April Fool's Pranks I'm Playing on My Kids!

Our little girl from Ethiopia has recently learned how to ask "Why?".  We were in Target, on the bathroom accessories aisle and she looked at a shelf completely lined with trash cans that were for sale, turned to me confused, pointed and asked, "Why, Mom?"


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Speaking of shopping, this is not at all newsworthy, but I switched my membership from Sams to Costco about 6 months ago because I'd heard so many friends rave about Costco and there was a new one built fairly close to my house ('course not as close as the Sams).  

And you know what?  

I don't get the Costco hype at all! Supposedly they have more organic-type foods, which I'm into, but they don't have as good a deal on organic milk as my HEB and the soy yogurt I'm now eating every day is nary to be found at Costco.  Not to mention a lot of the old standby basics I bought at Sams I can't find at Costco.  I'd already decided to go crawling back to Sams and ask if they'd please have me back when lo and behold they sent me a card in the mail saying they missed me and gave me a free 2 month membership if I'd come back.

Dear Sams, 

You had me at "we missed you"!  And my kids are in withdrawal over your beef jerky, Costco's tastes funny.  I'll be there tomorrow!

With promises to never stray again, yours truly,

It Feels Like Chaos

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A couple years ago for April Fool's Day, I used some food coloring and dyed the kid's milk blue before pouring it into their cups at breakfast.

They thought it was so funny and still talk about it occasionally.

So, I'm planning some stuff for April Fool's Day this coming Sunday.

Here are some pranks I have up my sleeve:

• When we were in Ethiopia last summer with our 2 oldest kids, I was so worried someone would accidentally drink water from the faucet or even just wash their hands and not use hand sanitizer after it, so I covered the faucet in our guest house bathroom with a plastic baggie and then used a rubber band to secure it in place.  It worked pretty well!  But, this Sunday, April Fool's Day (actually late at night on Saturday since my kids wake up earlier than me), I'm going to plastic baggie the faucets in our house!

• Also, when I lay out the kids' clothes on their closet doors for church, I'm going to switch them up, not too obviously like putting girl clothes on the boy doors, but I'm going to lay out my 4 year old son's clothes for the 9 year's old son to put on and switch the girls up, too!  I bet my oldest son won't even notice his clothes are 4 sizes too small!

• We typically eat cereal before church, so I'm going to fill the kid cereal bowls with milk the night before and freeze them. Then in the morning we can add a little cereal and milk on top and the kids will be in for a surprise when they dig into their bowls!

I'm looking for more ideas, nothing mean, just harmless fun that will get them laughing, not crying!!  Do you have any good ones?

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***I was in no way compensated by Sams Club to write this post!***

Find more Finer Things Friday and  Friday Fragments.

Funny Story From The Caseworker Visit

Can you believe our new little girl has been home for 3 months already?

At what point do I have to stop calling her "new"?

Want to hear a funny story about our 3 month post-placement caseworker home visit?

As I mentioned here, supposedly this visit was very low-key, nothing to stress about.  Still, the house was clean (or so I thought), the kids were dressed cute, and Little Girl's hair was neatly braided (because somehow I felt that screamed, "I'm obviously a good mother!").  And when the caseworker arrived I quickly got the children settled playing with playdough at the kitchen table, so they were close enough to keep an eye on, but we could visit in the living room.  And they actually all four played nicely for the 40 minute visit!!!

Okay, so what's funny?

Well, just at the exact moment I though maybe we had it all together, I noticed it.

A curious, suspicious looking, small, brownish, black thing on our leather ottoman, right smack in front of where our caseworker was sitting.  In my mind I thought maybe it was a remnant of something the dog had chewed up, or a stray dry bean from the sensory tub I get out for Little Girl to play with sometimes.  So, I leaned forward and casually picked it up while continuing to converse with the caseworker.

As soon as it was in my hand, I realized it was not a chewed bit of plastic toy or a dried bean, it was a dead bug!

A rather large beetle!

Just the night before, my husband had noticed that Jupiter and Venus were particularly bright and visible in the sky from our house.  He woke up our 2 oldest kids so they could see it.  As he carried them outside, they left the front door opened.  A huge bug flew in, and I couldn't catch it.

But there it was in all it's dead bug glory right in front of the caseworker the next morning!

