"The Birds and the Bees Don't Compare to your Knees, Louise"

I was watching a show on TV the other day, as my kids were playing with Legos in the same room. I was being very careful to change the channel during certain parts of the show that were not appropriate for the boys to see. Well, I guess I didn't do a good enough job of editing...


There was a part where this teenager just had a baby and was trying to decide if she wanted to give it up for adoption or keep it. in the end she decided to give it up. Well, a few hours after the show ended, Jaden was all distressed and came up to me and said, "That was RUDE!" I asked him what he was talking about and he said that it was rude that the girl gave her baby away.

So I took this as a good opportunity to teach him about adoption. We have friends who adopted and so we talked about it, and how it's not rude, it's giving your child more than you can do by yourself. And also how happy it can make the new parents, who wouldn't have been able to have a family otherwise.

This led to more questions. He asked why some people can't have their own kids. I went back to our friends that adopted. I told him that sometimes there's a health problem with the wife, and so she is unable to get pregnant, or sometimes there is a health problem with the husband, and it prevents him from helping the wife get a baby in her tummy... ooooo!... THAT was my mistake.

He dropped it for a a while, but then out of the blue, later on that night he said, "Mom? So a boy makes a girl pregnant? How does he do that?"

I just froze. I had no words. No way was I going to have this conversation. So I tried to change the subject. Didn't work. "But HOW does a boy make a girl pregnant?"

I seriously didn't know what to say. But I DID know, that I was NOT going to give him the detailed answer. Besides, Charles and I already agreed that HE would be the one to have that conversation. So I just brushed it off by saying, "Actually, It's a HUSBAND that can help a WIFE get pregnant. So when you are a husband, then we'll talk about it."

Later that night I told Charles what had happened and he just looked at me and said, "What? Are you telling me that I have to talk about the Birds and the Bees... with my SIX year old?!"

I just laughed and said I was sorry, and that I didn't see any harm in teaching him about adoption, and that I had no idea it would lead to this. He laughed and said, "Crissy! He's SMART! He's going to make connections and figure things out. From now on, no more shows for YOU until AFTER the kids are in bed!"

I agreed. We laughed about it some more, and so far it hasn't come up again.

BUT....

The other day my baby kicked me so hard that it made me cry out loud, "OUCH!"
Jaden looked at me and said, "Awwww... Did she kick you really hard? In the nuts?"

I was laughing forever over this. But I guess this tells me that he hasn't quite figured out everything yet, so I'm okay!

Turning 30, and the Meltdown

Today Charles is the big 3-0. Lookin' gooooood! When we first got married, our goal for our family was to have 4 kids and be done with that by the time we turned 30. I guess Charles ALMOST made it. Just 7 weeks shy. :)

For his birthday (we celebrated yesterday) I made him his favorite "Heart Attack Breakfast." It's made up of breakfast sausage, cream cheese, scrambled eggs, and cheddar cheese, sandwiched between crescent rolls. For dinner we had the meal that my mom was going to make on Sunday. Since she got to go to Arizona to be with her new grandbaby and Kare, I took the food and made it up last night. AND I have to say... Jennie-O turkey rolls are the way to go. When I'm old enough to cook my own Thanksgiving dinner, it will be Jennie-O all the way. It's WAY easy and I think it even tastes better. :) So yes, we had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls and green beans.

After dinner it was present time! We decided to let the boys go oldest to youngest this time. Jaden gave him his card and gift...


...while Kaleb waited to be next.


Kaleb gave him his card


(which Charles loved, because it was his first card that Kaleb actually did the writing, himself)


... while Bradley waited... oh wait, no he didn't. We looked over at Bradley and he had just finished opening it himself. Guess there's a reason that the youngest usually go first.


I got Charles an Amazon giftcard...


Mom and Dad got him a card... Man, Charles was so sure that Dad had picked this out. He was SHOCKED when he learned it had been my mom. He said he's going to keep it forever because he couldn't believe Mom would ever buy something like this! Jaden kept saying, "I wanna see the hundred girls again!"


Then he opened his present from Mom and Dad.



So all in all, Charles received a gift card, a bunch of DVDs he'd been wanting, clothes and money. Nothing interesting from the boys' perspective. There were no toys at all. So what was there to play with? Wrapping paper!


This must be the strongest wrapping paper ever, because the boys each got to ride around on it 4 or 5 times, each. It was so funny how amused they were by the littlest thing. It was like, better than Christmas for them!


Once it finally started to tear, Charles crumbled it up into a ball and said, "all done!"


In tears, Kaleb uncrumbled it and asked if they could ride some more.


Daddy is TOO nice. They rode and rode and rode...

until... Check out this amazing meltdown.

Everyone was in tears. Only Charles and I were in tears from laughing so hard. I mean, seriously? Over wrapping paper? Next birthday we're just gonna SKIP buying presents and just give them a roll of wrapping paper!

I love Charles' sympathetic face...



And so, to cheer up the little maniacs, Charles gave them horsey rides. All is well again.


Happy Birthday Charles. Hope 30 isn't as bad as they say. :) We love you!

