Our Chipmunk is a cute little thing. She comes and eats with us but not as often as she used to, once upon a time. This isn’t your normal Chipmunk who carries nuts and seeds around in her cheek to hide away somewhere for winter eating. No, this Chipmunk stuffs meat or carrots into her cheek and it’s not for winter chow time.
I try to help things out by cutting the meat really small but instead of chewing and swallowing one bite at a time; she stuffs all the small pieces into her cheek at once. Then chews. And chews. Chews some more. No swallowing though. This can go on for ages.
“Please finish your dinner.”
Chewchewchewchewchew….chew…chew.
Chew.
Chew.
“Stop chewing and SWALLOW it!”
Chewchewchew….chew…..
The cheek is sticking out about an inch. She’ll just sit there with the enormous wad in her mouth, chewing once in awhile.
“Try drinking some water and swishing it around in your mouth to wash it down.”
Chewchew- well, you get the point.
There have been times ***Gross out warning! Read at your own risk*** when we have given up on her and had her spit it out and she eats it for breakfast. Sounds harsh (and disgusting) but it doesn’t seem to bother her.
Like I said earlier, she doesn’t do it so much anymore- thank goodness! I don’t know what causes it- what would turn our lovely KJ into a chipmunk?
******WARNING! The following Blog content might cause some readers to go “Ewww!” Read at your own risk!******
I have mentioned this before here. It’s a call often heard coming from the bathroom.
Yesterday the kids were outside playing in the water while I enjoyed a few minutes of quiet in the house. I let them play in the hose or sprinkler with only their undies on or naked. Our neighbors are not very close and most work so there is no one around to see the naked natives dance in the water. It’s much easier than having them put on swim suits for five minutes of play.
The girls were naked and playing on the swing set when KJ came running into the house to announce to me:
“TG let The Stink Out under the rings!”
Lovely.
The Evil lurks in every corner… a danger at every stop… ever on the prowl… it’s insidious! Just when you think it’s safe- it launches itself at you with tremendous force! In wave after wave it swamps you into a helpless blob of frustration. Yes, it has happened. The dreaded Spam has found my blog. Only certain entries though. I haven’t figured out why those entries but I have been getting enough that it has become an annoyance.
Therefore, Col. Panic has installed an add-on to combat the evil monster. Now when you leave a comment you will have to type in two words that are all squiggly. It’s called reCAPTCHA .
It is neat because you will actually be doing something constructive when you decode the words. Instead of just proving you are a human being and not a spam crawling bot you will be helping to digitize books.
As I understand it, books have been scanned into computers and are being “read” by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This will make the books searchable and formattable but the OCR doesn’t always decode the words correctly. This is where you come in–by typing in the distorted words correctly you will be teaching the OCR the right word. The first word will be one that it already knows, if you type it in right then it will assume you typed the second word right. It will then compare it to what other people have typed in to verify and then it will know what word to insert into the book.
It is explained better at the above link and while you are there you can decode more words for the project.
TG came upstairs at my parents’ with her socks and shoes for me to put on so she could go into the woods. Being the wise and insightful parent (don’t laugh) I asked:
“Who are you going with into the woods ?”
“The woods!” She answers.
O.K. Try this again-
“Yes, the woods. WHO is going with you?”
“THE WOODS!” She forcefully says.
One more time.
“I understand you want to go into the woods- who all is going?”
“THE WOODS!!!” she yells.
She is thinking: My mother doesn’t listen! I have told her THREE times what I’m doing!
I’m thinking: Pronoun trouble.
“No, I don’t know where that is!” I said with stress creeping into my voice. I haven’t lived in the area for 15 years why do people think I remember where things are? Besides, I have never known that specific area very well.
I also am not blessed with a good sense of direction. I have troubles figuring out which is my right and which is my left. (Oops, it’s my OTHER left!) I remember a time when our Boss on Harvest was telling me how to get into a field using North, West, etc. He looked at me, I looked at him and then he got down and drew me a map in the dirt. I got to the right place; wonders never cease.
But I have a new aide- the van’s navigation system! I put in the intersection of where I needed to be and presto! I did what The Voice told me to do. At least it wasn’t a voice in my mind that only I could hear. And she was dead on. Several people commented that they would have chosen another route but I thought it fairly direct and easy.
I have a new friend. She may get things a little off once in awhile but it sure beats being lost in a big city.
The kids and I went to stay with my parents for a few days last week. My good friend, Boo Boo was unexpectedly in town for business plus relatives from out of state made good reasons to make the drive.
The van was great to travel in. KJ actually made it without any throw up mishaps, which is wonderful. It is, unfortunately, a common problem for her.
