Turkeys, Chickens, Rats, oh my!

Aidan:

"Mom, next time we see a rat in our house we should catch it and put it in a box so I can take it into school for show and tell."

I can see it now: Aidan carrying in a rat to show his class and telling them all about how it was living in our grill until his dad went out there to make some dinner and ACK! it jumped out at him. Actually, it was a mouse but it was a pretty darn big mouse, easily mistakable as a rat. And it was as scared as Kurt if not more....of course, you would be too if your home was about to ignite. (If you are ever over for dinner, beware of the burgers....)

MJ

Madeline loves Uh, and by Uh I am referring to the nickname she has affectionately given to Liam. No, really, she calls him Uh. She came in the other day when Liam was fussing and we heard her say, "Oh, poor Uuuuh, he's sad." When we questioned her she simply replied, "That's what I call him...Uh."

I look forward to explaining to the next inquirer that no, she doesn't have a rare memory disorder ("My little brother's name is Uuuuuh.") or some strange speech impediment ("Hi Uh! Uh, I got your feet. No, Uuuuh. Uh, smile!") How she came up with this one, we just don't know, but the other day we heard him repeating his new name and thought maybe we oughta try something else out. She came up with Huuuubit....we're thinking we'll stick with Uh.

Lily

If you ever need to make a quick 5 minute trip into a 30 minute debacle complete with blood and tears, take Lily with you, top her off with a loving, five-year old brother, add a fence, some pavement and voila! Madeline, Lily and I were running a little later than usual to pick up Aidan's so we had to walk out to the playground to fetch him. Upon seeing us, he ran up to give Lily a hug, picked her up off the ground, lost his balance and practically body slammed her into the rod iron fence, nose first. She came up with a sweet little impression OF THE FENCE on the side of her gushing nose. As the playground staff went to get me a bundle of paper towels (or were they thin strips of cardboard?) I held Lily until she was done crying (about 10 seconds) and then attempted to get her to stay still enough for me to apply pressure to stop the bleeding....because, you know, two-year olds are notoriously fond of holding still while having a bruised nose squeezed. Meanwhile, Aidan limped around as if his world were completely shattered because he had a microscopic speck of blood on his knee from the fall. I walked them into the classroom to retrieve Aidan's things when one of his classmates noticed the scene and as his eyes widened to the size of half dollars he exclaimed: "OH MY GOSH! That's REALLY bad!"

Thanks kid; next time why don't you tell them Santa isn't coming because he got eaten by the monster reindeer hiding under their bed!

Looking down at the blood smeared across my entire upper body I replied, "It's not as bad as it looks," while Aidan immediately took to dragging his leg behind him and swollen nosed Lily squirmed away from me trailing blood down her shirt and behind her, all the way out the classroom. Good times!

Uh

I had it in my mind that we wouldn't have turkey this year at Thanksgiving, mainly because no one likes it. And since we all of a sudden have found ourselves in the midst of yet another move across the country (more on that later), Kurt wanted me to make it as easy as possible. No turkey, I declared.

"But Moooooom, EVERYONE has turkey at Thanksgiving!" Madeline insisted.

"We have to have a turkey, Mom," Aidan agreed.

I caved. We roasted a little 10 lb turkey, and to "make it easy" I bought a ready-to-eat spiral-cut ham, three slices of bakery pie and pre-made mashed potatoes. But then I couldn't bare to leave out all the other sides so I also made a green bean casserole, stuffing, cranberry salad, and my favorite sweet potato casserole. The only one who really ate the turkey? Liam. Outside of the mashed potatoes that Lily devoured, and the ENTIRE SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE sitting in my tummy, everyone else ate Ham and Ham alone. (And pie of course....because Tami made it....) Reciting my inherited lines after the 10 minute meal I said, "I'm not doing this again." So, next year I'm sticking with chicken. We all like chicken and they don't take as much room in the fridge. I suppose I should start fattening them up now....