A Big Bath for a Little Boy

I had a big bath today. You see, Mommy thought that a sponge bath wasn't bad enough. She put me in this big blue thing and splashed water on my tummy, and that made me cold!

He helped!

"Hey, I helped the most!"” Yes, he helped too. Mommy had him get the soap. This is what she did to me then...

Can you believe it?

As if that wasn't enough, they had Polly take pictures of me! She even looks proud to be the photographer! Preposterous!

At last we're done. That was bad, but at least I kept quiet and didn't cry. A guy has to be tough, you know. The whole thing was scary. Sometimes I don't know what gets into Mommy.

 

You Might Have a Lot of Kids If…. Part IV

Instead of asking your husband to make a quick stop at the grocery store on his way home from work, you ask him to make a quick stop at SAMS Club for 4 gallons of milk, 4 loaves of bread, and a few other assorted “little” things… and he agrees that it’s a little trip.

Related Posts:

• 20 Ways to Know You Have a Lot of Kids
• You Might Have a Lot of Kids, Part II
• You Might Have a Lot of Kids if, Part III

 

The Candy Man????

This one requires no introduction

 

Clean up in front of Aisle 8

I’ve never been involved in one of those incidents.

Until now.

It all happened pretty fast. Princess, tired from having already accompanied us to Trader Horn, the farmer’s market, and the bank, reached her melting point in the middle of our grocery trip. As we strolled through one of the pantry aisles, she suddenly popped her head out of her cart.

“Mommy! I have to go pee!”

“Okay Princess. Just a minute, alright?”

“Mommy! I have to pee, reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad!”

“I hear you, Sweetie. Just give me a minute, okay?”

At this point I detect a stronger urgency in her voice.

“MOMMY! I CAN’T HOLD IT!”

‘Nuff said. We need to find a potty, pronto.

I scan the store, realizing that we’ve never visited the restrooms in this particular store. Then I spot a friendly-looking woman who works there.

“Pardon me,” I say, “Can you please tell me where… ummm…” I trail off, while the woman looks at me as if I must surely be in need of medical assistance.

Why does my voice trail off, you ask? At this moment, I am distracted – by the slippery feeling under my shoes.

I glance behind me and realize that there is a stream of slightly yellow liquid trailing for about 4 feet behind us.

“Ahhh… it looks like we’re too late,” I say to the woman.

I apologize profusely, and get the directions to the potty.

Once inside the restrooms, the kids all take their places. “Polly, hold George. Fred, stand right here and be good. Gameboy, keep Fred in line. Bubbles, stand here next to Polly.” Inside the stall, our conversation went like this:

“Princess, why didn’t you wait?”

“I had to pee!”

“But you have to give Mommy a little more notice than that…”

That’s when we heard it.

“Clean up in front of Aisle 8!”

I closed my eyes in embarrassment once again.

So now we’ve experienced being part of an aisle cleanup incident. Let’s just check that off the list, and not go there again, shall we?

But lest you think that our entire excursion was bad, I have to mention all the good aspects of our grocery trip.

1. Princess’ dress was already dirty.
2. She only got the dress a little bit wet. Most of the mess went straight into the seat of the cart and onto the floor.
3. We actually had one of those race car carts. These are a scarce commodity in our store, so usually everyone walks except the youngest child. Having more than one rider is a treat!
4. Our race car only had one seat in the front. That means that Fred wasn’t sitting next to Princess during the Aisle 8 fiasco, and he didn’t get wet.
5. George was unsuccessful in getting out of his seat. This was quite a success on the part of Polly and me, because his seat did not have a buckle. Additionally, he has a very remarkable stubborn streak and was quite determined to win this battle.
6. I didn’t have to lift a finger at the checkout lane. Nor did I have to ask any of the kids to do it. The four oldest jumped ahead and unloaded the entire thing onto the checkout stand.
7. Likewise, I realized that I no longer have to ask the kids to help me put groceries away at home. Everyone down to Princess automatically grabs a bag or two out of the back of the vehicle and puts the items away. We can unload groceries faster than ever.