So, then I had the awkward moment of, "Okay, now I'm sitting here with a dead bug in my hand.  Did she see the bug?  Does she now know I'm sitting here holding a dead bug?  Is she stifling laughter?  Are the notes she's taking on that legal pad about our new daughter's adjustment or mostly just a write-up on our obviously bug-infested house?"

I did get up and casually throw the bug in the trash as if nothing was strange.  Even though typically I don't even pick up dead bugs with a paper towel between my hand and the bug because I think it's too gross to be that close to a bug.  All my children know how I handle bugs -- I get the hand vacuum and suck them up!

I have no idea what the case worker thought of us, will probably never know.  Thankfully, in my years of mothering what are now 4 children, not much really embarrasses me anymore.  My husband and I closed the door and cracked up laughing!

She's been home 3 months.  It's chaos, but it was chaos before.  It will probably always be chaos.  No matter how hard we try, we can't pull off normal.

But, the six of us?

Are a family.

And there isn't anything normal about how that came to be.

Knit together by God alone!

Normal is overrated!

What?  Yes, actually, that blurry, smudged pictures is the best photo I currently have of the 6 of us!

"I want just one normal family photo of the 6 of us," I've told my husband many times these last 3 months!  Perhaps I'm asking for too much.

Find more Thankful Thursday here.

Quintessential American Experience

When our plane from Ethiopia touched down on American soil this past December 24th, our youngest child became an American citizen.  We turned in some paperwork from the American embassy in Ethiopia to immigration while at the airport in the U.S. and got the official papers to prove her citizenship a few weeks later in the mail.

But, this past weekend, brought a quintessential American experience that was previously lacking from Little Girl's American life.

She met the Chick-Fil-A cow! 

I wish I could put into words her love for the cow and her joy at meeting him, hugging him, high-fiving him, dancing with him, but it's just not possible.

I really wish I could juxtapose my current 3 year old daughter's over-the-top happy reaction to the Chick-Fil-A cow to my other daughter's fear-clinging to me for dear life-crying-wouldn't go anywhere near the cow reaction when she was 3 years old.  Total opposites!  In fact, my first daughter had such an extreme phobia of that Chick-Fil-A cow (and any life-size characters) that even though she's no longer afraid of them, hasn't been in a couple years,  I still find myself with cow radar, like I am aware of the Chick-Fil-A cow's impending presence from 100 yards away (and you really just wouldn't believe all the places that cow turns up) and I brace myself for the trauma that will ensue or I switch to flight mode and try to escape with my children.

Guess it's time to get over the cow-avoidance.

 

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

Camping With Four Kids!

Wanna know why I'm so tired today?

Because over the weekend we went camping with our 4 kids.

Really they are not as unhappy about camping as they look in this picture (all not happy, that is, except my sweet, sweet 6 year old daughter who is always smiling in pictures), they were just pretending to be mad that I made them pose for a picture after setting up the tent and before they got to go do the fun activities.

To be totally honest, it was not real, actual camping.

We did sleep in a tent, outside, not even in our own yard, all night, with our 4 children.

But, we did not have to bring or prepare any of our own food.  And there were tons of fun activities for us to do, like jumpy things, star gazing with telescopes, games, campfire stories.  All without us planning any of it!  We camped in the park 2 minutes from our house for our little city's annual Tents in Town.

Surprisingly, although I joked to many neighbors and friends that they didn't want to pitch their tent next to ours (hello 4 young kids in our tent -- I felt like we should post a warning sign or something), my kids slept all night!  Sure, they went to bed later than usual, but they were exhausted after all the activity and slept great.  Other people's noise outside of our tent kept waking me up, though, and then at 6:15 am Little Girl needed me to accompany her on the hike to the bathroom.

But, with the disclaimer that it was not real camping with 4 kids -- I'd do it again!

Brothers sliding

Crazy girls sliding down head first

Little Girl mastered the obstacle course in no time!

By the way, doesn't everyone camp wearing a tutu skirt?  By far Little Girl's favorite clothing item!

The clown was a hit!

And the lady bug balloon animal was treasured!

We all survived and nobody got lost.  Really those are our only 2 criteria for a successful outing with our 4 kids!

Recently heard around here . . .

The other night at dinner my 4 year old son says, "Do you know what I've always wanted to do?"

