happy mommy day

sunflowers from my son and pretty roses from my pretty girl

so sweet

when Q is tired he is either a devil child or the sweetest thing ever.

cuddling in his bed tonight he said to me, "mommy, you a good best buddy" and gave me a hug.

irrational fears

Q has developed irrational fears of both sweatshirts and button pants.

what? you don't know what button pants are? pants with buttons. like jeans or khakis. unlike sweatpants. duh.

cozy couping

turn and pull

if you have seen "bolt" as many times as we have, you get it.

he's got his melon stuck. yup, that is one stuck melon.

you pigeons are useless.

follow me!

there's this obnoxious radio ad we hear in the car all the time for forman mills, a local discount department store.  it's one of those really loud, shouting ads with the announcer using his best growly, wrestling-match-promoter slash furniture-store-going-out-of-business voice… "designer men's shoes ten dollars, ladies' hats five dollars, and kids' socks just one dollar!"

 

Q loves this commercial.  he giggles when it comes on.  over the course of the commercial, the announcer probably shouts, "forman mills!" about fifteen times.  Q mimics the guy each time, but he thinks that the dude is saying, "follow me!"

 

so even when we are not in the car, like if we are out for a walk or if Q is standing on something tall, he will shout, "follow me!"

all smiles

over the past few weeks, Q has been acting out a bit at school.  not really sure what's been causing the behavior, but he's been driving his teacher crazy.  to try to drive it into his head that bad behavior isn't acceptable, miss diana started tracking his day and rating each portion of the day with a smiley face, a frowny face, or a meh face.  she shows him the face she is drawing and talks to him about it as she's doing it.  he's consistently had 2-3 frowny faces per day, mostly centered around the times of day where he is expected to sit and participate in structured activities (circle time, etc.)

 

but yesterday, he got all smiley faces!

 

and they made a big deal about it too.  she made him a certificate to commemorate the occasion and gave him a prize (bubbles!)  he was very proud.  now to see if any of it sunk in. my guess… no.

red light, green light

Q is big-time obsessed with traffic lights these days.  he announces the color of every single traffic light we encounter (and on a 45-minute each way commute, that's a lot.)  but not only does he announce the color of each light, he also tells me what to do (even if i am not the one driving,) "red light, mommy. stop."  "green light, mommy. go."  but the thing is, he doesn't realize that traffic does not work exactly like the red light green light game.  because when the light is red, he wants me to stop immediately rather than pull up behind the line of cars.  and when the light turns green, he reprimands me over and over, "green, mommy, GO. GO" even when the cars in front of me haven't started moving yet.

this disposable straw belongs to quentin

last week, we got an email from daycare reminding us of the rules about labeling your children's personal belongings.  i immediately dismissed it, knowing i am a super-star of labeling, having spent a bunch of dollars on semi-permanent sticky labels and such for all their lunch containers, sippy cups, etc. (i refuse to comply with the labeling of clothes both out of laziness and thriftiness – can't resell clothes if they've got Q's name sharpied on them!)  but then, when we arrived at school friday, miss diana audited Q's lunch box and clarified that everything needs to be labeled, not just Tupperware.  everything – yogurt cup, string cheese, applesauce cup, box of raisins… all need labels.  first and last name.  it was still early and my brain-filter wasn't exactly turned on yet.  I may have said, "are you f-ing kidding me? That's so fricking obnoxious."

 

because it is.  i guess it is to help the teachers ensure that the kids are only eating their own food and not sharing amongst each other, food allergies, blah blah blah.  not sure why i am so fired up about it, but it is really pissing me off.  don't i pay enough money to send my kids here already?  so not only do i have to pack my kids' lunch (when many similarly-priced and even lower-priced daycares PROVIDE meals) now i have to waste even more money and time labeling everything??  if the place wasn't so damn conveniently-located, i would be looking elsewhere.

 

it took me 16 labels to make the two kids' lunches today.  that's 80 labels a week.  they each had a whole, unpeeled clementine in their lunch box today.  i stuck a label on them too, as an expression of my feelings about this absurd policy.  too bad they probably won't get the joke.

quotable quentin

car ride conversation this morning:

 

Q: mommy, i have a good day at school today i watch your phone tonight.

Me: ok, if you're good at school you can watch my phone.

Q: it's a good deal.  you got that?  ok.  good.

 

i'm not really sure what i am getting out of this deal, other than sticky fingers all over my phone screen.

spring is here!

since the weather has finally turned nice, we are trying to put pickle in these cute summer dresses before she outgrows them without ever getting to wear them. i assumed she would be able to wear this size last summer but she remained peanut-sized and didn't graduate to 18 month clothes until the fall. we're almost ready to bust out the 24 month and 2T stuff, so it's now or never!

fashionista

daddy, i mean the easter bunny, got caroline a tutu for easter. here she rocks the tutu with pajamas look. note the pink jelly shoes over the jammie feet. her choice, not mine. and she really wanted to go outside in this attire. she was not pleased when i wanted to put her in "real clothes" to go to her gym class.

