Mollie V London

For those of you who I haven't seen since February, London is my newest daughter. Yes we had the baby, yes I know it happened back in April, and yes she is adorable. I know I'm a horrible father for not blogging about her earlier, but I can live with that. I'm OK, are you? Good, now that we are in this happy place let's talk about this little bundle of joy before she is no longer with us. No, she's not sick or dying, just in danger, and that danger is called Mollie.
You see some people would think that there would be some sibling rivalry or jealousy or something like that.

Mollie just loves London WAYYYYY too much.

For one thing, she always wants to touch her face, which I can understand because when I really like someone I really like to get a tactile experience of their cheekbones. It's good bonding time as well. I can't tell you how many of my friends I have now were won over with a nice massage of the mandible.

One of these days Mollie will learn that people in general don't like to have their faces touched.... by anyone.  I let Kara touch my face, the doctor, and the occasional kid who thinks I'm Santa and want's to pull my beard (when I have one), but other than that, really no one.

I went up to Mollie and did the exact same thing she was doing to London and said "Do you like that? How does that feel?"

Her response, "It feels good!" I must explain that I was also shaking her cheeks back and forth with my fingers. She loved it.

Another fear London now has, is Gummie Bears. Thanks to Mollie. One day Mollie decided to feed her several gummie bears, and me being the ever attentive father missed most of it, until the last one had been shoved down London's throat. Luckily grandma saw it and raced in just as Mollie was saying "She likes it!"

I jumped in and said "Mollie, we NEVER, EVER give London food!"

Her response, "You're welcome!" and she skips off. I guess she thought that I meant that we never feed London so she needs to.

So in addition to the above death threats that London receives every time Mollie enters the room, she has also been sat on, licked, kicked, cheeks squished (all four) nose plugged, blanket covered and in general PTSD. London will be smiling at me, and then Mollie will jump in and say "Hey London" and she will visibly jump at the sight or sound of her.

She loves Nikki, loves Lukas, allows grandmas to hold her for two minutes of non cry time a week, but lives in constant fear of Mollie. I hope they both survive.

Lasers from Heaven!

We gave the Nikki "The Talk." And when I say "The talk" it's exactly what you think. Since Kara has been pregnant she has asked a lot of questions, like, how big is the baby, how does the baby grow, where does the baby come out, and all that stuff, whereas I have been asking questions like "How am I going to take care of this one, and how am I going to keep Mollie from smothering it, and where is my Hair Gel?"  The last question is answered by looking in Mollie's toy kitchen. She seems to think it looks like food and puts it in her refrigerator every day. She also takes my glasses.

Anyway, the big question finally came up "Mom, how did the baby get in there? And how are they made?" Also the big one "Why does it take a mommy and a daddy to have a baby?"

Luckily I didn't have to handle this one on my own... well I pretty much didn't have to do anything even though I was "prepared". Kara did most of the talking, probably because she is smarter about this stuff. I remember just before we got married she answered some questions that I had had for quite some time.  It turns out Kara was just as terrified as I was about this whole situation and had absolutely no idea how to go about it.

So we got a book. Well actually we got three books, one on Amazon which helped us introduce the subject and kind of take away the awkwardness of the subject "How to talk to your child about Sex." and then we got two books by Brad Wilcox on the subject, one for little kids set up like a story book (I liked that one) and the other one for more pre-teen kids (talks about maturation and stuff like that). We opted for the story book, and it really was a good way to introduce it. The first book was great too, it just didn't give us any ideas on how to present the whole miracle of making a baby. It did however talk a lot about how AWESOME it is, and how we should not make it seem taboo, but be respectful of it.

So we got Nikki all excited to learn about it telling her that we are going to talk about it on Saturday night after the kids go to bed, and that it was really awesome. She kept asking for hints about it, and she even gave me her theories, such as "I think that a laser beam shoots down from heaven and goes into the mommy's stomach, but it can't go out her back, and then the baby gets transported there."

Sounds Legit.

We were worried it would totally gross her out. Stories heard from around the family include Nikki's cousin Jacob just shaking his head and saying "You mean you guys have done that 3 times?" (there are three kids in his family).  Then there is also Kara's brother quoted saying "Mom, there has to be another way, you and Dad would never do that, would you?" At least seven times! My family sitting all the boys down in a family home evening and my little brother asking VERY specific questions and all the older siblings simply asking to be excused. And of course there was the night before the wedding night talk. That's for a later blog post. Like 15 years from now, or maybe never.

