Musical Me

Today the rest hymn was actually a piano number by the Bishop's eleven year old daughter. S1 had grown restless with the talks so he was sitting on the pew listening to his tape of Christmas music. As soon as she started playing, his head perked up, he ripped off the headphones and dropped them on the pew, stood up, turned around, looked expectantly at the congregation and began to conduct the music. S1 loves it when you sing and he gives you this "look" when he wants you to sing for him. While as he conducted he gave me that look. I whispered that we weren't going to sing while she played. He continued conducting watching the congregation. About two-thirds of the way through he turned back around facing the piano, continued conducting with one hand and "played" the "piano" on the back edge of the pew in front of us until the musical number was over. He then sat down and resumed listening with his headphones. The funniest part was that even though S1 was conducting with both hands, he apparently had a nose itch because occasionally he'd stick his index finger just inside his nose but still have that hand waving to conduct!

Chores

When my kids are about 18 months old I have them start helping me unload the dishwasher. They are great about taking out the plastic plates and handing them to me. As they get older they do more of the unloading. My quandry has been what chore can I give S1 that a) he's capable of doing b) won't get broken c) makes sense to him why he has to do it. We started with having him throw away his diapers. It met all three qualifications, especially since he would connect getting his diaper changed to having to go throw it away. Compared to him being in the middle of something and me saying, go do this job. So what other chore could I give him? Since he knew how to throw stuff away, if we need something put in the trash and he is in the room, we'll give it to him to do. Not much but it's at least something. But still I felt he is capable of more. So we started making him put his clothes in the hamper when he gets dressed for bed or has to change clothes. It was funny at first because he'd bee line it for the trash can so I was watching for clothes in the trash and diapers in the hamper. We had to work a little to get him to go to the bathroom (where the hamper is) to put the clothes away, but now he does it all by himself. Good job S1! What next?

Blackberries Anyone

I've been meaning to write this post for months. In August the blackberries in our front side yard are ripe for the picking. You have to pick them in stages so you can have enough to make jam. While all the boys were busy I slipped outside to pick some. I just put them in a colander so they are ready to wash when I go inside. Well, when I got inside the boys needed my attention so I hid the colander of berries behind some items on the counter-where I promptly forgot about them. Not such a big deal as they were hidden from view. But things got shuffled around the next day, not by yours truly, so the colander was now sitting in front of the toaster in full view. I was in my room when I hear S2 yell, "MOM!!!" I walked into the living room to see S1 up to his elbows in blackberry juice and bits, laying on the living room carpet, waving his arms like he's making a blackberry carpet angel! Immediately I got him up and into the bath. Cleaning off the TV was no problem, but it took over an hour with the help of Spot Shot to get it all out of the carpet. Yes, it came out! Then I had to go and clean up the kitchen where S1 had massaged the berries in the colander so the juice had leaked out everywhere. Thank goodness for Comet with Bleach. I guess we won't have any blackberry jam this year.