Honor just obeyed me! I told him to go get some socks out of his drawer and he did it. The very first time I told him. And I didn’t have to walk him into his room and make him do it either. He just obeyed. This is a very momentous occasion.

And while we’re speaking of poop these days, I just over heard Eden say in the bathroom while she was undoing her overalls. “Just a second poop, I’ll let you go in the toilet.”

Eden messed up her face again. I swear, she’s going to look like a boxer by the time she’s 6. It seems all her injuries involve her falling from great heights. Luckily this one didn’t end us up in the emergency room. She climbed ON TOP of her little kitchen and then either jumped or fell off hitting the corner of her eye on a sharp toy. That kid is a monkey. Today, her eye is still swollen, but I think she’s going to be ok.

If we can make it though this week with everyone intact, we’ll be doing great. Three more days until the fiesta, I think we’re going to make it!

Eden: “Hey, why did you put your flower sheets on, where are your blue sheets?”
Me: “I changed them because the blue sheets were dirty.”
Eden: “‘Cause Daddy peed on the blue sheets?”

Me: “Eden tell Grammy what happens when little kids go into the liquor store.”
Eden: “They go to jail.”
Me: “And what happens in jail.”
Eden: “They get knocked up.”
I very quickly add, “She means LOCKED up.”

Upon realizing that the kids are very quiet, Jim goes to investigate. He finds both of them sitting side by side on their bedroom floor. “What are you doing?”
Eden: “We’re watching Cinderella, it’s just pretend.”

I can’t remember the last time Eden slept through the whole night. She rarely gets up needing to go to the bathroom, but she always says she’s scared. As she gets bigger, it gets harder and harder to actually get any sleep if she’s in bed with us, so we usually make her go back to her bed. The other night she climbed into, or I should say onto, our bed and when I told her to go back she threw a big fit. She said that she was scared of the Elephant on her wall. She was really freaking out about it.

So, in a moment of tired desperation I asked her, “Do you want to sleep on the couch?” And she thought that was the greatest thing ever. Now all she wants to do is sleep on the couch. I’m not sure how to keep her in her bed, but at least she says that she’s not scared of the elephant anymore.

Awhile back, before Honor really talked much, Eden had taken to saying “Rocky Butt.” No one knows were she got it, but she said it about 100 times a day. The frequency of this is partly my fault, because whenever Eden would say it, Honor would repeat it and it was just so dern cute…

After hearing our little chorus of “Rocky Butt”, oh, a million times, Jim decided that it wasn’t cute anymore and told Eden that she needed some new material. “Why is it always ‘Rocky Butt?’ Why not ‘Rocky Toe?’ Or ‘Rocky Nose?'” He said. So somehow she has taken to saying “Rocky Dude.” Everyone is a “Rocky Dude.”

But now that we’ve broken her of saying “butt” every other word, she’s not saying anything that’s potentially embarrassing to us and she had to come up with a new one. So Jim informed me the other day, what Eden’s new phrase is. It’s a phrase that I’m ashamed to admit, must be straight from my mouth, “Freakin’ Dork.” So I asked her about it, “Eden do you say ‘Freakin’ Dork?'” And she tells me, “No, Honor says it to himself.” She’s smart that one.

Monday night I went through every article of clothing we own, including every article of clothing the kids have ever worn. A friend of a friend’s dad is driving a big load to a church in Louisiana. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to give. At first Eden was a little disturbed by the fact that I was giving away all our clothes. “You’re giving away my dresses!” I was a little worried about how I was going to teach her compassion. It was difficult to explain to her what’s been going on in the other side of the country, but I think she finally understood that other little girls over there don’t have any dresses at all, let alone a bed to sleep in.