The visits with Boo Boo and husband were short but very nice. Husband had not seen the two girls in person yet so now he can envision the “live” versions.
It was fun to visit with my Aunt and Uncle and their kids. Two who were visiting from out of state- one brought her boyfriend. Checking the poor man out- how many times did he have to answer the question “is this your fist time in this state?” And none of us thought to ask him what he does for a living. I am sure all of our faces are a blur to him. There are two large families for him to get used to but I don’t think he was exposed to all of us/them at once. Let him adjust slowly- don’t want to scare him off too soon. It was good to be able to sit around and talk some- as much as we could with three wild kids cooped up in the house- it was hot outside. Whose kids were those, anyway? And why did they come home with me?
My Mom’s back started bothering her again. I didn’t know shingles could reoccur so often. She gets stressed from the extra pressure of the garden needing attention and my Dad crabbing at her about it. She even got a shingles shot this year. She has help in the house this year, and had some last year too but it doesn’t seem to help. She likes to have the garden and preserve the produce- she’s “frugal” ya know. And she likes it better than what you can get in the store but I’m beginning to think they really need to do something different. I will have to start making “noises” about cutting back and maybe in five years or so it will sink in and she’ll actually do it. It took me years of talking to get her to get help in the house. Some of what she has “put up” is getting pretty old too which is a little bit scary but she will NOT get rid of it. Wasteful, ya know.
On the way home I felt the beginnings of a headache. I took some medicine at the gas station but it still was hurting pretty bad with still an hour of driving left. So I fumbled around in my purse and took more. I made sure there wasn’t too much traffic around- so don’t you worry. Speaking of traffic- it’s getting heavier out there. I expect it to be heavy right out of the Big City and also some when we get closer to home but the last few times we have made the trip, it has seemed to be continually busy. The girls were entertaining themselves but unfortunately, they were using their high little girl voices and making lots of noise- not good on a Mommy’s headache.
We made it in time to unload and get the Church’s Block Party, which was good fun. I talked, Brett took photos and herded kids. The kids had fun getting their faces painted, watching the dunk tank and bouncing in the bouncy house. Life is good. 🙂
On the way to church KJ was singing a song of her own making. I tuned in long enough to hear this line warbled:
“My mind is goooone!”
Join the club. I didn’t think it would happen so young.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, LEMON, O, P……
HP has had a continual fascination with airplanes and farming. When he was very young it was all things that had motors then morphed into a fascination with trains. Then, someone gave him his first airplane and that was the end of the story- or the beginning. He had those little dye-cast airplanes surgically attached to his hands. I had to limit the number we took with us on shopping trips or we would have had the whole fleet along.
Then, it was time for the tractors to be working the fields and his attention shifted. Farming was the thing. Tractors and farm “implements” were the fascination of the day. As the summer turned to fall we began to wonder where his attention would fall next. At Christmas he received some planes as gifts and we were back flying again!
So it has gone for the last few years. Spring/summer rolls around and out comes the farm equipment, fall arrives and the planes come out. The fascination for both seems to be waning some though. But I think planes still hold the strongest.
The heavy decision of a seven year old- should he be a pilot or a farmer? At one point he decided that he would farm in the summer and fly in the winter.
He’ll probably end up being a spray pilot.
We took our little Sunshine in for her 3 year checkup last week. She wowed the Doctor with her smiles and laughs. She was cooperative through the whole thing- even when the Doctor pulled some built up ear wax out. Our Doctor is moving out of the area and she will be sorely missed. We’ve been with her through all those infant check-ups, three times over. She sat through my list of questions with number one- once she was so anxious to see my list she grabbed it from my hand. (Tip for all Doctor appointments- make a list! I get amnesia when I enter that small room.) Some how the list kept getting shorter with each kid. She is verbal and we shared the same type of humor. Now, with fewer and fewer appointments ahead of us (Lord willing), we will not get to know the next one as well.
Anyway, how the children grow! For those of you who don’t have kids or for those that it’s a foggy memory- to monitor the growth of children they are put on a chart that determines what “percentile” they are in. If a child is in the 50th percentile then they are average- 50% of kids are shorter and 50% are taller.
Here’s the stats-
TG- 36 pounds (close to the 90th percentile) 40 inches (90th percentile)
KJ- 37 1/2 pounds (just under the 50th percentile) 43 3/4 inches (75th percentile)
HP- 62 1/4 pounds (just under the 90th) 53″ (4′ 5″- Over the 97th percentile)
KJ looks like she is still the “Pixie” of the family. As a perspective at three she was 30 pounds and 38 1/4 inches.
