Bells and Whistles: Six things for today.

1. So on Thursday there was no school. I think all the teachers had a meeting- not sure about that, but it was also a day for kids to go to work with their dads (or moms? I don’t know, the details about all this are a little sketchy). Anyway, it happened to work out pretty nicely for Jethro to go to work with Brett since he had an appointment in Bern anyway that day, and I really don’t like taking all the kids into Bern if I can help it. Sooo, when they got to work Brett had Jethro go through a tutorial for CAD on one of the computers (CAD –Computer Aided Design) and then Jethro went to work and designed WallE’s head. Isn’t that amazing?! I think it is. He didn’t have any help. Okay, so the picture doesn’t look all THAT impressive, but click on it, and you should go to the pdf, and that’s a 3-D image, so you have to click it and drag it around and see it move.

I told Jethro he doesn’t even need to go to college- he’s already set to be an engineer, and Brett said, “Well, being an engineer isn’t just using CAD, you know.” hee hee.

2. Speaking of Brett’s work, lately he’s had the pleasure of skinning a sheep’s head. I don’t know why he always ends up with these kinds of projects—at Purdue he scraped skin from a pig’s hide to collect cells. Now he’s skinning a sheep’s head to get the skull for use in experiments (sheep’s head being less expensive than humans). He says it’s actually much weirder to do this kind of thing at work, where there are all kinds of rules and regulations and you have to wear gloves and disinfect everything so carefully. I know, you’d think doing something with gloves on would make it LESS gross, but apparently to Brett, it’s more natural to do it with your hands.

3. On Sunday Hazel asked me what she should write, and I said “Ten things you love about me.” So she did, because she is awesome.

Her note says: Dear Mother hear are ten Resens wy I Love You. 1- You Teach me wat I need to do. 2- You kook for me. 3- You Buy Clothse for me. 4- You Read to me. 5- You play with me. 6- You Sing with me. 7- You listen to me. 8- You love me. 9- You help me. 10- You buy Toy’s for me.

4. The other day at the dinner table I told everyone to say Orrin on the count of three, so we did, and he looked at us, surprised, then after a few seconds, his face crumpled and he started crying, and he laid his head down on his arm and whenever he looked up at me, he would get sad again and start crying again. It was so sad, like, “Mom, how could you do that to me? I trusted you.” So sad. Pretty funny.

5. So, I just looooove that Talmage talks now because it is the cutest thing ever and he’s always saying things in funny ways. He is fairly good with pronunciation, but of course there are still little things he does wrong. He backs a lot, like when he says ‘get’ it’s ‘gek.’ I know I’ve said this before, but I absolutely ADORE that Jethro and Ethne are Lello and Henny.

The other day the girls were a little late coming in from playing outside, and I said, “I wonder where those girls are. I hope they’re not lost… and living with a mother bear.” (We found a children’s book at the second-hand-store about a little girl who goes into the deep, dark forest and ends up living with a mother bear.) And Talmage said, “Let’s go gek them.” And I said, “But I don’t know where they are.” And he said, “In deep woods. Dawk woods. Wiweee WIWEEEEE scawy woods. But don’t worry, I bite (fight) the bad guy.” HA ha.

One afternoon when Jethro and Hazel were at school, he had a stick or something and kept trying to get Ethne to fight with him. He kept saying, “Bite, Henny! You bite me! I bite you!”

The other day I asked him what he was going to be when he grows up, and he said, “BATMAN!” (Thanks to a friend of his who was Batman for Halloween and then seeing a costume in the store.)

Another time he was trying to get me to do something on the computer, and for so long I couldn’t figure out what it was. It sounded like, “yoobdoob” and I finally realized he was saying to go to youtube. Ha. Smart kid.

On Sunday we were talking about Christmas presents and I told him that once I got Brett a gun for Christmas and he said, “I… I… I… Me too want dat.”

Of course, talking also comes with its drawbacks. He has told me “You meanie Mom!” and, heartbreakingly, “You make me ty (cry) all time!” So sad! And in church one time, I told him to sit up or be quiet, or something equally offensive and he got reallllly mad and pulled the maddest face EVER and said, “You make me MAD now!” At least he’s good at recognizing his feelings?

It’s also really funny how he’ll come up and ask for something that he really wants and give the biggest, cheesiest, smile with his eyebrows raised high. He’s way too cute for his own good.