Huzzah!

This is the "pumpkin" that I voted for in the "contest". And it won!

My Halloween Victims

I love Halloween. It has become my favorite "holiday", besides Christmas. I think I get into it more every year. Why? I just love the decorations and the fun childlike emotions that go along with Halloween. I can't wait until Killian is old enough to get into the Halloween spirit and to start new traditions with him.
This year I was able to come up with 3 costumes for other people. I decided that Killian would be a bear as soon as I spotted a bear winter hat, mittens, and slippers at H&M. I also bought brown sweatpants and a brown long-sleeved shirt for him there. All of these items are re-usable for fall/winter - so it was a practical costume. I thought he might fight me on wearing the mittens, but he loved them! He looked SO darn cute - I only wish I had taken more pictures. (I thought I had taken a ton, but apparently I did not.) Jay and I quizzed Killian on what a bear "says" for a month before Halloween- which Killian responded to with a small "woawr". Here is a picture that I have, but I will try to find a better one so you can see the mittens and slippers.
Ryan was my next victim. His parents have dressed him in his brother's old Tigger costume for the past 2 years, and were planning on this year being round 3 - but I asked them if I could make him a costume instead. They did not object to me request. I have been trying for about a year and a half to get Ryan interested in the Nick Jr. show "Wonder Pets" - which is, in my opinion, the best kids' show on TV aside from Sesame Street. (For those of you who have not had the pleasure of viewing this cute and funny show, I suggest you go to this link ASAP!) Ryan has finally replaced his "Elmo's Potty Time" dvd with episodes of "Wonder Pets" on the DVR - and his favorite pet is Ming-Ming duckling. So I made him a green cape with the "W" logo and searched frantically for yellow sweatpants - which I finally found at a thrift store. I tried very hard to come up with a duck bill, but every attempt failed. He still looked very cute :) (Ryan is showing his cheesy "picture smile" in this photo.)
My last victim, Brett, brought it on himself. What is "it"? Here is the conversation that led to the following pictures.
Brett: My friend is going to be a pimp for Halloween. He's got the clothes and a cane...
Me: You should be a hooker.
Brett (without any hesitance): OK, I'LL DO IT!!

I always wanted a younger, skanky sister...

Can I Keep Him?

(This happened a few weeks ago, but I'm still entertained by it so I thought I woud share)

Ryan is on a kick right now of listing things that he has or is going to "eat". (Guess what the #1 most listed item is? If you guessed poop, of course you are correct and I congratulate you on knowing Ryan well enough to have guessed that.)
On this particular morning, we were getting ready to go to school. As I dressed Ryan, this is the list he came up with:
"I eat diaper."
"I eat poop."
"I eat pants."
"I eat socks."
"I eat shirt."
"I eat goldfish." (Which is, sadly, the truth; Ryan eats Golsfish crackers for breakfast every morning. But that deserves a seperate post altogether.)
"I eat Dana."
"I eat plate."
"I eat cup."
"I eat door."
"I eat baby."

I stopped him there. I said, "Ryan, don't eat the baby! I'd be sooo sad" and I pretended to be sad. His dry reply:

"I eat your sad....I eat your tears."

This kid has a very dark sense of humor....which I love about him. And I can't take credit for it - I don't think that's something that can be taught...but I will surely continue to cultivate that part of him!

Mmmm...Sacrelicious

WARNING: This post has the potential to offend people. That is not my intention; I simply want to share some of my findings with you. Having had a religious upbringing, I have come across a large supply of religious artwork. Some pieces have elicited spiritual emotions. The following examples have had the opposite effect:

The only 30-some year-old man who can get away with inviting/luring children to his party with treats...

(This piece came from Ryan's preschool lesson book)

"When he went for a layup he was denied three times..."

(Jay spotted this gem at a Catholic school where he was taking school pics while working for Lifetouch)

The following are miniature statues found on a Catholic supply website that are sold to be used as inspirational awards and inspirational decor. I find them to portray Jesus as a mean-spirited child-hater.

Jesus playing "monkey in the middle":


"Jesus- you're trippin!"

Jesus using his height advantage to taunt children with a ball:

Jesus crashing a ballerina photo shoot:

Golf meets the Heimlich Maneuver:

The only way of cheating in baseball that is worse than using steroids...)

And I saw this last one at church in the Young Women's room, where I teach. I realized pretty quickly that it's supposed to portray Jesus with young women as a way of saying that he loves them and is there for them . But my very first thought when I saw it was "Jesus is a pimp!"

