Ryan to Stephen:      Where’s the mustard?

Stephen to Ryan:      We don’t need any mustard.

Ryan to group:          What kind of a dinner is this?

“No no no Daddy.  It goes like this:
Once upon a time, I had water in my hand.  And it farted!”

Ah, children.

Ryan: “Dad…!  What the heck are you doing?”

A week ago, Michelle went in to check on Alyssa, because Alyssa usually kicks off her covers before finally going to sleep, and then she’s ice cold in the mornings.  Alyssa is also not a very sound sleeper, so she half-woke up when Michelle covered her up.

Alyssa: “Oh… hi, mom.  I was dreaming.  The sprinkles are getting checkmarks.”  (very serious face) “They are getting checkmarks for the rest of their lives.”

Yesterday, Santa Claus called the house to talk to Ryan and Alyssa.  They talked for a while about what Ryan wanted for Christmas, and then:

Santa: “Ho, ho, ho… that’s wonderful.  Would you like to talk to Rudolph now?”

Ryan: (not missing a beat) “I don’t think reindeer can talk, Santa.  They’re not people.”

I’m feeling very blessed these days.

But in the last few months, he’s really just powered through, and gotten to the point where he’s really reading.  He can sound out unfamiliar words, getting the sounds wrong only sometimes (mostly vowels, because English can be tricky like that), and once he’s seen a really unfamiliar word that appears more than once in a story, he can recall it for the rest of the story without trouble, and can remember it the next time he reads the book.  His current favorite book is about a caterpillar who spins a cocoon and who at one points eats a salami, and although some of those words gave him trouble on the first read, he doesn’t even hesitate on them anymore.

Even letter combinations I’d classify as ‘really tricky’ no longer trip him up.  I taught him how the gh in night doesn’t make any sound (“N-I says nye, G-H says <mouth open without saying anything>, T says tuh, so N-I-G-H-T says nye, <pause>, tuh.  Night.”), and he immediately picked up on the obvious words like fight, right, and sight — but it was still startling to see him not trip over bought, only making the slight mistake of pronouncing it like boat.

It’s not just reading comprehension, either, it’s also spelling.  He can take a word he’s never heard before and pretty quickly guess at how it’s spelled, which amazes me when you give him a word like amaze and he comes back with A-M-A-Z.  And he can do the reverse, and he can take a string of letters spoken out loud and turn them into words, which startled Michelle and I when we were talking about having I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M, and Ryan said “I want ice cream too!”

(Of course, being a child of the Internet Age, he also makes some pattern-matching mistakes when sounding out words; his initial attempt at saying the letters in the word welcome resulted in “W-E-L-dot com-E”.)

All of the above is just to give a little more insight into what happened yesterday.  The whole family was outside; Michelle was cleaning the big dog’s ears, I was just hanging around, Ryan and Alyssa were alternately chasing and being chased by the little dog.  When I went inside to clean up from dinner, Ryan followed me, initially to ask me how I came inside (he’s got ‘how’ and ‘why’ confused a little right now), but then he helped a bit and dawdled in the kitchen.

Not too long after that, the microwave switched on.  I whirled around to see Ryan standing right next to the microwave, his eyes wide and his finger still hovering near the buttons.  He didn’t say anything, which is pure Ryan (Alyssa would have said “I didn’t do it!” almost immediately), just stood there with a cross between a mischevious grin and abject horror on his face.

More laughing than angry, I crossed the kitchen and turned off the microwave.  ”Ryan,” I asked, “what on Earth are you doing?”

“I was wanted some popcorn,” he said.

I got what I’d imagine is that look of utter bewilderment that I get when my son says something that is perfectly reasonable and still makes no sense.  I didn’t know what to say, so I just said, “What?”

He points at the microwave, where there is a button I have never seen that says POPCORN.  ”Popcorn, dad.”  He says this in that patronizing tone he gets sometimes, as if I’m a bumbling but lovable buffoon.

After a moment, I laugh.  ”I’ll get you some popcorn later, Mister Guy.  Don’t play with the microwave, ok?”

He says “Okay!” and then he’s off playing outside again.

Me: “I love you, little Mister.”
Ryan: “I love you, big Mister.”
Me: “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ryan: “All right.” (or “I’ll see you in the morning.”)
Me: “Night night!”
Ryan: “Night night!”

