29 June 2011

This just made me laugh. Getting kids out of the tub the other night- Nut Brown had already been dried and dressed and was hanging out on my lap while Rose Pink finished washing her hair. When she got out she came into the bedroom and Nut Brown exclaimed in a shocked tone of voice, "Rose Pink! I don't want to see your nakedness!" which is only funny because they were naked together in the tub not five minutes before!

Very sadly for me, Nut Brown has lost the tight confiding grip for holding hands that small children have. He's growing up. He doesn't always want to hold my hand any more when we go out. :(

28 Jun 2011

My parents were here recently visiting for a weekend. Nut Brown yesterday: "I'm going to make a picture of Grandpa because I miss him SO MUCH." Here he is with his portraits of Grandma and Grandpa.

Tonight, getting ready for bed, he gets a cup of water and has an enormous gulping drink. Pulling the cup away from his face, he sighs and says, It's a good thing there's oxygen in here.

24 June 2011

When my parents were here visiting two weekends ago (hooray for Grandma & Grandpa!), Nut Brown was discussing what happened at church with us at lunch afterwards.

Nut Brown: I got a bracelet too!

Rose Pink: Where is it?

Nut Brown: ... I ... I think I left it at church.

Grandma: Last time I saw it, Nut Brown, it was in your pocket.

Nut Brown: (lights up) digs around in pocket and triumphantly produces said bracelet.

Nut Brown: (digging further) and I have this too! (holds up a thumbtack, with the point towards us) The shield of DEATH!

2 June 2011

Nut Brown coordinates his outfits. He came downstairs the other day in an orange sweatshirt and orange shorts and announced, "I'm a carrot!" When he wears red, he tells us that he's an apple.

He drew a cactus in the driveway, and shouted, "NO PAT NO! Don't sit on that!" (Name that Dr. Seuss book.)

Mr. Brown has gone to Dallas for a niece's blessing, so I get to stay home from work til Monday afternoon. I'm so excited by this - the staying home bit. Although it is completely weird to have him gone. Usually it's me that leaves and has to subsist via speakerphone conversations.

26 April 2011

We have some plastic Oreo cookies that are part of a matching game Gia gave us awhile ago. The kids usually use them as toy food, having correctly identified them as cookies. We were visiting an older couple in our ward a few weeks ago, and they set out a bowl of Oreos for nibbles. Nut Brown came up to me all round-eyed: "Those are just like our play cookies, Mom!" Poor deprived child. He's never had an Oreo to actually eat.

10 March 2011

Nut Brown's vocabulary is increasing tremendously. Last night he said, "I'm a super hero! I wave my hand and voila! I can fly!" (He knows the word voila! and how to use it!)

In the car tonight, Rose Pink says, "We're eating dinner at home tonight" and Nut Brown says, "No we're not, polka dot!" and reduces us all to giggles.

4 March 2011

Last night, after FHE, kids were sitting on my lap (oh my sweethearts!) eating girl scout cookies for treats (okay, I was eating some too).

Me: Okay! Time for scriptures! Let's go in the nest! (our front room with a couch)

Rose Pink gets up and runs into the nest.

Nut Brown: No!

Me: You can sit on my lap in the nest, too, Nutty. Let's go!

Nut Brown: (stubbornly bracing his feet to make it clear he's not moving) No!

Me: Come on, little dude! We can read together.

Nut Brown: No! I want more cookies!

Who can resist? Held hostage for 'more cookies'. So I promised him cookies for breakfast. Then I forgot the next morning. But that's okay, because he did too.

3 March 2011

Nut Brown has an invisible friend named John. Last night kiddos were pretending to be Kung Fu Panda characters (Rose Pink was Tigress (I know you saw that coming) and Nut Brown was Tai Lung) and when they needed a sparring partner, Nut Brown offered to call John up from the basement for Rose Pink to practice on. Rose Pink was in complete consensus. Later, Nut Brown announced that his invisible friend John was actually a girl, and s/he was pregnant, so s/he could be Po. I completely love the logic there.

roar

Most favorite shirt of the smallest person in the house. It says, "Nobody's bigger than me!" and when Nut Brown reads it, it's usually accompanied by "RAHR!"

16 February 2011

During a discussion last night during dessert about 'good calories' and 'bad calories' (i.e. calories from an apple are better for you than calories from cake) Nut Brown declared that calories from dessert are good for him because they're dinosaur calories!