All in all, not a bad trip, save the Aisle 8 incident. And we had to experience it at one point or another. How can a family with 7 kids do otherwise?

 

Princess takes her work seriously

Yesterday I told you all about our new chore system. One of Princess’ responsibilities is to refill the napkins after breakfast.

Let’s just say that she is going above and beyond the call of duty.

Isn’t three a wonderful age?

 

You Might Have a Lot of Kids if, Part III

You might have a lot of kids if…

You buy your toothbrushes by the pound.

Just kidding. No one sells them by the pound. If they did, you’d buy them that way.

As it is, you do the next best thing. You go to the Dollar Store every couple months and buy out all of their toothbrushes. Well, maybe not all their toothbrushes. There are a few rules:

1. You only buy the big packs.
2. You only buy the ones clearly labelled “soft bristle.”
3. And of course, you only buy one of each type and color, because having a lot of kids also means that you don’t want any two children to ever have identical toothbrushes at the same time, as to avoid confusion.

In case you are counting, there are 36 toothbrushes in the picture. Those ought to last a while.

While we are on the topic of toothbrushes, let’s talk about Sharpie markers. Having lots of kids also means you might keep a Sharpie marker near the kids’ bathroom, so that you can write each child’s name on their toothbrush and label other miscellaneous, easily-misidentified items.

Want more? Check out 20 Ways to Know You Have a Lot of Kids,
or You Might Have a Lot of Kids, Part II

 

Hey, Rules are Rules

Lately our Curious George has become a little… shall we say… particular about the way our house ought to function. I rather like this new side to my young son’s personality! He has a few house rules that he takes upon himself to keep after:

1. All bathroom doors should be shut. It doesn’t matter if he’s in a hurry to get his shoes or a diaper. If the door is open, even a crack, he takes the time to shut it. Smart boy. Maybe he remembers The Great Toilet Incident of 2009.
2. All shoes should be in a container. If someone misses a shot when tossing a shoe toward a shoe basket, George will see it to it’s proper home, even if he has to get up from across a room to do so.
3. All paper should be in the garbage. I must say, I really appreciate his attention to this little detail. Most of our other children love cutting paper, taping paper, drawing on paper, etc., and we usually find scraps of something laying around.
4. Dirty diapers must be changed immediately. When George has a messy one, he will bring a diaper and container of wipes, pat me on the arm, and announce, “Ca-ca! Ca-ca!” repeatedly until I take the needed action. Afterward, he quickly follows up with carrying the diaper to the garbage, most likely because it’s a paper product (see #3).
5. Dishes belong in the dishwasher. It doesn’t matter if the lid is still on the sippy cup; if Mommy has the machine door open, George is determined to help!
6. Toilet paper belongs in the toilet. Rolls, small pieces… it doesn’t matter.
7. All toilets deserve to be flushed. Frequently.
8. Shoes may never be worn without socks, even if said shoes are sandals. We are working on getting him to loosen up on this one a bit.
9. Socks must be pulled all the way up, as far as they will go. None of this “bunching around the ankles” stuff!
10. CDs and DVDs should take up as much surface area as possible, and they should be kept on the living room carpet, not in a cabinet. This last rule of George’s is the only one that I don’t like. It’s in direct opposition to my rule. One of us is going to have to give.

 

“I don’t care what Archimedes did…”

“I don’t care what Archimedes did; We don’t run naked in the house.”

Those aren’t words you don’t hear every day, are they? They sure caught my attention as I heard them come out of my husband’s mouth. I followed his voice until I found him finishing a talk with Fred, who was now hopping off of a chair and skipping out of the room.

I asked Iron Man what that was all about.

He elaborated: “Bubbles told me that yesterday, while Fred was trying on his bathing suits, he ran through the hallway naked. I talked to him about it, and he said he was trying to be like Archimedes.”

I couldn’t resist a giggle.

Have you ever heard this story? We read it in Archimedes and the Door of Science a few weeks ago. Excellent book, by the way. I’m learning a lot from it, right along with the kids!

