The Butler

Overheard while driving the kids home from school today:

Sean:  "We should get a butler for our house so he can carry our stuff and cook for us and help us."
Clare: "I don't want a butler!"
Sean:  "Claaaaare!  Butlers aren't scary.  They're helpful to us.  All they do is wear a black tie and a white shirt with stripes on it."
Clare: "Okay."
Sean:  "Sometimes they have mustaches, too. And leeeeetle chubby cheeks - just like yours, my little Clare!"
(Both kids giggle so hard, there are tears in their eyes when we pull up to the house!)

Beauty tips & teeth time sweeties

"The hippo is eating my hair. Then it throws up my hair and that's how my hair is so straight and smooth!"

"Clare, you're a good little brusher, little sister.  I love you."  

"You're a good big tooth brusher too, big brudder.  I love you too, Seany!!!"

Crayons

Two kids and two very different pronunciations of the word "crayon"...

Sean says "craylon"

and Clare says "crown"

And We're Baaack

While I get some catch-up posts together, here are a few nuggets from Sean's day today:

- Sean had Library class today and he was allowed to pick out a book and borrow it for one week! He picked out a book from the "scary Halloween section" - it's about a family of skeletons who go on vacation together.

- Sean's class was shown where the school nurse's office was today.

- Sean told me that his teacher cracked open a real coconut today for "science time."  Then they all drank the coconut water and the teacher made coconut ice cream from the "white stuff" but since Sean doesn't like coconut ice cream, she brought "chocolate minto" (chocolate chip mint) ice cream for Sean to eat.

- Sean had a little scratch underneath his nose and when I asked him what happened, he called it his "hot spot." He got the hot spot when he went to visit the "black smither" at school.  The black smither was making a horseshoe and he said that Sean could touch the horseshoe when it cooled, but Sean couldn't wait and he touched the horseshoe while it was hot then he touched the hot spot under his nose.

- Sean said that a police officer comes to his school everyday to each lunch at the cafeteria.  Then the police officer goes back to work at the Police Station at Town Hall near the Library.

- When I asked Sean if he could call his teacher to ask for more details about all the stories he told me that I couldn't call her because she told the class that parents weren't allowed to call her. How convenient :-)

Here's our storyteller boarding the bus for school!

Sharing Ice Cream

We went out for ice cream the other night. Clare got chocolate with rainbow sprinkles and ate it all up - yummy!

Sean got mint chocolate chip with sour patch kids on top - he savored his treat!

Clare gobbled up her ice cream and then started to eye up Sean's dish:

"Please may you give me some of your ice cream, Seany?"

"No Clare! You have your own!"  

"Pleeeease, Seany?"  

"Nooo!"

"Humph! He's not sharing his ice cream with me!"

"It's mine, Clare! You had yours!"

(Sad whiny noises)

"Okay, Clare - you can have a teeny tiny bit of mine."

"Okay!  Yay!"

"Here you go, open wide!"

"Yay! Thank you Seany! Mommy, Seany shared with me!"

"Yeah..."

Dawdling

When we got home from daycare today, we spotted our neighbors' cat: Ninja. Whenever we see Ninja, we must stop and say "hello" since he's our "best pal who is a cat and he is our neighbor so we are friendly to him," according to Sean. Tonight, Sean ran ahead inside the house to get his shoes off and go potty while Clare spent a minute with the Ninjacat: 

"Hi Inch-a! Hi! I see you eyes!"

Ninja had just stretched a very big cat stretch, so copycat Clare showed her best stretch, too.

Next, Ninja rolled around on the ground to scratch his back and Clare showed that she can "do twirling" too!

And then she decided to lay down just like Ninja, so I told her we needed to get inside to check on Seany.  Clare popped right up and headed toward our house, but got distracted again...

"Wait! Wait! I need pickin' flowers for Daddy and my Seanybrudder!"

Seanybear speaks

At the dinner table the other night, Sean noticed Clare experimenting with her food (she was topping her turkeyburger with raspberry yogurt) and said, "I don't think that is a great idea, Clare. But if you like it like that, I still love you."

 

Sean asked me about recycling plastic (specifically his empty vitamin bottle) and I tried my best to explain the process to him. He summed up what he'd heard by telling me: "So, a recycling truck comes and takes our recycling away and then it dumps it out like a dump truck and the plastic goes in a hot pot and gets cooked and then a blonde(???) comes and put it all in a blender and makes new shapes out of the meltened plastic and when it cools we can put new vitamins in the bottles. And this is good for Earth Day!" 

Seany at Kiddie Soccer

On the way home from daycare yesterday:
Me: I saw turkeys in the backyard - maybe they'll still be there when we get home.
Sean: Did you cook 'em?
Me: Ummm ... what?
Sean: COOK them! Did you cook 'em?
Me: Noooo - they're wild turkeys. Besides, how could I get them in the house?
Sean: You just put a line of corn on the ground and the turkeys will try to eat the corn and when the sun gets hot, the corn will POP POP POP and hit a turkey in the BUTT! Hahahahaha! It hits his butt! Hahahahah! And that's the one you cook! 

