Butler, Butler, Butler

Continuing the theme of nearly-inappropriate language, Benjamin was just singing a Halloween song for Zoë while we were eating lunch. We made some skeletons to tape to our front door before lunch and were singing "Dem Bones," but the lyrics and tune for this particular song were all original to Benjamin:

"Butler, butler, butler, butler, have you any bonesies?"

Technically he's not allowed to say the word butler. All that means, however, is that he says it all the more. I really should stop banning things from this kid...

He overheard the word during a conversation somewhere about something—involving butlers, obviously—and thought it was hilarious because it has the word "butt" in it, which is also technically a word we avoid saying (because kids can just get so rude). Anyway, "butler" has quickly replaced the word "butt" in Benjamin's lexicon.

And he uses it so rudely.

At ukulele practice last week he was playing in the basement with his friend Rosie (not his cousin Rosie) and she came upstairs to tattle on him. "Benjamin keeps saying butler," she told her mom.

Butler isn't even a bad word...but, oh, he makes it sound like a bad word.

"Butler! Butler! Butler!" he'll spew the syllables out like poison. "You're a butler!"

When I told him that if he can't start using that word nicely and appropriately he'd start getting in trouble for saying it, he did his best to make it more polite by changing it to...bumler.

"Bumler! Bumler! Bumler! Zoë, you're a bumler!" he started chanting.

Everyone knows that "bum" isn't nearly as rude of a word as "butt," so this was a big improvement. In his opinion. I wasn't quite satisfied and told him so, evoking further evolution of the word.

"Potty-ler! Potty-ler! Potty-ler! Is that better, Mom?"

"Yeah, not really," I said. "You're still trying to be rude and you're still using potty words and I just don't like it. You need to be nice."

"Can I just say -ler?" he asked innocently.

The boy knows how to negotiate, that's for sure.

Oh, and how to drive his mother slightly batty. He knows how to do that, too.

When the SHTF

A few nights ago when Benjamin was supposed to be getting out of his regular clothes and into his Halloween costume he was instead whooping and hollering and dancing around the house (not at all out of character for him). When he finally started doing what he was supposed to be doing the whooping, hollering, and dancing continued—despite all our protests and threats of consequences.

He pulled off his shirt and swung it above his head before launching it into the air with an emphatic, "YEEHAW!"

The shirt flew up and hit the fan, sending up a poof of dust (because I'm an A+ housekeeper) before landing on the floor with a thud. 

"Benjamin," Andrew growled in his best serious-daddy voice. "Come here."

"Okay," Benjamin sulked remorsefully.

"You are out of control," Andrew said, getting down at Benjamin's level and holding onto his shoulders to steady the wild child. 

"Okay," Benjamin mumbled.

"What did you do that was wrong?"

"I threw my shirt," Benjamin said.

"Yes. You threw your shirt and your shirt hit the fan," Andrew said, suddenly fighting to maintain his composure. "And do you know what happens when the shirt hits the fan?"

Halloween dance FTW

On Friday morning we were just getting ready to head out the door to go to the Museum of Life and Science with Rosie when I got a text from Miriam's teacher saying that Miriam didn't feel well and wanted to come home—her ears were bothering her. So instead of heading to the museum we headed to school where we found Miriam playing with her friends, seemingly fine. 

We've had a cold at our house, it's true, but we're all (mostly) over it. Some lingering side effects seem to be an abnormal amount of ear popping (which can be uncomfortable), a bit of a stuffy (though no longer runny) nose, and, for me, laryngitis (because I can't get sick without getting laryngitis). I'm sure Miriam was experiencing ear popping at school and just didn't know how to handle it, because she wasn't really acting sick at all. 

I had such a terrible time deciding what to do. Selfishly, I didn't really want to bring a sick child home to just sit around the house doing nothing (Rosie was with us for such a short time!) but I also didn't want to leave a sick child at school. Miriam didn't seem sick at all (no fever, no cough, no runny nose, no throwing up) but insisted that she wanted to come home. Andrew said that we should just take Miriam to the museum with us, but I didn't want to set up that sort of precedent—at our house if you come home sick you have to be sick for the rest of the day so there's no going outside to play with friends or going to Halloween parties in the evenings or anything. Besides, if we'd done that I imagine Rachel would have felt really left out. 

