Achubai

Instead of milk, John drinks this stuff called Silk soy milk. (gag)

For whatever reason, Christopher calls it "achubai"(pronounced ah-choo-bye). Or something like that. We're not sure where he got that from. But it didn't stop him from screaming at the top of his lungs in Sprouts today upon sight of the stuff "Achubai! Achubai!"

John has recently started to drink it because he discovered he's pretty lactose intolerant. He uses it on his cereal, and has the occasional glass of it. I really don't know how he does it. It doesn't look very tasty. (But I don't like regular milk either) John says it's "okay."

None of the rest of us will touch it with a ten foot pole.

We've decided that when he's saying"achubai", he's really saying "Ah choo buy that for?" (make disgusted face while saying it)

Christopher - spea(click!)

I love it when kids start talking and they develop their own little language. Christopher is, of course, no exception. Some of my favorites are-

sambo- sandwich

chawdee- chocolate

pahsuhsee- popcicle

ookie- cookie

slasses- glasses

cyto- motorcycle, bike, scooter

icky- special blankie

And then there are my favories- he has a hard time with the ending sounds of some words (like ck and g) so he makes that clicking noise with his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

Nick becomes Ni(click!)

truck becomes tru(click!)

clock becomes clo(click!)

flag becomes fla(click!)

pig becomes pi(click!)

I DO NOT correct him, and I tell people not to either. They learn on their own. My very favorite beanerina went to bed one night, and the next morning in her place was a pretty little ballerina and I nearly cried.

late night entertainment

Zach is by far our most entertaining child at night. He doesn't like to be alone so he refuses to go up to bed until Nick does, and most nights ends up crashing on the couch before his bedtime of 8:30. (I realize this means that maybe his bedtime is too late, but by changing his bedtime, I'd be punishing Nick, because they share a room, and Zach has weird issues about being alone in any room)

So around 8:00 every night, Zach crashes on the couch. At 8:30 I take on the monumental task of getting that kid up 17 stairs to the farthest bedroom at the end of the hall. I'm just glad he sleeps on the bottom bunk. He's a big kid. I can't pick him up and carry him like I used to, I have to try and convince his sleepy self to walk as I half drag him first to the potty, then to his bed. It is imperative Zach use the bathroom before he goes to bed. If he doesn't, the risk of him wetting himself, the bed, and the floor increases dramatically. Most of the time he's so out of it, he can't wake up enough to figure out what is going on, and so he just stands there and cries.

Nick is always on hand to help because he finds his little brother hilarious. Zach tends to talk in his sleep, which can be pretty funny. (We think so at any rate. Maybe this is one of those "you had to be there" things, but I'm sharing anyway.) The other night he was yelling at me "No, Christopher! No! No! No!" Over and over again as we lead him up the stairs. Once, he kept crying "No! I want to go to bed!" I'd assure him in my most soothing voice that he was indeed going to his nice warm bed, to which he'd reply, "No! I want to go to bed!" Tonight I stood him in front of the toilet, he stood there for a minute, (pants still pulled up) and said "Kay, I'm done." Luckily, he wasn't, and I was able to yank those pants down in record time and get him to use the toilet. On the way to his bedroom, he asked me what Braden (the neighbor kid) had done. (I have no idea what he's talking about. I can only assume he was dreaming)

Nick now says that in addition to regularly talking in his sleep, he's been singing in his sleep. Zach denies all such accusations.

so much to learn...

Zach: "There's lots of things I need to learn about before I grow up."

Me: "Yep."

Zach "Like my woods."

Me: "Like your what?"

Zach: "My woods. You know, like maple wood, pine wood, tree wood..."

necessities

Favorite quote of the day:

"It's like TV, you need it!"

(Madison was actually referring to why I should buy her another book, the one she just finished had a teaser in the back, leaving her at a cliff hanger. )

Rawr.

Zach- Mom? is Christopher your littlest dinosaur?

Me- Huh?

Zach- You know, cause dinosaurs are crazy and Christopher is crazy.

I guess as far as I'm concerned I have four little crazy dinosaurs.

Deep thoughts by Zach Berrett

"If you were versing, and you did V vs. S, I think the S would win because it looks like a snake."

inside the mind of a 6 year old

Zach has been cracking me up all day today

first there's the- " I think the peanut butter and jelly are friends- that's why they taste so good together."

Then there's this picture he drew in school of his family-

me- "Great job Zach. (noticing all 6 members of our family standing on the ground next to each other) Who is this person in the tree?"

