Dora, Dora, Dora the evil tyrant

Here's a conversation overheard from the back of our van:

We have these Dora pens where there's a little Dora figure on top of a spring at the top of the pen. The other day, Rebecca was playing with the pen and then broke the Dora off of it. She held it up to show me.

"Look daddy, it came off"
"Oh well", I say
"But that's better now anyway, because now she can fight."
"Fight?"
"Yes, this is the mean Dora"
Emily: "And she's fat too"

(Here is where I could have taken the conversation to explain that fat people are not bad people, but I was more interested in the mean fighting Dora)

Rebecca plays some more, and I hear her say (to the other toys in the back, speaking as mean Dora)

"Come out you guys, so I can put you in hot lava and make you dead"

Yeah - awesome parenting there.

I like to ride my bicycle

Here's a healthy warning to those of you with kids: Don't decide on a whim that you want to go for a bike ride.

BAD DECISION!

The first bike ride of the season is always an exercise in frustration. First of all, it means climbing over the mountains of crap in the shed to extract the bikes. This didn't prove to be all that hard this year - maybe I put things away properly last year. (which, by the way was done AS the first snowfall was happening)

Ok, fine... next step is to put the trailer together. That was pretty easy this year too (now that I've done it a million times)

Then I realized that my front tire was flat. No problem - we have a compressor... only Georgina has borrowed it to fix their car tire. D'oh. Ok, so I can load the bike into the van and drive to the gas station. Except that with 3 car seats and the usual piles of crap in the van, there's no way the bike's fitting in there. Alright, next option - remove the tire. Done and done.

Ok, so now, back from the gas station, it's time to put the tire back on my bike. Hrmmm - the brake cable is so tight that I can't get the tire back on and have the brakes connected. Will solve this later. Next step - attach the trailer - no problem.

Now we're ready for kids to come outside. Helmets at the ready. Turns out that Becca's head doesn't fit her helmet anymore. So it's time to switch with Eve.

This is a process that involves cramming helmets on heads, swearing over the straps, dealing with one baby who hates helmets and one 3-year-old who complains when getting her hair brushed.

Ok, we finally get all helmets adjusted. By this time, Eve has lost it - hates the helmet, hates being in the trailer, has already gone through an entire bottle.

Almost ready to go, and I remember that my brakes aren't connected. Kathryn and I try to work together to re-attach. No luck. So, I have to go grab a ratchet from the basement. Which means unlocking the house (for the fourth time). As I'm pulling the cable through the screw, it schwings (technical term) back and the nut goes flying.

5 minutes later, we find it in the grass and re-attach the brakes. Ok, finally ready to go (after re-filling the milk bottle).

Turns out that it's an incredibly windy day. Eve screams the whole way to Sobeys. The tires on the trailer are low, so are the other tires that I didn't pump up. Kathryn goes in to Sobeys to buy treats while I head over to the gas station. Woops - their air hose is broken.

By this time, all we want to do is get home. Eve is placated with Malteasers for most of the way home. She actually makes a happy sound at one point. We finally make it home, sore-assed.

Next time will be better????

(Author's note - this was only slightly exaggerated, but in the end, it was still a good time).

It's a bird! It's a plane!

A few months ago, we were driving home, Kathryn and I saw an impressive shooting star. While it wasn't as impressive as the Edmonton Fireball, it was still pretty cool - and lasted for about 20 seconds or so.

Kathryn, (who immediately regretted it as soon as she opened her mouth) says to the girls "Look girls, a shooting star". Now, keep in mind that Emily can't find things in the house when they are on the floor directly in front of her.

Neither of the girls saw it before it burned up - cue the whines and cries. So Kathryn says "Oh no, I was wrong, it was just an airplane".

Rebecca ate it up, but Emily continued to snivel, pout and moan ("why do these things always happen to me").

Becca, in her meanest yelling voice, turns to Emily and says:

"EMILY! IT WASN'T A SHOOTING STAR. MOMMY SAID IT WAS JUST A PLANE!"