Sean's been resisting bedtime lately - he puts on an exasperated voice and says something along the lines of: "Awww, why do we have to go to sleep EVERY NIGHT? I always have to go to sleep. It's just not comfortable for me!" And he's usually snoring within 10 minutes of lights-out :-)

Sitting on the ball - ready to listen to his coach

Hot Potato?

Just before lunchtime on Saturday, Clare helps me decide what to have for lunch:

Log cabin

Sean brought home some of his artwork from school and this little collage was in the bunch:

 

I asked him to tell me about this picture and I tried my best to get down his response: "That man lives there. Abraham Linkin. He died a long long time ago, Miss Nancy said. He could be another president. He was a tall man. There's a penny on the house so he can look out the window. His face is on the penny, you know. I flipped it over backwards so he could see his house. He wore a tall hat. It's a silly hat. His house is a log cabin hosue for him to live in.  It has a triangle roof that ripped when the glue dried - oh well. He lived in Indanoy. Brock Obama is the new president and George Washington is the first president. Now, can I please have my vitamins?"

Silly kids

Last night, Sean kept calling Clare his "Apple Dumpehlin" - "Where you going, Apple Dumpehlin?" "Here, Apple Dumpehlin, I have your sippy cup for you!" "Apple Dumpehlin! Come sit by me, Apple Dumpehlin!"

"Mmm what a nice broccoli dinner you made, Mommy! I don't like the broccoli though. It's too ... hot tasting for me."

The kids had yogurt with dinner and Clare asked "Chocklah? Chocklah ohker?" (Chocolate yogurt?) When I told Clare that it was rasberry yogurt and not chocolate, she nodded her head and said, "Rahbaby. No chocklah. Rahbaby ohker! Yay!"

Tonight Sean suddenly asked me, "Do Bert and Ernie have mommies?"

And tonight Clare spent a few minutes stomping her feet while looking at the floor and saying "Oh man!" over and over.

Practicing for school picture day next week:

Cheese! Cheese Pizza!

"I Writing"

I was sitting at the kitchen table today, writing out our grocery list, when Clare walkes over to me, snatches the pen out of my hand and says "I do!" Then she grabbed a piece of paper and set herself down on the kitchen floor, all the while muttering, "I writing. I do. I writing."



Thursday

The day started a little after 4am when Clare woke up calling "Mommy! Up? Mommeeeee! Up?" She didn't nod off again until nearly 6! By then it was time to get up and out the door ... only to find that a road adjacent to ours was closed, so there was a looooooong line of traffic on our street. When Thom John and the kids came out the front door for school, Sean exclaimed, "a parade of cars and trucks! What a lovely surprise!"

 

Clare had a rough morning at school - her teacher said she seemed tired.  Hmmm ... I wonder why? Later in the day, she tripped and bumped her head, leaving Clare with a nasty scrape on her forehead. 

 

 

 

And Sean was running on the playground and ran right into one of his buddies, leaving him with a full-on shiner under his right eye!

Despite the shiner, Sean was his normal chatty self tonight.  On the way home, he told me that he can't wait until he grows up and then he will drive and "Mommy sits in the back seat of the car and you can take a nap, Mommy ... and eat cookies!"  Yay!  Later, he told me all about his teacher being absent this week "She went on bacation at the beach. It's a different beach than our beach because there are tigers and a merry-go-round."

 

Then he asked me about the Green Goblin (he had recently opened a packet of Spiderman stickers) - "Who's this guy? He flies on a board? He lives in New York? Does he come to New Jersey? Will he come to my house and get in my room and try to take my animals away?" I told him no - I won't allow it. Green Goblins are not allowed in the house - just like cats (I tell him cats are not allowed so he doesn't leave the door open for our neighbors' outdoor cat to come in). And then Sean said, "Hey! Mommy! Did you know? Cats have babies that are called kitties and they are so so so cute! Did you know that?"

YOU'RE cute, Seanybear!!

 



No! No!

Clare is quickly growing into her toddlerhood - her favorite word at the moment is "no!" We're trying to get her to use more "yes" words, but the girl is stubborn. She knows what she wants and she's not afraid to assert herself - especially when it comes to her Gacki:

 

Fall morning

After breakfast this morning, as I was sweeping Kix off the floor (I miss you, Pepper!), Clare was at the window and started to excitedly call out, "Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo! Moo!"

Sean came over when he heard the ruckus - and helped identify the source of Clare's hollering... "That's not a cow, it's a little baby deer! The baby deer is eating all the grass so he can grow up to be a big deer because he's just a little baby now and he wants to be a big deer with nant-lers.""