She was a little embarrassed. Each time we brought up something she would quickly chime in "yeah yeah I know" with the undertone of "lets speed this along please." I would like to say that I did a good job at explaining the whole thing, but in reality Kara did the majority of the talking, and I chimed in once in a while. I think I actually learned some new things as well.

We didn't cover everything, mainly because we didn't want to overwhelm her, but we covered the basics. We didn't cover any bit of puberty and all those fun changes to look forward to, but the very next day, she asked about it. So we are going to talk about that again on Saturday. I think this might be a weekly thing for us now. Some people work out regularly, we tend to talk about the birds and the bees on a weekly basis.

One last note. It was nice talking to her about it, before she had really heard anything, because there was no real embarrassment, just a great conversation. I heard that the older kids get, embarrassment and mortification increase exponentially. So we are going to get it out of the way early and let her have the freedom to ask questions and know that she will get a real answer, and hopefully it's a good alternative to lasers from heaven.

Mollie has a man cold (and a little rant)

I don't really like the term "Man Cold" because it's very off the mark.  It's a term that someone made up that means when men get a cold we all act like babies again and that when women have colds they just work through it. I'm calling B.S. There are plenty of times when I have gone to work with a cold, headache, back pain, shin splints, etc. Whenever I actually have a cold where it's bad enough that I have to stay home from something (very rare) it's pretty bad, like I'm nauseous, ready to throw up and can't walk straight. So in these extreme cases, yes I am going to need a little attending to, like possibly someone to make the kids lunches. Most of all I just want to lay in bed and sleep when this happens. What sucks about being a stay at home parent though, is you never get a sick day. You just plow through it and hope you don't pass out during the day (or sometimes I think it might be nice).

Anyway, Mollie today has had a bad cold. Sniffling, coughing etc. You know how I can tell, because she is asking me every 20 seconds for another tissue. Which brings me to my next point. It's 11 am and I have been working on the dishes since 9 am and just barely got them done. We didn't have a lot to do... we had Pizza last night.  This was dishes from breakfast and a little bit from yesterday, but because I kept getting interrupted every 20 seconds (literally) I would wash half a dish... wipe a nose. Finish the last dish...wipe a nose. This went on for some time. In the meantime when Mollie wasn't having me collect her mucus in disposable cotton, Lukas was asking me every 30 seconds how to do something in his video game Lego Batman.

You know those times when people who "work" wonder what SAH's (Stay At Home's) do all day and they think it would be nice to have that life. Catch up on Days of Our Lives, eat bon bons, take long naps, play bridge and catch up on the latest Oprah Winfrey book club book?

Well, to put that rumor to rest, that is exactly what I do. With all my spare time I also put together homeschool lessons three three years out, create and photograph all my beautiful homemaking ideas and post them on pinterest (yes I AM THAT EVIL PERSON and I want you all to feel like less of a person because you can't make Despicable Me minion cupcakes for your son's Birthday Event/Party that takes more planning than a wedding). I also work out everyday but I do it with my kids because only bad parents leave their kids at the Gym daycare, do crafts and learning activities with my children,  they NEVER spend more than 30 minutes watching television/playing minion rush/or nintendo, and my house has this great feature where it never gets dirty or untidy. All this because I have magic Yoga Pants that let me do anything.

Oh, and all the laundry is done too. My secret! I just buy new clothes and throw the dirty clothes away! You should all strive to be like me, but not too hard because you know you'll never achieve it. It's because I live in an alternative reality where my days actually have 36 hours in them and my children sleep or are in school for 30 of them. It's so GREAT to be ME!!!!

NIGHTMARES!

My kids talk in their sleep. There. That's my nightmare. It kind of freaks me out! But in all seriousness they have conversations in their sleep. Mollie scolds her dollies in her sleep, Nikki argues with her friends, and it's really funny when they can hear each other because they sometimes argue with each other when they are asleep (not realizing they are arguing with a sleeping person while they themselves are asleep......yeah it's weird). It actually freaked out one of our babysitters. The first time she baby sat for us the kids went down to bed like a half hour after we left.

Then it began.

Let's just say she was a little reluctant to come back the next time. They thought our kids were possessed.

The only one who doesn't really talk in their sleep is Lukas. He occasionally will say something, but nothing to the extent of Nikki and Mollie. So last night when he started talking it took me a while to realize that he wasn't asleep. It started with a

"Daaaaad?"

 and me half asleep trying to make sense of the whole thing. "Go to bed Lukas."

"But Dad, um, can you come and cuddle me?"

Me still half asleep, "No, it's time to go to bed."

"OK"

silence

a few minutes later, and with a little more desperation in his voice, "Dad can you PLEASE cuddle with me?"