This kid is always coming up with crazy, hilarious, random stuff, so I was just waitin' for it.

He says, "I've always wanted to wear all blue.  You know blue pants or shorts and a blue shirt."

As I'm processing that desire, 

my 9 year old son immediately pipes up:  "You've always wanted to do that?  You know why we don't do that?"

(The 9 year old continues on without pause so apparently the questions were just rhetorical.): "Because people would laugh at you!  People just don't do that now a days, wearing all the same color.  Boys don't wear the same color on the bottom as on the top.  Unless you're wearing all black because somebody died and you're going to a, what's it called Mom?"

I suggest:  "Funeral?"

the 9 year old:  "Yes, a funeral.  That's the only time boys wear all the same color and it's black because black is the color of sadness."

I think to myself:  "Wow, all that coming from the kid that just a few years ago used to tell me, 'What?  It's plaid and plaid so it matches!'  after my look at his selected outfit of plaid shorts with a plaid shirt!"

That little conversation goes to prove that there are many concepts as a parent that you only have to teach once, to your first child.  And then after that the wisdom just trickles down to your other kids!

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In the past week all the trees in our yard and our neighbors' yards have dropped these brown caterpillar-looking seed pods.  The problem is that they stick to our dog's fur like velcro.  So, she goes out into the yard, frolics around a bit and then runs back inside where over the course of the next 30 minutes she distributes the yard debris all over my house!

So today after vacuuming the house when the dog showed up at the backdoor covered in the stuff, I decided to use the hand-vac and get off the debris before she came in.  It didn't work too well, it wasn't really a strong enough suction.

But, the funny thing was our new little girl (home from Ethiopia nearly 3 months), has recently learned how to ask "What doing?"

So, she comes to the door while I'm vacuuming the dog and says, "What doing, Mom?"

I tell her, "I'm Vacuuming the dog."

She says, "Oh, dog vacuuming." as if it makes perfect sense!

Really, I'm certain her English will soon be good enough for her to tell everyone her family is nuts!

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Speaking of nuts, how crazy is it that Little Girl can do this?

Her legs are flat against the floor and she can then put her chest flat on the floor!

She tries to get me to do the splits with her, like she's my exercise instructor or something.  Perhaps I've let her watch too much Jillian Michaels from my Shred exercise DVD? 

I've had to break it to her, "Baby, Mommy can't do that."

I have no idea how unusual this is.  I know my other three children can't do anything near the splits, much less at age 3 or 4 with no stretching routine or anything!  Perhaps the gymnastics class I'm considering for Little Girl this summer is a good idea?

Find more Finer Things Friday and  Friday Fragments.

Teaching Kids the Value of Hard Work

All of our neighbors have a lawn service mow their yards.  

My husband mows ours.

When we bought our first house and he said he planned to do his own yard, several friends laughed and said, "Just wait until those 105 degree summer days we have.  You'll hire someone to do it then!"

He's continued to mow our yard, even through the summers, for 11 years now.

We could afford to hire someone to do it.

My husband has a busy work schedule, he shouldn't have to worry about the yard, too.

Even me with my frugal tendencies have suggested a couple times that maybe he should hire someone to do the yard.

But, my husband has always said, "I want our boys to see me doing the yard.  I don't want them to think you hire someone to do that.  I want them to know how.  And then someday I'll turn over the job to them."

For a couple years now, my husband and older son have talked about when he was nine he could start mowing.

The newly-turned-nine-year-old recently got his chance.

I love that image of a father guiding a son!

My husband even has his arms up as if he's pushing the mower, too!

And the nine year old really loved the chore!

Teaching my kids the value of hard work is very important to me.  I think a lot of young people these days lack the ability to work hard and see a task (especially a menial chore) to completion.  Everyone wants to start at the top.

I've often felt we'd so far failed with our boys in this regard.  We'd send them upstairs to clean their room and there would be complaining and then we'd go up 10 minutes later and it would be not a bit cleaner!

But, there is still time to instill a good work ethic in our children.

I told my oldest son that the yard mowing will be his job now for the next four years until his little brother turns nine and then he could pass it on.  But, my younger son asked about his sister that is 2 years older than he is, "What about her?  Won't she mow?"  To which, my 6 year old daughter immediately replied, "Girls don't mow!"

