Miss Elizabeth

One day Ellie and I were looking out the window talking about what we saw. There were probably 50 robins in the yard. Ellie got pretty excited and said, "Look at all the chickens, daddy!"

Yesterday morning, while teetering at the top of the steps with her arms full of stuffed animals: "I'm taking all my aminals to church." We got her to say "aminals" a few more times until she realized we were making fun of her. Then, whenever we'd try to get her to say it, she'd say, "no, I don't want to say that."

Yesterday afternoon, after taking a bite out of a cutout cookie shaped like a duck: "I ate his nose right off! . . . 'Quack, Quack. I want my nose back!'"

She also loves matching clothes, now, especially anytime she gets to wear all pink. She's pretty good at picking out stuff that matches, too. Better than me, anyway. Whenever she's in an outfit that matches she says, "I'm all matched up." Whenever she and someone else are wearing the same color she says, "We match together!" The happiest time in her recent memory is the day she got to wear a red dress because that's the same color dress her bunny has.

But wait, there's more (I completely forgot about this yesterday). I took Ellie and Walker for a walk in our woods last week and she kept calling it the forest. I wondered why until I realized she was holding onto my had for dear life and wouldn't let go. She thought she was in the "spooky forest" from Dora the Explorer and she was a little scared. She also told me twice that she heard crocodiles, which are native to Dora's spooky forest. We looked for them but came up empty.

Don't worry. She was going to cut the CHAIR.

Carla called me last night while I was in class. I ignored it at first but she called right back so I stepped out of class and answered. I figured she must be on the way to the hospital with a kid with a broken arm or something. Maybe the house was on fire, maybe she just found out Norm MacDonald was making his return to TV. You know, something that she urgently needed to tell me. Well, here's how it went.
Kurt (a little short because I got called out of class): Yeah?
Carla (near hysterics): I need your saw!
Kurt: What? (because I couldn't hear her because Ellie was crying in the background)
Carla: I need your saw!
Kurt: What? (because I couldn't believe that my wife had just gone crazy)

As it turns out, Ellie had gotten her foot stuck between the slats of one of our kitchen chairs. She was OK and just told Carla that she was stuck. Then, when Carla tried to get her loose and couldn't, even with Crisco, Walker broke down crying and saying, "I just want to play golf with Ellie in the living room," which they do after supper a lot of times. Doubtless, he thought she'd be stuck there forever and they'd never get to golf again. Anyway, that got Ellie started crying and that's when Carla called me. Eventually, I sort of calmed Carla down and told her to call my dad, who came over and wiggled her free. Just how he wanted to spend his birthday - prying a 2-year-old out of a chair. By the way, happy birthday, Dad.

Prisionero de guerra

Walker and mom saw a POW-MIA flag yesterday.
Walker: Grandma, why is that flag black?
Grandma: I don't really know, Walker.
Walker: Maybe it's a Mexico flag. Bryan and Robin speak Mexico.
Then it went into something about their faces being different now but I didn't really follow. Something about how they used to have triangle faces and now they have oval faces. Of course.

Carla - to the kids: Do you know why we celebrate Easter?
Walker: Because Jesus is alive. He's alive and he lives in my heart.
Ellie: Jesus and Mary live in my heart. (We don't know where she got that but we're guessing that she's thinking since she lives in the same house as mommy, Jesus' mommy must live in her heart along with Jesus. Well, I guess she's covered for getting into Catholic Heaven now, too . . .)
Walker: When's Jesus going to die again?
Kurt: He's not. He gets to live forever.
Walker: No, probably when he's 4000.

Ohio State Knights

I got home last night from a meeting at church at about 9:30. I knew Anderson, Walker, and Carla would be asleep but I thought Ellie was probably still awake. She was. She had just been laying in her bed in the dark for an hour and a half looking around. When I walked in, she said, "Is that you, daddy?" in a really sleepy voice. I told her yes and gave her a hug and she wouldn't let go. She just hugged me for the longest time. I told her she was my best little girl and she said, "Oh, thank you, daddy." Then I covered her up and she even let me kiss her goodnight (she's usually just a hugs kind of girl). It was just one of life's precious little moments that I don't want to forget. I'm sure the next thing I know, I'll be walking her down the aisle to marry a handsome republican pediatric surgeon with fledgling political aspirations.

Carla: Walker, do you want to wear your Ohio State shirt to school tomorrow?
Walker: With my Knight in Shining Armor?
Carla: You mean your UnderArmour?
Walker: Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure.

Sports Trivia and Nicknames

Kurt: Ellie, who's your favorite basketball player?
Ellie: The Browns.
Kurt: OK, who's your favorite football player?
Ellie: The Indians.
Kurt: And who's your favorite baseball player?
Ellie: The Leopards.