Zach- "I don't know." (zach just informed me that it is his friend in the tree- but he still doesn't know who.)

Me- "Oh. Okay" (good thing our trees are puny, otherwise I'd be checking for unknown strangers in them)

Zach- pointing to the car in the bottom right corner- "That's our car right there."

Me- "Our car? Really? Good job."

Secretly I am wondering when I traded in this car-

For this one-

Me- "What's that up there behind the airplane?"

Zach- "That's a wagon to catch the people that fall out of the sky."

somedays I envy the uninhibited creativity of children. To him it's perfectly normal to have airplanes towing Radio Flyer's behind them to catch people. I however get hung up on why people would be falling out of the sky.

Multi-cultural cuisine

Zach- "I know what they eat in Japan."

Me- "What?"

Zach- "Chinese food."

Me- (laughing) "yup."

Zach- "I know what a Chinese food is."

Me- "Okay, what?"

Zach- "Spaghetti."

You know what would be bad?

Zach- "Dad, you know what would be bad?"

John- "What?"

Zach- "If you fell asleep in a movie theater and we leaved."

Colors

Not that this has anything to do with the "Utah" theme, but yesterday in the car Zach said something I thought was cute.

"Mom, I wish you could REALLY hold a color. If I could hold pink I'd give it to Madison"

It's always so interesting the way kid's minds work.

We're obsessed

Yesterday this is what I overheard in the car while driving to the gym-

Zach-"Madison, would you want to live in Radiator Springs?"

Madison-"No, I don't want to be a car forever."

Zach- "Guess where I would live if I could live in Radiator Springs? Cozy Cone number 1!"

I love listening to these little things. Getting little glimpses of what goes on in their heads.

Do you love me?

Yesterday Zach asks me this question:

"Mom, do you love me?"

I know I should have dropped everything and run to him and smothered him with kisses, and done my best to assure him of my never ending love for him but given the fact that he likes to ask me random questions that he already knows the answer to, the conversation went like this:

"Mom, do you love me?'

"What!? Do I love you? What do you think? Do you think I love you?"

"Can I watch TV?"

Where do they learn such manipulation?

PS- minus the "smother him with kisses" part, (I was driving him to his school for this thing they had) I did do my best to reassure him of my never ending love for him, just in case he really was in doubt.

Is it a dog or a cat?

Tuesdays are my crazy days with my kids schedules and me being the family chauffeur, so dinner is fairly easy on these days. Today I picked up one of those rotisserie roasted chickens from Sprouts, some carrot sticks and called it good. I had one of those flashbacks to a conversation Madison and I had a couple years ago.

I was at the counter picking at one of those chickens (hopefully with a fork, probably with my fingers) and Madison came in the kitchen-
"Oooooh! What are you eating?"
"Chicken."
"Can I have some?"
"Sure. Pull up a stool."

A few minutes pass, as we are enjoying picking the carcass apart like a couple of vultures, probably having some conversation about who knows what, then she asks me this question-

"So what are we eating? Is it a dog or a cat?"
Me, totally caught off guard-"Uh neither, it's a chicken."
"Well, you know how sometimes dogs and cats get hit by cars and they die?"
(say it really slowly) "Yeeeeessssss?"
"So is this a dog or a cat?"
(It must have looked a lot like road-kill at this point)
"It's a chicken. Just a chicken. Nobody scraped it off the road. They raised it on a chicken farm chopped it's head off and plucked out it's feathers. It's a chicken. It was never anyone's pet."
"Oh. Okay."

I still can't decide what bothered me most, that she thought that I would bring home road kill, someone's pet cat "Fluffy" for that matter, or that she was okay with it. Fine with it. Happy to be eating it.

How babies are made

So I know I seem to post alot about Zach, but he just cracks us up. Today was no exception.

I don't know if there is something in the water or whatever, but there seems to be a lot of baby making going on out there. Anyways, I was helping out at Zach's school, and I had got to chat with his teacher today and she told me how she was pregnant (which totally makes three for three of my kid's teachers this year). I mentioned it to Zach on the way home, and this was more or less the conversation-

"Guess what! Your teacher is pregnant! She is gonna have a baby!"
"She has a baby in her stomach?"
"yes she does! Isn't that exciting?"
"How did it get in there? Did she eat it?"
"Um, no, it just grew there."
"It just grew there?" (can you hear the skepticism in his voice?)
(me sweating) "Yep."
"Oh, okay." (whew!)

