Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Fun Henry Style

Henry is always making up wacky games to play with Molly. Luckily she is as weird as him and is always game. Their most recent one is playing "Being Born." This involves stuffing your head under the other person's shirt making them look pregnant. When you remove your head you have been born. P.S. This game always ends with an injury.

Fortunately Henry is not acting out how he thought childbirth happens. Two of his friend's moms are pregnant and he asked how the baby gets out. I told him the honest truth and he said "Eww, do they poop them into the toilet?"

A Blank Slate

I love the age that Henry is right now. He is very knowledgeable about the things he has been exposed to but the rest of the world is just one big unknown.

We passed an advertisement for a TV show on a subway station today. It was a picture of the actors laying in piles of styrofoam packing peanuts and only their faces were showing.

Molly declared that they were taking a bath in popcorn. Henry corrected her and told her that they were swimming in a pool of marshmallows.

More Funny Molly-isms

Recent quotes from Molly:

"What?" Said in a very snotty voice when you call her
"Relaxin!" The answer when I asked what she was doing sprawled naked on the couch
"Don't touch me!" and "Leave me alone!" Her responses when I tried to give her a hug while she was watching a show.
"No like that!" Said in response to many things that Henry does to her

You can imagine who she learned these wonderful phrases from right?

Such a Rookie Move

Molly loves to color. Loves loves loves it. I decided to go to IKEA today to buy her an easel since she loved the one at her friend's house. Why not get some paint too right? This for the child who covers herself with any marker she finds, colors on my walls...

This evening I decided to set them both up with the paint at the easel while I made dinner and unpacked the IKEA bags. Going well...why haven't I done this earlier? My poor little art deprived children.

First I notice the paint footprints on the wood floor. OK. Back to unpacking the bags and loading the new dishes in the dishwasher. Every three second "wash my hands" "wash my brush" "more paint!" Start the dinner and am interupted every 5 seconds to wipe paint from the floor or stop Molly from pouring her own paint. I look over an Molly looks like a teenage mutant ninga turtle with a swipe of paint across her face. They got paint on the refrigerator multiple times. Then the fighting starts. OK, time to pull the plug.

Dinner on the stove, kids covered in paint. Oops, can't give them a bath because I am waiting for the grocery delivery. Strip them in the kitchen and carry them to the bathroom so they don't get paint covered footprints everywhere. Swab Molly down and not noticing that Henry is smearing hand soap all over his feet and legs. Drop him into the tub to rinse his feet. Put him down on a hand towel b/c of course the bathroom is devoid of towels when you need them. Henry shouts "She's peeing on the floor!" Look down at big puddle of pee. Of course the doorbell rings at that exact second. Throw hand towel down on puddle of pee and race to get the door for the groceries. Convince children that delivery man does not need to see them naked and quarantine them to their room.

Answer door, try to put away perishables. Two naked kids, dinner on the stove, boxes of groceries everywhere, place is a mess with the packaging from the shopping. Get a diaper on Molly and Henry dresses himself. Molly is now rooting through the groceries getting her own snack. Throw 2 bananas into the monkey cage and run into the kitchen to rescue dinner.

Grab pork chops from oven and blazing pan heat goes through pot holder and I drop the pan. Oil splatters into oven dripping into fire and the stove starts shooting flames Slam door shut, turn off oven, start opening doors and windows in hallway to avoid smoke alarm going off.Smoke clears, feed Molly some dinner b/c she didn't nap and is going to bed early.

Adam walks in and of course is not hungry because he "had a big lunch" Henry refused to eat anything but a yogurt. I am as sick as a dog so I don't want to eat. Dinner goes in fridge basically uneaten except for a few toddler nibbles.

I am blaming my stupidity on the cold medicine that I am doped up on. Really that is the only explanation. Tomorrow I am going back to anesthesizing them with TV while I get things done. Really much more effective

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Wild, wild girl

I have mentioned in past posts that my daughter refuses to wear clothing. I never really believed people when they said they could not keep clothing on their child; I admit I thought they were a bit strange and ineffective parents. Well, karma is a bitch and I have a nudist for a child.

When I tell Molly she needs to put her diaper/underwear/pull-up on she looks me straight in the eye and says "No." And then she adds "Being bad!" I chase her down, wrestle some clothing on her and she is in her birthday suit again within minutes.

Today I put a king size air mattress in front of our couch and the kids had fun rolling around on it all day. This evening before bed, the kids were having a treat of some cartoons and popcorn. Molly was sprawled out on the couch (naked of course), looked at me and with the biggest grin on her face said "Eating popcorn! Watching Teeee-Veeeee!" It clearly was a highlight in her life full of trial and neglect. Adam called them in for their bath and Molly stood up on the couch (not allowed) threw her arms out and did a swan dive onto the air mattress. She stood up, dusted herself off, looked at me and said "Taking my bath!" She marched down the hall, knocked on the door and said "Knock knock...who issssss it?"

Oh Wise One

This afternoon I told Henry that we needed to go to the store to buy dishwasher detergent. He asked "What's detergent?" I said "Soap." He said "Why didn't you just say soap?"

