Tall Tales

Okay, so last night, Kai wasn't feeling too well and he went to bed a little earlier than Griffin. Since all the books we usually read are in the boys' bedroom, and we didn't want to disturb Kai, Griffin and I told stories instead. He was very excited.

So we went downstairs to the other bedroom and he got comfortable. I asked him what kind of story he wanted to hear first. "A Turtle Story", he said. So I proceeded to tell a story of the Ninja Turtles loosing their pizza. Afterwards, he said, "Was that a great story?" -- (Meaning "That was a great story" -- statement, not question). Wanting him to express his imagination, I told him to tell ME a story. He told a Ninja Turtle one very similar.

Next, I told a dinosaur story -- he followed with his own again -- then, wanting to end storytime with some happier characters, I told him a Max and Ruby story. (These are some very gentle Nickelodeon bunnies who are brother and sister.)

I told how Max and Ruby wanted cookies and milk, but they were all out of milk. So the mom gave Ruby some money to walk to the store and buy some. On the way, they passed a toy store. Max wanted to buy a toy, but Ruby said that they only had enough money for some milk. Another place they passed was a candy store -- same situation happened. They finally got to the grocery store and bought their milk, returned home, and enjoyed thier cookies and milk.

Griffin quickly said, "My turn!", after this story and continued with: "Once upon a time, Max and Ruby's mom didn't want to buy milk anymore. So she took them to the toy store and told Max he could pick out a toy. They took it up to the counter and the worker said, "YES !". And Max was sooo happy." ------- The story went about five minutes longer, but that was, by far, the funniest part.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM !!!!

It's sad that I had to search EVERYWHERE in my picture database to find one of my mom. I have a few, but most of the time, she's behind a camera too so it's hard to catch her. I'll have to do better at getting her on film because WAY, WAY, WAY in the future I want my kids to have pictures of "Grammy"............ not a whole bunch of pictures that Grammy took.

I think my mom is the best mom ever. There is always something to laugh about around her. She has an amazing sense of humor and looks FANTASTIC for having

EIGHT

BIG

DEWITT

BABIES !

Everyone says so. She has raised a fun, happy family and I will never be able to thank her enough for all the things I've learned from her.

Love you Mom!!!

TURTLE POWER !!!

Griffin has a friend that kind of got him hooked on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This was okay with me because I actually watched them growing up AND this new phase helped him pick out a toy at the store the other day (he was taking WAY too long).

Anyway, I did a menu search on our TV to see if they were still playing the cartoon now-a-days. I recorded the one episode I could find and was excited for him to watch it. This morning was the first time I watched a few minutes of it with him. Okay........ for those of you with memories like mine........these are my "TMNT":

Friendly looking and cute, right? Well, this is the image no longer. These are what the animated reptilians look like for today's kids:

Much more rough and tough........ a little scary looking, and.......THEY HAVE NO EYES! Well, kind of, but come on. What was wrong with the old guys?

So, the REAL point of my story is -- I'm not sure how many more episodes I'll let Griffin watch. He looked out the window today at some loud car driving by and yelled,

"WHAT THE SHELL?!"

There's only one place he could have heard that ............... from the mouths of these "heros in a half-shell", down in the sewers of Manhattan.

(Sigh)

CALLING ALL DOCTORS.....

For the last 4 nights, Kai has been up coughing. Usually he would cough for half an hour or so and then go back to sleep for a while. Last night, however, he didn't even fall asleep until 4:30 AM !!! I got desperate around 2:45 am and called the pediatrician's emergency line. A nurse called me back and said, "So your child has a cough." -------I could just HEAR her rolling her eyes.------

As always, she was not very sympathetic to the fact that he hasn't been sleeping AND along with the cough, usually comes mucus vomit.

She informed me quickly that medicine will not help and it's been all over the news that doctors are trying not to prescribe cough medicine to kids under 6 yrs. anymore. "Haven't you seen the reports? It's been all over the news.", she said. My reply was, "Uh, no. I don't have time to watch the news." Which is partially true. Usually when our TV is on, a kids show is playing. When I DO get a chance to watch..... I'm not going to waste my time listening to weather forecasts and reports about traffic or who was killed in downtown Phoenix last night. Sorry, not my first choice.

Anyway, her advice was to give Kai plenty of fluids, use a vaporizer (which we have been -- no help), or if possible, sit in a steamy bathroom for 15 minutes or so. At that point I was willing to try ANYTHING. So I turned the shower on and sat on the toilet with Kai kicking away the whole time. I don't think we even made it to 15 minutes because.......... THE FIRE ALARM WENT OFF!!!! Yeah, that's what I said, "WHAT!!??" The steam from the shower had set it off which then set off all the other alarms in the house. Not a good night.

I was just wondering..........with all the advances in medical science today, are you telling me that NO ONE can come up with a cough medicine that actually works and is NOT dangerous!! Come on.

Catch-up

I think almost every blogger has one of these, once in a while ..........a random post about things that have been going on, just to catch up. Here is mine.

First off -- I love this show!!

Not just because these characters keep my kids entertained for 25 minutes, but they have some awesome dance moves too. Once in a while, I'll say to myself..."I wish I could dance like Pablo." ........Okay, not really, but I could take quite a few things from them if I wanted to make up a sweet dance routine.

A few weeks ago, they had an hour long show that was called "The Mighty Knights". Griffin had been anxiously awaiting it's premier because of all the previews shown. After him watching it a few times and singing, "We're knights, that's right..." all day long, I thought I'd make him a shield. Low and behold, right on Nick Jr. website, I found this printable shield and head piece.

He LOVED it!! Doesn't he look fierce?

I thought I could get away with making Kai a small shield out of a file folder, but eventually he wanted one just like Griffin's.

My next topic is just a cute picture of Kai "folding his arms". He puts the backs of his hands together in front of his chest and it turns out looking something like this:

ADORABLE.

BATHTIME.......

.....is also something I'm a fan of. The boys love it too. I think because they know that even though we said, "bedtime"......when they get to take a bath, it means 15-20 more minutes of playtime before the actual "bedtime" comes.

Kai's favorite thing to do is climb up high by using this little railing. It scares me to death!! I just see him slipping down and getting hurt over and over in my head.

Griffin's recent LOVE of Spiderman has found him "climbing" on the walls of our house or the walls of the playground at the mall.

As for Jeff and I --

-- we are very boring in comparison.

I am getting bigger, of course. I'm almost 26 weeks. Which in different terms means, I'm about 5 1/2 months along. Doing great as always. I'm still working a little and just started giving piano lessons to my friends kids. I've never done it before. Any tips?

Jeff is in the process of picking where his internships will be for all of next year. There will be four total and the whole picking process is very competitive and not too clear about how they actually make the choices of which student goes where. We will know our first place by the end of this month, I think. We are hoping to stay here for the first 9 wks. then possibly get one in Williams, AZ. That would allow us to stay in Flagstaff for another 9 wks. but it would also leave me car-less at home with 3 kids while Jeff commutes back and forth each day. When final decisions are made, we may have to arrange for another car.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading!