hot mouth.

early morning, hollis has crawled into bed next to me.
me: {kissing his face}
h: "mama! your mouth is so hot!"
me: "my mouth is hot?"
h: "your mouth is hot mama. why is it so hot?"
me: "ummm..."
h: "maybe there is sunshine in it?"

wolves.

h: "mommy. did you know that wolfs have all the smells? or i think they have most of the smells."
me: "oh yeah?"
h: "yeah. they have at least like 160 smells. wolfs do."

breakfast request.

yesterday, on the way to central market for our typical sunday morning there, hollis said:
"mommy. for breakfast i want a bagel. and then a taco. and then chicken and fries. and then a cheeseburger with fries and ketchup."

on yoga.

hollis: "mama. i like to do yoga. at school sometimes i do downyour dog."

hot out.

hollis, at pick-up one afternoon after being outside playing:

"mama! feel my sweatness!"

early in the morning.

hollis (as i'm waking him up): "i'm not very small, but i will always be your small baby, right?"

at a party.

[overheard at a bbq saturday night]:

annie: "i've been to disney land and lego land."

emme: "i've been to juiceland!"

hollis: "well, i've been to candyland!"

do you still blog?

i don't know. there's been a lot going on. and nothing, like sometimes happens. but it's all felt like too much to write about or adequately explain, so i've just been taking a little hiatus. i guess. but i'm still here, and i do plan to keep writing...

this past weekend we had spring weather and it was amazing. warm and breezy and sunny. we rode bikes and spent a ton of time outside.

the kids were really into valentine's day this year - my parents sent them some adorable cookies and they spent many hours sorting through their classroom valentines and trinkets all over the floor in their room. v-day isn't really my thing, but we made a pretty legit dinner on sunday night - filet, lobster tail, grilled potatoes, roasted broccoli, and smothered mushrooms. yes please.

hollis has been very three lately. so many feelings. so many tantrums. he loses it at least once a day, usually during transitions (to and from school, bedtime). we're working on a few different tactics to help him (and us) through this intensity...to varying degrees of success. the other day he was flipping out about something and i was like "i'm going to walk away before i lose my temper". he was like "where is your temper? ", so we had a talk about tempers and expressing our feelings in constructive ways. so a day or two later, he was starting to get upset and he busts out with "i'm about to lose my temperature!". he's such a rat but man, i love that kid.

knife skills and other things.

so i went to japan a couple weeks ago and it was awesome. one of the awesome things that happened was i got justin this gorgeous knives. these knives are sharp, as you might expect. one might even call them ninja sharp. anyway...sunday night i asked jb to chop up an onion for me so he could test out the sweet new blades...

(side note: justin has mocked me for YEARS about my knife skills (or lack thereof), but i would just like to state for the record that as of today i have not had an ER-worthy knife injury. i did jack myself up on a mandolin slicer like a year ago, but i just wrapped that thing right up...)

within a slice or two of the onion, we had a nice cut on his thumb. ouch. there was a lot of blood, and he wouldn't let me look at it (my dude hates the sight of blood), so i suggested we kick it to urgent care. amazingly, the bowmans were walking up to our house at that exact moment, so they were able to hang out with the kids while i drove him to the closest ER. amazingly, we were pretty much the only people there, so it was pretty quick. the doc suggested stitches, but said he could get by with steri-strips, which is what my needle-averse husband chose. there was a traumatic moment or two when the doctor cleaned out the wound (squirting some solution directly into it) and lots of blood happened, and jb would probably say the worst part was having to get a tetanus shot...but he didn't cry :).

anyway...i've been sure to provide plenty of mockery to aid in healing. 

in other news, this weekend was super rainy. all day rain on friday and saturday and most of sunday. the kids got creative with hiding places, ejecting the laundry from the hamper so they could occupy this nook. 

and, finally, on an unrelated note, i snapped this pic of hollis before school on monday. he "wanted to hug emme's pumpkin" before school. that kid, man. 

independence.

hollis is a pretty independent kid - he gets frustrated if we try to do something for him that he knows how to do himself. i have to remind myself to be patient and let him work through it even if i could do it way faster. i think this, more than almost anything else, is the great lesson to me as a parent.

anyway. there are times when hollis doesn't know how to do something or doesn't want to try. jb and i try to encourage him to do it himself (the biggest one lately is not wanting to pick up his own food - don't ask me where this comes from). his reply is "i can't know how to". i love it.

driving.

hollis is hilarious in the car, especially on the rare instances he is in the car solo with me. when i'm driving on a curvy road or even just going sorta fast (like 40mph), he will say "wheeee mommy you're making me bizzy!". i assure him i always drive the speed limit, but he insists it's a wild ride.

last night he and i were driving to the (super uneventful) open house at his school and he said "mommy i love when you go fast like the speed lemon and make me bizzy".

he is also super concerned with the music selection while driving. he will frequently interrupt conversation to ask "can you turn some songs on please?". he let me know yesterday that he likes the macklemore song can't hold us (the nah nah nah song), the dragon song (aka uptown funk), and some random song that was on the radio at that moment that i don't know if he'd ever even heard before.

first full day.

admittedly, i have had some nerves about this week. there are a lot of changes and a lot is riding on scheduling coordination during times when i am sitting at my office, and that makes me nervous. and then, this afternoon, this happened:

after-after school care called me

they were like "why isn't your kid on the bus?" (this bus is the source of all my afterschool angst, i swear)

i'm like...she should be on the bus, blah blah

so i call debra

the pre-after school coordinator person

and she's in a room like "amy? amy? has anyone seen amy?"

