My Pillow Popped!!!

Our two-year-old was very concerned when he saw me holding his freshly laundered pillowcase. He whined, "my pillow popped...my pillow popped!" He was so relieved when I replaced it on his pillow and it returned to full size.

It's a BOY...and a GIRL...and a BOY..and....

We've been looking at a lot of insects lately (spiders included). Six weeks ago, my husband caught a large grasshopper in the evening. By morning, much to our surprise it laid a BUNCH of eggs. I thought it would be great for the boys to see the lifecycle, until I figured out that they weren't due to hatch until spring. Either it was a different type of grasshopper than I looked up, or the living conditions caused an early hatch, but imagine my surprise as I was washing some dishes in the kitchen and kept seeing a little green thing jumping. I thought maybe a baby cricket had found its way into the sink, but on closer inspection it was definitely a grasshopper...make that about a HUNDRED grasshoppers (no longer contained in their container!). The top photo is of the eggs right after they were laid, and before I covered them with dirt; middle is the hatch; and last is a group of the little buggers on my washcloth rack (before we escorted them outside).

Now THAT'S thinkin'

We just got pneumatic chairs for the kids' table in my office so they wouldn't need to sit on their knees or use a booster. Everything is great about the chairs except our 2-year-old can't climb onto or off of the chair unassisted when it is at table height. The other day I was in the kitchen and he was asking for help getting off. I told him I couldn't get there right away, so he would have to wait a few minutes.

When I finally got over to the office to help him, I found our 5-year-old had already devised a solution to the problem. He and our 3 1/2-year-old climbed up on the chair with our 2-year-old, and their combined weight was enough to lower the chair so our youngest could get off by himself. And not only does it work, it's fun!

The whole world at their fingertips

3 1/2-year-old to his brother, "Let's go to China to get more chocolate."
5-year-old responds matter-of-factly, "Actually we need to go to Mexico for that."

Where do they get this stuff? We recently bought a globe and it has added a great dimension to our conversations, for instance, how toys made in China get to our homes; about where cacao plants grow (that question arose while reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). It is encouraging to think that the boys accurately incorporate what they've learned into their playtime.

Should I oval it?

I am accustomed to my kids taking things literally, but I've come across an instruction that is REALLY starting to annoy me. In one of our son's books, rather than writing out the instruction "circle it" it gives the instruction with a picture of an oval + "it". The first time my son read it he said, "so I oval it?" Good question. Why not be accurate and print a circle + "it". Well, the problem is that you often can't "circle" some things, you really do have to "oval" them, but we don't say "oval it" we say "circle it".

I can say that in the first three and a half decades of my life, I never noticed the difference, or had a problem "circling" something in the shape of an oval, but now every time I ask my son to "circle" something, I find my self wanting to say "well, you may have to oval it."

Snails in the house...

...or so they tell me.

Rules of Engagement

"You can't shoot my knees because I have bass drums on my knee-caps," said our 3-1/2-year-old to his 5-year-old brother.