Char’s Blog

A new boy has moved into our circle of friends.

Miss Sunshine calls him “My Friend”. She hardly ever uses his name.

“I want to sit by My Friend!” she proclaims at Sunday School.

“I am making this for My Friend.” she declares.

She is going to marry him.

The problem is that her sister also wants to marry him.

At least we are keeping it in the family.

Pixie calls him by his name and they are picking out houses together.

The Girls get into arguments about who is going to marry whom.

“I’m going to marry him!”

“No! I am going to marry him!”

Sigh.

I tell them that we’ll decide this in about 20 plus years. The longer the better.

The Brother, at dinner today, just to stir the pot, asked The Sisters if they loved this boy.

“I gave my heart in his heart.” Sunshine poetically proclaimed.

My heart sinks. What is a mother to do? I have been warned that he had a girl he was going to marry when he lived back East but now he has thrown her over because she is too far away.

I don’t know. A fickle, boy from the East. What could be worse??? What is a mother to do?

Well, we aren’t picking out wedding dresses yet but I’m keeping my eye on that boy.

My baby is four. The last of the babies. She still says some pretty cute things- I know this too will pass. Here’s a few:

We saw a Chinook Helicopter flying around on the way to church Sunday. Sunshine saw it and got excited.

“We saw one of those at the, uh, uh, uh….”

“Airport?” her Papa offered helpfully.

“No! At the uh… uh….”

“Air show?” Asked in confusion because where else but the airport would the air show be held?

“Yeah! The air show! That’s where we saw the Chimook.”

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The kids have started the annoying game of copying each other- repeating back what the first one says. This, of course, causes great annoyance in the copyee. (I know, it’s not a word.) It’ll go something like this (and I am highly condensing- be thankful):

“I like it!” says Sunshine

“I like it!” repeats Pixie.

“Stop it!” says Sunshine with increasing shrillness.

“Stop it!” parrots the Otter.

“I said stop coughing me!” shrieks the four year old.

**************

She’s also a bat sleeper.

We were out driving around when the CD with songs from Vacation Bible School came on. The kids, especially the girls, really like it. TG kept murmuring something about the “Ashes” song. She asks me to turn up the music and then starts hemming and hawing and saying “Mom!”. So I turn the music down to actually hear her and then she doesn’t really have anything to say. It can be frustrating. But I did hear something about the ashes song again. I didn’t know what she was talking about.

We reached one of our stops and I waited to get out so we could finish up a song. She kept talking through it that she wanted to hear the rest of the song.

Gosh! If you’d be quiet then you’d hear the rest of the song! See me twitch?

So we get our errand done and start off again. One song has a chorus that goes something like this: “My actions meet my passion for what My God has done!” Then I heard that word again- ashes. Oh!

“My ashes meet my Passion!”

That puts a whole new spin on those lyrics.

Yes, another post about footwear.

Not sandals, though.

Not involving the Fashion Queen.

It involves boots and how The Mother just can’t pack.

We arrived at The Grandparents with a large plastic tote in tow filled with footwear. Slippers, sandals, clogs, “strap on shoes” and one pair of boots. One would think that would be adequate for all our footwear needs. Teach One to think. I know, I know- I should give that up. I’m trying, really.

The one pair of boots belonged to The Boy- just in case he went out to do some work with Grandpa. The last day we were there it rained just a little. The Boy wanted to go out to the garden to pick some berries for our homeward trip. There was a little concern about mud so it was decided that he should wear his boots. These precious items were spotted by Little Miss Sunshine who promptly wanted hers, which were at home in a closet.

I promptly received a tongue lashing. How could I not bring them? She wanted them! Where were hers?

This nagging would crop up every now and again on the way home. She has a tendency to nag and not forget things.

After we arrived home there has been one choice in footwear, as far as she is concerned. She doesn’t care how hot it is outside or what fashion would dictate.

Ah, that we were all that confident in our footwear choices.

Sunshine came into the bedroom as I lay with my eyes closed.

“Are you pretending to be awake?” she asked.

I contemplated the question- it seems an apt description of how I go through life- just pretending to be awake.

Yes, I replied.

” I thought so” she giggled.

Sunshine decided on this day that she wasn’t going to ride the Dirt King Trike, her faithful friend that rides the ditches with her. She was going to walk. I guess she decided that it was really going to be a trek because she just had to carry her chair with her.