Ryan Boy

My family is very fond of the movie "Tommy Boy" (who isn't??) We introduced this amazing film to my two youngest brothers this past week while Tim, Jean, and Weston were visiting. One of my favorite scenes is when Tommy (the unfortunately late Chris Farley) and Richard (David Spade - really, why couldn't it have been him) are preparing for an important sales call. It goes like this:

Richard: All right, now it's sale time, so remember, we don't take no...?
Tommy: No sh** from anyone.
Richard: No.
Tommy: Um, we don't take no prisoners.
Richard: We don't take no for answer.
Tommy: Oh yeah... We don't take no for an answer! We don't take no for an answer...

Why am I sharing this with you, you wonder? Because I had a similar conversation with Ryan today. We were strolling through a store and Killian had my keys as entertainment. I have a few key covers that are rubbery monsters. Anyway, our conversation went like this:

Me: Ew, Killian! Why are you chewing on my keychain? You're going to bite off the hand!
Ryan: Baby eating monster.
Me: That's right. Why is he doing that? We do not eat . . .
Ryan: POOP!
Me: No.
Ryan: TOOT!
Me: No.
Ryan: . . . Monster poop?
Me: (sigh) Keychains, Ryan . . . We do not eat keychains.
Ryan: . . . I eat poop.

Our conversations often end and begin with that statement.

PS- You'll notice in the picture that 2 of the monsters are each missing a hand. Apparently "we" do eat keychains.

MacGyver: Eat Your Heart Out!

My blog is turning into "The Nanny Diaries" because a lot of these posts are about Ryan, but that's probably because the majority of my time this summer has been spent working.

Anyway, one of our latest adventures involved Ryan and a wardrobe malfunction. Ryan has to take medicine every day which I sprinkle into pudding or baby food (he loves eating Killian's baby food). On this particular day, we were away from Ryan's home and were between camp and his occupational therapy session. I decided to give him his lunch at a central location (which happened to be Janae's house- where I am currently housesitting). Ryan begged to have baby food with his medicine, so I gave him a tiny plastic tub of pureed peaches. He was doing well feeding himself for a few minutes....and then I heard "uh-ohh". This is NEVER a good utterance. It always implies that I am going to be a) annoyed, b) on my knees scrubbing something out of the carpet, c) swearing to myself to never let this happen again. I braced myself to face the reason for the "uh-oh" and found a pureed peach-covered Ryan. It was all over his shirt. I was grateful that it wasn't all over anything else, but I quickly realized that I had nothing to change Ryan into. If you don't have the pleasure of being in contact with peach baby food, let me tell you - the stuff STINKS! I don't know why. Regular peaches smell yummy. Peach-scented things smell delightful. Peach baby food - awful. I knew I didn't have time to wash his shirt, and I knew he couldn't walk around smelling like that. I had to come up with something fast. I had a few shirts at the house, so I tried about 4 of them on Ryan hoping that one would be ok enough to last him through his OT session. No luck- my shirts were v-necks and always left at least one of his bare shoulders exposed. I knew Killian's clothes were all way too small for Ryan (Ryan is a very big 4 year-old). My eyes fixated on my last hope: one of Jay's wifebeaters was draped on he arm of the chouch. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term- a wifebeater is a white tanktop undershirt made by manufacturers such as Hanes and Fruit of the Loom. Wifebeaters serve as the main ingredient in white trash wardrobe and are worn as an outershirt, often paired with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels). I quickly MacGyvered the large-sized wifebeater into a presentable 4 year-old tank top using 2 hair clips to pull the "sleeves" onto Ryan's shoulders, and tucked the 2 feet of excess fabric into his shorts. I'm not going to lie- I was pretty pleased with myself after viewing the resulting look. Ryan looked kind of old-fashioned, like he was going to take a dip in the ol' swimmin' hole. Ryan was also pleased with his fashion statement. He strutted around with his belly sticking out and played with the straps of the top for the entire 2 hours in which he adorned it. I was a little embarassed when we arrived for the OT session, but his therapist got a good laugh out of it.
I had to practically beg Ryan to change his shirt when we got home, but not until after this little photo shoot:

"____ the Shell" - A Passtime for All Ages

Each week, Ryan's camp has a different theme. The first week was "Circus Arts & Crafts!", the second was "Dinosaurs!", the third was "Fun with Science!", the fourth was "Puppets!", and the fifth was "Fun with Books!". (I'll let you in on a secret: the exclamation points, although enticing, are incredibly misleading...)