(and was probably calling her Triplet or Crank in her head)

Rebeccisms

Rebecca never ceases to crack us up with her wackiness... here are a few examples:

Emily is big into spelling things (part of being in Grade 1 I guess), so she often calls people by spelling their names. As in "Hey, M-O-M-M-Y, can I have some milk?". Rebecca, ever the imitator of the extreme coolness of her big sister, has attempted to do this too. When we visited Janine a few months ago, she tried it out on Kathryn. Her spelling of mommy? A-N-N-O-Y.


The other day, I took some toy or something away from her because she was playing with it instead of getting her shoes and coat on. (The issues with our girls getting ready to leave the house will have to wait for a future post). In her extreme frustration, she looked at me and said: "Dad, you ...... CRANK!" - this must equate to the worst word she could think of!

Supermess

Ok - another blog post about Rebecca - who seems to be the source of life's frustrations and funny moments.

Rebecca has an innate ability to make a complete mess of herself no matter what she's doing. I swear she can cover an outfit in chocolate with a single chocolate chip.

So anyway, after one especially messy treat, I asked her how she gets so dirty all the time. Her answer?

"I have a super power"

Bedtime woes

A couple of weeks ago, we were going through the standard bedtime routine, which generally involves carrying protesting kids to bed, then having them come out of their room for any number of made up reasons.

On this particular night, we actually convinced Rebecca to go in to her own bed (as opposed to Emily's bed, the floor in our room, or even the floor in the hallway). A couple of minutes later, she comes out with Emily telling us that she can't sleep because "there's this in my bed".

Upon further investigation, we find that she had puked in her bed the night before, and that the puke had now dried up on her sheet, pillow and blanket.

How you can puke in your sleep and not notice is beyond me. How you can sleep through someone puking in the bunk-bed below you and not wake up is also beyond me.

Just go to the effing potty!

Ok - so I absolutely HATE potty training. Rebecca is contrary at the best of times - but try and convince her that doing something is great and fun....

After a few weeks of Pull-ups, we decided that it would be a better idea to put her in real panties, so that the consequence of an "accident" (read on-purpose) is much greater. We were doing pretty well, until she went and hid behind the chair and pooped.

Alright, so that was an "accident". Mom and dad are sad, but not angry... clean, clean, clean (puke in your mouth a little). Kathryn asks her if she needs to pee, since she didn't. Might as well have asked her if she wanted her arm cut off, judging by her response. Ok, fine, new pair of underwear, off we go.

So I come back in to the room 5 minutes later to find her hiding behind the couch, in a puddle of pee, with a sad look on her face. Cue Kathryn and I losing it.

I carried her upstairs and put her in the bathtub and just told her to wait there while I cleaned up. (In the dark, no less).

Just for some context - we took the girls to swimming lessons a few weeks ago, and Rebecca absolutely hated the shower (not to mention the rest of the swimming class - did I mention she's contrary??). So Kathryn decides that a good punishment is that she'll have to be showered off after peeing.

"No no no!" says Rebecca... so I turn the shower on and start spraying her legs.

Rebecca: "Oh, that feels really nice"

This is where Kathryn and I turn red trying so hard not to laugh.

Arrrr me mateys

When we were in England last year, Kathryn's brother Chris and sister Suzie convinced Emily that I used to be a pirate before I was a dad.

Don't ask.

I don't really know how the story started, but they ran with it - so now, I'm a lot cooler in Emily's eyes, because I used to be a pirate.

So anyway, we went on the riverboat yesterday, since Suzie can get us on for free. Every weekend, they do a pirate-themed cruise, where everyone dresses up as a pirate and they have pirate-themed activities.

A few years ago, I won a pirate costume at work (and by costume, I mean a pirate hat). So we decided that I should wear the pirate hat for the cruise.

When I showed Emily, she says to me, "Dad, do you have that hat from when you used to be a pirate?"

Awesome