Overheard in the Wonderful World of Iz

I think some of the funniest moments as a parent are when you hear your own words coming back at you from your Toddler. The best part is when they regurgitate it several days later, and they use it in context. I believe I've posted about this scenario several times over the past year but I got another zinger today that I had to share.

Isabelle is home today for a snow day. Daycare was officially open, but we woke up to a pretty icy/sleety situation and it's going to turn over to snow at some point. It was just easier to keep her home. So she is playing, drawing, watching cartoons, etc. One of her cartoons was over and she wanted another episode on (we have several recorded on the DVR for just this kind of day).

I hold onto the remote control on days like this because Isabelle likes to think she knows how it works, but she totally doesn't. It can often take me several minutes to "undo" a series of buttons that she pushes on the remote control. So this morning, it was time to put a new episode on, but I couldn't locate the remote control. I must have had it in my hand when the phone rang, and placed it down in a very illogical spot. So when I tell Iz that I have to find the remote, she says....

"But, Mommy, you JUST had it in your hands....you MUST be losing your mind!"

Hilarious. Ed says that exact phrase about 10x every night. I think the whole family needs to start taking Ginkgo Biloba supplements to improve mental function.

The Power of Prayer

Isabelle has been praying at bedtime since she was born. Well, OK, I said a prayer over her crib for a long time, and then I recited the prayers for a while as she held her hands in prayer. But Daddy took the initiative to teach her the "Our Father" last year and she now recites it every night before bed.

I took the initiative a few months later to explain the "Our Father" to her, and why we have to tell God we're sorry that we sinned, and ask him to forgive us, and that we'll try to do better tomorrow, and how we have to forgive our friends when they are mean to us at school.

We then added an element of saying one thing we're thankful for after we pray. Ed says one thing, I do, and then we ask Isabelle to name one thing. In the beginning she was thankful for her wall. Her clock. Her door. She didn't really "get it". But in recent weeks, she finally has started to understand how it works and she comes up with some pretty good ones. She's thankful she got to talk to Mom-Mom SuSu on the phone, or that she had a good day at school, or that she learned a new song, or that it was a warm day (instead of a yucky cold day).

I just tonight added another element to prayer time of sending one special prayer out to someone who really needs it. Let's face it, there are a LOT of people in our lives who need an extra prayer these days, and I try to hit most of them during my own daily prayers. But for Iz, I thought it would be important to start getting her to understand that we don't just recite a memorized prayer and that's it. We have to pray for others as well as ourselves.

Tonight's special prayer went out to Ed's cousin, Kristy and her husband, Mike. Mike was diagnosed with Acute Lymphomic Leukemia in July 2009. He's been in and out of remission over the past 18 months and has hit another road bump in his recovery this week. He's in the ICU at the wonderful Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa and he's fighting harder than any Doctor or Nurse has ever witnessed. He will hopefully be moved out of the ICU tomorrow after another scary week, with hopes of continuing to gain strength, platelets, and all those other things that Leukemia patients have to fight for...things that we all take for granted every day.

So, tonight's first night of "special prayers for others" with Isabelle went out to Kristy and Mike and their two children. And they will probably get Isabelle's special prayers for a while, until Mike clears yet another hurdle in his battle to health. Isabelle hasn't even met these people yet, but I'm hoping that might become even more of a lesson.

Happy New Year and Happy Festivus!

With New Years Day falling on a Saturday this year, we spent the "holiday" un-decorating our house from Christmas. We typically spend the Saturday after Christmas doing this thankless chore, but this year just happened to fall on the holiday. No biggie, we never have plans for the actual day, we're usually nursing a pretty heavy hangover so it's typically a low-key day in the Siler household.

We brought the storage bins to the Living Room and kind of un-decorated throughout the day, a little at a time. We put Isabelle down for a nap and when she woke up, the tree was still in the house, but without the beautiful sparkling ornaments and twinkling lights. She was DEVASTATED!

What happened to our "nornaments"? Where are the lights? Well, Christmas is over, Bean. So we have to take all the decorations down. Noooooooooooooooooooooo! I want Santa to come BACK!!!!

Oh he will, baby. You just have to wait 51 weeks, K?

What the...????

I use the phrase, "what the...?!?!" a lot. I don't finish the phrase (usually), because most mature audiences know how that story ends.

Tonight, I threw out a "what the.....?!?!" and Isabelle turned nonchalantly and said...

"No, Mommy, you're supposed to say "what the hell?"

Oops. I know one of my new years resolutions!

On the fifth day of Christmas, my daughter gave to me…

Five Super Bowl Rings!

Tonight, Isabelle was asking when Santa was coming back to bring her more presents. So I tried to explain how giving presents is so much better than receiving them, and asked her if she’d given presents to her Pretty Lamb, Arthur, Baby Lola (and her other cast of characters). She then started handing out ‘pretend’ presents to us.

At one point, she told me she had a very special present for me, and that I should open it slowwwwwly. So I did as I was told. And I pretended to just LOVE my pretend gift, even though I didn’t know what it was. And she asked, do you know what it is, Mommy? It’s RINGS!

Rings, I asked? RINGS?!? Like, maybe….Super Bowl rings?

YES! YES! Super Bowl Rings, Mommy! Are you so ga-cited (aka, excited)?!?!?! (as she jumped up and down, clearly excited she had given me a gift that I truly loved)

Well, YES, that is everything I wanted for Christmas this year, Isabelle! But you know what? We need to give Super Bowl rings to everyone on the team. Like Ray Lewis...

