Just Part of the Job

I wish I could describe to you all the volume of poop I encountered this morning. Will has been constipated for one or two weeks, and we’ve had to load him up with laxatives. He’s been doing quite a bit of pooping over the last two days, and if I thought that was unpleasant, it was nothing compared to what I found when I went to get him up this morning. The child was literally covered from chest to toe, front and back, in nasty, slimy, sticky poop. He was wearing a blanket sleeper with feet, and when I unzipped it, there was a huge puddle of poop sitting there. (Needless to say, Will has one fewer pair of pajamas than he did yesterday.) I can’t figure out where it all came from, since I would estimate that the volume of poop was roughly equal to the size of Will’s entire mid-section. No wonder he’s been so cranky lately! I spent about 10 minutes attempting to get the worst of it with wipes, and then another 10 minutes scrubbing him in the tub. The entire time, Will was crying and screaming, “all done! all done!” Oddly enough, he had been quite content playing in his crib in his own personal puddle-o’-poop.

On a less smelly note, Will’s language continues to provide daily laughs. He loves fire trucks, which he calls “fire-fighter-trucks.” In fact, every time he says “fire” he says it “fire-fighter” . . . “fire-fighter-place” “fire-fighter-station”, etc. Even if I say, “Will, say, ‘fire,’” he’ll respond, “fire-fighter!” I hope he never outgrows that one.

According to Christopher, it has been snowing in our house since January. He mentioned once last week that the sun was coming out and all the snow in our house was going to melt, but now it is snowing again. He brings it up constantly, often like he did this morning: “And these race cars were in the Piston Cup. And Doc was McQueen’s new pit crew chief. And he had new racing tires! And it’s still snowing in our house!” I guess a small part of him is still hanging on to life in Indiana. As for me, I’m ready for spring!

Happy Birthday, Christopher!

After months of anticipation (on his part, not mine), Christopher is finally 4! This birthday has definitely been my favorite so far because of the boundless enthusiasm Christopher had for his birthday. On Saturday, we had a race car party (starring all the characters from the Cars movie, Christopher’s latest obsession) with family and several friends from church. I made a race track cake, and when I finally revealed it to Christopher before his party, he spent a full 25 minutes examining it from every angle and asking me why I put each car where I did. He probably would have stood there longer, but it was time for the party to start! Christopher and his friends had a great time playing all the silly cars-related games I planned, eating cake, opening presents, and playing in Christopher and Will’s rooms. My favorite moment of the party was when Christopher blew out his balloons and everyone clapped–and there was Will, clapping more enthusiastically than everyone else put together. Will is truly his brother’s biggest fan, and I think it is so sweet. I asked Christopher what his favorite part of his party was, and he answered, “Eating the cake!” (Click on photos to see them full-size.)

The cake table

Christopher studying the cake

Playing pin the race car on the track

Eating cake

Christopher and his friends managed to tear through a full table of gifts in about 7 minutes flat!

On Monday, his actual birthday, Noel took the morning off (which turned out to be providential since he was sick and needed to see a doctor) and we took the kids to IHOP for pancakes. They both got a huge chocolate chip pancake with a whipped cream smiley face on top. The whipped cream was topped with chocolate chips and cherries–a nutritious breakfast for sure! Will decided that he liked the chocolate chips best, but he doesn’t like to get anything on his hands. So he worked very hard to get to the chocolate chips without getting whipped cream on his hands. Christopher ate the toppings off and then put blueberry syrup on the chocolate pancake. Yum!

On Tuesday, the fun continued with Christopher’s friends at preschool. Christopher seemed more thrilled by the fact that they’d had cupcakes for snack than he was about it being for his birthday. A substitute teacher was kind enough to take a couple of pictures for me.

To finish off the celebration, I took Christopher and one of his friends from school to see “A Year with Frog and Toad” at the Walton Arts Center. Grandma and Grandpa joined us, too. The boys were really quiet through the whole production, watching intently, and seemed to enjoy it except for the part where there is a big, mean frog whose eyes are shining through the backdrop and who talks in a scary voice. The show was also about 10 minutes too long–before the last song, Christopher wanted to go home, and his friend wanted his mommy. But in general, I like to think they had a good time. I had a blast driving them to the show and listening in on their 4-year-old conversation. It included a discussion about how good his friend is at blowing his nose, an argument about how to properly make race car sounds, and a dialogue that went on for a long time, something like this: “Watch this!” (silly face) “Watch this!” (spitting) “Watch this!” (nonsense babbling and waving of arms) “Watch this!” (eardrum-piercing shriek) . . . you get the picture.

