Who Knew?

A bushel and a quarter of apples yeilds 11 quarts of apple butter. It took 24 hours to cook down in my roaster. I had no idea they would cook down that much.

That Last Boy, says that mother shaking her head

"Mom! you cannot talk about my cute belly button anymowa! You can tickle me but you cannot talk about my bellybutton. You can talk about my cute eyebwows." as he wiggles his eyebrows at me.

Where did this personality come from??!

Just wondering

current U.S. population is 305 million.

current estimates of GLBT population is between 13 and 17 million.

Tell me why if the gay/lesbian/bi/transgender population is a mere 6.5% of the population WHY is there a GLBT couple/issue on virtually every single television show I have seen lately? ABC, CBS, Fox.

My Baby

She isn't too much of a baby anymore. I fluctuate between being sad she isn't a baby anymore and rejoicing. She is climbing onto everything. She comes up to me in the living room, climbs the arm of the couch and gives me snuggles. She was just up next to me and I kissed her. I said, "My girl." and kissed her again. She giggles and said, "MY Momma."

The talking, oh, the talking. Sometimes we just don't know what she is saying. I just have to look at her and say, "I don't know what you want." She gets all sad and melts down and I have to scoop her up and cuddle her.

She runs really weird. One side of her body pumps an arm at a 90 degree angle always. The other side is all loosey-goosey. She runs everywhere. Anything less than 5 feet away means she runs. For a while when she ran she shot both of her arms behind her. I guess she thought it made her more aerodynamic.

She is just getting used to me leaving the house. For the first 6 weeks of seminary DH reported she would wake and I wasn't in my bed and she went into immediate panic and wailing. I walk into the door now to a chirpy little voice saying, "Mama!! YOU home!!!" accompanied with a body slam hug.

She plays peek-a-boo with herself. She covers her eyes and waits until someone sees her and then says, "ABOO!" She knows all the body parts and it particularly enamored of her belly button. She shows it off lifting up her dress and pointing to it.

She will stand at one end of the room and wave at you. "HI ILI!" "HI AYIA!" "HI TAAA!" "HI BAAA!" She has a scream that makes you think an ice pick is stabbing you in your ear.

I really love when she wakes up from her naps. She has this habit of being just soooo happy it is sometimes hard to comprehend. She is delighted by the smallest things after she wakes up. I regularly hear, "OOOHHHHH!" as she is marvelling at a pair of shoes after she wakes up.

DH said last night that her nickname should be Boots. That is her regular attired lately--a diaper and boots. Purple little snow boots that she can zip herself and a diaper.

She is welled loved by all the sibs. #2 regularly seeks her out says, "Hi Little Baby" and picks her up for some loving.

We are so blessed with her.

Free apples

A man in our church gave us all the remaining apples on his tree. I think we got close to 7 bushels. I am dehydrating our applesauce from last year to empty out the jars. It will all get refilled with new applesauce next week. In the meantime we are eating apple crisp, applesauce crumb cake, apple cake, apple butter-you get the idea.

The little girls are enjoying the baskets and baskets of apples. I find apples all around the house with little bites out of them. The are on shelves, tables, upside-down garbage cans, on the piano, the coffee table...

I am very grateful for the free apples but would be even more grateful for a place to lock them up.

:)

Cocoa Loco!

#5 just came up to me (I am checking email). She said, "Mom! I want hot cocoa."
I respond, "That's nice" because she didn't say please.
"Mom, I am cocoa loco. Cocoa Loco! That is my middle name!"
"Your middle name is Jeanne."
"Oh, No! I want my name to be Wigga Jeanne Cocoa Loco ourlastname!"

"Mom? Is it okay if I change my name?"


She is now dancing around the first floor of the house singing, "Cocoa! Loco! My name is Wigga Jeanne Cocoa Loco! Cocoa! Loco!"

Chocolate has a hold on that child...

Chicken Pot Pie Anyone?

the roosters are dead.

and yummy.

My toes are cold

the baby has on a pair of jeans. It is a step in the right direction, right?

I am entering real farm-womanhood tomorrow. I have to kill 2 roosters. One of them is getting aggressive towards the little girls.

Let's chat about breakfast

I know many rely upon cold cereal and milk for breakfast. We love cereal here. #4 loves cereal too much-he is happy to eat it morning, noon, night and any snack in between. His mother loves cereal and regularly has a stash of sugar cereal in her bedroom hidden. (tsk, tsk, tsk)

But, we have been experiencing this phenomenon: if cereal is served for breakfast they are hungry LESS than an hour later. It costs me for the cereal (2 boxes and a gallon of milk) and then it costs me for the second breakfast. And the dishes. oooiiiiyyy. the dishes. (did you see the eye roll?)