Quick Stories

1. We were all in the car, driving to a friends' house for dinner. I had to stop and run in to Walmart real quick to buy some ice cream. Charles asked me to hurry. I told him I would and I ran in, couldn't find the right ice cream, had to come up with something else, and then of course, picked the slowest moving line for checkout. While I was inside, this was the conversation in teh car:

Charles: "Ugh! She's taking forever! Boys... don't ever get married."
Jaden: "So what, you don't want any grandkids?"

Haha! Nice one Jade. :)

2. The last few months, whenever I take Kaleb and Bradley to the store, they like to run away from me and yell, "Where's my mommy?! Where's my mommy?!" At first I thought it was funny, but then I started getting these weird looks from other customers, and I wondered if they thought I was some kind of kidnapper.

3. We're still trying to train Bradley to stay inside his toddler bed at night. He probably gets out of bed 3 or 4 times every night, comes downstairs, feed us some excuse as to why he's out of bed, then gets sent back up. I really should be more strict with him, but he's just so cute. He always whispers, and has the biggest, cheekiest grin on his face, that it is so hard not to smile right back.


Some of his excuses thus far have been:

- "I have poop." (I swear he waits till bedtime for that last dump.)
- "Milk all gone." (But he doesn't bring his cup with him, so he has to go back up and get it. I followed him once to spy, and he grabbed his cup and just chugged it before coming back down for his refill. What a little liar!)
- "Here's my cup."
- "My light fall off." (The kids have book lights, and Bradley "needs" help attaching it to his book. But again, he doesn't bring it down with him, so he has to go BACK up and get it."
- "Here's my light." (Sometimes he "forgets" to bring his book too.)
- "Here's my book."
- "My peh-pay hurt. I need new diaper." (Sometimes I buy it and change his completely dry diaper. Mostly I just send him back up.)
-"I need this toy."

But after each time I send him back to bed, he will give me the biggest smile and whisper, "I stay in my bed now." Ridiculously cute kids are just too hard to discipline!

4. Bradley and Kaleb came with me to JC Penney the other day. We were just about done getting what we needed, when Bradley yelled, "EEEWWW! WHO TOOTED?!" I kind of stiffled a laugh because his enunciation is getting so good, and he just sounded so cute. But then he looked at me and said, while plugging his nose "MOMMY, YOU STINK! YOU FART!" I was like, "What? No I didn't!" But he kept on going... "YOU GO POTTY, MOMMY! YOU GO POTTY! YOU STINK! YOU TOOT! YOU FART!" Oh my gosh, I was so embarassed. What a little punk! I'll be the first to admit, that this pregnancy has been the most flatulent, by far, and about 90% of the stench going around my house, IS me... But I was not going to claim something I SO did not do! So I'm not sure which was worse... people hearing what my kid was yelling, or people hearing me argue with a 2 year old about who really tooted... Either way, my face was burning bright red, and I no longer think that Bradley is cute. The end.

Remember when...?

(I searched for the earliest family picture on my computer that I could find, and this was it. The story I'm about to share actually goes back 5 years from when this picture was taken, but it was the best I could do. So picture my sisters and I without husbands, and everyone is 5 years younger than this. Guess I need to buy a scanner and start archiving some older photos. Maybe if I ever do that, I'll replace this with a more accurate picture.)

Anyway... this is one of my best memories. It happened about 13 or 14 years ago. It's one that I most likely won't forget, but you never know. Either way, it needed to be written. Inspired so, by Jaden.

When I was in 10th grade, my family and I were traveling from Utah, back home to California in the middle of a snowstorm. I remember it was 10^th grade, because I was working on my chemistry assignments in order to distract myself from the pain. I really had to go to the bathroom, and had been holding it for a good hour and a half at this point. The next turnoff wasn't for another 45 miles but we were traveling like, 10 miles an hour.

I begged my Dad to pull over off the side of the road and let me out, but he refused because he thought we might get stuck if we stopped. I was sweaty, and so ready to burst. So my mom offered me an alternative. She picked up the empty Tupperware bowl that had been holding brownies and held it out to me.

I grabbed it gratefully and filled it to the brim right there in the car. It felt like a warm soup in my hands. There were little chunks of brownie crumbs floating to the top. It was beautiful... because it was finally OUT!

My 3 sisters were so grossed out as they held their noses and gagged. Well, I put the lid on top and handed it back to my mom. She informed us that she was just gonna chuck the entire bowl out the window, but my Dad said, "What?! That's good Tupperware! Just pour it out."

Being the considerate person that my mom is, she got on the walkie-talkie that we were using to communicate with the family traveling behind us. (Yes, this was before the convenience of cell phones.) She told the Collins’ to change lanes, so they wouldn’t get splashed. After they did so, she took the lid off, unrolled her window and... well, do you remember that we were driving through a snowstorm?

A huge gust of wind blew into the car causing the bowl to fly back at my mom. The contents of the bowl landed all over her, and my sisters who sat behind her. I remember my mom was wearing a denim shirt that was completely soaked on her right half. The walls and roof of the car were dripping with urine. I was sitting behind my dad, so I didn’t get any of it! Haha! But my sisters had the sense to duck under a blanket quick enough to avoid contact with the splash.

We were seriously dying. We all screamed and laughed so hard that we all had tears running down our cheeks. We kept hearing on the walkie-talkie, “Did you do it?” But for a while, no one could stop laughing long enough to answer. Good times.