Ever since Rose Pink's birthday party, Nut Brown has been fully engaged in planning his own birthday party this year. He wavers between a 'dinosaur party' and a 'monster party'. Either way it involves a volcano. He is struggling with his guest list, however. He wants an all boy party, since Rose Pink's was an all girl event. He also really wants to invite his sister and I. Decisions, decisions!

16 February 2011

As part of a discussion during dessert about 'good calories' and 'bad' calories (i.e., calories from an apple are better for you than calories from cake) Nut Brown announces that calories from cake are good for him because they're dinosaur calories!

Ever since Rose Pink's birthday party, Nut Brown has been busy planning his own. He wavers between a 'dinosaur party' and a 'monster party', but either way there is to be a volcano involved. He also struggles with who to invite: whether or not Rose Pink & I are invited depends on the day. He wants it to be an all boy party like Rose Pink's was all girls, but there's only one little boy his age that he knows.

19 January 2011

Last week Mr. Brown was planning to make an Indian dish with cauliflower, and he prepped the cauliflower (washed and chopped) and put it in the fridge. Nut Brown discovered it, and ate half of it raw before Mr. Brown got around to making the dish a couple days later. Every time we asked him what was in his mouth, he'd say, very mushily, 'cawyfowuh'.

18 January 2011

Last night Nut Brown invited us to play hide and seek. He thought it was so fun to be hiding that he'd start to laugh, so finding him was never a problem. And if you took too long finding him anyway (more than ten seconds) he'd stick his head out and shout, "Is anybody there?" It was tons of fun. Eventually Mr. Brown turned out all the lights and we played sardines, which was also fun, although Rose Pink was a little scared by how dark it was. We told her that it's just like the game she used to play called 'darky schlarky' where you turn all the lights out and sit in the dark. Mr. Brown was wearing black and found the best hiding place, where none of us could find him - in our closet. (Oh, probably shouldn't have told you that!!) But the funniest part was finding Nut Brown by the sound of his giggles.

petrified

Yesterday Nut Brown found the remains of a Christmas cookie (iced, with sprinkles) in the bathroom drawer with the hair stuff. What? You think you misheard? So did I. No, it was really there, in the drawer with the barettes and elastics, and when asked how it could possibly have gotten there, Nut Brown replied solemnly, "Magic."

9 January 2011

Nut Brown loves to wrestle. He is ready and willing at any time to jump on and punch anyone who indicates willingness. Since Rose Pink outweighs and can therefore outgun him, she will often join in. We have had several happy times lately rolling around on the living room floor. Today Nut Brown took on his daddy and punched him in the kidneys and then on the bum until his father rolled over and tickled him. Mr. Brown will put up with a lot more of this than I will! Thank goodness for daddies!

15 December 2010

Reading scriptures at night, Nut Brown asked us what 'behold' means. We told him that 'behold' means 'look'. Now whenever anyone reads 'behold', Nut Brown interrupts to say, "Behold means look!" Last night he'd gone out to get a drink when I ran across a 'behold' in the verse. I said it loudly, hoping he'd hear it and shout back from the kitchen, but instead Mr. Brown and Rose Pink chorused in unison, "Behold means look!"

12 November 2010

Nut Brown has a few speech difficulties that I want to record for posterity, especially since Mr. Brown has started working with him to get over them. First, he has a little bit of a lisp. I asked him to put some socks away the other day and he said, "Oh! Thesthe are my sthisther'sth sthockths!"

Also, he drops the 's' from the front of words like 'spoon' and 'stir'. So he asks for a 'poon and tells me that the movie is too 'cary. This is the one that Mr. Brown has told me very firmly that I have to stop encouraging. But it's so cute!

15 Oct 2010

Both of my little goblins are going to be Batman for Halloween (just for a change from being a witch and a cat) but one of them's going to be called Batwoman. We were trying on costumes last weekend and there was a fair amount of crime stoppage happening on the first floor of our house that involved capes. On Sunday Nut Brown produced this coloring page in nursery at church. Notice that he colored the little girl just like his sister: copper hair, as she always defines it, and he colored her clothes black and told me that he drew her cape on. He always surprises me with how much more grown up he is than I expect him to be.

6 October 2010

As Nut Brown has been learning to use the toilet, I have been so touched to watch my husband teaching our little boy how to do 'man things' (urinate standing up). It is sweet to me to think about the other 'man things' he will teach Nut Brown as he gets older - shaving, for one, and how to treat girls and women, and how to bear the priesthood with respect and reverence.