Ha!  Perhaps we need to work on the gender stereotypes around here, too?  Nah, she's right.  Girls don't mow!

And besides, my husband's not the only one who gets to turn over his chores.  My girls are totally on deck to take over the laundry soon!


Find more Thankful Thursday here.

Firsts

Last week our new little girl had a lot of firsts.

First rodeo

First cotton candy

First amusement park ride

First time swimming

First time riding a bike

All were a huge hit! And I think we created a monster.

The rodeo made a big impression and she now does a mean impersonation of a cowboy roping a calf.

She couldn't stuff the cotton candy in her mouth quick enough!

Once she rode the one amusement park ride she was hooked and immediately wanted to ride all the others!

The swimming was so loved that today when her older brothers and sister had their swim lesson, she begged and whined that she wanted to go, "Swimming!  Moooooom, SWIMMING!  Swimmmmming."

And the bike?  Our littlest bike is a boy version hand-me-down, but Little Girl didn't care.  We did buy her a new helmet and a ladybug bell.  She took off on that thing!  She is a speedy pedaling machine with NO FEAR.  I really think the training wheels will be coming off of all too soon.  We took the kids to a park with a lot of great sidewalks for biking and I had to run to keep up with Little Girl!  I turned my attention for a minute to one of my other kids and she was way down the path!

With all these firsts I was a bit disappointed to download the camera pictures from last week and realize I didn't capture a lot of them on camera, and the pictures I did get are not super.  But, then I realized that's just life with 4 kids and life with Little Girl, especially!  When she tackles a new thing it is with such gusto and intensity that it is really an all-hands-on-deck affair for her mother to keep her safe and reign in the chaos a bit.  If I take a minute to get out the camera, who knows what she'll do!

A few pictures I did manage:

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

I'm on Spring Break!

I'm taking a spring break from blogging the rest of the week.  

If anyone needs me, I'll be hanging out with this band of cowboys and cowgirls:

Mystery Solved!

You guys are amazing! There's nothing like the power of blog readers to solve a mystery! 

 The tall man mystery I hinted at on Friday when I said my 4 year old son refers to his middle finger as "tall man" and it always makes me laugh, but I wasn't sure where he got that because we've never told him to call it that.  I was assuming preschool and that maybe there was a song about it or something. Well, a couple of you guys clued me in that it is a song, the "Where is Thumbkin" song! So, glad to know! I remember the "Where is Thumbkin" song, but I'd never heard the "Tall Man" verse before. Watch this hilarious video to see the preschol song for yourself!

  

I had the best time going over the song with my kids.  My 9 year old refused to do the hand motions along with the 3 other kids and me -- his loss! And maybe this reveals my maturity level, but I can't help cracking up at the thought of a preschool classroom full of kids all holding up their middle fingers and singing "Here he is!" For the tall man part. So hilarious!!

Anyway, thank you, dear readers for helping to solve the tall man mystery and providing some weekend entertainment!

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We have our first post-placement visit for our adoption tomorrow.  Good thing it was Day 1 of Spring Break today, so my entire cleaning crew was home to help!

Here's 50% of my crew (and don't tell the boys, but this female half is way more effective and efficient than the male half of my cleaning crew):

I know, I know, you don't have to stress out about these visits or clean your house -- or so they say!  Let me send a caseworker over to your house and we'll see how much you feel the need to clean!  Maybe by the 6 month post-placement visit I'll be comfortable enough not to clean, but for now, you better bet it's gonna be clean!  And there may have even been some bribes, I mean incentives, described to the children tonight at dinner if they behave during the visit.

The caseworker is coming a little early for the 3 month mark -- can't believe it's already been 3 months since we brought Little Girl home!

Happy on a Friday

Little Girl finally let me do some real braids in her hair.  The secret is TV -- shhhhhh.  I don't really like my children to watch much TV but I tried everything else and she'd only let me do really quick styles.  Braids?  Are not quick.  But, I did manage to get these 4 french braids ending in 2 ponytails done in one 24 minute Diego episode!  Just hoping the style lasts through tomorrow, too!

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Speaking of Little Girl, I was right in the middle of a conversation with my other kids and I knew she'd gone in to the potty, so I headed in to help her wipe, opened the door, and couldn't help exclaiming, "Whoa!  That's a lot of toilet paper!"  Thankfully it all flushed!  Mental note, need to work with Little Girl on toilet paper management; only 4 or 5 squares are needed for tee-tee!  Too bad the way she counts right now is "One, three, five, eight!"

