Ahh…Tiny Talk Tuesday…the day for which I store up quotes in my memory.  At least, I try to!  Some quotes might get a negligible change with time, but they are largely as I heard them.  I really should put them in a draft right away, and then just pull it out on Tuesdays.  I need improved organization!

A couple times recently Paul has been playing in the living room, and he has randomly called out to me,

“I’m not crying!”

Yes, that is wonderful, and thanks for the announcement!  Anyone who has been around Paul much knows he has a propensity to cry with or without provocation.  When he gets on a crying stint and it is not necessary, I have to tell him to stop crying (and he stops).  I guess he thought it was worthy of announcing the good news of his non-crying status to me!

Paul is still into Pig Will from the Richard Scarry book.  He has asked me if different people are Pig Wills, and we discuss it.  Here is one recent conversation.

Paul:  “Is Jesus a Pig Will?”

Me:  “No.  Who is Jesus?”

Paul:  “King!”

We had previously talked about that Jesus was not a Pig Will, but that Jesus was the King.

Hannah is really close to her teddy bear.  Her big white one.  Recently she and her bear were on our big bed, but the bear wasn’t right beside her.  She said,

“Teddy bear,” and then reached out and grabbed a hold of him, pulling him toward her, “come here.”

And then she had her teddy bear to snuggle with!  It was really cute!

I guess she hears me telling her to “come here” all the time, and so it seemed reasonable to tell her bear to do the same.

Things are progressing with the house addition project.  You can’t imagine the added work and stress this adds to my life.  I didn’t imagine it myself, but I’m living through it moment by moment, and one day at a time.  And realizing this will be my life for a while, not just a week or two!

My kitchen feels a little claustrophobic with the

door to the red room boarded up (and of course the

red room is quickly disappearing).

Having found the septic tank closer to the house than anyone thought, we figured out alternate plans for our addition, with 1 1/2 stories for the three rooms instead of one story.

Andrew digging up the septic tank.

Then, when the plumber guy came out this week and looked at things and we discussed stuff, it seemed like we could either spend additional money putting a room upstairs, or we could spend additional money to move our septic tank.  Since we both preferred having all the rooms on one level, we opted to move the septic tank.  The plumber really wanted the map of our septic stuff from the Health Dept., so Andrew went to the court house and dug through the records to get the names of the people who owned this property when it was put in, nearly 30 years ago.  He gave that info. to the Health Dept., and they called back and said they couldn’t find anything.  I feel like Andrew wasted his working hours pursuing that.  The real need was to locate the distribution box.

Today we hired my brothers, Luke and Glen, to come for a couple hours and dig for the distribution box and to pull nails out of 2 x 4’s.

Glen

Luke

Luke

Andrew helping to dig.

(We are having this done time and materials, so anything we can do ourselves saves us money.)  Just as it was getting too dark to see and they were using a flash light, Luke found the distribution box.  However, in the process of tracking it down (digging holes across the yard), we got two holes in our pipe that goes from the septic tank to the distribution box.  Hmmm…….we’ll find out on Monday what that means for us.  We are really happy we know where that thing is now!

Paul and Hannah have had some fun outside this evening.  Paul enjoyed helping by hammering around with a hammer.

Paul & Hannah swinging.  They’ve missed being able to

go outside at will, since they can’t be out there un-

supervised with all the holes, equipment, etc.

Daddy swinging Hannah & Paul ’round and ’round.

Paul & Hannah having fun in one of the holes.

It seems like things have been zooming at hurricane speeds for me this week.  I can’t believe all the stuff that snowballed.  A guy finally came to measure for making a cabinet for us to replace the one that fell off the wall.  He’s the third person I called about it.  The other two said they would do it, said they were coming to measure, etc., but then they never called and they never came.  I figure the economy can’t be too bad if no one wants me to pay them to make a cabinet, and that’s their main line of work!!  I just wish they had told me up front they didn’t want to do it instead of making promises, and then me waiting a week or two for them to show up and then realizing they weren’t going to.  Anyway, the cabinet guy came at the same time the plumber was trying to talk to us, and my mom had stopped in to pick up a birthday cake I was sending to my sister Gail.  And, Hannah felt insecure and just wanted me to hold her, and I was trying to carry cabinet doors up from the basement, and well, it seemed rather zoo-ish for a little while.

I’ve also had quite a run on cooking and baking.  Baking cupcakes for the kid’s club, baking a cake for Gail’s birthday, baking pies and sticky buns for our church’s yard/bake sale today, and making supper for my brothers and us this evening.  Whew!

Last evening Andrew gave me a break and bathed the kids!  He didn’t even announce he was going to do that, and I was so shocked, I nearly needed an ammonia capsule to draw me back from a faint!

I didn’t get my baked goods made for the bake sale ahead of time like I had planned, so I had to run them over to the church early this morning.  My plan was to roll out of bed, into my clothes, deliver the goods and come home.  Well, they were short on help to set up, so I stayed until about 8:00 to help get everything set up.  I was not a good sight, because I had not prepared to be on display!  Oh well, I look like anybody else who just crawls out of bed.

After I got home, I breakfasted the kids, and then we all got ready to meet Julia in town for her to take a family picture of us.  Ha!  We had two little people who didn’t want to smile at her or the camera.  Here are a few pictures from my camera of our attempts.

Hannah & Paul

Somehow Hannah kept losing her shoes.

I’m counting on at least one from Julia’s camera being a suitable representation of  pleasant family!

This is our beautiful Hannah with her new pig tails.  She was playing in this box with her bear just before nap time today.

We’ve been having some new firsts around here.  One big thing that has taken a lot of any extra time I’ve had is our decision to have an addition built onto the house.  Our primary objective is to have a sound-proof room for an office for Andrew so I don’t have to contend with keeping the kids quiet whenever he’s on the phone in meetings down in the basement.  So, we’ve been meeting with a contractor, drawing up plans, getting cost estimates, etc.  We thought we were all set, and the contractor was going to go get a permit, and then Saturday Andrew actually dug down to the septic tank, and discovered it was not where we thought it was.

Paul in one of the holes Andrew dug trying to find

the septic tank.

It was a lot closer to the house than everyone thought.  (FYI, the Health Department is of absolutely no help in providing maps to show you where your septic tank is.  They will only give you that information if you tell them what year the septic tank was put in, and who put it in.  Nnnnyyyaaah to that tangle of unhelpful bureaucracy!)  So, over Saturday night and Sunday night Andrew and I worked at drawing up another set of plans to see if we could come up with something else (besides our original plans) that we wanted to do, accommodating the closer septic tank.  We felt like we needed to figure out if we were going ahead with this or not, and let our contractor know.  Believe it or not, we were able to figure out how to use the smaller space in a way that we were both pleased, and it seems to be within our budget.  So, the contractor came on Monday, we hashed out some things, and he said they may come as early as noon on Tuesday to start removing the second-rate addition that was on our house (that the new addition will replace).

I had just had a 3-event weekend and was planning to recuperate on Monday!  Yikes!  I pulled myself together, even though I didn’t feel up to it at all, and got in high gear to get all our belongings out of the red room.  My sister Gail and her son Bobby came over Monday afternoon.  While all the kids were napping, we managed to get that room emptied out.

Here’s Paul and Bobby playing in the garden for

a little bit prior to taking their naps.

The empty red room.

They didn’t come Tuesday at noon (that all depended on when they got their previous job finished), but they were here first thing this morning.  I was getting Paul and Hannah dressed and I thought I was hearing knocking around.  I thought maybe Andrew was outside poking around, but the more it continued, the more I thought the workers were probably here.  When I looked, sure enough, they were!  Boy, was I glad we got that room emptied out on Monday (especially since our neighbor children were here yesterday and I wouldn’t have been able to work on it very well then)!  Here are some pictures I took today as they were taking down the porch.