I told Mr. Brown how it makes me all mushy inside, and he smiled and said that it makes him happy, too, but also angry, because there was no father figure to teach him 'man things' when he was growing up. I'm glad that he can do it for Nut Brown.

27 Aug 2010

So in the car, on our vacation in Utah, we're driving about an hour, and Rose Pink asks Mr. Brown to tell her a Princess Rose Pink story. Princess Rose Pink stories always start: once upon a time, long ago and far away, lived a beautiful princess with red hair and blue eyes whose name was.... and Rose Pink shouts, "PRINCESS ROSE PINK!". That night we were all tired, so Mr. Brown tried to get Rose Pink involved in helping tell the story.

Mr. Brown: One morning Princess Rose Pink received a message from the dwarf chieftain (is anyone surprised that it was a dwarf? Me neither.) asking for assistance! So Princess Rose Pink mounted her trusty steed Fluffy and rode to the dwarves' mountain. What is wrong? she asked the dwarf king. Oh help us, Princess Rose Pink, said the dwarf, for we are overrun by zombies! (Zombies are popular in our house lately.) See, mighty Princess, look here? And she saw a whole cavern full of zombies fighting the dwarves and moving inexorably forward. There were hundreds of them! What does Princess Rose Pink do?

Rose Pink: Princess Rose Pink runs away. She runs all the way back home to get Prince Nut Brown.

(Prince Nut Brown was falling asleep in his seat but revived when he heard his name.)

Nut Brown: Prince Nut Brown kills all the zombies with his axe! Whack! Whack!

Mr. Brown: With his axe?

Nut Brown: From his father! It's silver! Whack! Whack! They're all dead!

Mr. Brown: And then what does he do?

Nut Brown: He climbs up to the top of the mountain!

Mr. Brown: What does he see?

Nut Brown: He sees a dead dragon.

Mr. Brown: How does he know that it's dead?

Nut Brown: It's been eaten a little bit.

Adrian: Well, if there's a dead dragon, that must mean there's dragon treasure around here! (Is anyone surprised that the chronic rogue felt this was an opportunity to jump into the story? Me neither.) You should look for it! Climb around the mountain and see if you find a cave.

Nut Brown: I go in a cave.

Mr. Brown: What do you find?

Adrian: Treasure!

Nut Brown: Another dragon! It's alive!

Adrian: Run away! Are you going to kill it?

Nut Brown: No! I have my axe. And my two swords. They are named... um... (insert five minute discussion about what the swords are named, and I don't remember now)

Adrian: So are you going to kill the dragon?

Nut Brown: No! He fixes my swords. They're broken. And then I kill more zombies!

Rose Pink: Princess Rose Pink gets out her sword, too, and goes to visit the dwarves.

Adrian: As Princess Rose Pink prepares to attack the zombies with her sword, she suddenly feels weak and wobbly. Her muscles won't do what she tells them to! She begins to collapse on the ground! What are you going to do?

Mr. Brown: I smell a hidden magic user.

Rose Pink: Ummmm....

Nut Brown: I take Princess Rose Pink to the dragon! So he can fix her!

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That was the first time that Nut Brown demonstrated his interest and capacity for telling his own stories. Last night he asked me for a story again and we started with Prince Nut Brown setting off to explore, and staying overnight in a barn on a farm.

Adrian: Early the next morning, Prince Nut Brown is awakened by the farmer hollering, "Git outta here, you no-good varmint!" Prince Nut Brown runs out of the barn and sees the farmer yelling at a gigantic chicken, as big as the barn. "bock bawk bokk" says the chicken, and then it lays an egg as big as the table!! What does Prince Nut Brown do?

Nut Brown: (with very round eyes) He lays an egg too!

Adrian: He what?

Nut Brown: He lays an egg too! Out of his nose!

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Another time Prince Nut Brown was riding on his steed with his daddy on his way to the Mountains of Doom (it was Nut Brown's decision to bring his daddy on this quest) when a tiny groundhog popped out of the ground in front of them and warned them about not continuing on their quest, for they would surely come to a BAD END if they pressed on. Then the groundhog dove back down its hole. What did Prince Nut Brown do? He dove down the hole after the groundhog.

This type of storytelling is entertaining for everyone. He keeps us on our toes.