On Monday, we had a special family home evening at Marty's seminary classroom. He had gone over there Sunday night and blacked-out his classroom. It's crazy how just the tiniest blinking green light from a thermostat or something can let in a lot of light. Anyway, he finally got it to the point where you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. He was using it to teach about the darkness that fell over the earth after Christ died. Last year he and the other teachers at Queen Creek put together a video of clips from various movies showing the timeline of Christ's death and his visit to the Americas. In the middle of it there is total darkness with just a voice-over. We wanted the kids to be able to experience it, especially with it being near Easter. When it was over, we turned on the lights and saw that Brynn was crying. She buried her head in Marty's chest and just said, "I know Jesus is real." It was so sweet. Marty puts so much time and effort into his lessons. I know I've heard administrators encouraging the teachers to teach like it's their own kid, because it is someone's kid. This experience brought a lot of enlightenment to that teaching principle. Afterward we went to the gym to play around and ate blueberry muffins (Muffin Monday!). It was a good day.
On Tuesday, Brynn walked out to the car looking devastated. Gabe was having a particularly two-year-old day and was screaming in the car. I told her to tell me about it when we got home. But through the screaming I could just hear her telling Bryce all the reasons she had gotten a "red," which is a huge deal, she's never gotten a red before. I was biding my time and plotting all kinds of sinister disciplinary actions when I heard her and Bryce giggling about April Fool's Day. She got me. I guess her teacher sent everyone in the class home with a red ticket letter and got a good laugh out of it. The rest of the day was spent something like this:
Brynn: Mom, I'm going to throw up!! April fools!
Bryce: Mom, I'm going to throw up, too!! April fools!
Brynn: Mom, Batman just walked in the house!! April fools!
Bryce: Mom, I'm Batman!! April fools!
Marty had late meetings that day, so we'd been waiting basically until bedtime to finally give him the special parfait the kids made for him, made with sour cream instead of yogurt. I explained to them that you can't smile or laugh if you want to fool Daddy. In all the agony of waiting, I should have known exactly how it would go down. Just before they climbed into bed Daddy came home, and they ran downstairs, jammies and all, like this:
Brynn: Dad, we made you a parfait!
Bryce: There's nothing wrong with it!
Brynn: Hurry and eat it!
Bryce: Why aren't you eating it?
Brynn: Are you ready to eat it?
And so on and so forth. It was awesome. He was such a good sport, he took a bite. And then gave the kids the disappointment or their lives when he said it was the best parfait he'd ever eaten, and continued to eat it. Tuesday was a great day, too.
These days Gabe says, "Oh my goodness!" and "Oh, my!" over many things. I really don't see any possible way of that ever getting old. He has Brother's genes, which include a high pitched voice mainly audible to dogs. So yeah. It's pretty cute.
Also these days, Camille is still a total chatterbox. If she's not cooing and babbling, she's saying:
"Uh-oh" when I drop anything. You can imagine what a TOTAL klutz I've become since she started saying that!
"N-n-n-o! N-n-no!" when I do things she doesn't like, such as washing her hair or face.
"Ma-ma-ma" when she cries and gives me a totally pitiful face like I've just run over her dog.
"Hi," but that's more a mimic than anything else, I'm pretty sure she doesn't know what it means.
And I can't be sure yet, but I handed her a toy and it sure sounded like "thank you" (kay-kou). We'll see if it continues or if it was a fluke. I looooove this phase.
She's also incredibly playful and loves to be teased, played with, and chased. She is a little tease herself and loves to push a button on my phone and look at me mischievously while she waits for me to get after her.
I have this feeling she's going to be a drama queen. She already knows how to fake cry when she wants something, and dramatically throw her limbs from side to side when she's mad. That's at 11 months old. I have a feeling she is going to be a handful. We shall see. But for now, she is just a darn fun baby and I would do it all over again up to this point if I could.
As for me, I'm suddenly feeling self-conscious of my blog. I never worry too much about what I post on here because I know it's mostly a few family members and myself who are the only ones reading it. I write it quickly in any small snatch of time I can find. There is very minimal proof-reading. I know if I become an obsessive perfectionist nothing will ever get posted. But Marty, being the amazingly thoughtful and good husband that he is, sent my blog to the printer to be published as a surprise for my 30th birthday. I seriously can't believe he did it. I've been meaning to for a long time, but I wanted to edit and perfect every post before it became our physical record and history, so it always got overwhelming to me and I gave up. Well, it's history now!! I hope I didn't write anything too embarrassing... :)
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