In Case of Emergency

Last night for Family Home Evening we read a story from this month's Friend about being prepared in case of an emergency. For part of our activity we talked about what to do if the smoke alarm goes off. I actually demonstrated what he should do by lying on the ground and yelling out "Mommy, Daddy, I'm in the dining room!"

We also had Peter memorize my phone number by making it into a song. And we wanted to make sure that he knew our real names, not just Mom and Dad.

Bryan: Peter, what's Mommy's name?

Peter: Mommy

Me: What's my real name?

Peter: Margot

Me: That's right. And what's Daddy's real name?

Peter: Sweetie.

Maybe I should call him Bryan more...

How to Be On Time to Church

We arrived at church today during the prelude music. I don't remember the last time that happened. Wait, yes I do. It was when the choir was singing and we had to be there to practice. That was in December, so it's been a while. Bryan is sick today so I was flying solo for the morning and at church, which makes our timely arrival even more amazing.

Do want to know the secrets to our success?

• Have your clothes set out the night before. (We did this by hanging the boys church clothes back up as soon as they got home last week. Yes, they wore the exact same thing two Sundays in a row, without washing them.)
• Accept the help of your fall-over-sick spouse in getting your children dressed.
• Don't stress over the fact that your son's hair is sticking up all over the place. This will save you precious moments that would have been spent trying to get him to stand in one place long enough to comb it.
  
• Take a shower late in the day on Saturday, put on mascara, and don't get too dirty. Next, ignore that voice of good hygiene that says you should wash off your make-up at the end of the day. The next morning, and this is key, don't shower. Put on lots of deodorant and pray that you don't stink. And bonus, you're still wearing mascara from the night before!

Hmm, I probably shouldn't fess up to that whole lack of grooming thing. But spending little to no time on myself really did speed-up the whole operation.

Fetch

My boys play fetch together. I'd like to say they're playing catch, but that wouldn't be true.

I think it's awfully cute.

Rock-a-bye Baby

You know the song Rock-a-bye Baby? The one where the child falls out of a tree at the end? I think that song is highly disturbing. It's a lullaby and therefore meant to soothe your child to sleep... because nothing says sweet dreams like telling your child they might fall from a great height and then have their cradle land on them.

No, we sing other songs to our boys at bedtime. Peter's current favorites are Hush, Little Baby and Come, Come Ye Saints. In spite of the fact that I don't like Rock-a-bye Baby, the song used to regularly pop into my mind when I was trying to come up with a sleep-inducing song. So I made up my own words.

Because I am highly forgetful and want to remember my alternate version, I thought I'd put it here. Are you ready to bask in my cleverness? Just kidding, no basking nessacary. I'll use the Cooper version, but Peter's name is easily plugged in. This means that all of our kids need to have two syllable names so I can keep using this song to sing them off to dreamland.

Rock-a-bye Cooper, in mommy's arms
I will protect and keep you from harm.
And when you cry I'll hold you so near
So rock-a-bye Cooper, baby, my dear.

Every Little Bit Helps

I have a picture in my mind of the kind of person that uses coupons. She's in her late thirties and is wearing a jean jumper with a floral print cotton shirt. She has an envelope in her hand that is packed and overflowing with small slips of colorful paper. Her gaggle of children are clambering for her attention as she digs through her clutch of coupons and the people standing in line behind her are checking their watches and wishing they had picked a different line. Yes, I know that I'm falling prey to socioeconomic profiling, and I realize that this mental picture is not accurate, but it's still the stigma that clings to the concept of couponing.

In spite of this, Bryan and I have been seriously considering entering the wide world of coupons.

Now, we can't go coupon crazy. Peter's food allergies and our general desire to eat healthy food cuts out lots of the stuff that coupons cover. You know, TV dinners, meals where you just add water, anything by Hostess. No, we like fruits and vegetables and make lots of stuff from scratch.

That said, is it even worth it for us to invest the time and money in clipping coupons. We've agreed that we would need to subscribe to the Sunday paper in order to make this work. I don't want to shell out that money ($91 for 52 weeks) if I don't think we're going to save even more than what we've spent.

So here's my question to those of you with coupon experience (and anybody else that wants to respond): Is it worth the cost of the Sunday paper to save money on toiletries and whatever healthy food might be on sale? Or should we just look for deals online? Are their other coupon tricks we should be aware of? Do I really need to buy a jean jumper to make this work?

Mini Cooper

Cooper was really little when he was born, 6 lbs. 9 oz. I remember thinking that he had bird legs. Part of the reason that he seemed so small is that Peter weighed 8 lbs. 8oz. when he was born. A two pound difference is quite significant on a newborn. A few days after he was born I announced that we had our very own mini-Cooper. (Well, I think I came up with it. The mind is kind of blurry in those first few weeks. And months.) Then he started to get nice and round and outgrew his 0-3 month clothes and I thought, "He's not a mini-Cooper anymore."

Cooper, at about a week old, hanging out with Grandpa Marc.

I was wrong.

Cooper had his one year well-baby check-up last week. I commented to Bryan a few weeks ago that I was afraid Cooper wasn't growing. In truth he is growing, just not very much. He put on less than a pound in the last three months. I asked the doctor if I should be worried and he said no, most babies this age have a dip in their weight gain because of their new-found mobility and that we would reassess the situation at Cooper's 15-month check-up.

