Life According to a Five Year Old

Ben told me today: "Sometimes I feel like we are a vacuum. Like when we are pretending a spatula is the ground and we suck all the stuff off it with our tongue like a vacuum."

Stealth Stair Climbing

I've really been neglecting to post about all of Jacob's changes. He's growing and changing so quickly. For instance, Brian and I tag team kid duty most mornings. You may interpret that to mean, he stays home from work long enough for me to shower and he gets breakfast moving for the big kiddos. What a good guy. Anyway, Brian had the kids Saturday morning while I jumped in the shower. While I was showering, Brian came in to brush his teeth real quick. The mother hen in me wanted to ask, "Is Jacob in a safe place?" but I refrained. Brian is a smart man. Of course he's safe. Teeth brushing only takes two minutes anyway. After my shower, I went down to the kitchen and received the report from Ben that, "We are a two gate family now." Apparently, in the two minutes it took Brian to brush his teeth Jacob climbed half the staircase and greeted him with a big smile from the landing as he came back down. Now we have the lovely pleasure of having a gate going both up and down the stairs. What a pain in the neck. I can't get anywhere anymore. I'm not casting any stones here. If it hadn't been Brian it would have been me that found little man on the landing. They get fast so unexpectedly!

Here Comes Sharp Tooth

At just past 7 months old, Jacob officially cut his first tooth. He was cranky and nasty for a day, but nothing too bad. Then he was chewing my thumb knuckle as he usually does when I felt something really sharp. Upon further inspection we found his first little tooth. What a cute guy he will be with one lone chomper on the bottom. Can't wait until it shows in his pictures.

Golf Course in the Backyard

Our fun neighbors and swim team friends bequeathed upon my children a plethora of lovely hand me down toys yesterday. The kids were really excited about it too. They have two cute girls, so most of the toys involved pink which made Ben sad. One of the things though was worth a compromise to him. He's been really into golf for a while now. Brian built a quick jig for one of his building projects by nailing a long board to a stubby short one. It sort of resembled a golf club and Ben has been playing with it for months. So the neighbors gave us a "real" golf club (pink plastic and just his size). He was so excited this morning to go find a golf ball in their toys and head outside. In the process of finding the ball, he and Maddie got in a fight. Maddie hit Ben with a baby doll and her accompanying bathtub. Ben hit Maddie with his pink golf club. Both toys were confiscated until after lunch and kids sent to time out. Even without the cool golf club, Ben decided they should still prepare. They went in the backyard to scope out a great golf course for after lunch. After awhile, Ben came in to tell me he had the holes ready to golf. I asked him how he made holes. "Oh. I just dug them in the dirt area," was his reply. My eyebrows raised. We don't have a "dirt area" in our yard. I asked him to clarify to no avail. So I went outside to see what he was talking about. Sure enough. He had dug two holes in the "dirt area." The dirt area being the place where we have been trying to get our grass to grow for two years plus. The place Brian seeded this year so it would fill in. The place that gets great shade most the day. I saw two little holes and two little mounds of dirt on the sides of the holes. I guess I'm grateful today that our ground is sort of hard so the holes weren't too big. Since they were already there, I let it be. I just asked him to not make anymore holes in the "dirt area" because we were trying to get it to be the "grass area."

Random

Don't ever send me shopping when I'm sick. Yesterday, despite my fever, I had to pick up a few things at the store. I had an obligation to sew a quilt and have it ready on Sunday. I had almost finished it on Monday, when I noticed that someone had snipped a hole in the fabric. I thought through a million ways to fix it and in the end, I decided that if I were the girl to get that quilt, I would feel slighted. Who wants a messed up quilt? No one. All week I tried to get to the store with no success. Sick kids and tired mommy prevented any shopping. Now being Saturday, I knew I had no choice. Maddie was also within two diapers of running out completely. While technically we could have just switched to underwear and finished off the potty training process, when faced with the prospect of a quick Wal-Mart run with a fever or shampooing the carpet multiple times a day for the next week with a fever, buying more pull-ups was the obvious choice. When I got home from shopping, I realized how dumb it was to go shopping when I'm sick. My family has had pretty bad dinners, heck, meals all week. French toast, hamburger helper, Wendy's take out, scrambled eggs, hot dogs, etc. Before we left for Kirtland, I totally emptied the fridge. We had nothing left upon our return Sunday night and I hadn't been shopping since. So what did I buy at Wal-Mart while I was out? 2 cartons of ice cream, 2 packages of Oreos, 2 packages of donuts, 10 yogurt cups, cottage cheese, sour cream, hamburger buns, hamburger patties, 4 boxes of Capri Suns (that was actually on the list). And of course, 1 1/2 yards of fabric for the quilt and pull-ups. Still nothing of any use for cooking for my little family. Brian had to pull out some burrito makings from the freezer just to feed us today. He's a good man.

