Sandwich Art

We had A LOT of deli meat and cheese leftover from the birthday party. Friday I thought I might scream if I had to eat it one more time. In fact, I REALLY wanted to go to the mall to play and eat at the food court. If you ask my husband, nothing good comes from our trips to the mall. There's no excuse when the weather is decent, says he. So the small voice of conscience (and the attempt at discipline) won, and I decided to be inspired by the monkey sandwiches and try to make something cute with more turkey and cheese. I don't know what this is, but we called her Miss Mousie. She has a Ritz cracker head, mandarin orange ears, raisin eyes and nose, snap pea mouth and feet, pretzel arms and legs, and a broccoli bouquet of flowers. Pretty cute, if I do say so myself. Of course they still just ate her eyes and ears, but we tried...

Theological Quandaries

Big Sissy is starting to ask a lot of questions about God. I feel like I know something about God. I have a master's degree in knowing something about God, but I still feel at a loss about how to explain things to a toddler. I want her to know that God is all-powerful but not exactly in a super-hero way. I want her to know that God is loving but bad things still happen. I want her to understand His grace without taking advantage of it. These are hard concepts even for adults, but here's the way it plays out with us.

Q: Can God lift up our house? Wouldn't that be so cool?

A: (all in my head) I'm stumped because God is strong enough to lift up our house, but if he does, we're probably in the middle of a tornado or hurricane. That's not so cool. But if I say no, then she thinks God isn't strong enough/cool enough to do it. We've already told her that God is bigger and stronger than anything.

Q: God made the doorknobs and the bouncy seat, right?

A: (all in my head) I'm stumped because we've already told her that God made the whole world and everything in it. The doorknob and the bouncy seat are in the category of "things in the world," but God didn't make them. Sure, he made the raw materials and the engineers and gave them their brain so they could figure out how to design them and make a living doing so, but he didn't actually do that. If I say no, I'm contradicting the first premise. If I say yes, I'm not really telling the truth.

Q: Do bugs go to heaven?

A: (all in my head) I'm stumped because I don't believe bugs have a soul, therefore once we squish them that is just the end of their life. But she already knows the 2 alternatives when we die are heaven or hell. If I say no, she thinks she's sending all these bugs to hell. If I say yes, I'm not really telling the truth.

Sometimes when she asks me these hard questions, I just do what any other caring, intelligent, Christian woman would do. I pretend I didn't hear her. I'm praying for wisdom to answer her at the right time and at the right level. Sometimes I just don't know the answers! She's already getting too smart for me.

Eat My House But Don't Eat Me

When Big Sissy was a baby, she was in a music class at Covenant Seminary for seminary students' kids. It was wonderful, led by a very talented lady named Claudia, who I'm sure will be famous one day. Claudia taught us a song, which I think she wrote, about a worm. It talks about biting into an apple, and who did I see? A worm, a worm, a worm who spoke to me. He said please, please, eat my house but don't eat me.

We met that worm today. We tried to meet our friends in IL to go apple picking, but when we got to the friendly neighborhood orchard, they told us that they are not allowing picking this year. I guess it wasn't a good crop. To avoid the akwardness of just turning around to leave since we really there for the experience, not just the apples, we bought a bag of apples that were sitting on the table for sale. Cara suggested that we go get caramels and let the kids make caramel apples as a fun alternative to picking them today. Great idea, Cara. The girls were big helpers, unwrapping the caramels, poking the sticks in, and swirling their apples around in the caramel. Since Little Sissy isn't really big enough to actually eat a messy apple on a stick, Cara used her apple slicer and that's where we met our friend who looked up at her and sang, "please, please, eat my house but don't eat me." OK, he didn't really sing that. He just wiggled around like a worm being led to the apple slicer slaughter. Needless to say, we sliced all of the apples after that. Thankfully the girls were very happy with their "flower apples" and forgot they spent all that time getting them on the stick. Way to go, quick thinking mama. Almost nothing about the day ended like we planned it (no apple picking, no smores, no fire in the fireplace, no rain), but it was a super fun day with chili and sliced apples and apple cake and good friends. I'm happy with the surprise ending.