His reassurance didn't do much to calm me though. I'm not pacing the floors at night, but I have been using my powers of deduction to figure out why Cooper is so little. Here are a few of my theories:

• Cooper has never liked solid food and therefore is not a voracious eater. We have been very slow to introduce new things (because of the family history of food allergies) so he's still been eating baby food, which makes me feel like a lazy mom. I've been working to feed him more age-appropriate meals.
• He's just inherited my short genes, which means while Peter is swimming and playing basketball, Cooper will be wrestling and playing football. (Yeah, right.)
• He's doing me a favor and staying small until he can walk so I won't have to carry around a giant baby.

Yeah, that's all I've got. Here I go comparing the boys again, but I think the real reason Cooper's size worries me is that Peter was always huge, off the charts in height, weight, and head circumference. Cooper is 25th percentile for height and 15th percentile for weight. At 12-months-old Peter was solidly into 18 month sizes. Cooper is mostly wearing 12 month stuff, but can still squeeze into some of his 9 month shirts.

He's like his big brother when it comes to head circumference: 90th percentile. My boys have giant craniums, what can I say?

Planning for the Future

Peter had a hard time falling asleep last night. At one point I walked by his room and saw him sitting up in bed. I went in to check on him:

Me: Peter, are you okay?
Peter: Mommy, I want...I want...
Me: You want what?
Peter: I want to go on a mission and then be married to a nice girl and she will be the kids mom and my kids will have four.
Me: You'll have four kids?
Peter: Yeah. And when my kids go to sleep I will be out there where you guys are.

I guess we make our evening routine of checking email and folding laundry in the living room seem like the happening place to be. Or maybe it's just that anything is better than going to sleep.

Watch Your Head

Have you heard about Natasha Richardson? She's the actress who played Lindsay Lohan's mom in the remake of The Parent Trap. She was skiing a few days ago, having a beginning level lesson, when she fell and hit her head on the snow. An hour later she complained of a headache and went to the ER. She passed away on Wednesday of a blunt impact to the head. She bled into her brain. And she walked around and talked to people while it was happening.

First, I think this is really sad, mostly because she was a wife and a mother. But second, this whole scenario freaks me out. I'm fairly clumsy. That means that sometimes I fall over. You know who else falls over? Peter and Cooper. A lot. Both boys currently have matching bruises on their foreheads from totally separate accidents. The scariest part? She had a headache, that's how they knew something was wrong. There was no obvious injury.

I'm a vigilant parent, a helicopter parent, a neurotic parent. But my boys still hit their heads. And ever since I heard about Natasha Richardson's accident, I've been wondering how to keep all craniums whole.

Peter likes to wear his helmet. Maybe we should make that a permanent practice. You think I'm joking, don't you? I am. Mostly.

If a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

...then what are a picture and a video together worth? And if they contain letters which make words, does their value increase? By the way, Peter organized his letters all by himself. He's actually been writing words. Some of them are real words (like when he wanted to spell hot and I suggested he sound it out, he did, and it was correct) and some of them aren't (like what he put on the fridge today: olfptvjic, which is an example of the kind of word he likes to sound out correctly and then tell me it's Spanish or French) but it's exciting to watch his brain work.

Just Say No

I had my first drug talk with Peter last night.

He graduated to Children's Chewable Tylenol this week. Well, he's probably been eligible to take it for just over a year now, but it only occurred to us on Saturday. He's been waking up every night crying and telling us that his knees hurt. Bryan and I both had horrible growing pains when we were younger, and Peter's symptoms sound very familiar to us.

On Monday night all three of the men at my house felt lousy. Cooper felt yucky from the immunizations he had gotten that day, Bryan was fighting the same cold that has had me coughing and sniffling for days, and Peter's "knees hurt." So all three of them were medicated before bed. Bryan handed Peter the allotted two pink, bubblegum flavored meds. Peter didn't know what to think of it at first, but he ate it.

Last night Peter was the latest to fall victim to this cold that's been picking us off one by one. He said he didn't feel well and was sniffling and couldn't sleep. I offered Wal-Mart's version of Tylenol and he accepted. Gee, it sounds like we really medicate him a lot, doesn't it? We follow all dosage guidelines, I promise.

When I came in with the medicine his eyes got really big and he started to smile. This was our conversation:

Me: Peter, you know this isn't candy, right?

Peter: I know.

Me: It's medicine.

Peter: Uh-huh.

Me: And you know that you only take medicine from Mommy and Daddy, right? (I can't take credit for introducing this concept. It's what Bryan had told Peter the night before. I was just trying to reinforce the principle.)

Peter: Yeah.

Me: And that means that you don't take medicine from your friends.

Peter: Okay.

Me: So if you're playing with Isaac (not my brother, different Isaac) and he says "Peter, I have this medicine. You should take some," what do you say?

Peter: (Laughing because I am being weird) No.

Me: And if Camden is playing at the playground and says "Peter, this medicine is really yummy, you should have some," what do you say?

Peter: (Laughing harder) I say no.

Me: That's right. You say "Nope, I only take medicine from my Mom and Dad."

They're never too young, right?