Part of the fun of Christopher’s birthday was that we picked up our new minivan! Yes, my days of being a trendy SUV-driving mom are over, and I am now on my way to being a true soccer mom, a label that will be unavoidably true when Christopher starts soccer next weekend. The first time Christopher rode in it (which was actually a week earlier when we test drove it for a weekend), he thought it looked like a spaceship. I guess it’s because of the power sliding doors and all the controls in the front that are a lot flashier than our old car. Today he prevent a minivan-induced mid-life crisis when he said, “Mom, we’re in a racing minivan, right?!?” I guess its the next-best thing to a real race car!

Will keeps surprising us with new words–the other day it was money. He saw some coins and said “money!” and then later said the same thing about my credit card. I guess he’s been paying attention! Another favorite word of his is backhoe. It is difficult for him to make a “k” sound and then follow it with a different sound, so it comes out like “back. hoe.” So cute! He has also been a little clingy lately, so I hear “hold you!” a lot, usually at inopportune times like when I’m trying to fix dinner.

So we’ve had a fun birthday week (aside from Daddy being sick). I prayed and prayed that the boys would be healthy through all the birthday plans, and God was faithful–6 hours after we returned home from Frog and Toad, Christopher came down with a fever. I’m thankful for the timing of that! And I’m thankful to not be planning another birthday party for another 11 months!

Our new imaginary friend and a snow day

There is a new imaginary friend at our house. And it isn’t a person, it is a burp named Burpy Slurpy. Burpy Slurpy and his brother, also named Burpy Slurpy, come up regularly in conversation. Christopher will tell me that they ate silly things like toys and cans, and “that night they had a stomachache!” (Just like the Very Hungry Caterpillar.) But sometimes they eat whatever we’re eating for that meal, and then they don’t have a stomachache. Christopher likes to keep me updated on their actions throughout the day–Burpy Slurpy is still sleeping (he sleeps in my bed, for some reason), now Burpy Slurpy is waking up and eating a pop-tart, etc. According to Christopher, their mom dropped them off at our house and their dad is going to pick them up at some undetermined time.

Christopher’s latest explanation of what will happen when he grows up went like this: “I’m growing up REALLY FAST. And I’m gonna be a doctor and a van driver. Some doctors are daddys, and some doctors are van drivers, and I’m gonna be a doctor and a van driver. And then I’m gonna turn into a robot. And then I’m gonna be a daddy. And God’s gonna give me LOTS of kids! Lots of kids, and a baby, too. The baby is gonna come out of my wife’s tummy. It’s going to crawl around in my wife’s tummy and then cry and then come out, and I will give it a passy. And I will have a pack’n'play for her to sleep in. “

Will has become a little jabber-mouth. One of my favorite words he’s recently added to his vocabulary is okay, prounounced “oh-shay!” So adorable. He also likes to say “What?!?” and crack us all up. He has recently fallen in love with books and puzzles. He will do puzzles forever, and he’s getting really good at them. He has a puzzle with all the numbers from 1-20, and he can put them in the right spots just about as fast as I could. And a warning to anyone coming to our house–if you start reading to Will, he will bring you every book we own as long as you’ll let him!

It is really sweet to watch the growing friendship between Christopher and Will. Lately, if Will needs to be comforted, he will come to me, and then he will go to Christopher and want a hug from him as well. Yesterday at lunch, I had to get Christopher down from the table to give Will a hug and help calm him down when he was upset. It would have been really precious if Will hadn’t been throwing a massive tantrum for an unknown reason (welcome to the 2’s!).

This morning we went out to play in our first so-called snowfall in Arkansas. If you can believe it, this amount of snow has closed all the area schools for two days! I thought it was pathetic, but Christopher was enthusiastic: “Look at all this snow! I’m going to make a snow angel!” Our Indiana friends would have laughed so hard at the sight of Christopher laying in the grass making his snow angel! Will felt the same way about the snow as he did about the sand–he hated it. But he also wanted to be with Christopher, so I ended up carrying him and his many layers of winter clothing all over the backyard.

When we came inside, we had to have some hot chocolate! Christopher was talking about how I made it, and he said, “It is hot because you cooked the water, and then you put it in the cup, and Jesus turned the water into hot chocolate!” Yes, they read about Jesus turning water into wine at Sunday school last week. So I explained to Christopher (when I stopped laughing) that I had used hot chocolate mix to make the water into hot chocolate. He replied, “Well, when Jesus did it, they were all out of wine, and they put water in the jars, and Jesus turned the water into wine, and they didn’t need any wine mix!”