We definitely have some work to do with Ellie but I thought this next one was pretty impressive. Saturday, Mom and Dad picked up Walker to take him to their house to play. He was wearing a Browns sweatshirt.
Mom: Are the Browns playing today? Is that why you're wearing a Browns shirt?
Walker: No, the Browns aren't playing because the Colts lost. The Colts lost to Tennessee so the Browns don't get to play.

I had to think about that one for a minute but he's right. The Browns would have gone to the playoffs if the Colts would have beaten the Titans. But the Titans won. 3 months ago.

Walker met Bob's new love interest yesterday. She asked him what his name was.
Walker: Walker
Kurt and Carla (to clarify R's and L's): Walker
Laura: Oh, Walker.
Walker: Yeah. That's different, huh?.

Also, Anderson has a neck. I found it the other day when I was giving him a bath. For a while I was thinking that his shoulders were connected directly to his chubby cheeks. I guess maybe he's starting to thin out.
Nicknames for Anderson:
Chub Chubs - because he's fat
Chubalubs - because he's fat. Ellie calls him "Tsubuwubas"
Mr. Fat Pants - because he's fat
Mr. Spit Lips - because he drools and makes spit bubbles
Stuffy Jones - because he's so stuffed up right now that he can't even suck on his pacifier. And, yeah, I'm not really sure where the Jones part comes from.

While I'm at it, Nicknames for Ellie:
Sister Sue
Sue
Sue Sue (don't know why on any of those. Ask Carla)
Fluffy the kitty cat
Nicknames for Walker:
Rosco
Walker Joe John Johanson Magillicutty Kandel

Carly's in the microwave again . . .

is what Carla said to me one night as we were cleaning up after the kids went to bed. Walker and Ellie have a tendency to put baby dolls in microwaves and ovens. They get it honest, though. When we were kids, Kyle and I renamed one of Stacey's baby dolls to "Abuse-o-baby" because it acted really life-like when we would throw it down the stairs. Well, death-like.

Walker, Ellie, Carla, and I had an awesome game of My little pony Dora ball bocci last week. Ellie has a ball pit inflatable dora house, from which we used the balls. She also has a my little pony that we used as the pill. I told Walker to count everyone's dora bocci balls to make sure we all had the same number. He walked over to a pile, looked at them, and said, "two, four, six, eight, ten, eleven." He was right. He counted all the piles and was right with all of them. Why can my 3-year-old (well, almost 4 now) count by two's? Because he has . . . The Knack.

I like Apples

In my lunch today: Two apples, a baked apple granola bar, an apple NutriGrain bar, left-over apple crisp, and oatmeal. What kind of oatmeal, you ask? You guessed it . . . Raisin and Spice. And 2 oranges.

Ellie loves children's Tylenol. Sometimes if Walker's sick and she sees us giving him Tylenol, she says, "I have a fever. I need fever medicine." or "I have a cough and I need medicine" then she does this fake little cough. It's pretty funny. Last night, when she actually was sick (still is, actually, got that croupy cough again), I woke her up at about 11 to give her Tylenol. When I told her what I had for her, she got this really big but really sleepy smile on her face, took the tablets out of my hand, balled them up in her little fist, and started laying back down to go back to sleep. I had to wake her up again to get her to actually chew it up.

Last year, Ellie had croup pretty bad. It was an emergency room ordeal and she didn't really respond to the breathing treatments so they kept her for a couple nights (I think) and kept giving her steroids and stuff that made her really hyper. All she wanted to do was run up and down the hallways which the doctors said she shouldn't because it would make her cough. We thought we might have to take her back to the ER again on Saturday night (yes, the night with the blizzard) but she ended up doing OK. It got me thinking that it would be really funny to see her all hyper again, though. Especially with the way she talks and acts like a cat all the time now. Maybe I'll give her some coffee when I get home.

Busy Weekend

Saturday, I took Walker and Ellie to Micah's birthday party at the church. It was pretty entertaining watching the kids run wild in the fellowship hall and play games and react to the magic show. Some of them didn't know what was going on sometimes (Ellie), but even she knew to clap when the magician did a trick. Micah sure has some loving, patient, and completely exhausted parents. Speaking of Ellie at the birthday party, she had a dirty diaper right in the middle of it. When I was changing her in the tiny little super secret bathroom at church (the one with no ventilation to speak of), I said, "Man, Ellie, this is something else," to which she replied, "It's yogurt stick aaaaaand apple juice!"

We had Anderson baptized yesterday. He did a good job - didn't cry or anything like that. He was by far the fattest little baby up there but he was cute.

Last night Carla went to Youth and I stayed home with the kids. When I told them it was time to put on their pajamas, Ellie came over and gave me this huge hug and said, "Thanks, Daddy. Thanks for letting me get Jammies. You're my best friend. And Addie's my best friend, too." Tied for first. That'll do.

A long time ago, whenever Walker tried to tell us something and didn't make sense or was just making a bunch of crazy sounds and we'd ask him what he was talking about, he'd always say, "Nothing. I'm just talkin' 'bout the gibberish."