And then she flipped us off...

We had dinner at my godfather's house last night. His wife made pasta with a delicious Bolognese sauce and much to the girls' delight there was a cherry/raspberry tart for dessert. Raspberries are their favorite thing in the world. They don't go on sale often, but they have been the past few week at Sprouts and we are LOVING it.

Anyway back to the actual story...so during our meal, Kayla announces that she has a cut on her finger. Generally she tries to make a pretty big deal out of most of her "boo-boos" so that we will put a fun, cute, wildly exciting band-aid on it. Generally it's nothing and we explain (for the twenty thousandth time) what band-aids are for.

Well, I guess she figured she might be able to talk Paul and Agnes into giving her a band-aid (she had almost succeeded in convincing them that Ava, who was actually bleeding a tiny bit, needed one about 15 minutes prior). So, she is showing Paul the cut on her finger and of course, he is reacting as she expected with pity and Chris, from across the table, says something to the effect of, "Is it even bleeding, Kayla?" And then she flipped him off.

We all tried to hide our smiles and giggles because your child flipping you off is only funny when they have no idea what they are doing, and she was so serious about her cut, hoping that someone would believe her that it was truly a bad one and that she was in dire need of a pretty Princess band-aid to cover it up and make it magically feel better. And all we could do was laugh, and tell her that she would be fine; we were having raspberries for dessert. Which of course, perked her up right away...

You should know that I don't believe in posts without pictures, so here are a few cute ones of Kayla reading this book she memorized to her sisters.


and Elise in pigtails. She wasn't in to me taking these pictures at all...can you tell?

Things she says...

This morning, I got up, made Chris his lunch, waved goodbye as he left, and happily jumped in the shower. It was 7:30 and the girls weren't awake, so I could get an uninterrupted shower. And I did.

However, when I got out of the shower, Kayla was out at the dining room table playing with my rubber stamp set and my "create your own greeting card" kit. I asked her how long she'd been up and she replied, "Oh, about 4 minutes." At that moment we heard Elise calling from her bed. The door to their room had been left wide open (by Kayla) so I asked, "And how long has she been up?" Kayla responded without missing a beat, "About 4 days, I think". I laughed. "4 days??" I asked her. She looked at me and asked, "How long have you been up?"

Later in the day, after Kayla was dressed in an adorable little dress, I told her, "Kayla, you are as cute as a button." She looked at me, looked down at her dress, and back at me saying, "Yes, it does have buttons, Mommy" I'm sure what she was thinking was Duh, Mom....

The neighbor lady smokes. She is kind enough to go out towards the end of the driveways when the weather gets warmer and we are all outside more, which is nice. Anyway, I'm sure Kayla wonders a bit about what exactly it is that the neighbor is doing since she sees the smoke blow out, but she has never actually asked us about it yet. Today though, she looked out the window during lunch and commented, "Well, 'Judy' is blowing her little whistle." There was no whistle, there was no noise, so I can only assume she was referring to her blowing on her cigarette, but I had to smile about her conclusion that 'Judy' must be blowing a whistle...

In the evening while I was preparing dinner, I gave Kayla and Elise a little snack at the table since it appeared that Chris was running late and thus dinner would be a little late as well. I looked over and Elise was making sweet little faces, so I told her she looked adorable. We are also trying to teach Elise some baby signs, so I promptly said, "Can you say thank you?" and showed her the sign for thank you. Kayla loves to help "teach" Elise the signs and always jumps right in and proceeds to show Elise the sign 6 more times, which she did. So I smiled at Kayla and told her, "You are adorable too." She looked right back at me and said, "I know." I stifled a laugh and told her that she was supposed to say 'thank you' when someone gave her a compliment. I tried again, "Your dress is very pretty." She replied, "Yes!" Then she giggled. Oh, that kid.

And because I believe there should be a picture of my kid in every post...

"Sunday's" 7 quicktakes

1. The highlight (or really the lowpoint) of our week, was Kayla dumping a bottle of nail polish remover on the carpet in her room. To this, she added some sunblock for a stunning effect. Apparently she was trying to do her doll's nails and put "lotion" on her.

Chris was working from home and I was subbing that day. He immediately put cornstarch all over the place to absorb the sunblock. After vacuuming that up and making a huge mess of the vacuum, there was a nice HUGE "bleach" spot on the carpet. When I got home, I looked up how to get nail polish remover out of carpet and found that a mixture of 2 cups warm water to 2 TBSP of dish soap was supposed to do the trip. I spent the next day treating the carpet with that mixture every hour or two. Praise be to God, it has pretty much all come out and the carpet looks like it used to.

(the nail polish remover bottle is sitting on the spot where it was dumped...see you can't even tell!)


2. On Friday night, my grandmother and I went to a murder mystery dinner theater play put on by the local high school. It was very well done and the food was delicious. I was quite impressed. The high school performed Singin in the Rain several years back which was also fantastic. I always forget how much I love a good live play.


3. As a result of the nail polish remover incident, the girls were forced to sleep in the same room during nap time. They sleep in the same room at night and have since Elise was about 3 months old, but the nap was a different story. One or the other would keep the other one awake, so we set up the pack n play in our room for Elise during nap time. BUT because the room reeked of chemicals, Chris had to put both girls in our room (Elise in the pack n play and Kayla in our bed) and they actually both took a nap. I guess they are growing up. Once the carpet was taken care of, we moved them both back to their own room for naps and they are now officially true roommates. So proud of them!


