A new early readers' book

See Ellie.

See Ellie's long hair.

See Ellie bend over to take her pants off to go potty.

Hair in the toilet!

Skibbits

While we were on the way back from our trip, we stopped at Bob Evans for supper.
Carla: Ellie, do you want mashed potatoes, yes or no?
Ellie: Skibbits

Walker (over and over and over again): Are we in Pittsburgh or Pennsylvania?
Kurt and/or Carla: We're in both. We're in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
Walker: No . . . no, I think we're in Pennsylvania.
Ugh.

Ellie's favorite part of the vacation - seeing the "aminals" at the zoo. Her favorite animal - kitty cats.
Walker's favorite part - sliding down the bowling alley slide at the children's museum. It was a slide that looked like a bowling lane. It was also incredibly fast.

I'll post pictures when I get the chance - probably February.

Well . . . kind of soon

Walker on his first tee ball team, the Bees. He loves diving for the ball and catching high pops. In my completely biased opinion, he's definitely one of the better athletes on the team.

Anderson laying around and smiling, like usual. He's starting to reach for people and things a lot more now, also eating his first solid foods - Cheerios and baby fruit puffs. He also spits non-stop. Not the gross spit up kind of spit, the gross buzzing his lips together kind of spit. Either way, the front of his shirt is usually soaked.

Walker loves it when we have storms because he thinks our power will go out every time (whereas, it actually only goes out about 80% of the time). He thinks that every time the power goes out, it means he gets to have a sleep over in a tent on the living room floor. He told me the other day that he prayed to Jesus that the power would go out but it didn't. He must be getting a little frustrated now because we heard him praying again in the back of the car when we were driving somewhere: "Dear Jesus. This is the last time I'm going to pray to you for the power to go out. So please make the Power GO OUT! OK? . . . I still love you very much. Amen."

Ellie: Daddy, we're not the samest.
Me: We're not?
Ellie: You're a boy and I'm a girl so we're not the samest. Walker and Anderson are boys so they're the samest as you.

I think I mentioned once before that Walker loves that horrible show American Gladiators. I really can’t blame him, though - it's mildly entertaining, but I liked it better the first time I saw it . . . when it was called American Gladiators. Anyway, his favorite event is the Eliminator at the end. He always gets really excited and says: “Daddy, when’s the Lemonader going to be on?”

Ellie Pics

"Daddy, what does this spell?"


Dr. Ellie checking on mommy's headache.

Poor little sick girl. She kept "spitting up".

And a couple shots of Princess Elizabeth I.

Pictures of the boys coming soon.

She also does a great rendition of "Don't Speak"

We were watching American Gladiators last night because it's Walker's favorite horrible show and it was time for Ellie to go to the bathroom. She didn't want to because she didn't want to miss the action so Carla told her to run super fast, just like a Gladiator. Ellie's response, "I'm not a galadiator. I'm just a girl." By the way, aside from wearing a diaper to bed, she's pretty much potty trained. Just the very occasional accident but, hey, that happens to all of us . . . right?

Walker: Mom, come quick! Anderson has some WICKED spit up!

Carla, to Walker and Ellie: Wow, you guys are done cleaning up already?
Ellie: We used the teamwork.

Splatter, rinse, repeat.

That's Ellie's potty training in a nutshell. Actually, just for the first couple days. She caught on quick and is doing extremely well, now. She's even gotten out of bed a couple times at night and during naps to go to the bathroom all on her own. She still has the occasional accident but they're getting fewer and farther between, which is definitely better than stronger and closer together. I guess it helps that Carla can be home and set the timer on the microwave for her to try every 15 minutes or so. Problem with that, though, is now every time we warm up lunch we find puddles on the floor. You know . . . Pavlov's dog.

Let's see, what else? I'm posting from MD, just outside of DC - down here for a training thing. It's 4 days long which kind of stinks because it keeps me away from Carla and the kids but at least we have the cell phone and such. It was rough leaving. Walker literally clinged to me and begged me not to go. "I just want you to stay here and play with me." "Mommy doesn't know how to play football right." etc. And now that I'm gone, he's extremely clingy to Carla, which I guess isn't too surprising. I think Walker's clinginess and potty training Ellie alone might be getting to Carla, too. I called her after class this evening and we talked for a while but then we got cut off. I called her right back but got the machine. When we finally reconnected just now, she said that she thought she was talking on her cell phone and she got in the car and drove away, just chatting away on our LAN-line (landline?). Oh, well. Hopefully things will be back to normal soon. On the plus side, the old Grand Cherokee ran like a champ on the way down. I actually got very close to 20 mpg, which is really cool. Now the old girl just has to make it back . . .

Stuff the kids said before I left:

Walker, before our family tee-ball game: Inside our house is the locking room. Where we get dressed to play baseball.

Ellie, after trying to pull the table cloth off to help set the table for dinner: Daddy, can you move the table clock?

Ellie: Walker, you need sunscream.

Walker, at his real tee-ball game, after I told him he should play short stop for an inning: Where's long stop?

Walker, after I had to call him a couple times before he finally came over to me from the other room: You know what I was doing that was taking so long? Walker puts both hands around his neck. Feeling my blood. (He meant checking his pulse).

Walker, during a living room football game against me: Come on guys! Tackle him!
Kurt: Who are you talking to?
Walker: The guys on my team, Extrugal Gabowskasi and Floppy Hair. (can you guess who?)

Separation Anxiety

Ellie's been trying our patience lately. She's been throwing a fit any time we take anything away from her. It's always been that way with food, even stuff she doesn't like or want. "Don't eat it daddy. Save it for later." You have to be pretty sneaky taking it away or she makes you give it back. Recently, though, it's gone way beyond food. Other things we've had to "give back":
Milk that we've wiped
Peepers (eye crust) that we've wiped out
Tears that we've wiped away
"Boogies" that we've, well, you know.

To top it all off, potty training officially starts today. We've been introducing her to it very slowly for months now and she hasn't been receptive at all. Today she's been on the potty probably a dozen times already and she hasn't squeezed a drop. It might be for the better, though. She'd probably want us to give that back, too.

Carla, at lunch today, after Walker had cleaned his plate: Wow, Walker, look at your plate!
Carla gives Walker M&Ms for dessert.
Ellie picks all the food up off of her plate and puts it on the table.
Ellie: Look at my plate!