Observant Andrew

We drove by a red-colored barn-shaped building last week.

Andrew: "That's a beer-barn!"
Me: "Is that the one you went to with Pop-pop?"
Andrew: "No, that one had green and white letters."

I'm not sure if I should be amazed he knew that minute difference between the two...or worried that my 4-year-old knows what a 'beer barn' is...

Family Day at the Office

Every year, Jim's employer has a 'family day'. There are bounce houses, train rides and games for the kids; a free dinner (complete with ice cream for dessert) and vendors and other people giving things away (like pens, highlighers, yo-yos and bouncy balls!). Here are a few pics from last Friday's family day.


Andrew on an inflatable slide.



Andrew coming down...Jim and Peter going up.



Peter and Jim at the top.



Jim and the boys on the 'train ride'.

Andrew played the 'QB challenge' - he actually did pretty well getting the ball into the tiny holes.

Our little railroaders...
before playing with the 'snort' (which Peter kept yelling over and over again to the man behind us. Fortunately, said man also had kids and knew exactly what Peter was talking about! If you don't know, read Are You my Mother?)

The goal: to knock over the cone using the orange hook attached to the crane attached to the 'snort' truck...using a remote control.

The VERY patient volunteer who explained to Andrew how to do it. I think all Andrew really wanted to do was the trigger that made the horn honk!

Andrew, in his safety gear, manipulating the triggers. He DID eventually get the cones knocked over...but I think it took him 3x as long as the other kids! God bless his patient instructor!

Spectacular Sunsets

(This is not the same sunset described below, but another one earlier that week)

While driving westward one evening, the boys and I were treated to a spectacular sunset. The kind you see in movies or on postcards...or the really annoying supposed-to-be-uplifting e-mails.

The sun was sending out beautiful orange & yellow rays of sunshine through lines of puffy white clouds and the sky was starting to change from blue to the oranges and pinks and yellows of late summer. It was really just fantastic.

I said something to Andrew about how pretty the sky looked and how beautiful God had made it.
Then I said something along the lines of, "didn't God do a good job painting the sky and sun and clouds with all the pretty colors?"

Andrew laughed like that idea of God painting the sky was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.

I asked him if that was funny. He said, "yeah"...still chuckling.
I then asked him how it got to be so pretty if God hadn't painted it.

He replied, "He just asks the sky to do that stuff, and they do it".

Well, there you have it.

what goes on a pizza?

Andrew: "pepperoni. I like pepperonis, they're, like, my favorite."

Peter - with much enthusiasm: "Pepper-bonies! Pepper-ponies!"

cookie sheep

Peter's (new) name for cookie sheets.

money pools

We drove by one of the local park/exercise center/pool today - the club-type place that charges admission or monthly/yearly fees. Andrew saw the really neat pool with big slides and thought it looked really cool...which was of course followed by, "Can we go there sometime?" I tried to nicely explain that because you have to pay money to go to that particular park, probably not!

A few hours later, we drove by the same park again on the way home.
Andrew: "There's that cool park again!" (I'm not sure if this was excitement at seeing something familiar...or the thinly veiled 'I'd like to go there, so I'll mention it to mom again b/c she's surely forgotten that when I mentioned it earlier she said, 'no', which he has been practicing quite a bit lately).
Me: "Yep, there it is. But I think it's closed."
Peter: "money....pool. ...money...pool"

Ha! At least one of them was listening!

hot doctors and hershey-does-its...

Human speech is an amazing thing! We go from tiny, screaming infants to grown-ups with vocabularies of prodigious sizes. I think I read a statistic once that b/t 12-24 months, a kid can learn almost 20 new words a day...incredible! While the human vocabulary is quite amazing, there is a problem with it growing so quickly before a person reaches the age of reason...and how words often get lost in translation.

When Andrew was little, 'ba-ba' meant 3 different things. 'Baba' was pacifier; 'baba' was buddy; and 'baba' was bottle - depending on which syllable was accented. This took a while to decipher (God help me if I ever have to learn chinese!).

Then there was the time we visited a mall with a (fake) alligator...and Andrew kept talking about the alligator at Pop-pop's office. And how the alligator beeped (the fake one actually roared, which made this all the more confusing). After a couple weeks of hearing about the mysterious beeping alligator, we realized that the alligator he was talking about was actually the 'elevator' at Jim's very tall office building.

This brings us to 'hershey-does-its' and 'hot doctors'.

Andrew loved 'hershey-does-its' - he still does!! They brought a smile to his face, wild motions from his hands and utter frustration that mom & dad obviously had absolutely NO idea what in the world he was trying to say!

Peter recently had the same problem with things being lost in translation - he kept saying 'hot doctors' over and over again - very emphatically. Pointing at the sky or his shirt, repeating it over & over again...occasionally adding 'Thomas' after 'hot doctors'. I would politely repeat it a few times...and then wonder WHERE in the world he'd learned to put the word 'hot' with 'doctors'?!?! Is he watching soaps on the sly?!?! What the heck?!

Fortunately, for the boys - and for us, the mystery of 'hershey-does-its' and 'hot doctors' was eventually solved. "Hershey-does-its' was Andrew's 1-year-old way of saying 'tasty donuts' - a treat Jim would occasionally indulge us in on a lazy Saturday morning. "Hot Doctors" are really NOT hot doctors (in case you were wondering, there were no soaps being watched on the sly)...it's Peter's way of saying 'helicopters'.

I can't wait to see what they'll come up with next!

Pride goeth before the Fall...

Andrew was exceptionally well-behaved today - which is a change from his behavior of late.
He was getting quite good at following directions the FIRST time...and even did one of his little chores withOUT having to be asked to do it.

Jim came home from work and told Andrew he was just"so proud" of Andrew for being so good today.

Andrew said, "I was proud of me, too!"

So much for inculcating humility...

Clodfelter would be proud...

One of my college professors, Dr. Cherie Clodfelter, always insisted we answer in the affirmative by definitively saying, "Yes".

'Yeah', 'uh huh' and any other version just wasn't going to cut it - it sounds bad, makes you sound uneducated, and a host of other reasons were given - the best one being that there is no misinterpreting 'Yes' for something else (which can happen with yeahs and uh huhs).

Peter must know this somehow, as he always responds with a "Yes" - no yeahs, or uh huhs allowed. He would have fit into her class wonderfully!

You're so Vain...

We went to a playgroup today with a few friends and their kiddos. We walked in the door, and one of the moms commented that my hair (recently chopped off) looked nice.

Andrew pipes in: "Does my hair look nice, too?"

Where did this kid come from?!