Smiley's Songs

Kids grow up so fast, said every mom in the universe ever.

It's because this is true that I sometimes want to capture every living breathing thing that my kids do and say, and bottle it or record it or write about it or something... anything to preserve a perfect moment.

I have, however, convinced myself that writing about the little things will bore the socks off of you and I tend to blog about the bigger moments instead, or at least for the extremely hilarious and sometimes shocking things that Turbo churns out.

And then there is Smiley. Sweet, cute, cuddly, adorable Smiley. She gets plenty of my attention, which might not be obvious for how often I write about her older brother. While Turbo turns my head in wonder at a high frequency, Smiley melts my heart a thousand times a day. This girl is special.

Maybe this blog entry is really just for me, to capture something dear to me so I always have these thoughts to look back on as she turns yet another corner in her way-too-fast growing up-ness. She could grow out of this little moment any day now and I don't want it to be forgotten.

Putting Smiley to bed has always been easy. When we moved from a crib to a twin bed recently, we did suffer a short-term setback of her not settling in quite as quickly as she used to. It's not too surprising that, given access to the bedroom door like that, she would naturally be inclined to visit it several times before falling asleep. Instead of putting our sleepy girl into her crib, rubbing her back briefly, and then leaving the room, the twin bed now requires some extra cuddle time. No complaining here! Snuggling with this cuddle bug is the high point of any day.

The new routine includes singing her some of my favorite songs from when I was a kid. I grew up with a lot of music in my life, thank you mom and dad, and these little tunes are her current favorites, and they belong in the following order, no exceptions:

1) Frosty the Snowman
2) Tender Shepherd
3) The Pie Song, or as she calls it, "Baby Don't Cry" - from the movie Waitress.

Baby don't you cry

Gonna make a pie

Gonna make a pie

With a heart in the middle

Baby don't be blue

Gonna make for you

Gonna make a pie

With a heart in the middle

Gonna be a pie from heaven above

Gonna be filled with strawberry love

Baby don't you cry

Gonna make a pie

And hold you forever in the middle of my heart

Looking the song up on YouTube just enlightened me. I need to learn the rest of these gorgeous lyrics to sing to my gorgeous Smiley. She is my baby pie, my heart, from heaven above.

The Royal We

Tonight Turbo pushed back on pretty much everything I threw at him. I said "one more book," and he countered with, "two more books." Etc., etc., etc.

The last instance of the evening warmed my heart. I was tucking him into bed, sure I'd be able to avoid climbing into his bed with him and he pushed the point again, but it's his carefully chosen words that got the corners of my mouth to turn up.

Turbo: "You come in my bed with me." (It wasn't a question.)

Me: "No, honey. You're a big boy and you can sleep all by yourself."

Turbo, whining: "Nooo. Sometimes we need someone in our bed with us."

I caved. I couldn't help it. And so he fell asleep quickly with Lightning McQueen in one hand and Sarge* in the other. And I was assigned Luigi* to hold while we snuggled.

And I loved every minute of it.


*Sarge and Luigi are cars in the Cars movies. Luigi is pronounced Leeg-oo-ee in our house, by the way. This is something you'll need to know should you come visit.

He's Doing Math

I've always liked math, so tonight's little surprise from Turbo has got me excited beyond measure.

Turbo has long used the number 5 as a replacement for whatever number something might actually be. Before he could accurately count, he'd say everything was "five." Five Cheerios, five books, five more minutes of his favorite movie...

Since he's been able to count, we hear this less and less, but it still surfaces. The other day at preschool there were 7 of something on a tray and the teacher asked, "how many?" and Turbo glanced, waved his hand over the objects, and declared, "1,2,3,4,5." She asked him to try again, and when he counted he got it right. Sigh, I was so proud.

But it gets better.

Tonight, Turbo asked to read books with his "heavy duty diggers" - or, as he calls them, "heady-duty diggers" - and while it was a little LOUD during story time, as much from my own laughter as from the sirens on the fire engine, we made it work.