I probably wouldn't have posted that, but then a few hours later Zach made this out-of-the-blue statement to John.

"It takes a lot of science to make a baby. And math."

We didn't inquire further.

Square

So today I'm driving in the car with Madison and Zach in the back seat. Madison is telling me how her reading tutor at school thinks I need to get her eyes checked for glasses. Zach then pops up with this little tid-bit.

"If you don't wear glasses it means you are square. Do you know what square means? It means you are not cool. People who wear glasses are cool."

Yay! I guess this means I am cool! I tried to take a picture of myself with my glasses to post, but all the shots were hideous. Apparently glasses just make you cool, not gorgeous and photogenic. To be fair to the glasses, I wasn't wearing any make-up, and my hair needed more-than-usual serious help.

Just for clarification I asked a few questions and what I found out is that both regular glasses and sunglasses make you cool. Sunglasses more I think, or maybe he just added the regular glasses to make me feel better. Maybe I am really square and my five year old just doesn't have the heart to tell me.

Apparently he learned this from a girl on the bus. Could be worse I guess.

12:34

So I was eating my lunch today and I looked over at the clock and it said 12:34 and I just had to laugh.

From a very early age, Zach has been fascinated with numbers. Counting, adding, subtracting, etc. He figured out how to count by 11's forever ago, except he goes, 77, 88, 99, 100! But he really loves time. He pays a lot of attention to time. Last year the bus would come pick him up at about 12:40, and if it was a minute late, he'd know. He knows that after 12:59, it goes to 1:00, but his absolute favorite time is 12:34. Followed by 1:23. Any time he can find some consecutive numbers he gets thrilled. (weird, I know) So anyway, it always makes me laugh because of a story John once told me. About a year ago I was away one afternoon and John was home working away in his office, (when he's not out of town, he gets to work a lot from home- one of the perks of having your work office in St. Louis) and Zach just comes bursting into the room surprising John and it's

"Dad! Dad!"

"What!?!?" (thinking the house was on fire, something was broken, you name it)

"Happy 1-2-3-4! Happy 1-2-3-4!"

Sure enough, the time was indeed 12:34 pm.

So for one minute every day, if we remember, we pause to celebrate 1-2-3-4.

Here's a picture of him lining dinner rolls up and counting them. A familiar sight back then (when he was 2 years old) I'm adding the next picture, because it shows what doesn't appear in the last one and while not relevant to the story, it's my blog and I want to show it anyway. Good thing it was washable.
PS- I don't allow my kids to climb on the counters, this is just what I came into the kitchen and found one day.

Real Underwear

Zach says the craziest things to me out of the blue. Today while getting dressed for school, and putting on his own Lightning McQueen underpants, he says, "I know what REAL underwear looks like. It's white with red polka dots." hmmm. I guess no one in this house has real underwear.

The other day ( I was in the kitchen, doing dishes) "If you kick the ball through the things you get three points, if you throw it it's a touchdown." (since when was he interested in football?)

"Nick! Nick! you gotta try this! pancakes and ketchup!" says the little boy who won't even touch cold cereal, has never in his entire life eaten a bowl of cereal.

What gets me most is when he corrects me. Several months ago after school one day, he started asking me a series of questions which I guess they must talk about in kindergarten.

"Mom, what's the month?"

"September"

"What's the day?"

"Um, the 19th."

"No, I said the day, not the date."

"Uh, okay, Wednesday."

"What's the date?"

"the 19th."

"What's the weather?"

"Sunny."(It's 7:00 pm and dark out, but I think back to what the weather must have been like this morning when they would have talked about it)

"Uh mom, I think it's dark out"

So that's what like twice in 30 seconds I got the answers wrong? is that some kind of record?

And finally on Saturday while driving in the car, Madison asked me how many days until St. Patrick's day, (so she can wear her new green shirt) and I guessed and said "ten." (it was a good guess) TWO HOURS LATER, not even realizing he had even paid attention to the last conversation I got this little correction,

"Mom, you're wrong. Wednesday was the 5th, (the day of his surgery) and two days later would be the 7th, but that is Friday and today is Saturday, so today is the 8th." (he was pointing out that if St. Patricks day was in 10 days, today should be the 7th, which tells me he can do math in his head, and he knows the date of St. Patricks day, did I mention he is 5?)

I realize at some point in every child's life (I was a teenager, I remember pretty clearly) kid's THINK themselves smarter than their parents. I'm kind of worried at how early he's gonna KNOW it.