Bigger

Salem was playing with her dolls today when I overheard her say in a sing-song tone:
"It's better when it's bigger..."

Wise as a sage at 3 years old.

The Sound of Chocolate Miiiirk

I picked the girl up from school yesterday. I had to stop by the bank before going home and thought that I'd pick up a few groceries on the way.
"No! I don't want to go in the grocery store! Please, can we just go home??" She shouted from the backseat.
"But, we're really low on milk, if I don't go, you will not have any milk with your oatmeal tomorrow. Would you be okay with that?" I asked.
"Yeah, sure sure, that's okay. I don't mind." She said firmly.
Not more than 60 seconds later....
"I want chocolate miiirk!" She cried.
"I just told you we don't have enough milk at home. I wanted to go to the store but you said NO." I just got cries and whails.
"Fine, we'll stop at the Big H and pick up a half gallon, but, no more whining or you get nuthin'."
That shut her up.

We walked in the store, picked up the milk when a bottle of Yoo-hoo caught her eye.
"That!! I want that!!" She squealed.
"Babe, that's not really milk, it's kinda watery, like a chocolate water, not a chocolate milk. I think it's gross...."
"NOOOOOOOOOooooooooo! I want it! I want that chocolate miiiiiiiirk!" She cried.
"Okay! but, I'm warning you, you may not like it."

We get home, get out of the car and I head upstairs while she starts playing with her legos in the den. "Are you making my chocolate mirk?" She calls from the den.
"Yeah..." I said under my breath--gosh, bossy bossy. I started to wash a few dishes and pull out her sippy cup while opening my mail. Yeah, I'm a multi-tasker. This is when the devil's child bounds up the stairs...
"Are you making me my mirk?" she said. "Yes, calm down." I snapped back.
"Well, it doesn't sound like you are! Sounds like you're cleaning the kitchen and opening mail!"

That landed her in time out. After, she got her "mirk", that Yoo-Hoo and you know what? She hated it.

Recurring Nightmare

Salem has a recurring nightmare. She wakes up screaming and claims that spiders are in her bed. This has happened at least 6 or 7 times in her life. I wonder what it means....

NosePicking Lesson

The girl and I were downstairs the other night packing in our daily dose of Sponge Bob Square Pants. (That's the only kid show I can stand, it's actually pretty entertaining.) I noticed Salem had her finger so deep in her nostril that my first reaction was that she was giving herself brain damage.
"Salem! Stop picking your nose, that's unsanitary. Go get some tissue and blow your nose."
She ignored me and continued to dig for gold.
"Salem, I don't want to see you picking your nose anymore." She turned to me without removing her finger from her nose and said, "Well, why don't you turn your head the other way then?"
Dude. The gloves are coming off.

WAH-WAH!

I've been working on the ol' hand-eye coordination with Salem. We've been throwing and catching a big, pink, non-threatening bouncy beach ball (like the ones you get in the big bin at the supermarker). She's finally getting pretty good at catching, though I'm always trying to get her to use more hands and less face. We're still not there yet with the throwing part, but she has alot of fun anyway.

The hilarious part, is when she drops the ball, she says "WAH-wah!" in a perfect, high-pitch/low pitch Ashleyesque delivery, complete with accompanying left-then-right head nodding. Its awesome.

By the way, turn your adult filter on before you do an image search for "pink ball". Trust me.

-CHUK

Right in the Eyes

Raising a child has it's high moments where the rewards of being a parent far surpass anything else you may have experienced in your life. Everyone knows you're unable to experience a high point in your life without hitting lows. With that said, I got a good dose of 'hitting-the-parenting-low' the other day.