The story goes that King Hiero of Greece gave his goldsmith a lump of gold to make him a crown. The goldsmith did the work and presented the king with his crown. The workmanship was perfect, but something didn’t seem right to the king. It just didn’t seem to be the same amount of gold that he had given the goldsmith. He weighed the crown, and sure enough, the weight was equal to the amount that he had given the goldsmith. He couldn’t figure it out, and it was really bothering him, keeping him up at night. He sent for Archimedes and asked him to figure out if the goldsmith had cheated him.

Archimedes took the crown home and pondered the question. He did nothing but think about this, trying to determine how to find the answer to the king’s question. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t bathe. Nothing but total focused concentration on the question before him. Finally, Archimedes’ slaves became desperate to take care of him. They determined to get him to bathe. They dragged him, kicking and screaming, down the street to the bath and plunged him in the water.

While in the water, Archimedes began to ponder how his weight in the water would cause the water level to increase and overflow. A lightbulb moment occurred as he realized a way to solve the question of the gold crown. He jumped out of the water and ran home, completely forgetting his clothes. Which, by the way, was the part that Fred re-enacted yesterday.

So Archimedes returned home and gathered the crown, a lump of gold of equal weight, a jar, and a bowl. He filled the jar completely with water and set it in the bowl. He then immersed the crown in the water, allowing the bowl to catch all of the displaced water. He then repeated the process with the lump of gold, and found that less water was displaced. Through this, he discovered that the king had indeed been cheated. The crown was actually made of a mix of silver and gold. Gold is more dense (heavier in weight) than silver, so more silver was needed to equal the weight of solid gold, therefore taking up more space, therefore displacing more water.

The book doesn’t mention what the king did to the goldsmith, but I’ll bet it wasn’t pretty.

Interesting, isn’t it? Archimedes seems to have been quite a brilliant guy, albeit eccentric. But, most definitely, not a good example of modesty for Fred.

 

Duct Tape or a Nail

Note: I did not write this myself. I received it in an email from a friend this morning, and have no idea where it originated. It’s too good not to share though…

A man dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter meets him at the Pearly Gates and says, “Here’s how it works. You need 100 points to make it into heaven. You tell me all the good things you’ve done, and I give you a certain number of points for each item, depending on how good it was. When you reach 100 points, you get in.”

“Okay,” the man says, “I was married to the same woman for 50 years and never cheated on her, even in my heart.”

“That’s wonderful,” says St. Peter, “that’s worth two points!”

“Two points?!” he says, “Well, I attended church all my life and supported its ministry with my tithe and service.”

“Terrific!” says St. Peter, “That’s certainly worth a point.”

“One point!?!! Hmmm… I started a soup kitchen in my city and worked in a shelter for homeless veterans.”

“Fantastic, that’s good for two more points,” says St. Peter.

“Two points!?!!” Exasperated, the man cries, “At this rate the only way I’ll get into heaven is by the grace of God.”

“Bingo! 100 points! Come on in!”

We often try to fix problems with WD-40 and duct tape.

God did it with 3 nails.

AMEN!

 

Funny how that worked out…

Fred never fails to make us smile. Usually it’s deliberate, because he loves to be the comedian, but sometimes things come out of his mouth completely seriously that make us stop in wonder. Last night was such a moment.

Now, before I tell you what he said, I have to give a little background. This particular comment relates to my father-in-law, AKA “Pap.” Pap is a funeral director. Years ago when Iron Man was still a boy, Pap purchased their family’s home and the land next to it, so that he could build his business there. He built a beautiful funeral home next to the house, and paved a large parking lot between them. The project was a lot of work and a large investment, every detail carefully planned.

Fast forward to last night. As we were eating our dinner, Fred was being unually quiet, apparently pondering something. Suddenly he looked up at Iron Man and thoughtfully announced, “Daddy! I know why Pap got his job that he works at.”

“Why is that?” Iron Man asked.

“Because it’s so close to his house!”

Funny how that worked out, isn’t it?