Where your heart is

Lately, I've been playing a lot of Bejeweled. I know it is a serious time-waster. At least when my game of choice was Word Challenge, I felt like I was getting a little bit of a mental challenge. Oh well. For better or worse, Bejeweled is the game of the moment for me.

George and Charlie enjoy watching me play. They like to try to find things to point out that I haven't seen yet. They get really disgusted with me when I play somewhere else and mess up "their" move. George started noticing the statistics recently. He's keeping track of my progress and reports to Charlie what the title of my current level is. Charlie, it seems, is enamored with this. He has added "Gem Finder" to his list of what he wants to be when he grows up.

Well, with this in mind, after scripture reading the other night, he said to me, "Mom, do you pray that I can't be a gem finder?" As often happens, he was making a conclusion that I wasn't sure where it came from. So I asked what he meant. "Well, when you pray, you say we shouldn't find treasure on the earth."

I love it when kids listen and process stuff that you don't even think they're paying any attention to. So we took a moment to discuss what it means to seek for treasure in heaven instead of on earth. And how it doesn't really relate to your choice of profession... unless you get too greedy. He's still got Gem Finder on his list.

Not-so Grown Up

A little while ago, Charlie and I were having a conversation about describing children by different titles. I told him that Baby was not really a "baby" anymore, but more a "toddler." Fred is considered a "tween," Harriet is a "big girl," George is probably now a "big boy," and he's probably a "little boy."

He thought those labels were probably mostly okay, but he told me that he was still kind of a toddler. I told him that last year he was a "preschooler" and that toddler comes before preschooler, so really he's not in the toddler category anymore. But he insisted that he is still a little bit of a toddler. Curious, I asked him why he thought that.

His answer, "Cause I still think lots of things are mine."

Looks so good I could just eat it!

Here's another reminder to me how boys think with their stomachs.


We were working in the yard the other night and the sun was setting. Many of the clouds in the sky were half pink and half grey-blue. The beauty of sunsets is amazing to me. I stopped and pointed this out to Charlie, telling him that God is the best artist EVER! He looked around at the clouds and said, "They look like suckers. I think I would love to just lick them!" And he proceeded to pretend to do a giant lick in the sky.


I see beauty, he sees food. Or maybe we both see beauty in it, but we associate it with different things. Anyway, it made me giggle.

Just giggle while you clean -- or at least CLEAN while you giggle!

In my somewhat continuing effort to purge and declutter, organize and clean, I'm trying to enlist others to help. Some are more of a help than others. Today, for instance, Brian is working in the garage, throwing some things out and organizing so that we can park at least the bikes and strollers and stuff in there as well as make room for more of my junk that I'm not ready to part with yet. He's so great not to grumble (very much) about my pack-ratting.

For the last two or three hours I've been in the big girls' room trying to help them get things cleaned up and stuff. We've got a pretty good amount of trash heading out and half a garbage bag of give-away stuff. Harriet is generally better at parting with things than Fred is, but I've been pleasantly surprised at what Fred's been willing to give up. However, we've hit the wall. At least I have. I don't want to do the cleaning for them, because I want them to know where to put things when they clean their own room. I'm trying to direct and help, but not do. But they've gotten to the point where they are tired of trying to get stuff done and so they are just laughing and playing with each other. That's when I had to leave.

Don't get me wrong. I'm delighted that they are playing together and not fighting. But I can't stand to sit there and gather a bunch of their craft stuff in a pile and ask, "Okay, where does it make sense to put this?" or get a bunch of Barbie clothes and ask where they keep Barbie stuff and have them point and continue giggling. So here I am blogging instead. I was hoping that they'd get their floor clean enough to vacuum today, because seriously I don't know the last time that happened. (I know that will totally gross some of you out. Sorry.) Don't think it's going to work out. But I guess that's okay, because we don't have school on Monday and we can start again.

Lucky them!

Which way was that again?

This story is from way back. Fred was probably only 3 years old. Harriet was still little, but old enough to feed herself things off her high chair tray. I remember we were eating and I was trying to keep pieces of whatever I was feeding Harriet on her tray. Fred was messing around while she was eating. Finally I looked at her and said, "Eat right!" I went back to my meal and feeding Harriet. I looked at her and she was still playing around while she ate. I told her again, "Eat right!"

She looked back at me and leaned sideways in her booster seat and said, "Eat left too, Mom?"

Kiddie Tech Support, may I help you?

This morning, George, who is not yet seven years old, got a phone call from one of his friends from his first-grade class. I was fully expecting a little chatting and then, "Mom, can I play when I finish my chores?" But the boys kept talking. And talking. And here's some of the things I heard:

Type f-u-z-z-y-b-u-n-n-y.
Yeah, then you want to click on that red button.
No, type it across the top!
It worked when I did it.

