To My Very Thoughtful Niece:

Thank you for your sweet letters to my daughter, even going so far as to put the last one in an envelope, allowing her the "thrill" of opening her own mail.

Thank you for realizing how much this would mean to my girl.

Thank you for making her feel like a million bucks. She will treasure your letters always. She will store them away and pull them out to read once in a while (in her words).

Yes, this means you, Jenna. You're the greatest.

Paper Bag Princess

Yesterday the kids head-butted. Acidentally.......I think. I was not in the same room when it happened, but the screams and wails could be heard at their auntie Laura's house clear across town. When I walked into the living room, Hannah was crying so hard that she could barely catch her breath. Seth was crying, slightly, but I think more because he envisioned his untimedly demise. It is usually through his wrestling that these accidents occur, after all.

I saw that Hannah had a small laceration on her left eyebrow, and you know how surface wounds are, they bleed like you're dying. This was almost her undoing. After cleaning her up, I gave her the dreaded words that she would have to wear a bandaid on her eyebrow. For all the world to see. We were leaving the house pronto for an appointment, so I didn't have time to hold something on her wound for the next 30 minutes.

Just like kids do not have to be taught how to lie, neither do girls have to be taught how to be vain. It is somewhere in the psyche of the female gender that they must look nice at any cost. So, when we had to go out into public, my little/big girl was not very pleased with me. We went a couple of places, and each time she walked with her head down, arm over her left eye, very gimped. Really, I wish that I would have remembered my camera. It did not matter how many times I told her that she was drawing much more attention to herself by the way she was walking and hiding, she would not believe me. She had a bandaid on her eyebrow, after all.

Next time there is an incident of this nature, and I'm quite certain there will be a "next time", this is what I am going to recommend she wear out in public.

At least my princess won't have to walk all gimped.

P.E.A.K. Youth Conference 2008 - Holy Ghost Explosion!

The youth are off to the P.E.A.K. Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is a clip of last year's conference. I really pray they have a move of God like they did last year, as evidenced by this clip.

P.S.

P.S.: On my last post I said that when Hannah figured out that the exact middle of the piano keyboard was RIGHT IN THE CRACK, she would inform her teacher. Well, she figured it out today and let me in on it, so I'm sure she'll inform her teacher at her next lesson. In fact, she counted all 88 keys, several times to be sure, and then told me that it was "impossible for a piano key to be in the exact middle, because there were 88 keys, and that meant that a crack was the exact middle".

What can I say? I guess I know my OCD daughter very well.

Piano Lesson

Today my lovely, inquisitive, wonderful daughter began piano lessons.

I went in with her to meet her instructor and told her to let me know when she was confortable enough for me to wait in another room. Consequently, I stayed for her entire first lesson. Not surprisingly, I discovered that I really didn't like to be in the room when someone else was teaching her. I'm her mother, and it's much too tempting to correct her when I know I should stay silent. I managed to do alright, however.

Hannah was instructed to sit on the bench at the middle of the piano. Her teacher told her she could tell where the middle of the piano, and particularly the Middle C, was by the word (which is the name brand of the piano) written just above the keys.

And does my inquisitive, partially-OCD daughter take her teacher's word for it?

No, she does not.

Instead, she reaches to both ends of the piano and, OCD-like, puts her fingers on the keys one-by-one until they meet in the middle. And what does she discover? That the WORD above the keys is not in the exact middle. And she informs her teacher of this error. Her teacher looks at me, surprised but smiling, and says that "she never thought to count before to be sure".

Imagine that?

Of course, if one wants to be technical, the exact middle of the piano keys falls RIGHT IN THE CRACK. I'm sure when she figures this out, she'll inform her teacher of this as well.

Next week I'm sitting in the waiting room. Even though my daughter already told me she was ready for it, I'm pretty sure that's where I would have been. And I really don't want to know how many things she thinks she needs to inform her teacher from now on.

Unless, of course, her teacher chooses to inform me.

That STINKIN' GRIN

This is my boy. And so help me, if he ever gets ahold of a Calvin and Hobbes book, it will be immediately burned. He has enough material of his own without the help of his twin.

I do believe that he is getting more mischievous as the days go by. DAYS. Not months or years. DAYS. All day today he had a smug grin on his face, just itching to push his sister's buttons. Usually it's my buttons, but today it was hers because she was having a particularly hard day and he zeroed in on it. Tonight while he was having a bath, I made Hannah clean up Seth's blocks because she was the one who used them. She had them all ready to put in their proper containers when she realized that the containers were nowhere to be found. She asked her brother where they were and he replied, sporting his USUAL grin, that he "hid them". She was getting frustrated, so I told her not to let him see her frustration (since I'm the expert at hiding it myself). We hunted the house high and low, trying to be sneaky about it, and eventually found them. He thought it was all a hoot, even though I had told him that if they weren't found by the time he was done his bath he was going straight to bed.

It has become obvious that he has two main goals in life: to get into mischief OR to make people laugh. He says things all the time that crack people up (myself included, although I try hard not to let him see). A little while ago while I was correcting him, he informed me that I wasn't the "boss to him". That his "father was his boss". That I was only the "boss of his sister."

All with that STINKIN' GRIN.

Last week we went to the Dairy Queen with my aunt while visiting in Regina. It was closing time and the staff was waiting for us to leave so they could lock the door so, as I was walking out the door, I apologized to the man waiting. Seth, who was coming up behind me, looked up at the man and said,

"You sure are a good man!"

Again, with that STINKIN' GRIN.

Of course, we all laughed. He was immensely satisfied, proven by his, "I made a funny joke, mom, didn't I?" comment to me.

He doesn't always crack his one-liners to be sassy. Much of them are quite sweet, like this last comment. He is fun to be around, and most people enjoy his company because he is so entertaining. The problem is that I really don't want him to always be seeking attention and I'm just not sure if this is something I can do anything about.

Fast and pray (and turn my hair grey). Or laugh along with him (or in the privacy of my bedroom when he can't see).

Sure makes life interesting.