."

Reese: "Ow, I just hit myself in the sperm!"

Reuben: "Mine tea brown just like a toot-toot!"

It's not altogether a bad thing that Sean hasn't learned to talk yet.

Heard Around The House

Mama: "If you put the clean dishes on your head, they're not clean anymore."

Cole: "I'm just like an orphan!"

Daddy: "....I'm thinking of making it my new profession, actually. I'm sure organized crime needs Project Managers..."

(Typical) Conversation With Reuben

Mama and Reuben are sitting on the couch. Enter loud, scary tooty sound.

Mama: "Reuben, what was THAT?!"

Reuben: "I do it BIG ONE POOPIES!"

Mama (laughing): "No, you didn't do 'big one poopies'. What was that noise?"

Reuben (deadpan): "Reese."

Mama: "No! It wasn't Reese. What was that noise, Reubsy?"

Reuben (rolling his eyes, pointing to the sky): "Umm......rocket ship?"

Have I mentioned yet how much I L*O*V*E two-year-olds?

Heard Around The House

Cole: "Reese, did you know that you are an animal?"

Reese: "A what? An animal?"

Cole: "Yup. And do you know what kind of animal you are?"

Reese (thinking): "Umm....an octopus?"

Cole: "No. A person."

Heard Around The House

Cole: "I just love to close my eyes. Then I can daydream all I want about Indiana Jones."



Reese: "Reuben, are you a Nazi?"

Meatballs Revisited

Last week I took the boys to the outdoor market and we LOADED UP on every type of fruit and veggie (see previous post for reference to my recent produce addiction). Out of everything we bought, the one thing that we couldn't WAIT to dive into was a perfect little half-pint of perfectly tart blackberries. (Don't your cheeks hurt just thinking about them?) I could hardly get us all buckled into the Volvo before cracking open that little plastic box. Trying desperately to save some for Daddy, who was at home working on the computer, I carefully rationed out 6 berries per hungry mouth and we were on our way. Soon, I hear Cole:

"I'm saving two."

Reese: "I'm saving three."

Cole, frantic: "I'm saving four..."

I peek in the rearview and see the two boys looking at the little berries in their hands, at each other, and back at their berries. Finally Cole, in an act of desperation, blurts out, "Oh, Reese, we can't play Midnight Meatball anymore, remember? Let's just eat them, okay? I'm going to eat mine, are you going to eat yours? Let's just eat them."

Reese: "Okay."

Wowza. Can you just imagine what those little berries would have looked like hidden under the pillows?

Heard Around The House

"I don't like babies. Reuben is still a baby. Well, Sean is a baby, and I like him.....but I don't like other babies." --Reese, age 4

Today

Today, when I was putting Reese down for a nap, I found a meatball under his pillow.

A meatball.

Under his pillow.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you hear the conversation that followed.

Me: "Reese, you can't have meatballs down here."

Reese: "But Cole has one."

Me: "He does? Where?"

Reese: "Under his bed."

Me: "Will you get it for me?" (I was, after all, holding the baby. Yeesh.)

Reese climbs around under Cole's bed and rescues a perfect little meatball from the frame of the bed. A place where I would have never, never found it. He hands it to me and I trek upstairs, trying not to laugh my head off.

I walk into the living room.

Me: "Cole, I brought your meatball upstairs and it's on the kitchen counter. No more hiding food in your room, okay?"

Cole: "Well, okay. But we do usually remember it."

What?

Me: "How many other foods have you hidden down there?"

Cole: "Just one. It was a cookie."

Okay, now cookies--that I can understand. But meatballs? Reese said they named them Midnight Meatballs and were saving them until after lights out.

Today might just be my weirdest day as a mother!