I was having #3 make breakfast but everyone was hungry and crabby. He can make great toast, scrambled eggs, and set the table now. (I moved #3 to morning snack duty.) I am finding I have to make breakfast. I walk in from bringing #1 to early morning seminary and don my apron. If #6 doesn't eat a good breakfast, oh, the whining. Please just take me out back and put me out of my misery. Our most recent successes are migas con heuoves (corn tortillas and scrambled eggs) and graham cakes (kind of a breakfast cookie).

Here is a list of what we regularly eat:
oatmeal, raw and cooked (DH likes it raw with bananas and raisins, I think it is horse food)
cream of wheat
applesauce and toast (whole wheat)
scrambled eggs
fried eggs and toast
french toast
migas con heuvos
yogurt (homemade)
pancakes
rice, milk and sugar
rice with fried eggs on top
graham cake with raisins and milk
breakfast apple crisp with vanilla yogurt (basically apple crisp, low sugar)
german pancake

Ingredient wise I use eggs, milk, bread, rice, cream of wheat, oatmeal, applesauce, canned fruit and dried fruit. Can anyone think of something with those ingredients that I can whip up another way?

From #5

Mom. I don't want piggy tails. I am just going to put my hair in between my ears.

It is 62 degrees in the house and #6

does not want to keep any clothing on.

For the last week we have put clothes on her, start the day and find little piles of 2T clothing around the house. Sometimes she removes them in one place, other times there is a trail of socks, pants, shirts. It is amusing watching her tenacity and completeness in stripping off of all her duds.

This morning was the wrestle of a lifetime. It is just too cold to let her just run around in a diaper. She tried making a run for the back yard naked yesterday-when it was 54 degrees and raining. She wants to be naked. She even has been starting to refuse a diaper. "NO! NO ziapa!"

It took both DH and I to put a pair of footie pajammies on this girl. She was screaming and howling and protesting the entire time. She flipped over and had to be pinned down. We finally got them on her and I sent #1 scurrying for a safety pin to thwart her efforts in stripping. We held her down and safety pinned the tang of the zipper to the cloth of her jammies. That should stop her for a couple hours I was thinking.

Then DH said, "Gees, all that effort. Too bad they aren't clean."

So, she is dressed in dirty jammies, fidgiting with the the safety pin trying to get out of her clothes as fast and as furiously as she can, watching Angelina Ballerina and every now and then looking over at me moaning, "Noooo, nooooo! nooo mommmyyy."

Ah, the funny things they say

This morning I had a 2 year old running a duplo car up my arm. She just handed me the duplo grandma and said, "Buckle Up!"

Me: How many toes do you have?
#4: Same as everybody else! THiwateen!
and speaking of counting the other day he said to his sister, "Wiggga, you don't know how to count collectly." (correctly)

#2: Mom we are out of Arm and Shoulders shampoo.

#1: Mom, he is verblickly abusing me.

#2: Is this Hagen Daz sauce? (when we were having eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce.)

#1 and 2 were taking Legos away from #4. He came to us crying, "DEY WOBBAS!" and had a melt down. Isn't it good to know that your elder brothers are robbers?

A quote

Character is the aim of true education; and science, history, and literature are but means used to accomplish the desired end. Character is not the result of chance work but of continuous right thinking and right acting. True education seeks, then, to make men and women not only good mathematicians, proficient linguists, profound scientists, or brilliant literary lights, but also honest men, combined with virtue, temperance, and brotherly love—men and women who prize truth, justice, wisdom, benevolence, and self-control as the choicest acquisitions of a successful life. It is regrettable, not to say deplorable, that modern education so little emphasizes these fundamental elements of true character. The principal aim of many of our schools and colleges seems to be to give the students purely intellectual attainments and to give but passing regard to the nobler and more necessary development along moral lines.

David O. McKay
Gospel Ideals: Selections from the Discourses of David O. McKay. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1953. 440-441

What I am hearing right now

"#6! Get off the television!" at least #2 was kind and gentle.

another climber. sigh

What I am hearing right now

intense giggling.

#1 is wrapping all the little kids as burritos in their comforters. He wraps them. They squirm out. They gloat, "I GOT OUT!" and line up again for him to wrap them up.

intense giggling.