They'd been talking for a little while and I went and got in the shower. Daddy was arranging to borrow his dad's truck so we could go get soil mix for our garden boxes. When I came out of the bathroom, George was in his bedroom, STILL on the phone. He'd put it on speaker. I noticed that the low battery beep had started. I told him that he needed to get off the phone. (Yeah, he could have switched to the wall phone, but isn't 45 minutes long enough for two first graders to be on the phone to each other?) He told his friend that he had to put the phone on the charger, but they could talk again after lunch. Because his friend wasn't done yet. Holy cow! My girls are not going to be the phone hogs, my SON is!

Anyway, I think we'll wait a little while before we have him intern for tech support. But I think he's ready.

More Charlie art

Charlie loves to draw pictures for people, but lately the boys have been into Play-doh. So one night after the school kids went to bed, he was playing with clay and made something for everyone. He started with me (but I did not get a picture, because I saw it in person). He made me a happy face, a heart and a U. I think it was "I love you."

This was for George. (A car)




This was for the girls. (A flower)




And one for Daddy. (A dog)



Fun, huh?

Scared? Call Mom.

We got in late last night and I just left my cell phone in the pocket of the jacket I wore last night and left the jacket on the back of my chair at the kitchen table. So this morning, I pulled everything I left in my pockets out. As I pulled out my cell phone, I saw that I missed a call and had a voice message. Weird! I checked whose call I missed. It was a call from Home at 7:32 am. 7:32 am??! From HOME?? I listened to the message, but it was only about two seconds and there were not any voices.

After questioning, we found out that it was Charlie. He had gotten scared, so he called me. Nevermind that I was asleep in my own bed and he had to go find a phone to call me from -- I've told him that if he needs me he can always call me. I guess he's paying attention after all.

Are we?

This story happened in late fall of 2009. Charlie still couldn't say his R's very well. (Funny how he's learned to say them as George has been learning to say them correctly.)

Charlie asked me, "Are we chunnel?" I could not for the life of me figure out what "chunnel" was. I thought that maybe there was an R sound in there that Charlie could not say correctly. So I kept repeating that word as best as I could back to him.

"Chunnel?"

"No. Chunnel."

"Chewnal?"

"No, chunnel."

"Churnel?"

"Yes! Chunnel!"

"Churnel? Really? Where did you hear that word?"

"I don't remember. Are we chunnel?"

"I've never heard the word chunnel. Do you remember the sentence you heard it in?"

"Like owls are NOT chunnel, so are we chunnel?"

Suddenly, it all clicked. NOT churnel made a lot more sense than churnel. Nocturnal! I laughed so hard! So I had to explain that the word is actually "NOCturnal" not "NOTchurnal."

Even though he did not get it right, I thought that was some pretty good critical thinking on his part to know that nocturnal meant sleeping during the day and being active at night and that we were opposite.

Love that kid!

DeJunking

I think that everyone who reads my blog knows that I am a pack rat. Like a BAD one. I know that I need to get this under control. I'm sure I'd be a happier person if I could get rid of half of the stuff that I've got. And I bet that I would be happy even if I got rid of more. Logically, I know it. But emotionally, when it comes to parting with things, it gets painful. For those who don't suffer from this disease, I don't know how to explain it. I go through panic attacks. I have a hard time breathing, feel a tightness in my chest and can't think straight. There are times when it is worse than others. So if the mood to purge ever strikes (which very occasionally it does), I try to jump on it and do as much as I can.

I discovered a thread on Amazon.com (I did not even know they had discussion threads) about being a hoarder and disorganized. I felt that way, so I checked it out. It was last Saturday and I had a cold that was just draining energy out of me. So I was just sitting on my bum. I spent quite a while reading in that thread. Someone recommended a book called "Throw Out Fifty Things" which I started reading today. I get teary even reading about throwing things out. But I thought to myself that I could spend a few minutes somewhere purging something. So I did.

I went downstairs to the family room and pulled out a box of toys that have just been boxed up for over a year. I figured that I would just be able to basically dump the whole thing in either the trash or DI bag and feel so good. It did not go quite that well, but it was a start.

I want to log things as I purge so that I can look and see that I AM making improvements. They may be small and they may be slow, but that's better than nothing, right? So here's my tally today:

Trash: 1 small bag
Give away: 1 big garbage bag

Most of what went in these bags were small McDonalds-type toys. (Don't tell my kids.) This is probably the easy stuff, but I still have to start somewhere. I'm not starting where the book told me to either, but I wasn't ready to go there.

I'm starting. I want to continue. I want to be free from so much clutter. I want to be able to invite you all to my home without feeling shame and embarrassment. And I can do it.

Sunny Corner

A couple of days ago, I was ruminating on the naming of my blog. I knew it was going to be one of those things I would think harder about and then come up with something I just liked better.

