Randoms From The Frump House

First of all, a shout out to my brother Tim.

Happy Birthday, bro!

:: :: :: ::

We finally broke Judah of his pacifier.

We took him off it cold turkey.

And amazingly, he only cried himself to sleep once over the ordeal.

We were so proud of ourselves for this small victory.

Then he ended up with some strange bruising on each of his shoulders.

What in the world?

He'd been running around a lot without a shirt on due to the uncharacteristic heat and humidity and so I asked him incredulously after my precursory examination, "Have you been sucking on your shoulders?"

He grinned up at me and then immediately turned and began sucking on one of the 'bruised' spots to show me.

Turns out he was sucking on his shirtless shoulders during nap times in lieu of a pacifier.

So yes, there is something worse than a binkie in an almost 3 year old toddler's mouth.

Hickeys on the shoulders of said toddler.

How does a parent even explain something like that?

CPS could come knocking, for crying out loud!

Needless to say, he's been wearing shirts for naps ever since, and the bruising has disappeared.

But the good news?

He's forgotten all about his "Binkth".

Now if we could just get him potty trained before he's three!

:: :: :: ::

Last evening on the way to church, we stopped off at the grocery store for snacks for the youth group, and then grabbed a bite to eat at a fast food place in the same parking lot.

While we were eating, we had the windows down in the car. It was horribly muggy.

The air smelled of rain, though we'd not yet seen any.

The sky looked ominous with the clouds of the gathering storm. Lightning flashed in the distance, punctuated by the loud sounds of crashing thunder.

"Whath that? A hewi-coppow?" Judah asked to no one in particular as I was passing out the food.

Knowing he's got a really sharp eye for spotting helicopters and planes in the sky, I looked up in the sky in his line of vision and didn't see either. "I don't see any, bud", I answered.

As we ate, we chatted about how unbearably muggy it was.

We told the boys how when we used to live in Minnesota a long time ago, we used to open the blinds on our glass sliding door and watch the spectacular summer storms with their greenish-purple heat lightning and the loud crashes of thunder.

Thunder rolled again.

Judah sucked in a breath excitedly, "What wath that? The gobbage canth?"

I glanced everywhere in his line of vision, and couldn't figure out what he was talking about.

Then, there was another mighty roll of thunder.

And suddenly I realized that Judah had never (to his recollection, anyway) experienced this phenomenon before.

He was asking about the sound of the thunder, equating it with the only other thing in his frame of reference that it could possibly be...the sound of our wheeled trash can rumbling to the curb on the night before trash pickup.

And amazingly, if anything ever sounded almost exactly like rolling thunder, that would be the closest thing to it, lol.

"That's thunder, Judah."

There were some flashes just then, and I quickly added, "And that's lightning!"

I looked in my vanity mirror to find him in absolute awe at all these strange new sights and sounds.

:: :: :: ::

This morning I broke out a box of Golden Grahams.

I usually buy healthier cereal. The kind that never comes with toys.

Being that these are made with whole grains now and it was on a great sale at the grocery store, I'd splurged on a box as a summer morning surprise for the kids.

Jericho was thrilled, and after glancing at the box immediately yelled, "I call the toy!"

Judah echoed loudly, knowing nothing about what he was asking, "I caw-oh da toy, too!"

Playing the mom card, I poured their cereal and pulled out the toy for myself, holding it high out of Jericho's reach. "I get the toy."

Jericho did that little, "Uh" sound that kids do when they think something is not fair. "Why do you get it?"

I threw back my head and laughed a sinister, gleeful laugh...then sang a little ditty, "I've got the POW-UH!" as I did a jig that included (gasp) the Cabbage Patch.

Yes, I know...lame, lame, lame, lame, LAME! (Be sure to say that with Syndrome's voice from The Incredibles for the full effect.)

Jericho rolled his eyes, trying to suppress his grin. (Just like we used to do when you would bust out with The Pony Dance, mom. ;) )

"I got it, I got it...I know that, you want it" I taunted teasingly.

"Why would you even want the toy?" he asked, clearly amazed that it wasn't in his own hot little hands by now.

And I paused.

I wasn't sure why.

I suppose it was mostly because I enjoyed teasing Jericho knowing how much he wanted it.

Plus, I was the mom and could have it if I wanted to.

Not to mention the element of there being only one toy and two boys that would no doubt fight over it.

"So I can do this!" I replied, and promptly shot the little Batman disk launcher at him. Just because I could.

"Ooooh! Score 10 points for mom!" I said.

He snatched up the disc I'd launched, and pocketed it, as though to say, "Well, you can't do much with your part of the toy NOW, can you?", then proceeded to gulp down his Golden Grahams.

Cheap piece-of-junk toy didn't even come with refill discs.

:: :: :: ::

On the evening of my birthday, we went out to my favorite Mexican restaurant.

Along with the kids menus, they hand out little carboard 'bulls horns' for the kids to wear (kind of like Burger King crowns).

Jericho, on the cusp of adolescence, felt kind of 'dorkish' in his, and unfortunately, this was the best photo we could get before he took them off.

Judah, however, loved his, because it was such a novelty.

He wore them from the time we left the restaurant, all through the mall and in the car until we got home that night.

People kept commenting how adorable he was. And shamelessly, I had to post the picture as proof.

:: :: :: ::

Judah came running breathless into the house the other day. "Mama! The thpidow ate the wo-wee po-wees!"

At first I thought he was saying something about the police, but upon further investigation, I found that the spider residing in the corner of our front porch had apparently eaten and discarded several unsuspecting roly-polys that had wandered too close to it's web.

This is big news to our toddler.

But that same 'toddler speak' sound made it quite difficult to interpret what he was trying to say when came running in later, "Mama! A mo-whoa skoo-whoa!"

I had to peek out the front door to figure out that one.

Turns out there was a kid on a motor scooter riding around in our cul-de-sac.

:: :: :: ::

So I'm sitting here typing just now, and Jericho fires the Batman disk launcher at me.

And then he had the audacity to mock my earlier (if lame) dance.

He ran like a scared rabbit when I threatened to give chase, but now you'll have to excuse me while I go load the Nerf 425 repeating rifle that I confiscated from him yesterday.

The battle is ON!