Lucky Seven

David John turned seven yesterday. For his birthday, he wanted a red leather bible, some Magic cards and the movie Kung Fu Panda three. We were happy to oblige. I was especially tickled that he wanted a bible. His brothers had recently got their own so they could go to the local bible camp. He also received an awesome Minion ukulele from Grandma and Bapa and a new Oma blanket that is red and rainbow tie-dye.
The birthday boy spent his morning taking Grandma to the airport, eating cocoa puffs for breakfast and watching a favorite movie- Wreck-it Ralph. We then drove to Bowman for a rib festival that Daddy and the twins were already at helping a friend who had entered the rib contest. There was a big bouncy house and slide plus a bouncy water slide. I had never seen one of those. We bought everybody their first snowcones. (What kind of parents are we? I was surprised when the boys informed me that they have never had a snowcone before. For shame.) The rib dinner was delicious and our friend won first place! David John and the other boys didn't hesitate to bask in the reflected glory.
He opened his presents in Bowman and he had chosen some special brownies that he wanted instead of cake. He was one easy-going birthday boy.
Unfortunately, I have been a complete slacker in taking pictures of my boys especially when I am trying to wrangle them in a public area so I don't have pictures from the big day but I do have a cute one from the Safety Fair in the Spring and he's wearing a crown so it totally counts as a birthday picture.

More importantly, I have saved some of my favorite things that David John has said. A thousand words is worth a picture, right?

A Muppet of a Man

I recently got to spend a little time with just Gabe in the car. I can't even remember what the occasion was, but I really enjoy those one on one times.
Gabriel is a great kid. He's sometimes super silly and has been talking in crazy accents. He thinks that he's sounding Irish or Russian or French but somehow we're never quite able to guess what he's going for. He doesn't get discouraged.
One of the most delightful things about spending time with Gabriel is his laugh. If you can get him to laugh so hard that he almost can't breathe he sounds just like a muppet. I love it.
Anyway, on our car ride we were singing different random songs. His taste in music right now is pretty much Weird Al and ABBA, but for some reason I started singing "The Sign" by Ace of Base. Gabe liked the tune, but was confused about the lyrics.
"I thought you weren't supposed to look at the sun."
"No, it says 'I saw the sign' not 'I saw the sun'."
"Oh, okay."
"But we can make a version about looking at the sun."
I then proceeded to sing, "I saw the sun and I opened my eyes and now I'm blind. Life is concerning when your retinas are burning."
I was rewarded with the muppet laugh. Apparently that was the funniest thing, like, ever. We sang it over and over until we were both laughing so hard that we couldn't breathe. Oh man, I love that kid and his muppet laugh.
Gabriel thinks I should sell the song to a sunglasses company. I just might. He also thinks I should try and market my Gollum version of jingle bells that I made up for him at Chirstmas time.

"Jingle bells, hobbit steals my precious golden ring.
Once I was a halfling but I'm now an ugly thing. Hey!"

It's nice to have a kid who will laugh at your terrible puns and paraodies. Thank you my little muppet of a man.

Table Talk

We have a hard time with polite conversation around the table. The boys often want to play quiz-style math games or they want to mercilessly tease each other. A favorite tack is to pretend to see something and then when the person turns around chant "Baby look! Baby look! Now you're in the baby book!" So, I am always grateful when we can all just talk. Calmly. Without fighting. This means that I try to answer any question asked at the table as a means to demonstrate polite conversation. At breakfast recently, Gabriel asked, "Mom, can things be infinitely small?"
Wow, really? "Yes, things can be infinitely small just like they can be infinitely big."
"So, people can be infinitely small?"
"No, but the parts that make up people can be infinitely small. Like, we are made of cells which are made of organelles, which are made of DNA which is composed of proteins which are made up of amino acids which are molecules made of atoms and there are even subatomic particles like quarks."
Then there were questions about quarks and what might be smaller than quarks even.
At this point, the younger boys jumped into the conversation.
Benjamin: "Yeah, things can be really small! Like germs!"
David John: (still stuck on the idea of infinitely small people) "Germans could be smaller than a germ.... if you had a shrink ray."
Tobias: "We don't want Germans in our body! Yuck!"

We then had to talk about the fact that Germans and germs are not the same thing and that Germans are lovely people. In fact Aunt Tine is German etc. etc. By the end I think everyone was thoroughly confused. Maybe polite conversation isn't all it's cracked up to be. At least with the "Baby look!" game no one needed a nuclear physicist around to sort things out and Europeans weren't being accused of causing illness. I think we may go back to the math quiz bowl version of table interaction. I guess Marc and I will have to discuss it over dinner.

Toast

There is a rubber band in my toaster.
I don't know why, but this just really struck me today as a metaphor for my life or something.
Here I am, trying to make healthy whole grain toast for my kids but as it's cooking it doesn't smell quite right. I figure it's just some burnt pieces that fell to the bottom, but no. It turns out that smell was burning rubber. So I fed my children rubber-infused cancer toast.