Cute kids

Just to catch up on some of the cute/funny things that have been heard/seen around our house as of late.

Olivia set up this surprise tea party for Aaron complete with crackers and "soup"/water, all

by herself. She had me keep Aaron distracted while she worked on getting it ready. We became engrossed in... something, I can't remember what, and then she got upset. We apologized and they had a terrific time.

I get 2 days a week with Aaron where it's just me and him for the 2 1/2 hrs that Olivia is in Kinder. It is so fun to be with just him. When the two of us are together he is almost like a completely different little boy. I need to remind myself that the cleaning/chores can be done later, childhood needs to be done now. There is no "later" for these precious years. Between the two of us playing Rockband, on the "No Fail" mode, or playing with his Batman Cave Aaron has said to me on several occasions, "Mom, do you know how much I love you?"

M: "How much do you love me?"

A: "18 miles" said proudly with a huge grin on his face and then a very intense kiss where he is squeezing my cheeks and pulling my face so hard into his for such a long period of time I wonder how bad the bruising will be. What a little love! My mom was right, the name Aaron is more of a tender name... we couldn't have gotten it more right. And I couldn't be happier.

Olivia is moving right along with school and is starting to be challenged with her sentence length. The other day she had to write a one page story about a sentence of her choice from a list given on the page. (With the size of lines the story ended up being only about 10 sentences long but nevertheless, she wrote a story all by herself. The proof that she did it all by herself came in the proof read. She was writing about it snowing outside, "Annie ran so fast that she was so dizzy that she almost went in the street." I tried to help her hear how funny it sounded that there were 2 "so's" in the same sentence and what could she do to change one of them. She was determined that it didn't sound funny, she did an audible and repeated it for me to hear. (Yes, that is how she talks, I can see why it doesn't sound funny in her mind.) I explained that just like the Book of Mormon is written very nicely and not like how we talk, usually we try to write "more... nice". We decided to try "very" instead of the 2nd "so". She read through the sentence, "Annie ran so fast that she was very dizzy..." "Yeah mom, I think that sounds good. So and very are the same thing." I didn't have anywhere else to go, "Sure honey. That sounds great."

Aaron's bus riding days have all but ceased. He tears up when we even talk about it. He HATES being the last one on the bus. We don't understand what it is but it was getting to the point that when he'd wake up in the morning he'd ask if it's Monday? or Tuesday? or Wednesday? If it was Tuesday he'd hop out of bed and cheerily get ready for school. Monday or Wednesday, "I don't want to go to school." I'd drop him off at school he wouldn't let go of me, it brought me to tears myself. So, I now pick him up on Mondays and Tuesdays and he gets to play his Leapster on the bus coming home on Wednesdays. It's been a bit of a stressor on Olivia. Monday and Wednesday rides/walks home from school was the only alone time the 2 of us ever got for the week. We're working through it though.

A big complaint the kids have lately is, "Olivia gets to go to school everyday!" and "Aaron doesn't even have to go to school everyday!" The grass is always greener... Fortunately this is only really a problem when Livi feels as if her 11+ hours of sleep wasn't quite enough or when she's on her steroids. It's definitely not a good thing that now we have 9am church. "Why do we have to go to church so early?! I already have to wake up so early for school!" I try to patiently explain to Olivia (somehow she is Gretchen's daughter) that her cousins start school at about the time she has to wake up. Too funny. Too early, to already be complaining about waking up for school. Really, is 7:30 really that early? Gretchen?!?!?