The theme for this week, the 6th and final week, is "Down by the Shore!". The teacher, Mrs. Hunsberger (who can't possibly be older than 21 years, is married, and has a legitimate teaching degree), asked the group of 4-7 year-olds, "Where does sand come from?" I fondly reminisced, in my mind, that I had asked myself the very same question a week ago when I was standing on the Atlantic Ocean shoreline. My fondness quickly transformed into embarrassment when I realized that she was actually expecting, like, a real answer. My eyes darted around the circle as I tried to figure out if anyone else knew. Was I going to be outsmarted by a bunch of 4-7 year-olds?? Luckily, I was not. The teacher asked a few more times, with a look on her face and a tone in her voice that seemed to say, "Come on, dummies, you should know this!" (I must point out that she never offered a real answer.)

We watched 15 minutes worth of internet educational videos about fish and sand. I learned something that kind of blew my mind- did you know that a lot of sand is the result of digestion from the parrot fish? "Ingested during feeding, coral rock is ground up by the pharyngeal teeth. After they digest this it is excreted as sand thus at times creating small islands and the idyllic sandy beaches of the Bahamas and Caribbean." Small islands?! From parrot fish?! Pretty cool, huh? But that only explains some of the sand. Now, I'm not stupid- I know that sand is bits of ground up coral and rocks. But I still don't understand where it all comes from. There's just sooo much of it, unaccounted for (according to me).

Mrs. Hunsberger whipped out the next activity, which consisted of a plastic grocery bag full of large shells chunks of coral. We'll call this activity "Pass the Shell". Each item was passed around the large circle, starting with Ryan. He didn't seem too enthused, but I made sure he let me see each item before passing them along. (I revert back to my childhood at the sight of crayons and passing games.) A couple of shells were making their way around when a little girl named Ashley decided to turn the activity into "Listen to the Shell". Each child followed her lead. (As did I.) Another girl, Gracie, ruined this new version of the activity by obnoxiously voicing, "My brother told me it's just the blood in your ear that you're hearing! It's not really the ocean!" (Brat. It is the ocean. Your brother doesn't know sh**.)

Back to "Pass the Shell".

Mrs. Hunsberger and her assistant decided that the next object to go around was a sponge, but it was obviously a piece of coral. (Score 1 for me! Who's stupid now...) Another large shell came out of the bag. Ryan's buddy, Cory, creatively changed the activity to "Smell the Shell". Each child followed his lead. This time, I did not. I am extremely sensitive to smells, so I don't tend to intentionally smell anything that might be questionable, such as shells. I was very amused by the comments that came from this new version of the game. These are direct quotes that I documented:

Sam: It smells like COW MANURE!

boys: (giggling) Yeah!

girls: EWWW!

Cory: This one smells like bart!

Me: Like what?

Cory: Bart. That's barf and a fart.

(Of course it is. what was I thinking?)

Reagan: It smells like a STINKY OCEAN!

girls: EW!

Sam: Actually, it smells like PIG MANURE!

boys: (giggling) Yeah!

girls: EWW!

Cory: (to Sam) Do you have scissors at your house? Like, real scissors?

Sam: Yeah...

Cory: Can you invite me over so you can cut my nose off? It smells so stinky!

boys: (giggling)

Ashley: It tastes like a mountain!

This is where I stopped listening and busted out laughing with Mrs. Hunsberger.

Apparently the game had evolved suddenly and unexpectedly into "Taste the Shell".

Lazy Post

I don't have a whole lot of time to write a new post right now (most of my free time is being devoted to my new sewing hobby), but I thought I would post this link that Carrie emailed me because I love it. (She said it made her think of me...I don't know why...)
Enjoy!

http://www.cracked.com/article_16475_20-baby-products-great-traumatizing-infants.html

What's your favorite? I love #19! I want one.

No, not ME!

July has started out splendidly.

I was sitting next to Ryan during "circle time" at his camp today, when I noticed that he was fidgeting with his ear. I had already given him a long lecture on why it's not ok to pick his nose at camp, so I was annoyed at the thought of having to come up with a convincing ear-picking lecture. Before I could open my mouth to say anything, I noticed a tiny white object resting at the entrance of Ryan's ear. My immediate reaction was to try to get it out, but my hand was intercepted by Ryan's. His chubby little finger shoved the object further into his ear so that it was barely visible. I had to think of something before the object disappeared and ended up in his brain....or wherever the ear canal actually leads to.

