ins and outs of four-soon-to-be-five

I wish to document everything. Which is a stressful desire. But I don't want to forget anything. Which is a stressful expectation. Sometimes I do well with lists and journaling and emailing and video-taking and everything feels right with the world. Other times I find my documentation woefully falling through the cracks and I get stuck in a rut of refusing to document anything ever again because what's-the-point-when-I've-missed-a-huge-chunk-of-time-already-and-let-me-just-curl-up-in-a-ball-and-try-to-convince-myself-life-will-go-on. Yes, my brain is dramatic about documenting life.

One of my documenting outlets is to jot down random things in a file on my phone. It pleases me to no end when I finally decide to read through the file and find so many lovely, often context free, gems of life that I probably would have forgotten if not for writing it down. Another perk is that they make for, what I think is, an excellent lazy-man blog post.

So, as hopefully my last post before the arrival of wee one numero 3, here is a glimpse of some more documented life before things get even crazier. And I will begin yet another file of entertaining tidbits.

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Lucas, noticing his heart beating after running amok for ten minutes: "I think my heart is doing a tango dance."

Me, reading ports of call to Jason: "San Juan, Puerto Rico, and then Basseterre, St. Kitts, and then-"
Lucas: "You mean, St. Kitts and Nevis."
Me: "What?"
Lucas: "It's not St. Kitts. It's St. Kitts and NEVIS."

Jason: "If I can't find monkeys, do you want poop?"

Me: "That jacket has gross stuff on it too."
Jason: "I  have kids who leak gross stuff on me. What can I do about it?"
Me: "Wash your clothes sometimes."

Lucas, seeing a mermaid: "I saw... a marine girl."

Jason, trying to entertain both boys: "Can you come help?! Lucas needs help with Legos and Finley is getting into everything! I don't know how you do it by yourself!"

Lucas: "When I'm 5, I just might make breakfast for you."

Jason, contemplating his life filled with little half-Asian boys: "There are just all of these people walking around with girls. How do they get girls?"

Me: "Do you think most people have to wander around their house looking for their bra pads?"
Jason: "No, because most people don't let their boys use them as yarmulkes."

Lucas, after going to the bathroom: "And THAT was the pee that I've held since the day before yesterday!"

Jason: "Don't put your face so close to the toilet."
Lucas: "Why not?"
Jason: "Your face has your mouth and nose on it and the toilet is dirty."
Lucas: "But... My mouth eats food and my nose has boogers so they're already dirty."

Lucas: "I'm going to be the next Dr. Seuss!"

Jason: "That's no place to keep nature!"

Lucas: "If I had $300,000... I would buy... presents for you and Daddy and Finley and a lot of other people."

Me: "So! What should we have for Easter dinner?"
Lucas: "We could eat some rabbit."
Me: "Rabbit? It might be really hard to catch the rabbits in our backyard. They're pretty fast."
Lucas: "Well... We don't have to catch them. Maybe we can just eat their meat."

Lucas: "Will tortellini make me big and strong?"

Jason: "I just think it's funny how you're creative."
Me: "That is funny. But how I am creative?"
Jason: "You made the bunny cake."
Me: "...because it's Easter. So, bunny. That's not creative."
Jason: "Yeah but, it was a bunny."

Lucas, running into the bathroom yelling: "Mommy Mommy Mommy! Bad news! Bad news! You have to help Finley!"
Me, trying to pull my pants up quickly: "Okay. Tell me what's wrong. What happened?"
Lucas: "It's such bad news! Finley is being squeezed by a boa constrictor!!"
Me: "Seriously? I thought it was something bad that had really happened, Lucas."
Lucas: "Well, I didn't say it was an EMERGENCY."

The unexpected drawback of getting your son Day of the Week underwear: every time he wants to verify what pretend day it is, he pulls down his pants to check the day. Moral of the story: Don't ask him what day it is in public.

My life the past few weeks:
Me: *goes pee* *brushes teeth* *sits on bed* "Ugh, I need to pee again."
Jason: "Babe, seriously?"
Me: "This is all your fault."

Layers

Lucas and Finley are almost ready to have a complete conversation. Finley only says about 35 words (at least, only 35 words where it's clear what he is saying and we know he knows what it means), but he has been very enthusiastic about trying to combine them in different ways to express his meaning. He was slow to start talking, but once he decided that words were good carriers for messages, he has been trying to say as much as he can with the few words he has. Lucas is also really interested in trying to parse Finley's gibberish. He's always making (sometimes outlandish, sometimes surprisingly accurate) interpretations for Finley. It's as though they're playing some sort of encryption golf, where on person has to encode as long a message as possible in as few words as possible, and the other person has to reconstruct the message.

It's not always easy. Yesterday, Finley was carrying a green car and a blue car around when I noticed he needed a diaper change. I put him on the mat and he evidently dropped the blue one. He was looking at the green one for a minute or so, when suddenly he said, "Boo, bees! (blue, please!)" I would know either of those words from him separately, but together I was a little puzzled at first. Uh, why is he saying... that? Since I didn't give him the blue car, he grew more insistent: "Blue, please. Blue, please, blue please. BLUE PLEASE. BLUE PLEASE! BLUE PLEASE BLUE PLEASE BLUE PLEASE!!" Why is he shouting that? Then I realized what two words he was actually saying, remembered he recently had a blue car, and gave it to him.

We're really hoping Lucas and Finley become good buddies for each other in the coming months. They get along fine now, but they are going to be getting less interaction from us for a while, so hopefully they will entertain each other. They've already made some progress in that direction. Lucas reads books to Finley. They play with cars together. They hide in tents together. Finley still wants everything exactly his way and doesn't know why that isn't what everyone else wants. Lucas often wants to do things without a baby stomping around, knocking everything down, and mixing everything up. But in between all of that, the number of times we suddenly realize that neither of us is watching either of them, and we walk into the other room to see them entertaining each other one way or other, has been steadily increasing. It's always really sweet and encouraging.

Each little fellow we make opens up a whole new layer of love in our home. You always think you are already loving as much as you possibly can. Then another person comes along that you love with your whole self, somehow without taking anything away from the other people you love with your whole self. Our little family keeps growing together and growing larger. We're now above average (well, curiosity got me and I googled it. Apparently the average number of children has been below 2 since 1978, so we were already above average...). It's a lot of love, joy, and sleeplessness for one house. We can't wait (well, maybe a little longer) to add the next layer.