From the Mouth of Babes

First, a little context:  We sometimes bribe our kids to eat.  Sue us. We'll tell them, "eat all your lunch and you can have a cookie (or an ice cream, or a popsicle, or whatever.)".

Second, over the weekend, Janelle came into the bathroom when I was shaving.  She got Jeni's brush and offered it to me and said, "Here Daddy, brush your hair."  Jeni's brush is one of those things for long haired women, with individual, thick bristles.  You know, a few single, stiff, bristles in several rows perpendicular to the vented spine of the brush.  All the women have one.  I told Janelle that I didn't have enough hair to use Mommy's brush and I use a comb instead. (as an aside, she said "Grandpa doesn't have enough hair either").

Tonight, Janelle was having trouble getting to sleep, so I went up and cuddled with her and rocked her a bit.  She pinched some chest hair, below my collar, and then said, "Daddy, you have a lot of hair...... on your head."  (now running her fingers over my rapidly thinning head) "If you eat all your lunch, you can have some more hair... and some more hair... and some more hair, and then you can use Mommy's brush to brush your hair, if you eat all your food."

Bless her little heart.  You can't hide from your kids.

Girl Scout Cookies

A while back, I ordered some girl scout cookies from a little girl that knocked on our door.  I have no idea who she was, but she knocked on the door, and I like girl scout cookies, so I bought some Thin Mints, Tagalongs, and Do-Si-Dos.  They're four dollars a box now!  I remember when they were a dollar a box and the boxes were bigger, but I digress.  Anyway, since I haven't eaten them, or added to the girl scout cookie pile at work, they've just been laying, unopened, on the table.  The kids have really been eying those cookie boxes lately.  Jeni called me the other day and asked if Janelle could have some of "my" Thin Mints, because she wanted one of those "chocolate" cookies.  She'd told Janelle that those were my cookies and she'd have to ask me.  Of course, I said yes.  I don't have a "mine" that I won't share with the kids.  Jeni told me later that she only did that to slow down their appetite for cookies.  Janelle loved the Thin Mints, by the way.

Fast forward a few days... and I'm telling this second hand, because I was at work. We had a box of Tagalongs on  the kitchen counter, out of reach (or so we thought), that Jeni had been doling out, one by one, at select times.  There were three left in the box... until Jeni caught Joseph going up the stairs, where Janelle was, with a cookie in one hand that he was offering to Janelle, and two cookies in the other, presumably for himself.  I have to give him credit for his generosity in sharing his haul with his sister.

This morning, Jeni woke to silence.  That's unusual since the kids usually wake up before Jeni and wake her up - either making noise playing, or coming to her bed and waking her.  Jeni went down the hall to check on them and they were both missing from their rooms!  She went down stairs and discovered that they were conspiring to get the Do-Si-Dos.  They had gotten hold of the box and had it in the floor with the cardboard flap open but they were having trouble getting the plastic sleeve open.  Joseph was on his was to Janelle with a pair of scissors.  Those little schemers had managed to stay quiet, work together, and were about to liberate a box of girl scout cookies!

I've got to love the little stinkers for their ingenuity and, although they are always ready to tattle on each other for transgressions real or imagined, they love each other and share and work together to get what they mutually want.

Mountain Climbing in Suburban NOVA

Mountain climbing in suburban NOVA, you say?  Well, it all depends on your perspective.  Two and Four year olds, who have never seen the Rockies, have a different perspective.

We went to Van Dyck Park in Fairfax this afternoon.  Van Dyck Park is built on the edge of a shallow terrain feature that a military man would call a draw, a southerner might call a holler, and a mountain northwesterner might call a drainage.  The playground is at the top, on level ground.  They've leveled and filled in on the side of the natural hill to make a kind of bowl with a big, level playing field between the playground and the creek at the bottom.  Since they've filled it in to make the playing fields, the drop at the end down to the creek is pretty steep.

They have a paved "fitness trail" around the park (it's NOVA, so it couldn't just be a path).  After the kids played a while in the playground, we went for a walk around the trail.  It circles around the rim of the playing field and drops down to the creek bed and loops around and comes up by the field to the playground.  When we got to the bottom, I challenged the kids to race me to the top of the big hill up to the field.  Of course, they did.

I tried to get them to do the arms raised, "we made it!" pose.

When we got up there, Janelle yelled down to Jeni, "Mommy, we can see the playground from up here!  Come up here and see!"  With that Jeni started up.  The kids watch a lot of Diego and Dora, which always involve saving something, so Janelle took about two steps down the hill, stuck her arm out, and said, "Mommy when you get this far, take my hand!"  I egged Joseph on and told him to go down and push Mommy up.  He ran down to about 2/3 of the way up and grabbed her hand and started pulling her up.  That upset Janelle, because she was supposed to help Mommy, but Jeni got to Janelle and extended her other hand to her and let them both pull her up.

Once Jeni got there, I challenged the kids to another trip.  Down we went, and back up we came.