5, count them, 5 trucks in bed for story time.

Before story time, Turbo said, "I want 5 heady-duty diggers in mama's bed for books" and I said OK.

He ran up and down the stairs twice, ending up with 3 trucks in our bed, and I said to him, "Is that all of them?"

Turbo said, "No. Five more." He started to head back downstairs, then stopped, turned back, and paused to think.

Then he held up 2 fingers and declared, "No. Two more." and then ran back down the stairs as fast as he could.

I checked the bed again. 3 trucks.

Did he just do math????? Oh, my heart just geeked out a little bit.

Actually, Turbo

Tonight the word "actually" was used in sentence by Turbo. One of the most overused words these days, if you ask me, so I guess it's not too surprising that he picked it up. But still, it's like he started preschool and now he wants to grow up way too fast.

The context was when we were reading this David Shannon book:

On one of the pages there is a Santa ornament on the tree. Turbo pointed to it and asked, "What's that?"

"That's Santa Claus," I replied.

And Turbo said, "It's actually a pornament." (Yes, he said 'pornament,' that's not a typo.)


ps - I've you've never had the pleasure of reading these David Shannon books, I highly suggest you pick one or two up. There is almost always a naked picture of David streaking somewhere he shouldn't. The gist: David gets told, "no" a lot. :)

Not For Lack of Material

I miss blogging! It's been difficult to post any real content recently. Life is busy, but that's not anything new. I think life just accelerated all of a sudden and 'busy' became something to strive for.

While I'd sit at dinner each night, I'd often find great things to write about - Turbo gives me lots of material at dinner time - but by the end of the day I was spent. Unable to sit my butt down anywhere but in my bed or on the couch.

I secretly hope you've missed my blog too. :)

Here is a little gem from tonight. Oh, thank you, Turbo, for being the awesome kid that you are.

Turbo and I were in the bathroom tonight getting ready for bed. Have I mentioned to you that it takes forever for this dawdler to get on his PJs and brush his teeth? Oy vey. I've found peace with it by ignoring the clock and gently and consistently reminding him of the task at hand. I admit I've sometimes run screaming from the bathroom at the end of it all with a, "He's all yours!" to my husband.

Tonight we had spare time, so I sat back, relaxed, and watched the Turbo Show unfold.

As we were heading into the final stretch - jammies on, teeth brushed - I noticed a bit of black gunk in the corner of his left eye. My first thought was oh-no-he's-got-some-horrible-disease (do we ever stop worrying about our kids?), but that thought left my brain quickly, as I've gotten used to these freak moments of worry and find it easy to flick them away now.

Because of my amazing skill at being relaxed during the Turbo Show, Turbo was very willing to explore this new find with me. Amazing what a strong-willed child will be open to if you give him room to breathe.

I said, "Turbo, there is some dirt in your eye. Let me take a look."

He hopped onto my lap (me, sitting on the toilet), and I got out a hand-held mirror so we could look at his eye closely. The mirror served no help at all, since Turbo held it smashed against his eyeball and said to me, "Look. I'm holding the mirror to my face." Yes, sweetie, and thank you.

When I was finally able to fish out the black gunk - which, in the end, looked suspiciously like dark green crayon flakes - I showed it to Turbo on the tip of my finger.

"Look," I said. "This was in your eye."

"Oh." He said. And then:

"Now eat it!"

I guess if you're someone who eats your own boogers, then anything you dig out of your eye is also worth taste testing.

Sweet Lullabies

While reading bedtime books to Turbo tonight, he specifically asked for a book of songs.

I slowly opened the book to "Ba Ba Black Sheep" and as I began singing, this is how we rather quickly finished the book.

Me: sweetly, "Ba ba black sheep, have you any wool?"

Turbo: "YES!"

And then he turned pages as fast as he could until the book was closed.

There is a reason his nickname is Turbo.

NEXT!