Sisterly Love and Brotherly Payback

As each of our kids get a bit older and reach farther into the imagination and farther into realms of play, we are hearing more and more interesting snippets of things floating about the house sometimes. Since Evelyn is the oldest she is the ring leader and she also has the clearest speech so often her voice is the one we can make out the easiest- but not all of the time, I assure you. Here are a few examples:

• Evelyn was telling Liam's fortune with an Uno deck and Les heard that Liam would be really good at carrying luggage at an airport when he grew up.
• Liam wanted to give Ev a goodnight kiss the other night and she looked at him, shivered and said, "Let's not, let's hug, you're kind of...gross and boogery". "Oh-hay Sissy" he said and hugged her tightly and ran off to bed. 
• Everything here is Hogwarts and Harry Potter and they are frequently mixing potions in Ev's room, one day in passing I heard her say, "No! You can't touch that. You have too much monkey in you to actually MIX potions!! You just WATCH me do it and be my test subject!"
• Today while I was making lunch she had this bowl out and she was playing The Bowl Of Fire (after swallowing bitter disappointment that I was lacking a real goblet) and after boring the poor child with a long list of rules she finally got to the part and she said " And then there will be four very har...." at this point she eyes him up and down, changes her mind "Ummmm not so hard at all tasks to complete...."

We don't laugh this off and let her get away with it, we do try to keep her under control. But you have to admit she does have a certain...style. Believe me he gets back his own, his Grandparents can attest to the fact that he is not an innocent victim here. She is 8 and he is 4 and he is on the cusp of figuring out that he outweighs her (very nearly if you can believe it) and can lick her face or some other gross thing that brothers do. The very next day that she didn't want to kiss him? I had to drag him off of her because he was indeed VERY boogery and had her trapped in a corner and going in for a big back and forth smoochy woochy and enjoying it immensely, and well, she was about to have a mental break. He has also started mimicking her. Also he can just sit outside of her room and call her name over and over while she's trying to read. 

Actually if you think about it from a different angle, it's me they are after.

Also how DO little boys make so much snot?

Rites Of Passage

Les has been going through this thing call Initiation with the Coast Guard. It's kind of hard to explain but I'm gonna give it a go. In June of 2011 Leslie made the rate of E7 which is basically "Chief" and he got the pay of a Chief's rate, his guys called him Chief but in the eyes of other, Initiated Chiefs, he was just an E7.

Initiation is this process of nine weeks where a bunch of non-Initiated E7s are grouped together and put though a bunch of tasks. Some of the tasks have been community service, some of them have been about military history, some of it has been silly institutionalized hazing. Les has had to make two projects out of wood-from scratch. One to hold some of his paperwork from this process and one to hold his dress uniform hat.

It has been taxing and stressful. It has been especially hard because I have been all migrainy (yes that is my term and I'm sticking to it), he has had to do this Initiation and take care of the family and a me. He has had to take over driving Ev to all of her gymnastic nights. He has done all of the grocery shopping. Most of the cooking. The cleaning. Getting me to the Neurologist once a week. Getting by while I was in the hospital not only once, but twice. Surviving a hurricane evacuation. I just can not tell you how much pressure he has been under and he has been wonderful through it all.

As of last night Les is no longer an E7. He is really and truly a Chief. All Initiated and Official! We all get to go to a fancy dinner tonight to celebrate. Like I get to wear nylons! Ev is wearing some too- the very first time she is doing so!We are all so happy and proud of our Papa.

Chief Papa.
Chief Dillon.

The Halloween That Almost Wasn't

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Thanks to Sandy, our Halloween was delayed, but you won't catch me complaining because there are so many out there whose lives were impacted in far worse ways. We still have each other, we still have our lives and we still have power and the comfort of knowing that everyone of our friends are present and accounted for.

You must understand though that Halloween is indeed, my favorite holiday. And this year brought a delay, no carved pumpkins, no roasted pumpkin seeds, trick or treating in November, no Halloween  photo cards of the kids wearing their costumes. But all in all it kind of worked out because I was kind of too migrainy (yes that is now a new official term in my life) to really be up for any of that anyway.

Oh but wait! Evelyn did make a batch of Pumpkin Bread all on her own! And it was delicious! Also Liam turned four! ( I'll have to post those pictures too! OMG terrible mom alert)

Well, today it was 60 degrees or so and the sun was shining and so I took alot of meds and off we went for pictures. You can see Evelyn cracking up in some of them, that's because I was in a stopped position and lost my balance and Batman rushed in to save me by trying to push up on my booty and nearly got smashed by said booty. I went all National Geographic Photographer and just kept shooting because that is the true Ev! 

And Me! And Sissy Too!

My children are drawn to books, any book will catch their eye. On our recent evacuation to Philly due to Sandy we took along books because with us, books ARE a necessity. But Ev likes to look at what she calls "The Holey Bibble" (that is a whole other post in and of itself), she likes that the pages are thin, she likes that some things are written in red, she likes that some of it is about Jesus (see we are not TOTAL heathens). Liam wanted his turn with the Bibble because Ev had her turn.

So he was looking at the Bible and at the beginning where it has paragraphs written in different languages from around the world. Like an introduction part? He looks at the part written in Chinese and he points to it and exclaims "Mama! Like ME! Like SISSY!!" And he makes the sign for China. And then he proceeds to talk about what he sees for a good minute or two before he calms down. I have no idea what he was saying. I have no idea how he knew how to distinguish the Chinese writing on that page from the eight or twelve other languages on that page but he definitely put his little finger on the Chinese and he definitely knew what he was talking about.

Today I was watching a video on Facebook that a friend posted of her daughter being silly. It just so happens that they too, are an adoptive family and her daughter is from China. Liam came in about halfway through the video and he looks at the video, gets this strange look on his face and asks, "Mama? That Sissy?". I answer "No. That is so and so. Not your Sissy". I wanted to see how he would process the situation.
After a second or two, he grinned big and he said, "Oh! And Me! And Sissy too!"

Again he makes the sign for China on his chest, and he says" She have her Mama?" and I say, "Yes" he says, "Not you?", and I say, "No her own Mama" then he ran off to play.