and i'm like it's EMME

and then she's like "i'm going to have to call you back"

so then i am freaking out and about to get in the car

and then after after school calls me back and they're like "never mind she is on the bus now"

this whole ordeal was like 4 minutes

but still

all my worst fears about this arrangement were realized in this 4 minute period.

also, i am so glad this is not a cautionary tale. 

in other news, last night before bed, hollis said "i have a secret, mommy. my eyes are very fancy." 

when i was a baby.

the kids are saying some hilarious stuff these days. i want to be better about writing it all down because i know i'm going to forget/do forget so quickly.

hollis says "right now" about everything. we should really get it on video because it amuses me to no end. he says it in place of please, or in addition to it. it's not demanding, exactly, because he also uses it as verbal filler. examples: "i'm wearing this spiderman shirt because right now" or "can emme give me my spoon right now". he draws the now out so it sounds kind of like noooow in his baby voice. i love that.

the other thing the kidlets are obsessed with lately is "when i was a baby". they start with that, and then they whisper whatever random thing they think of and then lose their minds giggling at it. for example: "when i was a baby, i wanted to take off my eyeballs" and "when i was a baby, i wanted to be naked all the time". i have no idea where this comes from, and much of the talk involves nipples (potty talk is a favorite pasttime of theirs these days), but it is pretty funny.

also, hollis has been weirdly gracious in his language. this weekend in port A, he was eating breakfast and he just busted out with "thank you so much for making this delicious dinner for me, mommy". such a sweetheart. we were sitting on the beach at one point and he crawled into my lap and said "this was a really fun day mommy". i don't know where this awesomeness comes from either, but i'll take it!

dudes.

there is a lot of construction on a street near our house that we drive on every day when taking the kids to school. it's been going on a while, so we talk about it a lot - the people doing the work, digging up the street, all that stuff.

so, this morning, we were driving by and this was our conversation.

hollis: mommy, are they doing that work on the street?
me: yeah buddy, those men are fixing up the pipes for the creek!
hollis: no, mommy. those not mens. those dudes.

hollis says.

stethoscope = step-o-cope

mommy: "do you know how much i love you?"
hollis: "ummmm...three minutes!"

anyone: "hollis, are you a big boy?"
hollis: "no, i'm just hollis."

emme: "we're going to go to cate's house and have hot dogs! and i'm going to have a hot dog, and cate's going to have a hot dog, and hollis!"
hollis: "no! i don't want you to eat hollis! don't eat me!"

things kids say.

ek, last night at dinner: "i can open my mouth so big, i can literally fit a grownup in it."

hollis, last night during our walk when he made me carry him instead of running: "no, i can't run. i too big. i too strong."

green day.

today is "green day" at the kids' school, since next week is spring break and they will be off for st. patty's day. they were pretty excited to rock the green clothes they have. pro tip: buy more green clothes.

hollis was eating his cheerios this morning and i was talking to them about green day and what they were going to wear and do. he said: "mommy, it not green day! it dark outside!". so astute, my child. so astute.

saving daylight.

i hate daylight savings. with a fiery passion. i think it is absolutely a bizarre torture created specifically for parents of young children. i especially don't understand why it happens in early march now. it makes no sense. i could rant for a good long while about this, but let's just say...the past couple of days have been rough. the kids want to party until 9pm (which is really 8pm!) and when i drag them out of bed at 7 (which is too late, really, and also...it's 6!), it makes for lots of grumpiness. for them and me. it's dark, man. it's not ok.

anyway. i haven't really been in a blogging habit this year. there's been stuff going on, but not really any events per se. i dunno. we got new phones (finally), so i've been trying to get back in the habit of taking more pics, but i'm just not feeling it. meh.

we're taking care of my friend's french bulldog this week and she is mega cute. the kids love her and she's doing great with them, in spite of not really ever having been around kids. she and pippa battle, and she does attempt to sneakily steal hollis's stuffed animals in the evenings, so that's mostly hilarious.

this morning hollis got super mad about breaking his banana in half while he was peeling it. toddlers, man. emme and i were laughing at him (because it was funny) and he said "i not being funny right now! i crying right now!" which of course made us laugh even harder.

talking.

hollis is talking a ton these days. i love hearing how he expresses himself and thinks to convey what he wants us to know.

he's been snotty for about two weeks now, post flu, late winter awesomeness. he crawled up in bed with me the other morning early. he likes to whisper and tell me things at this time. that day, he was rubbing his leaky nose and he whispers "i need a nose napkin". obviously, it's been nose napkin ever since.

also, this weekend we were at a bookstore and i heard a mother talking to hollis. i turned around and there was a little girl - probably 12-18 months. i asked if her name was hollis (it was) and i looked at hollis and said "hollis! her name is hollis too! isn't that neat?". he looked at the girl, then looked at me and said "no."

anatomy lesson.

hollis has been interested in body parts lately. particularly his nipples, which he is confused about. are they a belly button? a penis? no, something else altogether.

this morning he was walking around naked after poo-pocalypse 2015 and he pointed to his nipples and said "this is nipples!" and i said "that's right!" and then he pointed to his navel and said "this is beebo! where other one beebo?". if you've got two nipples, you need to belly buttons, right?