Another new thing today was this:

Hannah wearing pig tails for the first time ever!  Yeah, I got them crooked, but you try putting pig tails on a little wiggling girl!  I took lots of pictures.  She was fantastically cute, even cuter than the pictures show!

Now, here she is with her second set of pig tails–I had to re-do them after her nap.

Isn’t she cuter than words?  Right here she was

on her way downstairs to show Daddy her pig tails.

Remember Paul’s organizational skills?  Well, he built a parking lot–right in a hot-spot of the house, the place with the three commodes.  Andrew took a picture.

Needless to say, I soon called on Paul to move the parking lot.

Here’s a few bits for Tiny Talk Tuesday.

Sometimes I will tell Paul and Hannah that I need to give them baths so the don’t smell like a skunk.  Inevitably, whenever I use the phrase “smell like a skunk”, Paul pipes up and says, “smell like a snake!”  I don’t know how he would know what a snake smells like!

Hannah and I were outside walking one day, and she was watching a bird fly in the sky.

Hannah:  “What’s that?”

Me:  “It’s a bird.”

Hannah:  “Oink, oink!”

Me:  “It’s ‘tweet, tweet’, Hannah.”

Hannah:  “Tweet, tweet!”

I think she needs to learn her animal sounds better!

Paul  likes Richard Scarry books.  He and Hannah have really picked up on the Pig Will character.  For a little while when I would ask them to do something, I would say something like, “Please put this in the trash can, Paul.  That would be a Pig Will!”  And he would pipe up excitedly, “I will!”.  Now, whenever ever I ask either of them to do something, either of them will quickly say, “I will!” and do it.

A few days ago, Paul was going to eat a cupcake and he said, “Will you take the wrapper off my cupcake Mommy?  That would be a Pig Will!”

You may remember from this earlier post the the neighbor children I keep on Tuesdays are fixated on septic tanks.  Well, we are getting ready to have an addition built onto the house, and in preparation, Andrew dug around in the back yard and finally found the septic tank.  I commented that we must show it to the neighbor children.

Soon after they got here early this morning (they come at 6:00 or very soon thereafter), Adrian, the oldest one, commented that we had rearranged some things in our house.  I told him, yes, we had emptied out the red room because they were going to take it down and build some more rooms.  The very first words out of his mouth after that sentence were, “Did you find your septic tank?”  I said yes, and pretty soon after it was light outside, they were out there tramping around in the mud to see the septic tank.  He came in and asked if it was the cement block-looking thing out there.  Later in the day, he asked if we were going to move our septic tank.  No feature about the addition onto our house was as notable or as interesting to inquire about as the whereabouts and future of our septic tank!

At least they finally got to see our septic tank to be assured that we do have one, and to know where it is.

I exercised.

I put the neighbor girl on the bus.

I took a shower.

I made some doughnuts for breakfast.

Bobby came to help eat doughnuts.

My sister Rachel called, and while I was talking to her on the phone for a couple minutes, Bobby, Paul, and Hannah opened the closet door in Paul’s room and transformed it into toyland.  *sigh*

Well, I don’t have lots for this Tiny Talk Tuesday, but we do have some vocal children around here so I’ll see how good I am at remembering stuff.
Paul’s newest word is “prefer”.  He finds all kinds of opportunities to state what he prefers, even if he is just walking around talking to himself.  And, as far as I can tell, he uses it appropriately and therefore must know what it means.

A few nights ago when I was bathing Paul, I was washing his nose and told him there was a frog in his nose.

He said, “Yes, and he’s looking out a window!  And he’s saying, ‘croak, croak, croak’!”

So the topic might be gross, but it sure was cute!

