What the little ones say...

Overheard this weekend:

Agustín, upon seeing a new brand of milk at the table: "Mommy, this milk tastes the same as the other one. Why are there different brands if they taste the same?"

Nicolás, who called me "Mami linda" (pretty Mommy) all weekend long, and who took out a piece of "artwork" he found in the trash, looked at me with hurt eyes and asked: "Mami linda, how did this get in the trash?"

Agustín, who got a door hanger from McDonald's in his Happy Meal that said "Do Not Enter" and was very excited when we explained the concept to him (His eyes wide, "No one can come in my room?"), and who woke up this morning and put it on his door first thing, then closed it, as I overheard, "Now no one can come into our room, OK, Nico? Except Mommy. If she wants to, she can come in. But not Daddy. Only Mommy."

Grilling days are back!

Andres finally got a new grill, something he has wanted for a really long time. It's probably been a year since the old one completely rusted through and basically disintegrated in my hands one day as I tried to move it. He got a bigger one this time, and not a gas one, which is fine by me since I like the taste of the carbon, and the pain of fanning it and all. (Although, admittedly, I don't really help out with that part. But I do watch.) The kids love it when Daddy buys something new, because they get to help put it together. They both love puzzling things together, but especially Tin.

Later this afternoon the gas guy came by to clean our hot water heater and Tin and Kas watched him the whole time, asking him a gazillion questions. I am sure the guy didn't think it was so cute, since he couldn't work in peace, but I sure enjoyed hearing them ask, "What is that piece for? What are you doing now? You'd better get a new battery! Oh, the new piece is blue! Cool!" and so on and so on.

Alien families

I spent the whole weekend cleaning - DEEP cleaning - so it is now prohibited to eat in our rooms or anywhere other than at the dinner table. In response to my other post, tonight I told the kids that they had to sit at the table, and they started to complain a bit. Of course I did the Mommy thing and told them that from now on we are going to "sit at the table, like a normal family!" No sooner were the words out of my mouth than Agustin looked at me, and in all seriousness, said, "Yeah, not like the alien families."

Mommy smells

Tonight Nicolas told his father,

"Mommy smells like my favorite cereal."

Not exactly a compliment, I suppose, as that means I smell like either Captain Crunch, Special K, or "Marshmallow cereal".

funny things they say

In tribute to my December Daily, and as a direct result of my faulty memory, I am trying to be better about documenting the little things, the daily things, in my life.

Especially when it comes to the kids and the things they say and do.

Which brings me to the other day at the mall. We went to do a little Christmas window shopping and when we got back to the car, Kas got in and got really worried.

"¿Mi teta*? Where is it? Someone broke into the car and took my teta!" He starts pouting and within a few seconds silent tears are streaming down his face. Of course the teta was there, up front by the driver's seat, but the look of pure horror on his face was sooooo funny! As my sister said, oh the things those little kids have to worry about. Makes me want to go back to the days when I had nothing to worry about. Now it seems that all I do is sit around with a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that there is something I forgot to do... Worse is that there usually was something I forgot to do and now I didn't do it, which sets off a whole new worry. Well, I'm not the product of a Bauer for nothin'!


Later that day, Agustín was admiring the new Hot Wheel he got as an incentive to sleep on his own (we are going on about 3 weeks straight, and I am officially jinxing myself by admiting this in public). He was so excited about it because it was full of "gold". It actually looked like the color silver to me, so I asked him, "Isn't that more like silver than gold?" He simply informed me that it was too shiny to be silver, since silver "es un metal muy sucio"**.

Well. I can't argue with that.


*teta = bottle
** is a very dirty metal

cute story #1

Nicolas wakes up every morning like at 5 :30 am. Much too early for a weekend, and I'm the one he usually calls. So Sunday morning he wakes up, calls me, I go in there and try to get him to sleep a bit more, or read some books or something so that I can sleep more. But no, he starts telling me we have to get up - it's morning. So I get up, put him in front of Discovery kids, and decide to do a little early morning Internet window shopping. Suddenly, there is this little guy pulling on my pajamas.

Him: (in broken Spanglish): "I want to go downstairs."
Me: (still a bit groggy): "Why?"
Him: "I want to go downstairs to play with the bears."
Me: "What bears?"
Him: (getting impatient): "I want to go... downstairs...play with BEARS."
Me: (no answer, silently mulling over what bears he could be referring to)
Him: "DOWNSTAIRS...BEARS. Let's go mommy." and he starts pulling on my clothes again.

So, I get up and start walking downstairs with him, thinking, OK, he can play with his bear toys and I'll find something else to do.

Halfway down the stairs he stops. I turn around to see what's got his attention, and he is looking at me from the corner of his eye, a slick grin on his mouth.

Him: "The GUMMY bears."

Note: Andres had bought a small baggie of gummy bears at a specialty candy store the day before, and the kids were (obviously) really excited about it.

And no, I did not give him the gummy bears at 5:45 in the morning. He ate a soft-boiled egg and some toast and then got his gummy bears :) Note to all mommies: dangle gummy bears like a carrot on a stick to get your finicky kids to eat their breakfast.