Photos that take themselves...

While I was doing laundry yesterday after school, Madeline brought the camera to me and said, "Mom, Noah was playing with this." So Noah was sent to his room (he knows he's not allowed to touch the camera without permission) and Maddy was praised for rescuing the camera. As I was putting the camera up, I thought I'd better check and see what kind of damage he'd done. Lo and behold, the pictures told a little different story than Maddy's version!

I was pretty sure at this point that even if she didn't actually USE the camera, she was aware of it well before she brought it to me. But further investigation revealed even more...

Unless Noah has mastered the timer feature (which isn't entirely impossible), it looks like Maddy actually TOOK some of the pictures. And did a good job, too! :) Here are some more of my little photographers' works...

And then there are the photos that appear to have been taken as a subtle hint as to Maddy's Christmas list. In case you can't tell, it's the American Girl catalog we randomly got in the mail (after her begging me a couple of days earlier to get a catalog and me promptly completely forgetting about it)...

She got Kathleen McKenzie, a Life of Faith doll (the Christian equivalent of American Girl), last Christmas before she knew anything about American Girl...now she's torn between the doll she loves (because she looks like her) and the peer pressure to have an American Girl doll. I think we've compromised at getting an American Girl outfit for her Life of Faith doll (although as I type that I'm thinking there's some lesson about a wolf in sheep's clothing--except reversed--or turning something godly into something worldly...except does that make sense if it was just a copy of something worldly in the first place? I think I'm over-thinking this!). Santa might even ask Dani to make matching outfits for Kathleen and Madeline??!! (You know, in all her free time before Christmas) Whatever happens, I sure do love my girly-girl and her doll habit!

Only Dani will care!

I'm not sure anyone but my mom cares about the random cute (to me) things Jack says...so if she's the only one who reads these, that's okay! As I've mentioned before, I hope to do a blog book someday of these, so I'm including everything I can think of!

This morning in the car, I went to Starbucks after dropping the kids off at school (I just refilled the envelopes this week, so you know that "blow money" is burnin' a hole in my pocket!) and Jack wanted a "grape slush", which is an indication that perhaps we've taken advantage of the 2-4pm 1/2 price drinks at Sonic a FEW times too many lately! Anyway, I never knew this but you can get a kid-sized drink (we got milk) at Starbucks. It's a little smaller than a tall, but it has the coffee lid and everything. Jack was THRILLED! He loves to drink out of mugs at home and calls whatever it is his coffee and pretends it's really hot, which means he mostly blows on it and thus ends up with more spit than drink, but hey, it's his cup. He kept saying, "Mommy, I WIKE this coffee! It's dus a wittle bit hot, I hab to be berry carepul!"

As we were driving home from Starbucks, he said, "Can we go to da shoe?" It took me a minute to realize he meant "zoo". (And for those who read my previous post, I tried writing the monologue in it's original Jack-ese, but it was too hard to read so I just "translated" for your reading enjoyment. He actually said all of those words, but it was with almost-3-year-old pronunciation!) I told him it was too rainy to go to the zoo today, and his reply was, "How 'bout da cemetery?" Only in our family is that normal! He really just wants to go for the big hill. I guess it's okay that I find it funny (and not bizarre or sad) for a cemetery outing to be a close 2nd to the zoo!

Jack just brought me his mini-tall Starbucks cup and asked for juice in it. Guess I'd better go ahead and put that travel coffee mug on his Christmas list!

I love my kids!

Some days (okay, really most days) they make me want to pull my hair out, and this morning was one of those mornings! We went to BG to visit Memaw & Grandaddy and went to church with them. Which is ALWAYS a disaster. I constantly feel the need to tell everyone there that we really do actually go to church 3 times a week, because the kids always act like they've never set foot in a church when we're there. Part of it is that they're usually sleepy (duh, they've spent the night at grandma's!), and they're used to going to church at 8 instead of 10:30 (Jack's naptime is at 11, which is why we go early!), and there are basically no other kids there, and they are usually hyped up on new goodies in the church bag and a lot more sweets than their bodies are used to. Okay, so they're not perfect at our church either, but this goes beyond normal childishness. They are just disruptive. I'll be surprised if the elders don't have a meeting with us at some point :) I have had to let go of this and realize that it is not about what others think of my parenting skills (or lack thereof) and that they will hopefully grow out of it. But I always come back from church much more frazzled!

Well, then those stinkin' kids have to go and totally redeem themselves (that's a quote but I can't even remember what it's from...J would know but he's not here**thanks to Uncle Pip for clarifying: "Just when I think you can't do anything dumber, you go and...TOTALLY REDEEM YOURSELF." He would know--he and his brother are the original "Dumb & Dumber"!). We got home tonight and they have been so cute. For starters, Jack didn't have any clean clothes left to come home so I put the tshirt Maddy took to sleep in on him and he looked SO adorable!! I'd post a picture, but Jared has the camera in VZ still. Maybe I'll recreate it just to get a picture...it's too cute. He put the shirt on and said, "Hey, I wook wike Maddy". I could eat him up. And as Mom says, "Sometimes I wish I had!"

Later Jack and Noah were watching a movie while Maddy and I watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Noah came and sat next to me on the couch and declared, pretty nonchalantly, "Mom, I've got a crush on you." He's the sweetest thing ever! Then of course Madeline had to explain to him that you can't have a crush on your mom because you can only have a crush on someone you might marry, which cannot be anyone you are already related to (because of course she also had to learn this lesson in kindergarten when she was determined to marry daddy). Noah was disappointed. Then he asked when he was going to be old enough to be a daddy. I explained (for the 1000th time) that he would grow up and meet a wife God has chosen for him and get married and then she would be the mommy and he would be the daddy when they had my grandchildren. This apparently was not the real explanation he was looking for since he followed up with, "But when do I get to boss people?" Yeah, when exactly do you get start bossing people? He also said he'd like to be a girl because they can boss people even when they're a kid (thanks, big sister Maddy!). So funny what goes through their heads.

Then to top it all off, when I put Jack to bed, in a hilarious attempt to calm his own fears of the dark and the monsters he may or may not believe are in his closet, he presented this bedtime monologue:

"It’s not a good idea to touch the shadows. We don’t touch the wall. Or the fan. Only mommy can touch the fan. So we don’t get in trouble. We can’t touch the squirrels. Or they might bite us. But they can’t bite us. But dogs can bite us. So we don’t touch dogs. Only pet them. If we ask Mommy. And we can’t go in the grass if Mommy says, 'Don’t go in the grass' because there might be spiders. And we might see a spooky spider webs. Ooh, I don’t like spider webs. But it’s not scary. It can’t hurt us. Only lions can hurt us. But the lion lives at the zoo. We don’t have lions at our house so they can't hurt us. But we have a kit [cat] at our house. But there's no monsters. Only dark. It's scary. But I'm not scared of the dark. It's just shadows. But they're not so scary. Oh, I think I lost my bandaid."

I kid you not. I was laughing hysterically while mentally recording every word. This was too good to forget! This, lessons in fear and obedience, from the kid unafraid of climbing up the refrigerator to get candy and in the process spilling a gallon of paint on the floor. He is a certified NUT!