The kid has been sick off and on since the seasons started changing. She got a terrible cough that lasts all night long. I tried cough syrup, allergy meds, putting dust mite covers on her pillows and mattress--to no avail. I had chuk's grandmother over (mommo) last week for dinner. Salem was really not feeling her best but was eagar to put on her normal show. She unfortunately started one of her coughing fits while showing off, jumped up in my lap and said, "Um, mommy...I don't fee....BLURG!" The 'blurgh' was a shower of vomit. It released from her mouth like a geiser splashing right in my face and under my eyelids. It flowed quickly down to pool in my bra and covered my arm and thigh. I was officially sucker-punched. I sat there for at least 10 seconds unable to move as I didn't really know what had happened. I got up from the couch trying to be as careful as I could as to not get the putrid mix of cheetos, applejuice and fig newtons on my furniture and wool rug. As I carried her quickly into the bathroom, she turned to me and said,
"Mommy, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to spray vomit on you like that!"
AWWWW! Too cute.
"Vomit shmomit, you're just as sweet as you could be!" I said as I plopped her into a tub of warm soapy water.

Dragons May Cause Gas

We went to the Gwinnett County fair yesterday and boy did we have a boot-scootin’ good time. If you like people watching, you can’t waste any more time, you must drive out to the strip-mall section of Georgia for a real treat. Between the pony rides, tilt-a-whirl, screaming fire-ball and funnel cakes with a side of corndogs the buzz is all about what you’re wearing to the fair. I saw grandma mullets, a girl wearing a black mesh shirt to expose the fact that she’s somewhere between 7 and 8 months pregnant, spike heels on a woman in a wheel chair, and as much clothing from Hot Topic that would supply the entire eastern seaboard chain of stores.

We went because of that tiny girl, you know, Salem. She loves fairs although she pretends to be scared of the rides for the first hour; she usually warms up and gets excited. Daddy, pop pop and gramma all took her on rides, so it was me who was left to carry the torch. She chose the spinning dragon ride. This ride is like a scrambler, only you ride inside the belly of a big fiberglass dragon. Once on, there is a large wheel that you’re supposed to turn to make the dragon spin while the ride is in progress--you know, so we can projectile vomit the funnel cakes and corn dogs we ate three minutes ago. We stepped into our dragon along with two other little girls. They proceeded to explain that I needed to make the dragon spin around since I was the adult, as it’s too heavy for them to get it going. Once I got the dragon spinning, the girls were all excited, shouting “Man, we’re going fast!” and “Boy, I feel dizzy, like I’m going to get sick!” Great.
Salem wanted to add to the excitement and put her own little twist on how the ride made her feel “Yeah!” she cried. “This ride makes me wanna fart!”

happy birthday!

Happy birthdays to both my niece and nephew this week! Sayre turns 3 and Wyatt has his first big #1!

mommy's job

Anne was over last night and had a nice little conversation with the girl.
I overheard Anne ask what my job was. Salem replied in her 'matter-of-fact' tone she uses, "Oh, mommy just licks the cabinets clean."

Why is my child such a nut-bar? Lick the cabinets, wtf?

Who's The Boss?

This is chuk's story, but I figure he may not get around to tell it.

Salem was playing with our cats, giving them treats shortly after she and daddy came home from the pet store. Chuk walked up behind them and heard her loudly command to the tiny animals:

"HEY YOU CATS! I AM THE BOSS OF YOU!!" She then quickly and quietly stated under her breath, "and mommy is the boss of me."

booze breath

Salem was staying at gramma and pop-pop's house one weekend. She crawled up in gramma's lap and stared her right in the eyes, nearly 1 inch from her face.
"Salem?" said gramma. "What are you doing?"

"Ooh, gramma!" the kid whispered. "I just love your winey breath!"

Butt-Blasters

A friend of mine and I were discussing colon hydrotherapy. The conversation went further south when we started thinking of certain consumables that would clog the colon cleanse operation’s plumbing. We finally agreed that prime rib and milk duds would for sure signal a breach in the pipes. To make matters worse, we were thinking of playing a gag on the colon hydrotherapy clinic by walking in with a giant Slurpee™, a bag of Cheez Curls and a big box of Milk Duds. Then say, “Sorry, I didn’t have time for breakfast. Want some?”
Let the hilarity ensue.