I went to the camp director, whose solution was to hand me a pair of pointy tweezers and grant me access to an actual nurse's office (the nurse is off for the summer, but her room was unlocked). I felt very official when I asked Ryan to lie down on the typical nurse's office patient bed (sans the sanitary paper sheet) and then I lit the spotlight next to him. I directed the light towards the ear and tried to devise a plan on how to maneuver the tiny tweezers into the tiny, dark hole and capture the rogue nugget. I was barely in there when I had a flashback of this story: There was a family that used to be in my congregation at church. One day, the mom was cleaning out the youngest daughter's ears with a q-tip. She went too far into one ear, and the girl passed out.

I froze, tweezers in hand, and realized that I had no idea how far I could go into Ryan's ear without making him pass out. I handed back the tweezers, and Ryan and I were on our way. His mom couldn't get ahold of their family doctor, so I was instructed to take him to the ER at Grandview Hospital.

I'll spare you the boring details of the ER visit; anyone who's ever been there with a minor issue knows how boring and annoying it is. Not that I would prefer to be there with a major issue, but I think you know what I mean. But the highlights of the trip were:

• Ryan telling me how hungry he was every 2 minutes. (To which I responded each time, "Well, when you stick things in your ear that don't belong there, you don't get to eat lunch when you're hungry."

• Overhearing (eavesdropping on) a conversation between a girl I would estimate to be about 14 and what sounded like her father, over her cell phone. The conversation went like this: Girl- (mumbling incoherently), Father- (something insensitive about her reason for being in the ER), Girl- (mumbling...gradually getting louder) "But it hurts realllly baaad!!" (followed by over-the-top crying that you would expect out of a toddler). The most entertaining part was that her mother was sitting there with her and never comforted her or tried to stop her from raising her voice. No wait, the best part was Ryan staring directly at her the entire time. I didn't stop him because it was taking all of my strength to not whip my head around and stare at her myself.

• The number of times Ryan repeated the phrase "No, not me!" in situations where it completely did not make sense. He picks up phrases like this from his brother and TV shows, and often uses them correctly- for example: when anyone says that they forgot something, or if someone does something dumb, Ryan says "a-duhh!" and everyone laughs because it fits and he looks clever. But this new one is just not getting the laughs he so desires, so he keeps on trying. The kid is a walking catch-phrase. (My personal favorite is another newer one; "What are YOU talking about??" I'm trying to get him to add "Willis" on the end...)

• The list of objects that Ryan claimed to have put in his ear when asked by various nurses and doctors on staff; including, but not limited to: hot peppers, pickles, pizza, pita, hummus, ranch dip, carrots, and cucumbers. Oh, and poop, of course- because simply saying the word "poop" always gets a laugh. (Boys!) I had to make it clear to each staff member that he hadn't actually put any of those things in his ear (with emphasis on the poop...) and that as far as I could tell he didn't actually know what he had put in his ear.

Once we finally got in to see the doctor, the visit went rather quickly. Three of us held Ryan down (just as a precaution- he was actually very good about staying still) while the doctor tried a handful of random medical tools/utensils until one did the trick. Ryan was rewarded with two latex gloves and a "boo-boo bear". (I have mixed feeling on him being "rewarded" for sticking something in his ear... but at least he was well-behaved for getting it out.)

So what was that thing in his ear? Throughout all of this, I described it like this: "You know the backs of earrings- those little white rubbery ones that come on some of them? It looked similar to that. I mean, I don't think that's what it is, but it was about that size." Well... I was right; that's exactly what it was! What that was doing on the floor of a preschool classroom I can't figure out, but stranger things have happened. (Hey, I'm just grateful it wasn't poop.)

As we walked out of the ER and towards my car, I lectured him again on why he shouldn't put things in his ears. To reiterate my point, I asked him, "So are you going to put things in your ears anymore?"

To which he replied, "No, not me!"

More Engrish!

I don't care if I am the only person who finds this funny; I am posting more Engrish pics.
I should mention that a major part of the humor, for me, is what the creators of Engrish.com write as captions under these pics. I will include some in quotations.
Enjoy! (Or don't.....I don't care either way!)


"America's finger-lickin' good!"


"Breathe out....now shiver me timbers"


"The steaks here are like rubber..."


"...or maybe two."




Why does such a toy exist???


When "Baby on Board" is a warning for the safety of everyone but the baby.


ew.


My family can appreciate this one.


Mmmm....sooo meaty!


"If you grow it, they will come"




Hell never sounded so good.




Don't tempt me! Pise myself laughing.




British-Engrish?


Especially if you're allergic...




Hey, I just wanted to brush my teeth.








Rabbit?




(I added this one just because it says "dana")


They're always so clean!


i heart sweatshits




...in case you didn't catch that.


Can't I get the "White and Wealthy" version instead?






not mine!


Can I get one for AB positive?




Don't worry, I alerted PETA.