And Joe Flacco, Mommy?

Yup.

What about Ray Rice?

Absolutely.

Does Todd Heap get a Super Bowl ring, Mommy?

Of course he does!

Who else gets a Super Bowl ring, Daddy?

Well, let’s go through the roster…

You see, what some of you faithful readers may not know, is that Isabelle played a key part in the Chicago Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup this past hockey season. Every day the Blackhawks played in a playoff game (and let me tell you, there are a LOT of hockey playoff games), Isabelle sent a picture of herself in her Blackhawks jersey to Uncle Don in Chicago (well, Uncle Don DID buy her the jersey after all, it was the least we could do). And while the team didn’t win every game that Isabelle sent a picture for, they obviously won MOST of them, because they have the Stanley Cup to prove it.

So, the fact that Isabelle gave me rings tonight as a present, leads me to believe that maybe she’ll be a good luck charm for the Baltimore Ravens obtaining a whole mess of Super Bowl rings this year, and the almighty Lombardi Trophy which has eluded Ravens fans for 9 years.

Festivus Maximus, everyone. May your heart bleed purple, and your new year be shiny and bright.

A Christmas Story

The day was lovely. Our three-year-old slept in until 8am. We ate way too much food all day long. I don’t think there was more than a 20-minute break between stuffing food in our face. Santa was very good to Isabelle this year. It’s nice when you only have one child, because Santa brings it pretty heavy. And well, he should, because she’s a pretty good kid.

The boring gifts were opened first (by design) – books, movies, stickers, flashcards. Then the good stuff came next – dress-up clothes in a trunk, Barbie princess dolls, Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders, a Dora Mega-Blocks roller coaster set, a jewelry-making kit, a Chicago Cubs winter hat. And then, the “money” gifts were left until the end…

• a two-sided easel from Geega and Grandpa (magnetic, dry erase board, chalkboard, and more)

• a digital camera from Mommy & Daddy with zooming capabilities, games, and a 400 picture capacity

• a GOLF CART from Santa for the dollhouse people, but then became a golf cart for the new Disney princess dolls (the roof doesn’t exactly fit on with their tiaras and bouffants, but they get around just fine); their first trip in the golf cart was to go to the “store” to buy “beer” because they were going to a really great party that night (ummm, OK, at least she pays attention)

• the 4th annual White House Christmas ornament from Baba (oh how we love those ornaments, they are sparkly and such a great collector’s item)

• $100 towards the “travel fund” from Uncle Don & Aunt Susan (again, still not sure what that thing is, but they keep saying I’ll really love it one day)

• $50 from Grandpa for my “pinky” bank

Mommy and Daddy made me lay down for a nap around 1pm, but I didn’t sleep. I just played with more of my new toys, read my new books, and didn’t stay in bed. Mommy finally let me get up and watch one of my new movies, I chose Snow White. But it was SCARY and I cried and didn’t want to finish watching it. So we watched the Princess stories DVD instead. That wasn’t scary. It was just cheesy plastic deliciousness that I could watch for hours. I guess the Princess era has arrived!

For dinner we had a baked ham, green beans, mashed potatoes, and cornbread. We had a baked apple crisp for dinner. I didn’t eat any of it, except for a few pieces of ham. Then I had oranges, cheese, turkey, bread, and some M&M’s. It was an exquisite dinner indeed.

Happy Birthday, Baby Jesus. Merry Christmas, every one.

Spoiled? Probably a little...

For weeks, Isabelle has not been able to come up with any concrete answers to the, What do you want Santa to bring you for Christmas? question. We got the vague answers of...

toys,
   books,
      clothes,
         pretty shoes,
            princess dresses, etc.

It was only within the last few days, after we were finished shopping, that she finally came up with a real answer. It was unique, cute, and well...impossible to find. She wanted a golf cart, for her dollhouse people and Barbie dolls, so they could ride around just like they were in Puerto Rico. Ummmm, OK?

So online I went and found one option which was a pink (of course) golf cart for the "High School Musical" doll set. (Whatever that means). Except it was $50. Seriously? I can't pay those prices for this stuff, I just can't.

I also found a die-cast metal one for about $10, but it was way too small for Barbie, and probably wouldn't be amenable to her dollhouse gang either. That dollhouse family is a big, roudy bunch and I could see a fight breaking out between them, Dora, and Diego. There was just not enough room in the die-cast version.

So, I moved to Plan B. Ebay, from where all impossible-to-find toys (and pretty much everything else) can be found. And alas, I found my holy grail. It was an older model of the now-$50 version of the pink golf cart. It used to be for Barbie, and someone was dumping one for $9.00. I won't get it to Edgewater in time for a Santa surprise, but boy, will I look like the rockstar Mom when I give it to her a few days after Christmas!

I had to pay about $15 for shipping, of course, but that still brings the total golf cart purchase to only $25, half of what I might have paid if I caved to the full-price retail 2010 version.

So, you might say she's spoiled. And maybe she is. She certainly didn't need one more gift to open for Christmas, Saturday morning is already going to take forever. But we only get a few years to play Santa, and I get a year-end bonus from work every December. I can't think of any better way to spend it.

Merry Christmas, my little Bean. And many Happy New Years to come!