Since I was a teen, I have been enamored with the idea of naming my house when I grew up. Maybe you had the story in Young Womens too. In Denmark, Holland, and that area it is common to name your house. Apparently still. Or at least when the manual was published that they used twenty years ago when I was a teen. Anyway, I also loved "Anne of Green Gables." They named their homesteads there too. I was just certain I would name my homes.

Fast forward to 1998 and I moved into my first home. I toyed with "naming" it, but nothing ever seemed just right. And I wanted it to be just right. So it is just "The Little White House on Ellison." When we moved into our next house in 2004, the name came to me right away. "Sunny Corner." It is on the Northwest corner of our block and has lots of windows and seems sunny most of the time. Plus, it was a play on words for how I want my home to be -- sunny, happy, smiling. I don't know how often we achieve that, but it is still my goal. In respect of our roots and where the original idea came from, I translated (or rather had a friend translate) Sunny Corner into Danish and came up with "Solrig Afkrog." Doesn't have quite the ring I was hoping for, so usually in my mind I stick with Sunny Corner.

Okay, what all of that was about was that I thought what a nice ring a blog title like, "The Ramblings from Sunny Corner" or something like that might have sounded. But then, what if we move? I guess I'm happy that I've got what I've got. But I wanted to post it so you could all see what a possibility of a cute title I could have had. Now it's out there. And I can forget it and feel better.

Charlie

I think I'd said before how Charlie only likes to be called by his real name. But I still call him Charlie. Sometimes nicknames need a variation too. George gets called Jorje from time to time and Charlie sometimes becomes Charlino.

The other day this happened. I think that Charlie must be tired of telling me to call him by his real name because instead he said, "Why Charlino? Why not Charliyes?"

Why, indeed?

The Worst Mom

I did it. I'm the worst Mom. And I hate my oldest daughter, Fred. She said so, so I know it is true. And she's not even 11 yet. (Insert sigh here.)

A couple of weeks ago, Fred let me know that she thought she had too many restrictive chores and not nearly enough freedom to do the things that she wanted. I let her know that I understood how she felt, but I would not be taking away any of her assigned chores. (At this point I did not feel like it would be a good idea to tell her that as she gets older, she gets MORE responsibility, not less.) She was not exactly happy, but there was no major contention.

Fast forward to yesterday. She wanted to skip one of her homework "chores," her multiplication practice, so that she could play with a friend. I let her skip this chore over Spring Break, which now I view as a mistake. We got the full-on pre-teen tantrum.

"Don't you ever think about how your kids feel?!" she hurled at me.

"Of course I do," I responded. "Sometimes I just don't care."

In retrospect, that is probably not the most calming thing for a child to hear. I did try to clarify, telling her that the prophet has asked that we teach our children responsibility and work and that I have chosen to give them chores that they are responsible for as a way to do that, even if it makes them unhappy. She remained unimpressed.

"Most of my friends only have THREE chores!"

"What are they?"

"Cleaning their room, making their bed, and their homework!"

So I took her stack of chore cards. There was Make Bed. Okay, that's the same. There was Reading, Math practice, and Keyboarding. All of those fit under the homework category. There was Clean Room, TV Room and Front Room. So I asked her if she thought that her other friends did not have to pick up their things from around the house. (She said that they probably didn't, but I don't think that even she believed it.) That left Practice Piano and Brush Teeth. I contended that her friends also probably had to brush their teeth, so she started in on piano.

"I don't want to take piano anymore!"

"I would like you to continue until you are at least 12."

"Sometimes what a parent thinks is important is not important to kids!"

"I know. But often, a parent has experience that allows them to see that things are more important than they might seem to children."

"But playing the piano is not important!"

I gave her some of the standard things like "Dad wishes he could play the piano" and "I'm glad I have the ability to play piano when I need to" and even used an analogy about how she might not see the importance now, but how it could be better in the future. Of course, nothing really helped and she was crying and angry, called me the worst mom, the meanest mom and told me that she could just TELL that I hate her.

Thankfully, this did not bother me. It bothered me a lot more when I told her that she could go to her room and she looked me in the eye defiantly and told me NO. Instead of freaking out or hitting her (both of which were pretty tempting to me), I told her that if she made anyone else's life miserable just because she was miserable that I would bodily carry her down to her room. She was welcome to stay upstairs with the family as long as she could be decent.

Another thankfully, she was decent. And, with all of Fred's faults and drama, I am grateful that she lets bygones be bygones most of the time. After reading and cooling off for a while, she was back to treating me like (mostly) nothing had happened, smiling, and bossing her little brothers and sisters around, just like normal.

... I am NOT looking forward to teenage drama.

The Birds and the Bees

A while back Julie gave the girls "The Talk". Let's just say that the girls were shocked and a little more than disgusted by the whole idea. If I remember correctly Fred asked Julie "Grown ups like that?" Julie may be able to expound on that part of the story.