And the deer gave Sean a look that said, "I'm not a baby":

Later on, we went outside for a walk to look for more friends and crunch on the "leebs"... We went out in the coach and when we got to a certain spot at the creek, Sean hopped out to say "hi" to the ducks.

Clare hastily finished her morning snack and hollered at me to let her out of her seat:

"Look!  I found a really big yellow leaf! It's from a 'boak' tree! I like this leaf - I'm going to give it to Baby Clare!"

Clare was too focused on trying to get into the creekfor a swim to accept Sean's gift, but Sean didn't seem to mind - especially since we hit up the playground right afer our walk.

Seanybear speaks

We took a trip up to North Jersey today to see the Sooy Babies' Corcoran grandparents. The kids slept like little angelbabies on the trip up, but on the two-hour drive home, Sean was not sleepy, so we had plenty of time to chat.  Here are a few snippets:

To a sleeping Clare: "Clare! Clare! Clare! Birdeeeeeee! Bird! Clarebear! Bearbear! Clare, wake up... I have a snack for you! Wake up and let's play!" (Clare kept napping, though)

To me: "Why can't Grandma and Pa Pa come with us?  Why do they stay at their house and we go home to our house? Is it because if they leave from their house, then a bear will go in their house and eat up all their food?"

"Mommy, this is taking too long in the car. Is this the right road? Why didn't we take the other road?"

We stopped at a Wawa gas station to fill up and I asked Sean to run in the store to get me a coffee and he replied, "I can't! My seatbelt is buckled!"

I cut through the College Ave Campus at Rutgers to show a bit of RU to Sean, and when I asked him what he thought about the campus, he said, "It has a lot of tall buildings and lights. I liked it. There are a lot of trees here, but no apple trees.  Johnny Appleseed didn't come here.  Mommy, did Johnny Appleseed come to Ruckers?"

And then we had a long, long conversation about the relationships among Spiderman, Batman, and Superman. We discussed whether Spiderman is best friends with Batman or whether they're just pals. This reminded me of a long story Sean told me a couple of weeks ago that I was able to jot down: "Daddy Spiderman and Spiderman and Brotherman watchin' TV together with Batman and Batman said, 'I like your shirt!' And Spiderman was wearing a Batman shirt! On his chest! And he had Batman underwear on! hahahahahaha.... And Daddy Spiderman was drinking juice and Baby Spiderman baby was drinking water and Daddy told brother, 'It's okay - you can have apple sauce - it's okay' and then they watched a little TV and had bath time."

Chatterbox

We got a couple of videos of Baby Clare's growing vocabulary. In this one, she shows off some of her favorite words - circle, "quack quack", Daddy, Mommy, and Moooo! Some other words we frequently hear from Clare are Baby, More, Cup, and Please.



In this video, we were trying to point out Clare's nose when the theme song to Sean's latest obsession - Thomas & Friends - came on and Clare seems to really like this tune - singing, dancing, and clapping:

Odds n' ends

The other day Sean did his usual "I'm gonna sit on Baby Clare and squeeze her!" thing but instead of merely crying and fussing like she normally does, Baby Clare bit Sean - hard - on the cheek!  Poor Seanybear was so surprised, he started crying hysterically and was only consoled after Baby Clare was properly scolded (although a part of me was amused/impressed with Clare's sudden ability to stand up for herself against her big bro).

so blurry- always moving!

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning I heard Sean in his crib chatting while we were getting ready for work.  "Today is Monday - Daddy comes to get me on Monday and we go to school. On Thursday, Mommy will get me and we will go to school. After Thursday is Saturday! No school on Saturday! After Saturday is... is... these are the days of the week. Too many days of the week! (sob) Too many! Nooooo! (sob) Too many days of the week!" I felt compelled to check on him since his outlook seemed so gloomy, but he promptly switched gears and started to chat to his "friends" about the movie "Monsters Inc.": "You know Randall (the villian)? He's not a bad guy. He's my pet. He's far away now, but he will come here in the car to get me and we will go to see Sully and we have to find Boo...."  After hearing this, I felt free to continue my morning routine until Sean started to call out, "Mommy Daddy Mommy Daddy I need to go pottttttyyyyy!!!!!!!" Good job telling us, Sean!

"No, Mommy! No takin' pictures! No cheese!" Sorry Seany, but I just gotta get a snap of that sweet face :-)

Dinnertime conversation

Complete with "dragon voice," squealing and smashed sweet potatoes.

Teething Ring

Sean: "Look Mommy, I Baby Clare!"
Me: "Baby Clare puts her teething ring on her head?"
Sean: "Noooooo... she wear it on her... FACE!"

Swinging

 "I having sooooo much fun!"

"I go real high!  Push me real high!"

"Hey, Mommy!  Mommy! Push me high!  Up to the very high trees!"