4. Kayla has been very cute with her baby doll recently. Elise got a doll for her birthday that Kayla also likes to take care of (Elise isn't quite interested yet). So Kayla essentially has a set of twins. She is often found cuddling, singing to them, and putting them down for naps. She takes them for walks and "hikes to the lake" and occasionally lets them watch "Francis" (which is what she calls her St. Francis of Assisi movie). It's adorable, really.

5. I went to a Mom's Group down at our parish last week. This is my second time. The first was somewhat promising. The second group meeting was a little disappointing. The subject was to be MARRIAGE. Several moms dominated the conversation with talk of their children and problems they've been having with them at school etc. Don't get me wrong, talking about kids and getting others' viewpoint is great, but the subject was to be MARRIAGE! I left a bit aggravated. It doesn't help that I feel like I have very little in common with any of the women who go to that mom's group.



6. The girls are both very into reading lately. They both will go over to the bookshelf and take out books and just sit and read for awhile. It's quite sweet.

7. Recently Chris has been singing a song with a line "Girl, you got those hands". Honestly, I have no clue what else the song says, but that line gets stuck in our heads and the other day, we heard Kayla singing "Baby, you got those hands!" We burst out laughing. Oh dear...

E is for Elise!

Thanksgiving and Christmas were huge contributors as to why we have still not moved on to letter "F". I wanted to do our "E for Elise" project, but of course we had to do turkey projects, advent wreaths, and Christmas snowmen during the correct season, so Elise got postponed a little. We finally got around to it just before Christmas, and I finally got around to posting it now.

Kayla has been spouting "E for Elise" for a long time now. She loves her sister and she loves that Elise starts with E. She has a puzzle with the letters and each letter has a picture underneath. When she gets to certain letters though, she pays no attention to the picture and just says what SHE knows the letter starts with. K for Kayla is one and B for Baby. E for Elise is, of course, another example of this, and she gets rather tickled that F for fish comes next.

At any rate, we painted a pretty picture with E for Elise and then I helped add some pictures of Elise.

I also asked Kayla to tell me a little bit about her sister so I could write that down.

Allow me to explain some of these quotes, if I may.

"She's good." If you ask Kayla a question (any question just about) her first response will usually be that it is "good". For instance: 'Kayla, how's your food?' "Good." 'Kayla, how do you like your new book?' "it's good." 'Kayla, how was your nap?' "Good." It's not a fabulous compliment, but at least it's not worse. :)

"She likes to get on me, like climb on me. She goes crazy with Jesus!!"
This quote must have somehow all made sense as one thought in her mind, but I'm not really sure how. Essentially, she is saying that Elise likes to climb on and tackle her and that she is crazy. Maybe she is also inferring that Elise likes Jesus as well? Not really sure.

"She likes to get on 'me's' head and bump it". Much like the last quote, she is referencing the fact that Elise, does indeed, like to jump on her, crawl on her, and manhandle her in any way possible. My favorite part of the quote is that she says me's instead of my.

"She plays toys with me". This one is quite obvious. There will be no explanation.

I love these two little girls and the way they interact. They love each other a lot.

This picture is great. This must be right after one of those times Elise jumped on Kayla's head because Kayla looked a bit dazed and annoyed.

Kayla and Catholic Radio

As many of you know, Christopher works for Immaculate Heart Radio. "Immaculate Heart Radio is a lay apostolate dedicated to spreading the knowledge, love, and practice of the Roman Catholic Faith by means of radio". For more information on their mission or to find a station or listen online visit ihradio.com

Immaculate Heart Radio is currently undergoing a mini-pledge drive. The station is run solely on donations which is an amazing testament of faith in action. Yesterday we visited the station (see the above picture with Kayla helping her daddy out in the tech room). We visited Chris' coworkers and the volunteers who were answering the phone lines. While she had the headphones on, she heard them say the number to call to make a pledge (888-887-7120) and she started repeating the numbers out loud. The other guys in the box thought it was so cute. Anyway, when Chris arrived home at dinner, he was telling me that story and was repeating the telephone number once again...888-887-71 but when he got there all of a sudden Kayla interrupted with a loud 20!!! We looked at each other thinking "she really IS a genius!". Haha, anyway Chris got the idea to record her saying the number thinking maybe they'd be able to use it on air. I don't know if they have yet or not, but you have to listen to it. It is SO CUTE!

Translation: Immaculate Heart Radio. Call NOW! 888-887-71-20

There are many expenses that go along with running a radio station. It takes a whole lot of power and electricity to keep 24 stations on the air. And of course there are the people that work so hard (like my amazing husband) to keep authentic Catholic programming available to you 24/7. Anyway, this is totally a plug to get you and everyone you know to listen and make a donation (big or small every little bit helps)...so listen to the clip again, smile to yourself, and make a little donation today. :)

Baby cleavage

Last month, a couple of my friends from college came over to hang out. We were just hanging out and watching Kayla and Katie's baby, Mari play on the floor together. Mari was pulling at Kayla's ears, and Kayla was totally ignoring her. I guess Kayla must think she's too cool for school or something. Anyway, then Kayla rolled over onto her tummy and Bernadette was making faces at her and Kayla was smiling back. So suddenly Bern looks at her and says very indignantly, "Kayla has more cleavage than I do!!" Hahaha-just another reason to love a chubby baby....