Mayem and Momost

Phoebe sat in an open-ended time-out for...I don't know how long...before dinner. Not an oppressively long amount of time, mind you. And it was her choice to be there, so I don't even feel too badly about it.

Our house is somehow a disaster, so before dinner I rallied the children to do some tidying up. Phoebe didn't want to help and kept screaming and crying at everyone so I told her to sit on the stairs and be quiet until she decided she could contribute to the household rather than simply causing chaos. 

So she sat and sulked. 

"Have you decided you're ready to help yet?" I asked her as I passed by the stairs on my way to put something away. 

"I AM MOMOST READY TO DECIDE!" she wailed. 

"Just tell me when you're ready, then."

Turns out she wasn't ready until it was nearly time to eat dinner. I think she put away two or three things from the dishwasher before it was time to sit down, the little stinker.

Anyway, "momost" is how she says "almost." 

"Is it momost time for lunch?"

"Are we momost there?"

*****

She also says "mayem" instead of "amen" at the end of prayers. 

My mom pointed out that this sounds very similar to "mayhem," which is perhaps Phoebe's motto in life.

You can perhaps see an owie by her mouth on this picture?

This was sustained when she decided to parkour off the toilet, shouting, "THE FLOOR IS LAVA!!" and springing off the seat with her pants down around her ankles. She landed on the stool (which she was aiming for) but then fell over and smacked her face...on the toilet. She bit the inside of her lip and bruised the outside of her face...blood was going everywhere...it was a whole thing.

Pure mayhem.

*****

But, she's really, really cute! So I guess we'll take the mayhem.

I just finished making another Shutterfly book, this time about our beach vacations the past five years. 

Phoebe loves looking at our Shutterfly books. We have several of them—Christmas volumes, Halloween volumes, one about birthday cakes, one on our Grover trips, one about living in Durham, one about living in Spanish fork, a few alphabet books about our family, one for each of the kids...etc., etc., etc.

The only book that Phoebe is in is her own little "first year" book (and, I mean, I think I deserve a round of applause for making that happen). Other than that Phoebe spends her time flipping through pictures of everybody else, poor thing.

So when I got this most recent set of coupons from Shutterfly, I figured I'd go ahead and make a book that featured Phoebe. I haven't seen them do a free book recently (that used to be the only time I'd order them), but this deal was pretty good—a standard book for $10, plus free extra pages (which I needed to really do our beach weeks justice). 

I chose a picture that I we took at Botany Bay for the cover, but it felt like something was missing...it was Phoebe! 

She's not the only one in this book (it has everybody), but it has more of her than any other book on shelf of photo albums (aside from her own first-year book). 

I can't wait for this book to arrive so she can see it make us read it to her at bedtime ten times in a row every night for the next five years.