My part came a couple weeks later we had finished our usual Sunday dinner at Grandma Nae's house. Fred and her little cousin were watching "Shrek the Third" on Grandma's bed. I was checking on them and got sucked in.

The scene was where Shrek, Donkey and Puss were sailing off to find some guy. Just as they left Shrek's wife shouted that she was pregnant. Shrek is stunned and starts to panic. He has a dream where little shrek babies are coming from everywhere. Through the doors. Through the windows and through the fireplace. The room was filling up with little shreks. Shrek wakes from the dream and Donkey and Puss are there. He confides with them that he is nervous and says to himself "How did this happen?" Puss trying to be helpful says "Well, when a man loves a woman..." Shrek cuts him off saying "I know how it happens" and he wanders off mumbling to himself. Donkey looks and Puss and says "How does that happen?"

At this point Fred looks at her little cousin who was, I think, about 4 at the time and says "I know how it happens and it is disgusting."

Needless to say I made a hasty exit not wanting them to notice the tears building up in my eyes and the fits of laughter that was about to burst my lungs.

I cannot wait for Fred to get married so I can remind her about her feelings on the subject of the birds and the bees.

Labelling

Can someone explain "Labels" to me? Should I bother to use them? What the heck are they for??

Sunday's drawing

I may be posting a fair few of Charlie's pictures. He is pretty prolific and I really like his pictures. And I'm blogging for me, remember? :oP

My favorite part? "Book oov Momon"

A little more input from Charlie: the big "S" stands for South, as in South Pole. The penguin wants to catch the fish, but there's a shark down there. There's a mad face because the shark is mad and there is a sad face because the fish is sad. The hole on the left is for the fish to hide from the shark.

Nicknames

Now that I have a blog, I find myself "writing" blog posts as I fall asleep. Mostly I'm pondering the day and wondering if there was anything post-worthy. It gets my mind going on different topics that might work, sometimes then fusing with dreams as I drift off. Some of those posts would be highly entertaining, I think. Unfortunately, I mostly don't remember them after I've woken up and definitely not by the time I sit down to the computer. This is actually probably better for all parties concerned.

I'm still debating on whether to keep this blog public or make it private and whether it matters if I use my children's real names as I post. So, in the meantime, I think I'll go with their nicknames. I apologize to those who know us, but not well enough to know the nicknames. I hope it is not too confusing.

Oldest child: Fredwina, Fred for short
Second child: Harriet
Third child: George (he hates that nickname)
Fourth child: Charlie (he hates any nickname that is not his own name)
Fifth child: Poor thing does not have one yet. So she'll be Baby.

Sunday, Charlie leans over to me and points out a Sunbeam sitting two rows behind us. "I will marry her when we grow up if she is cute enough," he says to me. I know I should be all concerned that he is basing his decision of a wife solely on looks. But it was so funny. A little more background: he wanted to marry Baby for a long time because she IS the cutest thing ever, but we've convinced him that he cannot marry his sister. So whoever he marries has to be at least as cute as Baby. That's pretty stiff competition.

Monday he wanted to open some mail for me. We got one of those coupon mailers, so I let him open that one. He found the flier that shows different styles of checks on it. He looked at it during breakfast. Later, he showed me the one he had picked. It was Snoopy checks. He particularly liked the checkbook cover because it was shaped like Snoopy's doghouse. You gotta admit, that is pretty cool. Although the cover was cool, I thought I might be able to find checks that he'd actually like better, so I started pointing some out to him. Not Cars, not Mickey Mouse. Okay, there really aren't very many styles of checks that would likely appeal to young boys. Then I found some "Where the Wild Things Are" checks. We'd read that book for a bedtime story a couple of nights ago and he was liking it. He looked at the checks and I could tell he liked them, but the cover was just not as cool as the other. He decided, "When I get married, I will get those for my wife." He's so thoughtful.

The other thing that Charlie seems to be thinking a lot about lately is jail. He asks me about jail. "Do you drive there?" "Do they have toilets there?" "How much money do you have to pay to get out of jail?" It is interesting some of the questions he comes up with. I don't know what started this new curiosity. I wish I did, because then sometimes it makes it easier to understand their concept and why they question certain things. The kicker was his Family Home Evening lesson Monday night. It was short. "If you drive fast, faster than you are supposed to, you can go to jail."

I certainly hope that these two things he has been thinking about lately are not related in any way.

This is a blog post. My first blog post.

Why a blog? I ask myself the same question. I guess I need more reasons to spend time on the computer. I'm certain that I will be able to keep up with this blog at least semi-annually. I have high hopes!

Really, I just wanted a place where I could write the funny things that happen in our household in a place where I did not lose them or forget them. Voila! A blog!

I'm hoping that I learn to use all these fun things like pictures, labels and all that jazz before long. Then my blog can be as cute as yours.

Or probably not.