Qtube

quentin is totally obsessed with youtube. he can't poop on the potty but he can wield an iphone and search youtube like a pro. this "excabator" video is one of his current favorites:

may blogapalooza

april was a weak posting month in a thus far weak posting year. but we got a shiny new laptop this week, so we now finally have an actual functioning computer connected to the internet. to make it up to the three of you who still read this, i am going to attempt to post every day in may. i'll probably fail miserably, but we are so far behind. must catch up. so many pictures to post!

please touch (and if you'd be so polite, don't steal my stuff either!)

we took the kids to the please touch museum today. we had gotten a membership for christmas and hadn't been yet. after a slight detour involving going to their old location several miles away(thanks GPS!) we found it. quentin was very concerned about the purple boy being upside down. he said, "that boy going to get hurt. he get a boo boo."

driving the septa bus

caroline was not as amused with the current selection and made a mad dash for the other side

quentin "extabates" some playground balls with the digger

where's the car keys?

splashing in the water table. there was a kid who kept sticking his whole head into the water. even pickle thought that was odd.

turtle!

we had to give mr. turtle a kiss

crawling through the tunnel (there's no pics of Q at this point because he and daddy were elsewhere in the museum, not because i don't love him.)

swan needs a kiss too. she also molestered a goose and a cow, not caught on camera.

sea cruise! she was cool with the boat until it started to rock and then she was out.

seriously, where are the keys?

dude. keys. now.

she really loves planting and harvesting (and planting and harvesting) these carrots

kid swap! Q spent a long time wheelbarrowing foam bricks into the back of a dump truck.

paging doctor rupon

and then we found the grocery store. they both loved the grocery store. we we in here forever.

clearly, Q is not on a low-carb diet

the good stuff

i love how Q's cart is full of junk and pickle only has fruit... for now

whoa. clean up on aisle 3!

and this is where it sucked for a few minutes. we were trying to put the food back on the shelves and we looked up and Q was gone. jeremy ran around to all the other close exhibits but he was just gone. jer took caroline and ran to look everywhere. i found someone with a walkie talkie. i have to give them credit - within 10 seconds of them radioing to look for an orange-shirted Q, they had him. he had pushed his entire shopping cart (full of pretend tea bags btw) into a separate room with toy trains. scared the crap out of us.

so we decided it was time to head home after that scare. jer went back to get our stroller and our backpack was gone. there wasn't anything in it except diapers and a couple of monster trucks, but it still sucks. obviously we left it unattended but it still sucks that people at a kids museum would steal from you.

there's a cool statue of liberty torch in the atrium made of discarded toys, street signs, etc. pretty cool.

and an elephant too!

and the good news - we got our bag back with contents intact. we checked in at the desk and they had found it ditched in one of the bathrooms. sorry Q, i guess the backpack bandit(s) didn't value grave digger as much as you do!

tired, tired babies.

melmo

phone pic of the balloon elmo hat pickle came home with after her classmate's birthday party at school

this and that

Q is on a major "bolt" kick again (after declaring repeatedly that "blue toy story" (i.e. #3) and the "lighting aqueen" (cars) were his favorite movies over the past few months.)  our commute home from work/school now consists of watching ½ of bolt each day.  he really likes the songs in the movie and likes to sing them loudly and passionately.  he also instructs me to sing (which despite not having a good voice, i am totally ok with doing!)  as a song ends, he says to me every time, "mommy, that was really good singing.  thank you for singing with me."

 

**********

 

pickle is big into possessives these days.  she likes to distinguish "mommy's juice", "daddy's juice", "tenten's juice", "wuhwine's juice".  she'll make sure we know who shoes, coats, plates, etc. belong to.

 

**********

 

oh yeah, she calls her brother, "tenten"

 

**********

 

Q likes to watch "the yellow boy show" and the "yellow boy movie."  (the simpsons, duh.)

 

**********

 

Q was invited to a classmate's birthday party.  when I first told him about it, he was adamant that he didn't want to go.  now he asks me daily if today is doruk's party.  poor doruk though – Q really wants to blow out his candles and seems more excited about the prospect of birthday cake than of swimming and the other fun activities the party entails.  and I hope the kid like monster trucks.  because that's totally what he's getting.

 

**********

 

speaking of birthday parties… a classmate of caroline's had an in-school party last week, complete with a visit from elmo.  more details and photos coming if i can ever get our computer and scanner to work simultaneously.

gender studies

right now, Q is very obsessed with classifying people as boys and girls.  he will tell me, "mommy, you and caroline are girls.  me and daddy are boys."  then he will run down a list of everyone we know and categorize them.  he will also classify movie and TV characters.  this morning he told me that blueberry, his lovey, is a girl.  my bad, all along i assumed blueberry was a boy.

phillies spirit

tuesday was phillies spirit day at school. the kids did not want to cooperate for photos, so these are the best i got:

he really wanted me to take pictures of the truck instead of him.

would you eat them with a fox? would you eat them in a box?

for the past few days, Q will only eat dinner in a cardboard box on the couch. totally normal.