Reunion

Just now getting around to posting pictures from the little get together that the Fullers have each year. My uncle Herbie has some great property in the middle of nowhere near Ft. Wayne. I remember climbing trees and playing there when I was little. Now my girls get to play there too. They call it the "house with the black walnuts" since this must be the ONLY black walnut tree in Indiana and last year they rubbed them all over their skin which stained their hands for weeks. Also stopped by the cemetery to visit my dad's grave. It was a very good day for the soul, if you know what I mean.











Some recent quotes:

Meagan: "I asked daddy why God makes tornadoes. He doesn't know. He won't admit it, though"

Meagan: "If daddy were a girl, I think he would be pretty...except for his feet"

NiNi: "When I get taller and go to college, can I get a puppy?"

Meagan and I had planned an early morning breakfast date. Unfortunately as we were getting ready, NiNi woke up. Meagan whispered to her, "If you get back into bed, I'll give you a Tootsie Roll." I was a little disturbed that she had no Tootsie Roll, nor any intention of giving her a Tootsie Roll. Gee, I wonder where she learned the art of bribery?

Meagan: "I've been thinking about what I want to be when I grow up. I can't decide....either an actress or a substitute teacher" (Hmmm...glamorous, high paying job where you travel the world, or get verbally abused by 8th graders for $67.50 a day . A tough choice indeed.)

Hou-nini

We are testing the limits of our 3-year-old's clever resourcefulness. After the cayenne pepper solution didn't work, we went back to the drawing board. There seemed to be a glimmer of hope with using the gloves to keep her fingers out of her mouth, but the challenge was getting her to keep them on. I snipped off the tips to keep it from being too hot and tried loosely duck taping it to the sleeve of her pj's. She figured out a way to get the tape off...besides, I thought grandma might call CPS on me (I think, "You will NOT put duck tape on that baby" were her exact words). My next idea was to SEW the glove to the sleeve of an old shirt. It took about 3 1/2 minutes before she realized that all she had to do was pull her arm out of the sleeve (duh, mom). Having the glove sewn onto her sleeper proved to be more of a challenge for our little Houdini, but soon I found her naked in her bed, having shucked the whole darn contraption...glove, sleeper and all. Ok, now this is war. I am 36 and she is 3. I better figure out a way to win this one. So, I pinned a safety pin across the zipper track and eureka...





She can't get it off and she's very unhappy about it. Chris likes to call it her "straight jacket." (As in, "Time for bed, honey, go get your straight jacket on")I think that's a little harsh. I prefer to call it a "night-suit." Whatever you call it, I'm quite proud of myself. I just might market it to exasperated parents of finger and thumb suckers all over the world.

Oh, and credit goes to my nephew, Kyle, for coining the phrase "Hounini". I love it!

Katydid

The girls found this guy on the lamppost after school. I think he must've been injured (only one back leg) becuase I think they only come out at night. We thought he was pretty cool looking!

Spicy

Well, the finger-sucking battle rages on. The other day I went to the drug store and picked up a bottle of this product which claims to stop thumb-sucking. It lists cayenne pepper as one of the ingredients. Luckily it was nap-time when we arrived home from CVS so I was thrilled to be able to immediately try it out. I slathered 5 coats of the stuff on her fingernails and fingers and put her to bed. A short time later, I began to hear muffled whines and cries coming from her room and smugly thought to myself, "It must be working like a charm." After a couple of hours I went in to get her up and much to my amazement, she had obviously been sucking her fingers the whole time. She sleepily opened her eyes, popped her pruney fingers out of her mouth and said, "Mmmmm...spicy!"

Today we went to Tuttles and picked some apples and green beans







I am actually quite familiar with this scene as I see these expressions on my children's faces on a daily basis. Just happy to have caught it on film




NiNi has been really cracking us up lately with her off-handed comments:


While hiccuping: "Hey, I'm a diet Coke!"

Braiding her hair one morning: "Why are you frenching my braids?"

Putting her down for a nap: "I don't WANT to take a A-S-P"

Feeding the fish: "Oh, he's eating allergies"

"Mommy, you a mean witch" (she heard that one on Dora)

"You a mean mom. You are not coming to my birthday party"

Me: "Do you have any new friends at school?"
NiNi: "Yeah, David."
Me: "Oh, and what does David like to play?"
NiNi: "David likes to play knocking down my stuff"
(I seem to remember that game from when I played with boys!)

Meagan has created a new game in which she imagines terribly uncomfortable scenarios and then asks us which we would prefer (the lesser of two evils). How about you, would you rather...

...Be eaten by a T-Rex or burned by hot lava?
...Be thrown into a pool full of baby sharks or into a lake full of snapping turtles? (apparently the baby sharks DO have teeth, which was naturally my first question)
...Be bitten by snakes or pinched by a crab?
...Be really really hot or really really cold?

Meagan: "Has there ever been a woman president?"
Me: "No, not yet"
Meagan: "Well, I hope it's not because they think that boys are smarter than girls"

I guess a few of my "women's liberation" genes slipped through to her:)