"Eclipse" and "Scooby-Doo"

What do Eclipse and Scooby-Doo have in common? Both have vampires, of course! Here's Buddy's interpretation of Robert Pattinson's Edward Cullen (sorry about the air freshener by his ear :) ), along with his version of "Whew, we made it!" from Scooby-Doo. As you can see in the video, I had to prod him, but he had been doing it all day long on his own. Everyone who has kids or pets knows their ability to stop performing as soon as the camera comes out :)

Equality is in the eye of the beholder

Buddy's new phrase is "NO FAIR!" and he picked it up from you-know-who (and, no, I do not mean myself!). He shouts this all day long now--just for the last three days. "Okay, let's go brush your teeth." "Already brushed my teeth." "Here, open up." "NO FAIR!" It's pretty entertaining until he starts hitting walls and throwing toys. Funny thing is, as a firm believer in individual responsibility, I really value fairness, but understand that it's impossible to implement more often than not. At any rate, I'll be mindful of his feelings about trying to be fair :) Now, if we could only teach CBC about not taking her brother's toys (he does have totally awesome cars), we might hear "NO FAIR" a little less!

School's out, OCD's in?

School ends this week, and CBC couldn't be more excited. Enumclaw has this great summer camp program where the kids get to go on field trips to a lot of fun places, play games, and swim each week. She loved it last year and is super excited to go this year. Even more fun is that she has a new best friend, Hayle, who has invited her to a water park to celebrate her birthday. And the amazing thing (at least to me!)--I REALLY like this kid! As in, she shows up to play, and I don't want to send her home 30 minutes later! She spent about 6 hours at our house one day and we all had a great time. There was no fighting, no crying, no whining, and they played outside almost the entire time. Other best part is that her parents are both police officers (mom is police chief!) so I don't have to worry about CBC when she's over at their house. Now if I could only figure out how to get them to move closer to us. . .

OCD has returned with a vengeance, though in a new form. For the last 2-3 months, CBC has been waking me up at least once every night because she misses me, and is sad she can't see me in the morning, and it goes on from there, culminating in her sleeping in our bed, and/or me sleeping on the floor. In the beginning, it was easier to be patient (and feel sad for her, too!), but I am losing it now. We've tried different tactics, but nothing worked. Her brain just gets control of these impulses and can't let them go, and now I'm fairly certain it's become a habit--that her body just wakes up by itself all night long. Anyway, last night I offered her a dollar (NOT a quarter :) ) for every night she sleeps in her bed the whole night. She told me a dollar wasn't much money (WHAT?! for sleeping?!) until I pointed out that there are ~180 nights before Christmas, which could mean $180 for the dog. That seemed to hit home. And may I say--she didn't wake me up at all last night. Cross your fingers!

Already?

Buddy's new vocabulary word? Already. As in, "I already brushed my teeth" and "I already ate dinner--ice cream now?" I forgot how interesting it is to watch 2-yr-olds start telling those obvious falsehoods that everyone else knows is false. Not sure where he picked up "already," but he is definitely getting mileage out of it. He's no longer into the green shirts, but now his focus is on peeing outside and running around at warp speed. He wanted Superman to play hide-and-seek with him, but it took us forever to figure it out--he kept saying, "I count to three!" until finally I realized he wanted to count to three (which really meant counting to five) while Superman hid. Hard to hide a 6'2" frame in 5 seconds, but entertaining to watch :)

Rat Part Deux

Superman and the kids climbed into the crawl space in search of the rat (or rat family, knowing my luck). The kids loved it and enjoyed seeing all the rat poop and footprints. Superman laid sticky traps (the idea is that the rat will be lured by the food onto the sticky trap, which will be so sticky they then can't escape--supposedly humane, but then the box says to throw the rat and trap away, wrapped in a plastic bag. Hello, rat still alive!!!) and poison. Well, when the sticky traps were checked a day later, all the food was gone and nobody was stuck on any traps. The next day the poison was obviously taking effect because Superman emailed me at work to tell me he found a rat clinging to life. He quickly dispatched it to a better world, and then left it out front for the neighborhood cats to eat. Like that would be a tasty meal. Anyway, when the kids got home, they wanted to see our "catch," which CBC then described as "heartbreaking." I swear, she is such a tender-hearted person. Anyway, she told me she said a little prayer and then told herself the rat was "in a happier place, where he can run and be free." The bad news is that this was much smaller than the rat I saw outside, so there are (were?) at least two rodent inhabitants.

Do you honestly want my $0.25?

Wow, a little extra excitement at our house--CBC swallowed a quarter. Yep, she swallowed an entire quarter. With absolutely no problem. She found one in her backpack, put it in her mouth, and before she knew it--gone! She related the story of telling her teacher thus: "So I went up to Ms. Kitz and I told her I found a quarter and put it in my mouth. She said, 'Go on.' Then I told her I swallowed it and she said, 'We better call the nurse.'" I laughed so hard at both of their nonchalant reactions--teachers must seriously hear everything! Anyway, the nurse called Superman; he called me; I called the doctor's office; and Superman took her to get an x-ray. Shiny quarter, settled right in her stomach. So for the last week, we've been examining her "piles" (ahem!), with no one being the richer. We never found the quarter, so Superman took her back for another x-ray today, and all is well. It "passed" without excitement, and now I can throw that "special" fork away. My co-workers will no longer call her my little piggy bank :) Amazing that OCD girl could put money into her mouth--think of the germs.

SO GROSS!! And yet fascinating. . .

A rat by any other name. . .

How lucky are we?! We have a pet rat! The only problem is, the rat lives underneath our house and surely has more friends than we are interested in taking care of. Kind of exciting, but really not so much. . .