Shmoogie wanted popsicles last week so we froze two cups of juice. Now we must make popsicles every day, early enough in the day that they are ready to eat when Mr. P gets home from school, or else Shmoogie will wail. And Shmoogie's wail is really, really painful.
One of these tipped over three seconds after the photo and the buzz lightyear costume you have a glimpse of had to come off for a rinse.
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The remnants left after making 30 heart shaped jam sandwiches for Shmoogie's school picnic fill a 9X13" pan. I'm thinking make a baked frenchtoast casserole thing? But who will eat it all?
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Shmoogie loves her preschool and her preschool tells her that Jesus loves her and so Shmoogie is pretty fascinated by Jesus.
Just the other day, she was lamenting that Jesus is not alive anymore because she would have liked to see him. I asked what she would have liked to say to Jesus if she met him, and she told me she wouldn't say anything, she'd just look at him.
I'm sure Jesus wouldn't have been creeped out by that at all. Probably happened all the time, actually, little kids staring at him, saying nothing.
Shmoogie is also lately very very into pretend play. Especially if she can rope an adult into playing with her. This afternoon, she had me playing house. She was my neighbor and I was visiting and she had a baby so my kids (at first I said I had none, but she wasn't down with that) had to stay outside. They got to come in eventually, but then we were back to the topic of how many kids there were and Shmoogie was again dissatisfied. We needed another girl.
"Jesus lives in this world, actually, and I can go ask him to make another girl."
Oh!?
"Yeah, for our family."
She arranged some blocks on the floor and informed me, "Ok, the car's all ready. Do you want to come with me to go see Jesus?"
Who would pass that up? I did have to change my seat and buckle myself in, but soon we were on our way.
"Ok, we're at Jesus's house. We parked in his driveway, his car is over there," she pointed helpfully, then got out of the car and went over to what I guess was the front door.
"Ding dong!" She waited, then Jesus must have answered the door, so she said, "Hi! Can we have another girl for us?"
She filled in his answer, "Yes!"
And turned back to me, "He said yes!"
The interesting thing is that I hadn't really considered where we'd go from here. But Shmoogie had no problem with that.
"He's making it now," she told me, as she stood awkwardly in his yard. "It's going to take a long time," she let me know, "For her blood. Because she's going to be as big as me! She's going to be three and a half!"
We discussed this for a little while. The usual sizes and ages of new babies and all that.
This became boring and it was time for another status update, "He's making her with his knitting. Because that's how people get made."
Soon, much to my surprise, Jesus actually handed over the new baby girl, a tiny baby girl, Shmoogie insisted. A tiny baby girl puppy, which she soon cuddled into her neck with a look of motherly bliss on her face.
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Twilight extends well into the bedtime hour these days and Shmoogie and Mr. P are extending their ability to stay awake.
Where once we read and sang and left them in peace, we now read and sing and stay with them in peace (always a question whether Shmoogie will fall asleep before Daddy starts to snore, though).
Except now, all of a sudden, it's not so peaceful.
Daddy is trying to tell a story in the dimming quiet bedroom, but he keeps dropping off to sleep. Shmoogie pokes him, then yells in his ear, "DADDY!! WHY AREN'T YOU TELLING ME A STORY??" He tries, falls asleep again, and the cycle repeats.
Until Shmoogie gets bored and strikes up a conversation with her brother in the upper bunk. "Tyler won't play with me at school," she says, or something to that effect.
"If Tyler won't play with you very much, you shouldn't be friends anymore," her brother answers, his voice full of concern and wisdom, as if he absolutely never ever could be the boy that calls her "stinky poopy head!" pretty much every morning as soon as she wakes up.
They converse with increasing enthusiasm as I sit there in the dark, astounded and apparently unnoticed, listening to them chattering away over the gentle snoring of Mr. Right.
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"What type of spider is that, Mommy?" Shmoogie wants to know.
"I don't know honey, it's just a spider."
She is exasperated, "It HAS to be SOME type of spider!"
Mommy's patience thins a little, too, "Yes, it IS! I just don't know WHICH!"
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Mr. P has unbuckled himself while I am driving, so I deliver a stern speech threatening death in a car accident.
Mr. P: "But you never have an accident."
Shmoogie: (slightly tremulous) "I don't ever want to die!"
Mr. P: (excited) "You know, Shmoogie, if you never died, you would get to see what species comes next [after humans]!"
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"When I grow up," proclaims Shmoogie at bedtime, "I'm going to be a teacher."
I tell her she would make a wonderful teacher.
"Yeah," she agrees, "And I would do art and be at my school and everybody would see how tall I was."
I will decorate this post with this picture of "a rose" (the scribbles are "leaves"), a recent work of the future tall art teacher which I've been meaning to share:
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A sweet scene, Shmoogie sitting in the grass collecting wild flowers in a cup (I don't know where she got the cup, but that hardly matters).
Then she informs me as to why she is picking "all" the flowers - "So the bees will go away! Because I don't like bees!"
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In fact, just this morning, Shmoogie found "a dinosaur toenail" in hers! To think of all the treasures I have been overlooking!
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Mr. P slept in for the first time in a long time and I had to wake him up.
For the first time EVER, his first words were, "Happy Birthday, Mommy!"
To have a child old enough to recognize that you have a birthday, too, to remember it first thing in the morning and to of his own accord follow it up with singing Happy Birthday for you... this is a gift beyond measure.
He then told me he had been having a good dream.
"It was about the dwarves from the Hobbit and they were traveling and they found Indians* and they found carts and then they were all in the carts and there was plenty of food to eat and plenty to drink and they all lived happily ever after."
He rolled over and smooshed his face back into the pillow, "I can't find my dream. I want to find my dream again."
* I do try to avoid the term "Indians", but neither his school(!), nor Little House on the Prairie, nor Peter Pan are helping.
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