The chair is a real cute one that was given to her by her Grandmother. It has straps so she can carry it on her back and a pocket to carry things.

She carried it the whole way, which wasn’t really that far, and we didn’t even stop to use it. Tsk, tsk.

We tend to weigh and measure the kids a lot. Why? They keep growing! And growing, and growing….

At the age of two, most children slow down in the growth department- not our crew. So I like to keep track of it all- I’m like that. Give me buttons to push and charts to keep and I am a happy camper.

So… because I know you all are dying of curiosity, here are the most current stats:

The Boy- 56 1/4″  (4′ 8 1/4″), 71 pounds. This puts him in over the 97th percentile in height. He is in the 90th percentile in weight.

Pixie- 46″ (3′ 10″) and 43 pounds. She is on the 90th percentile line for height and 50th for weight. And you wonder why I have troubles finding clothes that fit her!

Sunshine- 43″ (3′ 7″) and 41.4 pounds. She is in the 95th in height and 87th for weight.

I went back to the height predictor at WebMD to see if it said anything new. Since Sunshine was now 4, I wondered if it would change anything.

It assures me that The Boy will still be 6′5″.

Pixie will still be the shrimp of the children at 5′9″.

Sunshine is heading for 5′10″.

I will be the leaning post for all of them, I’m afraid.

I asked Sunshine what she wanted for her birthday (yes, this was BEFORE it happened!).

“A tractor and a shirt!” was her immediate response.

What color of shirt?

“Green!”

Green. Great.

I guess it’s better than orange.

I did buy her both items. The tractor was green too. (my apologies to a certain family I know who prefers implements of a different color.) She was thrilled with it.

Yes, she is wearing a green shirt. But not the one I bought her for her birthday. She hasn’t lowered herself to wear that one yet. It has green stripes but no fun tractors or Sesame Street characters on it- so it’s not hardly worth mentioning. I should have ventured into the boys department to find something more suitable. She is happily examining her tractor set here. This was after she kissed it.

It’s interesting to see how two little girls can be so different. Here is an example:

This could be titled “There is always one who doesn’t cooperate”. Here we are about to go to dinner at a friend’s house. Notice Pixie all color coordinated down to her “hair thing”. Then her sister’s fashion ensemble. The sensible shoes, green shirt with a tractor on it. She didn’t forget the accessories- the apparently fascinating necklace.

I just love watching their personalities bloom!

Chocolate cake to be exact.

I didn’t get a good shot of just the cake. Since the focus was on a certain young lady’s birthday, I guess that isn’t a bad thing.

It looks like a regular chocolate cake, right? Little would you know that the frosting had one pound (16 ounces) of semi sweet chocolate in it. And butter. And 1 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream. Do I hear your arteries clogging? Are you drooling on your key board? Eeeewww!

It was yummy. The cake itself, made from scratch with my own two hands (and the electric mixer) was also very good. It had butter in it too, of course, and two kinds of chocolate. It’s an America’s Test Kitchen recipe and, oh is it good. You have to have a bit of patience making it though, as with most of their recipes. I made it without a standing mixer and thought it turned out fine; just be patient and make sure things get mixed well.

I had one part that didn’t go totally smoothly. The recipe for the frosting says to melt the chocolate and (separately) heat the butter and sugar, etc. then combine these two with the cream. It’s too warm for it to whip up at this point and so to cool it down you place the bowl into a larger bowl filled with cold water and ice. The tricky part is to get it to the desired temperature of 70 degrees. If it’s too cold, it will seize up, if too hot then it will not whip up all light and fluffy. I cooled it in the water bath for a bit then did the scientific thing of testing it with my finger. It was clean! (and then I got to lick it too!) I don’t have a thermometer that reads that low. I thought it felt pretty cool, and not wanting it to get too cool went ahead and started to whip it with my hand mixer. It wasn’t getting lighter in color nor was it whipping up all “fluffy” like. I mixed, and mixed, and mixed. I finally decided, after referring to the recipe again (and again, and again) that the mixture was too warm still. So I plopped it back into the water bath and continued to beat it. And then the miracle happened. It got lighter in color and fluffy in texture. It looked lovely and was great to work with when putting it on the cake.

It was worth the effort.