In the end we made a deal with Miriam: if she could stick through the next three hours at school, I would pick them up at the end of the day. That way we'd still get to go out during the day and she'd still get to go to the ward Halloween party but wouldn't have to suffer through an hour-long bus ride.

When we got to the museum, however, both parking lots were completely packed. There were no free spaces in the regular lot and there were no free spaces in the overflow parking. So instead we headed next-door to Rock Quarry Park where Rosie and I chatted while we watched Zoë and Benjamin play. Rosie also pushed Benjamin in the swing for quite a while—this boy is a marathon swinger.

Grandma leaves, Rosie arrives, we visit a plantation and attend a costume party

My niece Rosie decided to come visit us for the weekend, so when Andrew dropped his mom off at the airport early on Thursday morning he brought Rosie back with him (she picked an early flight to save him a trip to the airport). Rachel and Miriam had already left for school but Benjamin and Zoë had not yet woken up by the time Rosie arrived. They took to her like glue. 

Come to the Funfair

Grandma treated us with a trip to the State Fair on Saturday afternoon—to see Rachel's picture, of course. We were so glad we had a ratio of three adults to four children, otherwise I don't know how we would have managed the crowd! It was pretty overwhelming as it was. We had two kids in the double stroller (being pushed by Andrew) and then Grandma admonished the girls, "If you aren't holding my hand or Mom's hand...you're doing something wrong!" We got through the day without losing anyone, so our system seemed to work well (even if it did fall apart a few times, like when I was nursing while walking or when Zoë/Benjamin refused to ride in the stroller). Over all, though, I'm just proud of us for making it out of there alive.

Zoë's favourite exhibits, by far, were the animal exhibits. Here we are in one of the barns, having fun with some cutouts. This one was a surprise for Benjamin and Rachel. I had them put their heads through the holes and then ran around to the other side to take a picture. I thought it was pretty funny—though Rachel was not impressed—when the other side was revealed.

Miriam's 7th birthday

Our Tuesday nights are so chaotic that we decided to do the bulk of our celebration on Monday night, and even that was rushed (Andrew always feels swamped on Mondays (probably due to taking family time on the weekends) and this Monday he was feeling particularly swamped (because of having just returned from his trip(s)) so he ends up not coming home until around 6:30...which is fine, except that cramming dinner and FHE in before bedtime ends up a little tricky when he does that). Miriam chose Cook Out for dinner (Grandma's treat) and we ate until we were stuffed and decided we had better open presents before doing cake.

My mom had been nervous about her selection of Miriam's card since Rachel's birthday (when Rachel received the same card from both sets of grandparents). Well, the first gift Miriam chose to open was from Sister Wood, who selected some excellent books for Miriam (one about Eleanor Roosevelt and one about authors), as well as a beautiful new dress (which she is rather excited to wear):

Miriam's soccer game

This morning Grandma attended Rachel's soccer game, which means she had a chance to see each child play (Miriam's game last weekend, Benjamin's practice on Tuesday, and Rachel's game today). Andrew and I took the rest of the kids to Miriam's game (Benjamin, thankfully, had a bye-game; it's always nice to only have to get kids to two soccer games rather than three).

The kids are so excited to have Daddy home.

Fall is here, hear the yell

At dinner, Miriam's hair was a mess. Her ponytail had become quite mussed and she had more than a couple leafs entangled in her rapunzelesque locks. 

"What did you do?" Grandma asked. "Get down and roll around on the ground or something?"

Well...

Phone camera

We have, in our collection of toys, an old demo phone (there's no battery pack and the screen isn't even real; it's a lenticular print). The kids all loved it when they were babies because it looks and feels like a real (if not incredibly outdated) cell phone and the buttons are real (and buttons are where it's at). Recently, Zoë (and Benjamin, to a lesser extent) has decided this phone has a camera function and has been taking billions of photos on it (its memory card must be huge).

She's a very intent photographer:

Off Their Rockers

I feel like we literally just attended Miriam's class concert, but I suppose it was about six months ago. Still, after performing that late into the school year it feels rather sudden to be the first musical performance of the year! 

This year the title of their little musical was Off Their Rockers. It was set in a nursing home; a group of young performers is determined to get the tired, bored residents up and rocking by serenading them with some hits from the 1950s. The kids were dressed either as old people or in 1950s attire. 

We put Miriam's costume together earlier this week and she looked darling!