Milestone Minutiae

Emmett has taken on an interesting speech pattern.  When he's making suggestions, he doesn't say, "I want to," or "I think we should," he says, "I move."  As in, "I move we go to Leatherby's and share a banana split" or "I move that after swimming lessons we watch TV."  So far, no one has seconded any of his motions.

Hoping for more cooperation at bedtime, I called out to the kids, "Five points for whoever is in their pajamas first!"  This is a ploy David invented a while ago, so it pops up now and then.  Emmett usually yells, "What are the points for???" but doesn't demand an answer before hurrying up.  Later when bedtime was nearly over, Henry asked me, "Did I get all the black and whites?"  I have no idea how "points" morphed to "black and whites" but somehow it did.  Since then, points have always been called "black and whites" around here.  Emmett gets the black and whites for getting in the car first, Henry gets the black and whites for being the first one under the age of four into the car (Henry always needs some black and whites).  Luke likes to get them, too, but seems less interested than the other two.

David wants to plant some street trees, so he's been pointing trees out to me on walks.  Today when I walked Jenny with the boys, Henry was pointing to trees and telling me about them.  "That one's a pine," he said, pointing to a silver maple.  "And I think this one is called Spruce," pointing to a purple ornamental plum.  I told him I thought it was a plum tree, and he said, "Oh yes.  A plum." Later on the walk, Emmett noticed cobwebs in a storm drain and noted that it hadn't been wet in a while.  Henry announced, "Cobs are spiders, and they walk around on cob webs."

Henry took a late nap, so instead of sleeping, he's hanging out with me and watching Wipeout.  He's chanting "you can do it you can do it you can do it."  Super cute. (This is the same thing that happened when Emmett and Luke first watched Wipeout.  I thought that it might be inappropriate for them to learn that it's fun to laugh at people wiping out, but they were genuinely cheering for the contestants.)

We've been to the local water park several times this summer, and Luke hasn't been on any of the waterslides!  He went on the big slides last year at Classic Skating, but these are even bigger than those - I think he's been a little nervous.  Today we finally nailed down which slides he could ride (without an adult, due to height requirements), and he still didn't seem that interested right at first.  Then while Luke stayed with Henry and me, Emmett went to the slides and rode a whole bunch, looking for the mildest for Luke to try.  After a quick snack, Luke decided to give it a try and, of course, he loved it.  They decided they wanted to ride together, so they got a double-tube (trading in their single-tubes) and kept at it.  The tubes aren't heavy, but the double tube is taller than Emmett!  Emmett lugged it up the stairs each time, though, and he and Luke had a blast.  I'm sure Luke will go straight to the slides with Emmett next time.