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This was one of my favorite dresses from my 1st daughter's younger days.  I had to put it on Little Girl today because she's growing so fast, soon I know she'll be too tall for it!  Since she came home less than 3 months ago, she's outgrown for sure any of the 2T clothes she could wear, and now I'm finding much of the 3T things are looking small -- 4T here we come!  Thankfully we have all the sizes in hand-me-downs from Big Sister!

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I just love hand-me-downs. Maybe that's because I'm not the one wearing them, my 2 youngest children are!  The 4 year old is starting soccer soon and I was thrilled to be able to get down the "cleats box" and find a pair that fit him perfectly.  Add to those some shin guards and socks I also found from his big brother's early soccer days and the little guy is all set.  Hooray, no shopping trip needed!

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All set, except for some kicking instruction from the big brother!  "Not with the front of your foot!  With the side!"

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One last funny thing my 4 year old son says.  He refers to his middle finger as "tall man".  I have no idea where he learned this, not at home, so I'm assuming preschool.  Maybe there's a song about it??  Anyway, he slightly hurt a finger this week and I was looking at it, determined just a kiss was needed, and kissed his finger.  He looked down at the injured finger, smiled and said, "Oh!  That's tall man!"  Cracked me up!

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Happy Friday, Friends!

Find more Finer Things Friday and  Friday Fragments.

Bonding and Attachment For Real (Celebrate the Small Milestones)

You didn't think I was done, did you?  Nope, I have tons more to say on this topic and will likely keep revisiting it or not, who knows!

Previous posts in this series:

Bonding and Attachment For Real (An Intro.)

Bonding and Attachment For Real (Sleep)

Bonding and Attachment For Real (Food and Nutrition) 

Just remember, the purpose of this series is to convey our experiences parenting a newly adopted 3 year old from Ethiopia and is not meant to be taken as expert advice!

Part 3:  Celebrate the Small Milestones

My 4 year old son was the one to point it out.  Just last week, we pulled into the driveway after picking him up at preschool, I opened the backdoor of the car to let him and his 3 year old sister out, and he said, "Mom!  She stopped crying!  She already stopped crying!  Usually when we get home she's still crying!"

I had to think on it for a second because it was hard to focus on anything positive amid my annoyance.  Our new 3 year old, home for about 2 months at this point, had thrown a huge fit at his school because she couldn't play on the playground.  The playground has often been a point of contention with our new daughter.  You see my 4 year old son's classroom opens right out on the playground, so Little Girl sees it each weekday and some days after school it is opened for families to play on and some days (like when some children stay for and extended lunch bunch day) it is closed.  

Today was a playground closed day, I'd given Little Girl a heads-up about this fact before we even walked into the school yard, "Hey Sweetheart, no playground today."

However as we waited outside the classroom to pick up her brother, she wanted to play and I couldn't let her.  So the fit began. I had to hold her crying, tantruming self right there outside the classroom with several other parents looking on.  Thankfully his teacher had mercy on me and let my son out first even though I was not first in line and we were able to make a fast break outta there.

But still, I was embarrassed, annoyed, irritated with her behavior.  And frustrated that we were still at the point of her throwing such fits whenever she didn't get her way!

I had to wrestle her into her carseat and drive the 4 minute drive home with her screaming and kicking the back of my seat.  Lovely.

And, this little scenario has happened several times these past 2 months.  Sometimes because she doesn't get to play on the playground, sometimes because she just decides she doesn't want to be buckled into her car seat.  So, it made the whole repetition all the more frustrating.  And at times like that it's tempting to get discouraged, to think things are never going to get better.  That the hurdles of beginning to parent a child later in the game than newborn are just insurmountable.

But, my little 4 year old guy was right.

I had to take a deep breath and step back to see it.

She had quit crying in the 4 minute drive home this time.  And her fits when we first brought her home from Ethiopia lasted 20 or 30 minutes some times!

I was flooded with amazement at just how far we had come and then other things began coming to mind, all the ways God has already worked healing in our little girl.

