"a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down"

I feel like one of the advantages to having these twins a little later in our life is that now we have our older kids to experience it with and enjoy the fun. It's important to remember to have some fun every once in a while. If you don't then I'm pretty sure it's more a case of "when" you'll crack rather than "if" you'll crack. One way I like to unwind is to mess with Jackie and the kids. An oldie but goodie that I like to do with Jackie, is wait until she puts a baby on the couch and surround them with pillows to keep them from falling off while she runs to grab their diaper. I wait until she's gone and I carefully move the baby onto the ground then wait and see how fast all the color drains from her face when she comes back in the room. Now that every mom reading this hates me, you should know that I've quit doing that one because Jackie threatened me physically, and I don't want be the boy who cried wolf , just in case they do fall off something for real.

I do think the kids get the worst of of the pranks. Case in point, when we were in the NICU with the babies they had these huge syringes that they would feed them with. When I saw those syringes naturally I had the same thought that any dad would have, "That thing would scare the crap out of my kids!" so I borrowed one of the humongous syringes from the hospital, filled it with apple juice, threw a huge needle on it and told the kids a story. I told them that Grandma Shoell had called and told us that all the local pools had tested positive for kryptospiritum (sp) and that if they wanted to be around the babies they would need a Gamu-globulin (sp) shot. How they reacted at the sight of needle said a lot about how each of our kids handle pressure. Lindsay immediately broke into tears; Kade looked frantic and started crying; Kalli impressed me the most, she kept quiet, made herself look smaller, and located the nearest exit. Me and Jackie couldn't keep a straight face for long, and eventually the kids were able to laugh about it. I like to think that by the time they are grown, our kids will have built more character than any of their friends.

Kalli's really getting into the role.

 

Kade still needs to work on his acting a bit.

 

Good tidings we bring!

We had another great Christmas this year with some exciting things happening. The family got a piano (used) as well as some other news. The Loveridge family is up-sizing! Jackie is pregnant, and from what the doctors tell us from the ultrasound, she's having twins. This news has brought mixed reviews. Everything from cheers and slaps on the back to awkward silence, but either way we are pretty excited. It's still early and considering our past attempts at getting pregnant we are still a little cautious that everything will turn out good, but we've done a lot of praying and fasting over the past 2 years and definitely feel like this is an answer to our prayers.

We've received some good reactions and feedback from the kids, they are all super excited. We told them on Christmas morning, which got some "happy" tears from Lindsay, and a little bit of confusion from Kalli. I tried to load the video but it's not letting me, so just text me if you want to see the video.

Kalli is a bit more of a realist. Me and her ran to the store yesterday, and as we were walking down the aisle she said "Do you think you and mom can handle 5 kids?" I had to hold back a laugh, but I asked her what she meant. She said " Well Kade pees in his bed a lot, and baby's don't sleep very good, so you and mom won't get a lot of sleep." Just when I start to underestimate one of the kids they show me just how observant they are.  Yeah we're a little nervous. I guess we're hoping for some divine intervention.

Kade has been nothing but giggles and one liners since we told him. He is convinced that they will be a boy and a girl, and he wants to name them Hopo, and Chopo. I'm not sure which of those is the boys name, but we'll cross that river when we get there. He also said that the boy can share his room, but not the girl. And that his new roommate won't cry at night because he'll tell him not to. I can't wait to see that work so we can use his own technique on him.

He also told me that he know what we need to do when the babies need to go poop. We can hold them over the toilet while they poop, because their bums won't fit on the circle part (seat) of the toilet. That's a pretty good idea. It should really help us save on diapers. (I'm realizing just now that a lot of Kade's stories involve poop, I hope that changes)

Well regardless of whether we're crazy or not, we are excited and are hoping for the best. All prayers for Jackie and the babies health are welcome.

Not a creature was stirring

We had a great Christmas here in the Loveridge household. Everybody got what they wanted (or what we could afford) and we got to see some family that we hadn't seen in a while. All in all it was a great holiday season. There were some funny instances, some Christmas related and some not. The first two involve a mouse.

Kade- We had been out as a family caroling or roasting chestnuts or something and when we got home and opened our garage door we saw a mouse bolt behind a board. This kind of freaked everybody out - except me and Lindsay - Jackie spent the better part of an hour trying to reassure Kade that there was no way for a mouse to use the door to get into our house. Eventually the only thing that convinced him is that Jackie told him that the mice don't have a key to our door.

Kalli- I went that night and bought some mouse traps so that everybody could sleep easy. I thought it would be educational to show the kids how a mouse trap works. I was very careful as I set it and explained what happens when the mouse touches the yellow fake cheese. Then I told them not to touch it and I turned around to get a pencil to set off the trap. Apparently the fake cheese is more irresistible than I thought because I heard a snap and turned around to see Kalli (bless her heart) with her hand in the trap and a look of shock on her face.

Lindsay- this last one doesn't involve a mouse, but it does include a trap. On Christmas morning while we were all eating our Christmas ebelskivers, Lindsay came up next to me with the note Santa had left for the family. She was looking at the note, and in her most nonchalant way said "Hmmm Santa's handwriting looks an awful lot like your hand writing dad." then she set a pen on the letter and said "why don't you write something" I calmly said under my breath "why don't you be quiet". I guess she's just growing up despite my wishes. I must say that was pretty smart of her to figure out that Santa had forgotten to leave a note and asked me to do it for him.