One really neat thing Paul was doing for a while today was playing with the stuffed animals and it seemed like he was having them talk!  It was really interesting to watch.  (Andrew says he did that when he was little and asked if didn’t I do that.  Well, either I have a poor memory, or I didn’t do that.  I can ever so faintly remember that possibly I did it a little bit, but I remember thinking playing with stuffed animals was boring and stupid.)  Paul has a good imagination!

My dear son Paul is so wonderful!  Ever since he could possibly do something, he has been chiefly focused on organizing.  He was at it again today.  As soon as we got home from church, he organized his cars while I was getting the pizza ready for our lunch.

After lunch, he lined up the animals.

And then he was lining up the blocks when I called for nap time.

He wanted to finished the blocks before going to bed, so I let him finish them while I put Hannah down.  Here’s the finished project.

If it wasn’t nap time, it would have been interesting to see what he found to organize next.  One of these days I’ll just turn him loose on the whole house and let him get my stuff organized!  I am just thrilled that God has blessed me with a son who likes neatness, cleanliness, and orderliness.  (Uh-hum, he’s like his mom!)

One of the things Paul and Hannah enjoyed helping me do today was make some cookies.  We were making cookies for the Bible Club kids’ treats tomorrow.  I had the notion to make something “fall-ish”, so I decided to make cut-out cookies and make pumpkins, icing them orange with green stems.  And, to top it all off, I started this about an hour before we needed to leave for Bible Study.  (I take the treats along and give them to Diana who teaches at the Bible Club.)

Yes, I should get my brain checked.

Anyway, I made up the dough and Paul and Hannah watched me cut out pumpkins until we had plenty of pumpkins for the Bible Club.  Paul wanted to get out the pig cookie cutter and have some pig cookies.  So, then we made some pigs too.  As soon as I had enough pumpkins and a few pigs cut out for the kids, I let them play with the rest of the dough while I concentrated on icing 24 pumpkins.  I did take a few moments to snap some pictures.

Hannah loved to roll out her pieces of dough.

Paul would pile up a mound of dough, and then mash

the cookie cutter into it.

Then he would examine the print closely.

Needless to say, we ate supper after Bible Study this evening.  After I put the kids to bed, I rolled out and cut out the rest of the dough and baked the cookies.  After I washed up the dishes, then I iced them.  By the way, I was using bits of icing in the freezer that were left from other projects.

Here are some of the finished products.  I wrote “pig” on

the pig cookies because Paul is so into letters, sounds,

and so on.  I’m sure with it being on a pig cookie

he will be able to figure out the word!

I’m looking forward to watching Paul and Hannah enjoy the pig cookies tomorrow!

I don’t often get around to blogging on Tuesdays.  I’ve been storing up in my mind a few things from the mouths of Paul and Hannah for whenever I get a chance to blog on a Tuesday.  I admit that some things have evaporated from my memory.  But, here are the things that stuck in my mind.

Paul:  “I’m running my nose,” to announce that his nose is running and needs to be blown.

Paul: (sounding out a word) “t-e-n”.

Me:  “And what does that spell?”

Paul: “Seven”.  He can sound out rows of letters, but as yet he cannot produce a word (unless there is a picture beside the word that gives him a clue).

One evening in our Bible Story time, we read about forgiveness.  Trying to put it on his level, I told Paul if Hannah took a toy away from him, he should not grab it back, but say “I forgive you”.  Now, sometimes throughout the day, I hear Paul walking around the house saying over and over, “I forgive you, I forgive you”.  Someday he’ll know what that means!

Hannah can sing parts of “Jesus Loves Me” and “The B-I-B-L-E”.  However, pretty much without fail, if I ask her what song I should sing, she says “The B-I-B-I-B!”

Also, (and I know this is getting long, but I love talking about my kids!), Hannah will sit down with a book and babble, pretending to read.  Paul will sit down with a book and “read” it, putting together a story from the pictures and from remembering what I’ve read to him.  It is so neat to listen to them!

That’s all for this time!  Maybe I’ll have more quotes for next Tuesday.