102.3

That's what the thermometer read this morning when I woke up to feed Jacob. I feel horrible. Brian took the kids to the swim meet this morning to watch, then put Jacob down for his nap and took off to the Fairfax Parade. I guess I won't be having any fun this year for Independance Day. I love to watch the fireworks over the Washington Monument, but not this year. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Frogs in the Kitchen

Everything was worked out. Diaper bag was stocked with all the necessities. I was watching a friend’s kids until 12:30 pm. Wake Jacob from his nap at 12:31. Feed him lunch in the highchair. Shoes on all the kids. Out the door. Load them in the car. Drop of my kids at 1:00 pm. On time to my 1:30 pm in Manassas. Like clockwork. Planned and prepared. Ben, Maddie and their friend Ben were catching frogs in the backyard and having a ball. Ben’s mom came to pick him up and off they went. My Ben turned to me and asked if he could catch frogs with his friends in the afternoon. Sure. No problem. He could go ahead and bring his frog catching gear (two nets and a bug cage he got for his birthday last year. I told him to take it in the front yard and have it ready to go. I got the high chair, bib and baby food ready. I turned to head upstairs to go get Jacob out of his crib when my foot knocked into something. I looked down and saw that I had tipped over his big cage onto the kitchen floor and there were dirt clods with grass in them all over the floor. I hollered, “Ben, come clean this up. We don’t ever bring your bug cage inside the house, right? You know that.” As I finished, I saw one of the dirt clods jump. Then another and another. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!?!” I screamed. He rushed into the kitchen and exclaimed, “Oh NO!!” with panic on his face. He knew exactly what I was so upset about and there was fear on his face. I told him to get the nets FAST. He got both and I caught two that had hopped off generally in the same direction under one net and set it on top of them. Then put the other net on top of the third frog. Okay. Situation under control. I could tell that he was panicked enough. No need to lecture him. Let’s just teach him a lesson now about why we shouldn’t bring frog into the house, let alone three at a time. I told him it was his job to catch the frogs and get them back into the bug cage. I picked up the net and handed it to him. He freaked out. The frog started jumping away again. I grabbed the net and put it down over the frog again. We talked about a plan while the frog waited under the net, fearing for it’s life I’m quite sure. I told him we were going to start on the single frog. He was petrified about the thought of touching them with his hand or even his hand on the outside of the net. I told him to get the net sideways so the frog got caught on the fabric and a myriad of other ideas he could try to catch it. I ended up helping him catch it and told him to dump it himself. He missed. I caught it again. He missed the bug cage a second time and started crying. I helped him deposit the frog from the net into the bug cage and we turned to get the other two frogs under the second net. As I told him we would need to do the same thing again with the second frogs, only faster so the other one didn’t get away, he was scared for me to lift the net. We mentally prepared. Then, I lifted the net. EMPTY. What? They both escaped under the edge of the net. Ugh!! Quick. Find them. We found one and I put the bigger, heavier net over it as Ben yelled, “It’s right there!” NO!! The frog was in the crease between the vinyl flooring and the cupboard about two inches (or one frog jump) from a big hole in the floor. A hole from which I knew a little frog might never return and I would be stuck looking for frogs in my kitchen the rest of my life! NOOO!!! We still haven’t replaced our flooring from our kitchen remodel over a year and a half ago, so the vinyl isn’t sealed and has several holes all over. Yuck. I told Ben to watch the other frog to make sure it didn’t get out from under the other net and I caught the final frog, got it into the bug cage. Then I relieved him of his frog watching duties and caught the final frog, dumped him into the bug cage and banished the bug cage to outside for the rest of eternity. He was happy to oblige. I have to admit that even though I had nasty, squeamish thoughts about having three frogs hopping around my kitchen, I could totally see the humor in the situation. After I got them all in the nets the first time that is. It was not the least bit funny until I had them all caught and felt at least a little bit in control. There was one point where I had to stifle a giggle while I watched Bens first attempts to capture the frogs and dump them in the cage unsuccessfully to keep my “this is a serious lapse of judgment on your part” stern face. It really hit me how funny it all was and what a circus we must look like. I almost lost it too as I dumped the second frog in the bug cage and was grateful I was facing away from Ben. I had to regain my composure and turn around with my serious face so as not to leave any doubt in his mind that we do NOT bring frogs in the house. Still, as I collected the last frog, I couldn’t stop thinking how hilarious the whole situation was and WISHING I had a video camera recording of the entire thing. This is exactly the kind of thing good memories and good stories are made of. I made Ben sweep up all the grass and dirt and dump it. Then I retrieved Jacob from his crib, went straight to the truck and loaded the kids and dropped them off with my sincerest of apologies for leaving a groggy, hungry baby to be cared for. I also clarified before I left that absolutely NO frogs were to find their way into the Hyatt house that day or ever. He was happy to obey after his traumatic adventure. Ahhh…I’m laughing again just reliving our adventure. Everyone knows that motherhood comes with all sorts of surprises. Sometimes those surprises are just slimier than other ones. Maybe I should point out that there are about a million frogs in our yard area right now. The bigger ones are normal sized fatties, but most of them are tiny little ones about the size of a quarter. We had quarter sized frogs in our house. He’s never caught a big one…yet.