So, my advice to other parents in the trenches is to celebrate the small (well, big to you) milestones.  Constantly be looking for forward progression in areas of behavior.  From day to day it can seem that there is no progress, but look back a few weeks, months.  Is it better?  High-fives all around!  Make cupcakes!  Celebrate!  Praise God for the progress and be encouraged that more is likely just around the corner.

And to bring some humor to the subject, now that the crying and screaming is subsiding, here's what Little Girl's fits have graduated to.  She lays on the floor silently pouting.

But, little girl is no dummy.  That floor is hard.  The pout soon moved to the comfort of the couch!

She does pouting like nobody I've ever known!

By the way, I didn't take these pictures just to poke fun at her on my blog, we've been talking a lot lately about emotions (well, on a 3 to 4 year old level) she and I, so I can help her better manage hers.  So, we make happy, sad, mad faces at each other for fun and I snapped those pictures to be able to show her and talk later when she wasn't upset about that feeling.

The next day she thought the pictures were funny and perfectly imitated her own pouting face!

Find more Thankful Thursday here.

First Ever Carousel Ride

There are unique challenges to adding a child to your family at the age of 3 years old instead of as a newborn, but also unique joys!

With my other 3 kids, many of their firsts happened when they were too young to really appreciate them, like airplane rides and zoo trips and Target shopping.  So, we never got to see their real reaction to the cool thing, by the time they were old enough to really communicate, the thing was old hat, exciting, yes, but not first-time-in-my-life-to-do-this kind of enthusiasm.

But my 4th child, who joined our family as a 3 year old from an orphanage in Ethiopia, well, there are tons of firsts that it's been so fun to experience with her.

Like this past weekend and her first ever carousel ride!  (Not too many carousels in Ethiopia, probably not any at all!)

Her face says it all!

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

It's just what little boys do to jeans!

It's been 4 years since his brother was 4, almost 5 and I'd forgotten about just how hard boys that age are on the knees of their pants.  But, now I remember.  It was the same when his brother was this age.  We've been through 3 rounds of jeans this winter season! 

Here's today's jeans casualty:

Thankfully today I found a pair of jeans in his size on sale for $7 at Target.  And, very happily it's nearly shorts weather in our part of the world! 

Anybody know if cutoff jeans are back in style?  My little guy may be sporting some this summer regardless!

I survived another week of the chaos!

Although she hasn't mastered the English language yet, Little Girl has tattling down!

Her tattling on a sibling used to be, "Mommy" followed by the offending sibling's name followed by her name all in an upset voice.  And she'd keep repeating that series of names until I did something about the situation that so upset her.

But this week she graduated to nearly full sentence structure: "Mom! (insert sibling's name)'s not letting me!"

If I've heard that statement once this week I've heard it a thousand times!  There are a lot of people in this house not letting Little Girl do everything she wants all the time!

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Having 4 kids, they are often talking over each other and I've seriously considered having one of those presidential debate moderators come moderate the dinnertime conversation every night so I don't have to - "Nope, not your turn yet, still his turn."  "You'll get a chance to talk in just a minute."  "Okay, you can tell us one more thing but then you have to let someone else have a turn to talk."

The funniest part about all the interrupting each other craziness is my 4 year old son's reaction to being interrupted, he hollers, "You're ERUPTING me!!!"  And I can't help but laugh every time because I immediately picture a volcano erupting and think that's probably a good description of the frustration he feels!

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Although Madeline The Puppy is now Madeline The One Year Old Dog, she still has plenty of puppy antics up her sleeve - if she had sleeves, which she doesn't, of course, because she doesn't wear clothes on account of the fact that I have myself and 4 small people to be sure are wearing weather appropriate clothes every day (hello challenging when it's 40 degrees F and 84 degrees F all in the same week!), so no way is the dog getting dressed!

Out of the blue one day recently, Madeline decided to attack the mail slot that had some outgoing mail in it -- a Netflix movie we were sending back.  I have no idea what the Netlix movie did to offend her, I think she was taking out some aggression at the cat that was walking up and down our front sidewalk taunting her and the Netflix movie was just an innocent bystander!

At least when she saw me photographing her destruction, Madeline was gracious enough to come pose with the evidence!  She has no shame.

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Happy Friday, everyone!  Congratulations on surviving the week -- no, wait, that's just what I say to myself, not out loud for all to hear!

Find more Finer Things Friday and  Friday Fragments.