I explained to her that I wasn’t giving away any of her clothes that still fit, just ones that she doesn’t wear anymore – she seemed to be relieved by this. But I told her that she can give away something that she still wears if she wants. She decided to donate her blue butterfly shirt – totally on her own – and went and got it out of her drawer. She wanted to go with me to give it to the little girls who don’t have anything anymore. It’s moments like these when your heart swells with such pride, that you don’t even know what to say.

This is why we parent, to teach our kids compassion and grace, to care for others who have nothing. We have the responsibility to train them to be good people, it’s nice to see that we can be successful.

PS: Everyone MUST read this email written by a woman who volunteered in Austin, Texas with the evacuees.

While waiting in the car –

Eden: “I want to go into the store with daddy.”

Me: “Sorry sweetie, you can’t go into the liquor store.”

Eden: “Because they might lick me?”

Last night we threw a wedding shower for our friend Josh and his fiance Heather at the church. Josh has been our youth pastor for the last year and is now moving on to get married and then go to Bible school. He’s leaving town next week. The shower was just wrapping up when we heard Eden’s blood curdling scream from the next room. The kids had been playing in one of the classrooms and somehow Eden fell and busted up her nose on the Lego table.

Jim went to get her and as I saw him walk by with her I noticed the blood gushing out of her nose. We cleaned her up in the bathroom when we realized that it was cut pretty deep in two places. We decided to take her to the ER for stitches. My mom met us at the hospital to take Honor, because there’s NO way we could have contained him there (good LORD!) and the waiting game began.

As we went through the check in process, we had to endure the many judgmental questions about our waiting to immunize. Because, you know, we’re waiting because we hate our children and want to do the worst possible thing for them. Sometimes the medical field can’t understand that they do more harm than good at times. And it’s frustrating to have to defend your parenting choices to everyone in the hospital.

She had x-rays, and luckily it’s not broken. She kept saying that she wanted to go back to the picture room. I think it was because she got to ride around on the hospital bed. And luckily it wasn’t deep enough to need stitches, the doctor just glued the cuts together. Eden said that they were going to “blue her nose.” Probably the worst part of the night for her was when she got her first shot ever, a tetanus shot. Poor kid, it was awful! And it made me glad that she hadn’t had to endure any other shots before.

I think the worst part of the night for me was when we got home and crawled into bed and I started processing the night. Of course the “what ifs” began running through my head. It is the worst imaginable thing in the world to even think about your child dying. How would I continue if I lost one of them? It fills me with panic to even think about it. It makes me want to lock them up in a padded room in the house and never let them near anything dangerous. But I can’t. I’ve got to let them face all of life’s dangers, take all of life’s risks. All I can do to protect them is trust God that he will keep them safe. Letting them go is the hardest part of being a parent and it’s the most inevitable. And I have to say, it kind of sucks.

“Mom, sometime when I get big, I’m going to have big, big, BIG boobs, like you and I can wear a bra.”

-Eden

So Eden picked up a bad word. Tuesday after dance class, she was at my friends house (the one I trade baby-sitting with). They were all walking outside to play in the wading pool when Eden said “Oh, Sh*t.” My friend was shocked and thinking that she couldn’t possibly have heard right, she asked Eden to clarify. And yes, Eden, in fact, did cuss! My friend had a long talk with her and Eden had to sit in time out.

We also talked to Eden that night about saying bad words. She never admitted to us that she had said something. So when Jim had the kids down at the church during band practice, you can imagine his embarrassment when Eden was playing with the microphone and said her new word. (Luckily for Jim, the microphone was turned off!) He asked her, “What did you say?” and she immediately became sheepish.

The funny thing is that it’s a word we NEVER say. I mean, never, ever! If she was going around saying, “Oh, crap,” I’d take full responsibility for that. My mom always admonishes that Eden will say “ass” when we’re at church. I admit, there is a distinct possibility. But this word? It’s just not a word either of us ever say. We’ve been wracking our brains and we can’t come up with anyone/thing who could have taught Eden her new word.

I’m calking this one up to the joys of having a kid who’s too smart for her own good.