Then he decided we should ‘tease’ by repeating the last word of every line, so it became, for example, “I love you, little Mister Mister.” We did that for about a week, and one night he broke out with this:

Me: “I love you, little Mister Mister.”
Ryan: “I love you, potato.”
Me: “… I’ll see you in the morning morning.”
Ryan: “I’ll see you in the morning, swingset.”
Me: “Night night night.”
Ryan: “Night night, lampshade.”

He insisted I tease with him like this, so we did that for about a week, coming up with new silly names to call each other every night.

Now he’s settled us down into the following sequence:

Me: “I love you, french fry.”
Ryan: “I love you, salad.”
Me: “I’ll see you in the morning, cheese.”
Ryan: “I’ll see you in the morning, salad.”
Me: “Night night, McDonald’s.”
Ryan: “Night night, salad.”

I don’t know what to make of the fact that he calls me ’salad’ constantly.

Alyssa:  Because I’m beautiful!

VeggieTales are the new obsession for my kids.  We watch them over and over and over… If you don’t believe me, just hang out with Ryan for a little while.  He’s likely to either sing you a song from one of the shows, or recite the dialogue – with his dad.

Tonight we were watching one we’d never seen, called “An Easter Carol.”  It teaches the story of Easter (though oddly it never mentions Jesus’s name).  Near the end of the story, Ryan says out loud – to no one in particular – “I love Jesus.” 

Yeah, okay, I got teary.

But this post isn’t about being sick. It’s about being adorable.

Two nights ago, I picked up dinner for Michelle after I’d taken the little ones to “the playroom pizza store.” As she was unpacking it onto the table, Ryan gets a shocked look on his face and says “Mommy! You have to put it on a table!”

We were sort of confused, because that’s exactly what she was doing. We figured that he meant she should eat at the kitchen table, so we explained that the coffee table is a table too, and it’s okay to eat there sometimes.

Ryan listens to all of this patiently before breaking out one of his “God, my parents are thick” expressions. “No, mommy. You have to use a table. I’ll get one for you.” And he scampers off into the kitchen.

So, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s going to try to drag the kitchen table into the living room, so I follow him into the kitchen. I figure, if I can’t talk him out of it, at least I could help him with it.

But it turns out he’s actually in the cabinet by the fridge, where we keep the cookie sheets and TV trays. He’s pulling on one of the big wooden ones with handles. I’d forgotten we even had them because we so rarely use them, but the kids always have the cabinet open because they can bang it against the fridge, so I guess they see it a lot more than we do.

A portable table. Who knew?

The cuteness was short-lived, however, as we barely had time to get the table into the living room before Alyssa threw up on it.

Alyssa was watching me paint my nails, and of course, we had a girly moment and painted her toenails too.  When we were done, I put the nail polish on the counter next to the sink in our master bathroom. 

Today I was downstairs working while the kids were taking a nap.   Stephen was outside washing the dogs, and asked me to get a towel for him.  On my way back with the towel I peeked in on Ryan, who was sound asleep.  I peeked in on Alyssa as well, and found an empty bed!

I started hunting through the house, and finally found her in our master bathroom.  She’d opened the nail polish, and had painted her toes purple.  Then she’d emptied the entire contents of the polish in a gigantic circle on our carpet. 

I stared at her in horror for a minute, and then just turned and walked out.  Emergencies really aren’t my thing, as my brain usually melts into oatmeal and I panic.  True to form, I went straight outside to Stephen and said, “Oh my God, you’ve got to see our bathroom.”  I followed him upstairs.

When I got up there, I found Alyssa standing in our bathtub, with Stephen trying to find something in the closet to work on the giant purple stain.  I waved him off.  We are now doomed with a stain that can’t be fixed.

I’d been toying with the idea of putting ceramic tile in our bathroom one of these days (far down the road).  Looks like today is the day.

As Stephen turned to take her upstairs, I turned back to the kitchen… Just in time to see Ryan at the door to the pantry, a bottle of Hungry Jack Lite syrup rising to his lips.

The most I could do was gulp “UH!” as I doubled over in laughter.  He jumped about a foot in the air and looked at me sheepishly, the syrup bottle hovering a few inches from his mouth. 

We now store the syrup on the top shelf.