Gross-eries

Last night was "no coupon Thursday" at Shop 'n Save. We don't miss it at our house. I refuse to cut out a million little coupons, so this is the only way I can consistently get money off at the grocery store--an automatic $10 off if you spend $50. I didn't get there until 10:30 because I forgot it was Thursday, but there was a lady there in her velcro rollers and slippers. No kidding. I guess she forgot too. Apparently she thought she'd be the only one there at that hour. Not so. She glared at me as I passed her. I'm pretty sure I wasn't laughing out loud. I guess she was just mad that I was there. There was also a dad and his son there trying to shop from the mom's list. After discovering that neither of them had brought their cell phones, they had to ask me for help. They said I looked like a professional shopper. I think that means mom--ponytail, no makeup, flip flops. I'm thinking the other lady might have looked even more "professional" than me. I was thinking of asking her about how to get mold out of my shower tiles, but I refrained. She just looked like she would know. Anyway, the list said "choch chips." I know there's not a 2nd "h" in chocolate, but really... They were saying, "choke chips?" "choochoo chips?" I'm pretty sure even my husband could have figured that one out. Boys...

So I was on a mission to find some sort of goldfish cracker-type snack that doesn't have yellow dye. Big Sissy has an intolerance that gives her "diaper rash." She doesn't wear diapers now, but that sounds better than alternative ways of describing it. Anyway...I didn't find the organic ones my sister suggested, but I found some other really gross things. I'm not a health nut. I love snacking, but I do have a sense of what is healthy. I know you really should eat whole foods the way God created them. Processed foods are bad. Lots of fat is bad. Some of the things I saw tonight were just gross. Let's take over-processed food and make it even worse. Some examples are macaroni & cheese-flavored crackers and Burger King french fries/ketchup-flavored potato chips. Gross!!! That makes mac & cheese and french fries look like health food. At least they've only been processed once! What are the grossest things you've seen at the store?

How to Scare a Bug Away--An Experiment

My girls have postulated the theory that since bugs scare them and make them run away, maybe they could scare the bugs and make the bugs run away instead. Here's my interview with Big Sissy, the famous Bug Scarer, on this theory. The interview is 28 seconds long, but I couldn't figure out how to edit the video. Sorry.

We conducted an experiment to test this hypothesis. Here is a spider before being scared.

Here is the same spider after being scared.

The beauty of science is that research is important (and worthy of publishing) even if one's theory proves false. Big Sissy and her assistant, Little Sissy, will be conducting further experiments to confirm these findings.

I'm the Shy One

I've always been the shy one in our family. My older sister used to make our new friends for us. Once I knew them, though, they were friends for life. I hated visiting churches for that reason, but my sister...she was sitting in some other family's pew by the end of the service. I've never been like that. It takes me a long time to get to know people usually. Even in college I hated lunch time because I would go down and look into a sea of unfamiliar faces. If I didn't see someone I knew I would jut go eat lunch in my car. (pathetic, I know) After college, when I moved to Springfield, I decided to just step out of my comfort zone and be social even if it felt awkard. Over time it got better, and I would venture to say that now I rarely feel shy or uncomfortable around new people. In fact, I am energized it by it now (thus the "E" part of my ESFJ personality profile--extroversion).

Tonight I was chuckling to myself at proof of this change in my personality. Last week I took Big Sissy to the 3-year-old choir at First Baptist. We don't go to church there. We visited there once, and never went back because it's huge. But they do have great programs for pre-school aged children. As I was dropping her off I saw a flyer for a women's Bible study during the kids' choir time. I wasn't able to check it out because Big Sissy was needing her mommy in a strange place, so I ended up staying with her the whole time. Tonight I dropped her off a few minutes late, helped her go potty (she does that a lot when she's nervous), then I walked upstairs. The Bible study started last week, and they were already going this week, but I walked in anyway. I don't know what made me do it. I think desperation for mental stimulation that I talked about earlier and a need for external motivation to do Bible study. Everyone was going around the room saying how long they'd been at that church and why they were at that Bible study. When it was my turn, I said, "I don't go here and I'm not sure what this Bible study is, but is it OK if I join you?" People laughed, and I was so proud of myself for doing it. There's hope for my kids, too. They won't always need their stuffed animals or their mommy to go to a new class. I can finally go to a class without my mommy or my sister. I have to be patient and remember it's part of the maturing process.

No More P's Please

I'm feeling inundated with "P" acronyms lately. Today the PAT (Parents as Teachers) educator called to get us signed up, and she was telling me about PALS (Parents Active in Lending Support). Already I'm immersed in PBS kids, PB&J sandwiches, and lots of talk about peepee. Next it will be PE and PTA, and then before you know it...PMS. No more P's please!!!