Ok something is up, and I thought, I bet he's scared. Now Lukas is a tough kid. He won't just come right out and say that he's scared, or hurt physically or emotionally. You have to ask him directly, and even then he won't always say it. So I went and picked him up and we went and cuddled and I asked him if he was scared.

"Well, yeah, just a little bit."

"Did you have a nightmare?"

nods

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

nods

"There was a monster, and the monster was going to eat Molls (his nickname for Mollie)."

"Really, what did you do?"

"I punched the monster in the face and he died!"

"Wow, did you save Mollie?"

Nods

"Were you scared?"

Nods

"And you killed the monster anyway?"

"Yeah, and then Mollie was safe."

The thing that is really significant here, is that Lukas isn't scared of Monsters. Well, not anymore. When he was two Monsters Inc scared the living crap out of him. But now he loves em and is not scared at all. What scared him was Mollie getting eaten. He absolutely loves that little girl so much. She is his best friend, amigo, buddy, whatever. Sure they fight, but they play so well together. He is an AWESOME big brother!

This just in....

So I was in the middle of writing a post on how Lukas is pretty much resistant to pain, when Mollie happened. Here is the scenario.

The kids were watching Dinosaur Train in our Living Room/Kitchen/Playroom (Student housing).  Mollie had found a green elastic workout band thing and had begun to flick it back and forth, annoying Lukas but generally harmless....but not really. I did not realize that she had put a glass of milk on the TV stand and was trying to whip it off with her elastic (no more Indiana Jones for the kids...not that they watch that or anything......sorry Kara).

The problem happened when she finally succeeded, and milk went FLYING everywhere. On the TV, the DVD player, the Rocku, the VCR (yes we still have one. You wouldn't believe the video selection at Deseret Industries), and all over the floor. Mollie screams out "My MILK!" And I inwardly scream a swear word. I grab a rag and begin cleaning up, and Mollie comes up to me and says "Daddy, can I have some more milk?"

Lukas scored a goal!

A lot has happened. Christmas, New Years, a new semester, all that fun stuff, and right now we are back in the thrill of things. I know this is a stupid excuse for not writing, because I see this on so many blogs (like I actually read them) but the excuse of being so busy. I could use that excuse but in reality I've actually just been lazy with writing. I kind of didn't want to do it for a while so I didn't. There I said it. I feel better.

To make this easier for me, I am trying to do shorter blog posts, so I don't have to mull over every sentence and try and make everything witty.  Sometimes when I write I use a voice in my head, not actual voices, it's actually my thoughts but I think them in the voice of someone else. It's usually Jim Gaffigan's but for some strange reason tonight it's the fat guy's from modern family. I don't know his actual name but I think he's funny. So while you are reading this, imagine it's him reading it to you.

So we signed Lukas up for Soccer. It's a really fun league where they spend the first twenty minutes having a practice and teaching them some fundamentals (like kicking the ball, very important I must say). After that they have a thirty minute game, and when I say game, I mean a free for all where the ball occasionally lands in the net if it doesn't accidentally hit the "goalie" at the time. It's the whole swarm mentality with the exception that no one is working together.  At least that is how it was the first few times. Lately the players have noticed that there are other players on their team, and have kind of helped each other out, or at least have stopped stealing the ball from them.... sometimes.

Lukas is halfway through the "season" and he was getting real discouraged because up until today none of his kicks have managed to find themselves in the goal, despite the fact that he has told me multiple times that he is the best soccer player ever. But today, today was the day of miracles. It was amazing, it was brilliant, it was... good timing.

Here's how it all went down. 30 seconds were left in the game, the score was... tied, and it was time to sub in new players (they sub every two minutes so the kids can rest and watch Despicable Me on my Microsoft Surface). The red opposing team (Lukas is on Green, the Sharks is their official mascot, we call  him Jaws) has just finished substitutions and the game has started, but they have come to an impasse as to who will play goalie. No one on the red team is willing to sacrifice their last few minutes of soccer time to play goalie. The whistle is blown, the game begins, and the red team is still arguing, with the ball right in front of the goal. Lukas sees his opportunity, and ever so quietly (like a Shark) runs full throttle towards the ball and kicks it into the goal, without any opposition, or goalie. The red team is absolutely stunned and shocked, and from the opposite end of the field, the crowd of onlooking parents and fan (Mollie) explode in applause and congratulations. Lukas turns towards the noise, waves, and suddenly realizes his goal counted. He jumps up and down, ecstatic, runs over to me just as the whistle is blown, ending the game. Lukas calls his mom, triumphant and confident, and proclaims "Hey Mom, guess what? I scored!  That's all, now you can talk to Daddy."