Tuesday Random 5: POOP.

1. Some of you Fellow Adventurers who’ve been reading this little blog from the beginning remember a poop theme that seemed to reoccur. Well, by (not at all, not even a request) popular demand, IT’S BACK! Guess what word Laura Ingalls Wilder knows how to say? Yep. Poop. She doesn’t have many words to begin with, and her only really understandable words are “Mama,” “Daddy,” and “poop.” It’s awesome and embarrassing at the same time. 

“Laura Ingalls Wilder, are you hungry?” 

“Poop.”

“Honey, would you like some milk?” 

“Poop.” 

“Say Mama!”

“Poooooooop!”

So, yes, I’m winning at parenting.

2. The International Man of Intrigue and I have an ongoing debate that he demands I include in my blog. He thinks, when it comes to kids, four is the new ten. He means, he feels like society sees four kids as a really huge amount of kids. I tend to disagree. While I do concede that when we crossed over to four kid land, we definitely started getting the raised eyebrows when people ask how many kids we have. It’s also when I started getting, “Are they ALL yours?” although, I can’t verify if that question has to do with number of kids or that it’s obvious all of the Little Explorers are not biologically ours. I just don’t see four as tons of kids. Maybe it’s my background—I grew up in a town where it’s not uncommon at all to have eight or more kids. Since we’re of the Catholic persuasion, I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who have more kids than we do. As a matter of fact, my argument to The International Man of Intrigue was that four is the new three. I seem to know more and more people who have four kids. Where do you fall, Fellow Adventurers? Is four the new ten, or is it the new three? Or is four just four?

3. Let’s keep the poop theme going, shall we? On Mother’s Day, I scrubbed toilets. I know, all you Fellow Adventurers are gasping in horror. “Toilets? On Mother’s Day? No!” Yes. They were disgusting. When I told The International Man of Intrigue what I was going to do, he said, “Make Amelia Earhart do it. She’s eight.” I said, “I can’t just make her do it. She doesn’t know how.” He answered, “Then show her and it can be her job from now on.” Genius. So, I scrubbed the toilets on Mother’s Day, with Amelia Earhart helping. She didn’t totally hate it, although she did think it was gross. If you’re eight, it helps that a toilet brush can also be called a wand. How fancy. It turns out, scrubbing toilets is the Mother’s Day gift that keeps on giving!

4. Do you meal plan? I used to and then fell off the wagon. I’m back on now. I realized it helps my diet so much to know what we’re eating all week. This week, I made myself overnight refrigerator oatmeal in little jars to eat for breakfast. Last night for dinner, we had bacon and pancakes. It’s early afternoon, but I already have Greek chicken prepped to throw in a skillet for dinner, and made two more to freeze for later while I was at it. Tomorrow, Gertrude Bell and Amelia Earhart have piano lessons and then Gertrude Bell has a Girl Scout thing, so we’re eating out. Thursday is once again an eat and freeze night. I’m making a giant crock pot of vegetarian bolognese sauce. I’ll freeze most of it into individual jars. Friday is pizza night at The Intrigue House, so probably frozen pizza this week. 

5. Yesterday after school, I took the Little Explorers to the library. I had a book on hold I wanted to pick up, and Amelia Earhart really needed some books to read. We were all in the kids’ section browsing. I was toward the back of the kids’ section with Amelia Earhart, who needed help choosing a book, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was in the stroller, yelling “Poop!” when I heard my name over the loudspeaker asking me to report to the information desk. I knew immediately that one of my Little Explorers had escaped. I told Amelia Earhart to stay with Laura Ingalls Wilder and took off.  When I got to the information desk, there were Gertrude Bell and Arthur Dent, gasping for breath between sobs. Even though I had only been a couple of shelves away, they thought they were lost. They handled it perfectly, getting someone who worked at the library to help them. The library employee brought them to the information desk, where another librarian gave them coloring sheets and paged me. I was heartbroken that they were so upset, but immensely proud that they were still clutching the library books they wanted to check out. My plan to raise little bibliophiles seems to be working.