Monday, August 16, 2010

Mr. Manners

We go to a pool in NJ almost every day. On our return we need to cross the GW Bridge. I have to go through the cash lane because I get a special carpool rate. I guess Henry is listening from his perch in the back seat.

We were crossing recently and Adam was driving. Adam must have been a bit gruff and said "Carpool rate" or something short like that. Henry piped up "Daddy, you are supposed to say Hi could we get the carpool rate please? OK Daddy?" The next time we went through and Adam had some improvement but not enough for Henry. His coaching was that Adam should start by saying "Hi!"

I'm going to feed Henry a some notes on a few other things that I'd like changed.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Tipper Gore

Molly has her own little book rating system. If I am reading something to them that is not personally approved by her, she repeatedly tries to slam the book shut while saying "Too bad!" Yesterday she deemed more than one book "Too spicy!"
People often comment at how well Henry and Molly get along. Adam and I were laughing in the car today that they are already ganging up on us, we can't imagine what it will be like when they are both fully verbal. We are afraid. Very afraid.

Last night Adam got an On Demand movie for them. There was some sort of scary character in it that Molly decided she was afraid of. Everytime it came on, she would say "I'm fraid." Henry decided it would be best if she hid her eyes during those parts to he told her she could shove her head up his shirt. I'm not really sure how well she was breathing but she kept going for it and spent half the movie with her head jammed up his shirt.

She also located a case of juice boxes and kept sneaking new ones in for them. It looked like the morning after a fraternity party in our living room with empties everywhere!

It is funny how quickly Molly is learning to give it as good as she gets. She has come up with a name for Henry that he hates. She calls him Henry-ya. She never uses it unless she wants to make him mad and then she keeps saying it over and over. He goes nuts.

Today we found this little deserted beach on the Long Island Sound. We dragged some boat cushions ashore because we thought Molly would stay asleep. Henry was trying his hardest to make a little bed out of them and remove every speck of sand. As soon as he turned around Molly would hurl herself on them and lay down. She would shut her eyes and say "Leave me alone!" over and over.

Last week I overheard Henry ask Molly if she wanted to lick his shirt. He had gotten into a package of macaroni and cheese powder and it sprayed onto his shirt. She readily agreed for some disgusting reason. I had to demand that he refrain from asking her to lick his hands. He likes to pretend that she is his cat.

My sister had a good description that Henry treats Molly like his evil little pet. She will do any bad little thing he tells her to do. I recently was showered in orange juice because he told her to make bubbles into a full bottle of juice. He tells her to jump on the couch and rip up pieces of paper and put his underwear on her head as a hat. He is always trying to get her to jump from things. I left them with Adam last weekend and when I walked out of the door Molly was naked, standing on an ottoman and ready to dive into a pile of blankets. He is always trying to get her to curse. I have to ignore the repeated Oh Damnit! Oh Crap! and Jee-zus! raining from the backseat while I am driving. She sounds like a foul mouthed sailer with a speech impediment.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Nighttime Antics

From the time he was very young, Henry slept with us off and on. We never had trouble getting him to lie down and go to sleep. The threat of going into his crib would shape him up and even now he will easily fall asleep with one of us there.

Molly is a different story. If anyone is in the bed, she turns into wild girl. Jumping, laughing, playing...she will not go to sleep. Henry is dying to have her nap with him, he asks every day. She promises that she will go to sleep but it is impossible. She pretends to shut her eyes and then just keeps talking. "Mommy sleeping. Henry sleeping. Molly sleeping" before breaking into a fit of giggles. Or she will say "Shhhhh. Henry sleeping" with her lips pursed and her finger at her mouth. When I say "That's it Molly, you are going into your crib" she laughs and says "No. Sleeping!" and pretends to fall in line. Of course it does not last. As soon as I put her in her crib she is out like a light.

Last night, Henry had a nightmare and woke her up when he ran screaming from his room. Adam went to check on Molly who was now screaming as well. She stopped screaming as soon as she gained entry to our bed but then proceeded to torture me for the rest of the night. She was standing, crawling around the bed, hurling herself headfirst over my side...She was tracing one of her fingers around my face for HOURS. Sounds cute but it is unbearably ticklish and distracting. Whenever I tried to move her back to her crib she would just scream and scream so it was a Catch-22. She finally passed out around 4am and the alarm rang for my exercise class at 5:15am. I have been dragging all.day.long.

Chatty Cathy

At 20 months, Molly is quite the little chatterbox. I can understand what she wants the majority of the time and if I can't, Henry interprets. I could not even guess how many words she has, she knows: names, animals, colors, numbers, fruits, vegetables and tons of other nouns like airplane, elevator, button etc. She asks questions like "Who that?" and "Happened?" for "What Happened?" She can say "Hold me", "Kiss it", "I love you". She repeats almost everything we say. She can sing "Twinkle Twinkle" "Monkeys on the Bed" and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" well enough that you know what she is singing. She reads certain books out loud to herself. She can even repeat certain things that Henry has taught her in multi-word sentences like "Bear chasing me. Bite my shirt. Scary!"

It is just amazing the vocabulary she has at this point and it is so fun to hear what she has to say.