It's fun to stay at the.....

It has recently become our Friday night ritual to take the kids swimming at the YMCA. Loren is able to be with us, none of us usually has to get up early the next morning, and---our favorite reason of all---it seems that most people are doing other things on Friday nights, so we practically have the place to ourselves. It's so much fun!

It doesn't always turn out the way we plan, though. One time just the Quiet One and I went because the other kids had been acting up. He decided to hang out with Youth Explosion (sort of a sitter service where they do different activities) for a while, and I went out by the pool to do some studying. When there was about an hour of swim time left, he joined me, and we hopped in the water together. Less than 2 minutes later, there was thunder, and they closed the pool. The Quiet One was so disappointed, and I was too. So I took him to Dairy Queen for a Blizzard. It was his first one ever, and about 4 bites into it, he looked up at me with the widest baby blue eyes and said, "I think I'm gonna remember this night forever!" Wow.

Our littlest guy (who, BTW, will be 2 at the end of this month) has come to adore the Y. As soon as he sees the road signs indicating that we are getting close, he starts singing Y-M-D-Day over and over again. I wish I could convey in type how cute it is, but I'm sure it doesn't come out the same.

He has quite a few other things we love to hear him say, some more difficult to decipher than others. One of my personal favorites would be, "Weer my dippy dup doe?" (where my sippy cup go?) And then there's, "I nee my hued on." (I need my shoes on, of course!)

On Tuesday, I had left the kids at a friend's house while I attended a meeting. My friend forgot to give the baby a nap (and let me tell you that child LOVES his sleep), and by the time I got him back at dinner time he was cranky!! This was understandable considering the fact that he usually has a four hour nap, but I still couldn't ignore the fact that he decided to start kicking at his mommy. So when I had to discipline him, he grabbed me with tears streaming down his little face and shouted out again and again, "You MEANIE mommy!" Now, I know it's not funny when children disobey or call their parents names, but the way the whole scene played out was just hilarious. My friend and I were about to split our sides trying not to laugh at his little outburst.

However hard we tried to hide our amusement, he must have noticed this, because yesterday something similar happened. He was coloring with markers at the easel, and decided to reach over and color on my shirt. I told him he was only allowed to color on the paper, and not on mommy or anywhere else. Just a moment later, he was coloring on the carpet. When I told him no, he could not color on the carpet and that he had to put the markers away, he did it. Then when he was walking over to me he gave me a funny little smile. He got in my lap, looked up at me smiling, and said, "You MEANIE mommy!" Then he said, "You doowh-bahw." This one was a little more difficult to decipher, but I finally got out of him that he was saying, "you goofball."

Okay, I'm guilty. That one comes from me. When the kids do something silly, I laughingly call them little goofballs. Bad mommy. Someone get a bar of soap!