Interpretation's

We went to Bear Lake a little while ago with some friends and family. I'd love to post some pictures but I didn't get my camera out the whole time we were there. Maybe I'll track some down later. Anyway It was the trip home that things began to get a little silly. As we got closer and closer to home our kids giddy-level seemed to get higher and higher.(I apologize to my Hispanic friends for my children's behavior). As we got close to home Kalli started screaming out the window at passing pedestrians "HOT SAUCE FOR SALE!!!!" Lindsay and Kade thought this was hilarious so Kade started screaming it out the other window. Then Kalli upped her game by being more specific about her customers shouting either "HEY MEXICO PEOPLE, or HEY AINGLUSH PEOPLE, . . . HOT SAUCE FOR SALE" We would have stopped them but it was pretty funny, and we figured nobody could tell what the heck they were saying anyway.

As I was typing this I remembered a message I'd gotten on my phone a while ago that I forgot to tell Jackie about. Lindsay called me and left me a message that she was a teacher from Mexico that wanted to order some copies of my children's book. She must think that Luigi is Mexican, because she was using her Super Mario accent. Anyway I'm expecting the pesos to start rolling in from Mexico.

I was also going to post some translations to those who may have difficulty understanding Kalli.

he-bout: used in place of "what about" or "how about"

zert: a sweet treat eaten after dinner.

Satan George: A city in southern Utah known for it's golfing, shopping, and triple digit temperatures; making it a popular vacation spot for George aka Satan.

Example: When we are in Satan George, he-bout we get some ice cream for zert.

It's a bird, It's a plane, It's Jackie and Tiff

This Wednesday Jackie and Tiff took off for Arizona to go visit with the Gray's. That night Kalli was helping me make dinner when she asked me if mom and Tiff were flying in the plane at that moment. I told her that they probably were. She was quiet for a little while then she got this little goofy smile on her face. I asked her what was funny, and she said " That would be funny to see them flying in the plane with there hair blowing all over and everybody screaming". Apparently Kalli thought that planes fly with all the windows open and that it's just shear pandemonium for the entire flight. I can't blame her for thinking that, she's never been on a plane before. She's right though, that would be funny to see.

Can you hear me now?

Communication is kind of fascinating to me. There are so many different ways that people can communicate with each other these days. It’s also amazing how early in childhood it starts. I’ll try to keep this short (but that might be impossible).

First off there’s Kade. He’s really turned into quite the talker. Like any other kid his age he just repeats everything he hears. I guess that’s why everybody has funny stories about kids at that age repeating funny little things, like racial slurs and swear words. Kade hasn’t said anything too embarrassing, he prefers to express himself through song. He has a beautiful little song he sings which is a mash-up of “all the single ladies” and “the sun will come out tomorrow”. Normally I would say that these two songs go together about as well as diarrhea and a trampoline, but Kade has managed to blend them seamlessly together.

When it comes to communicating Lindsay and Kalli take it to new heights. My first example of the brain trust is when I walked into the bathroom and found Kalli crammed under the bathroom sink screaming something into the cutout for the drainpipe. Just as I’m about to ask what on earth she’s doing I hear Lindsay’s muffled response come back through hole. Apparently they felt that this way they could share secrets back and forth between the two bathrooms. I guess it would be secret as long as no one else was in the house at the time to hear the muffled screaming. I would make fun of them but I seem to remember a couple of other kids who made a pair of peep holes that looked into the back of Mom & Dad's closet in the old Orem house. Want to know what a suit coat looks like in the dark?

They don’t use the bathroom to communicate anymore, because for Christmas they got some sweet texting devices ($10 at Wal-Mart). Kalli doesn’t read very well yet, so this is usually how it goes down. They sit down a foot away from each other and Lindsay starts to type out her message (it’s usually “Kalli what are you doing?”) then Lindsay tells Kalli that she sent her a message and takes Kalli’s texter to read to her what she just sent. Then Kalli gives her answer to Lindsay who then responds and sends the message back to herself. I could only bear to watch this whole process once. Come to think of it I would probably rather have them yelling at each other through the bathroom walls.

Why does Tigger Stink?

I agree with my wife in the sense that I don’t really like the idea of using a blog as a self brag forum, but I do like both of my sisters approach of using it to keep track of funny, cute, special things my kids do or say. So, although it won’t be very often I did want to keep track of some of these moments for myself.

I think that kids are hilarious. Occasionally they are trying to be funny and succeed, but for the most part I think they are funniest when they are not trying. Today my second child, Kalli, started telling me a joke while I was home for lunch. She said “Dad, why does Tigger smell bad?” Having heard this joke before, I tried to act like this was new material. Then she said” because he eats poo!” Personally I think that her punch line was far better than the original, and showed a lot more creativity. After I stopped laughing and told her the correct version of the joke (to avoid her telling anyone else about Tigger eating poo.) She decided to give me a disclaimer that it’s not good to eat poo, because it’s unhealthy. I have no doubt that with her new found knowledge, she will go far as a dental hygienist. She really is a sweetheart, and I think that joke made the second half of work a little more bearable.