They give them away for free at Trader Joes...

Background - CR is really into passing out stickers to people that purveyors give him freely at the checkout line, probably to just shut him up from asking for them. He saves them, cuts them into individual "portions," and gives them out. Family. Strangers at the grocery store. You name it, they are offered a sticker.

Tonight's good-night conversation.

CR: Mommy, do you want a sticker?
Mommy: I would love one - which one do you want me to have?
CR: You choose it, but I want money for it.
Mommy: (a little perplexed as to where he grasped the concept of currency) How much will it cost me?
CR: Twenty ducks
Mommy: (laughing) You mean twenty bucks - are you going to now start charging for stickers?
(I wanted to express to him that exchanging water fowl for adhesive is not necessarily something that flies these days, especially in that quantity...coincidentally we did go to the zoo today, but if I had only known about this proposition when I was there....hindsight is, well, you know...)
CR: I can make a stand and people can get them (I presume he is referring to the lemonade stands that are so prevalent in our town this summer - not sure how successful stickers will be in competition with the lemony liquid portals for those who pass by...)
Mommy: (while walking downstairs) Okay sweetie, I will make sure you will have payment on your bed when you wake up in the morning for my sticker...
CR: (while I walk down the stairs) I am sure you can find a buck in your wallet if you look...

Since when did CR become so fiscally driven? I am sure B has some part of it, and if I forget to put that dollar on CR's bed before morning, I am sure there will be harsh repercussions...

Everybody needs a "day"...

Mommy: What should we do for Daddy for Father's Day?
CR: I don't know - what do you want to do?
Mommy: It's next weekend so we need to decide soon
CR: When is it going to be Kids' Day?

Misunderstandings

Baby C came down with the stomach bug yesterday morning - just in time for B's trip to VT for the weekend...lovely. CR and I are still feeling okay (knocking on every bit of wooden furniture in the house), and today Baby C is tired, but definitely better.

After a call yesterday morning to their pediatrician to make sure it was okay to send CR to school (yes, I am a little crazy...I know he wasn't the one who was throwing up, but out of fear that he might still be able to transfer the belly bug to others by way of association...this crazy lady needed to make sure his classmates weren't in danger...), I Purelled the heck out of his hands and shipped him out of the sick house into the school house.

I picked him up after "Lunch Bunch," and his teacher shared with me a little tidbit that CR said to his classmates earlier in the day.

What his teacher heard:

My babysitter had too much of the bottle and got sick...

What CR actually said:

My baby sister had too much of her bottle and got sick...

Mrs. W laughed, thinking what kind of bottle CR's babysitter drank too much of to make her sick...Jameson? Cuervo?

Gotta love everything that gets lost in translation...

A standing O

Baby C put her hands together and clapped for the first time today - video to follow...

Amazing trip...

We have so many pictures from our trip - just battling with technology to get them uploaded appropriately...here is one snapped by Uncle J to get a little glimpse of heaven we experienced last week in St. John...

Old MacDonald had a...menu...

As I stood in my kitchen tonight, picking the pinbones out of my dinner, (a center-cut piece of wild salmon - B has convinced me to eat only wild salmon after a conversation he had with an impressionable client - his take was that there are horrible dietary ramifications for consuming farm-cultivated spawn), I thought about at what point do you charge your child with the association between fuzzy and cute, and delicious and seared?

I almost called CR into the kitchen to start such conversation while I freed my meal from it's natural choking hazard, but then paused.

I grew up on a recreational (read: edible) farm. My first real association between what I pet with my hand, and what I put in my mouth, sent me into eight vegetarian years.

The brief: Nancy the ewe had triplets - she came down with a nasty case of mastitis (again, read: horrible, horrible, unimaginable as a former lactating female), and as a result, we bottle-fed her lambs...

Every day "Sweet Thing," my favorite little surrogate, would run at me when I arrived home from school, often with so much excitement that she would lunge herself through the squared-off fencing that separated her from our extended side lawn. I took it as a sign of love, when in reality, it was more her excitement to become one with the ghetto bottle that my father rigged up for her - a Forty, complete with a rubber nipple that was poorly attached to the oversized beer bottle...

At any rate, I loved my "pets," I loved raising them, but that ideal shifted when one day I came home from school, and asked my father "where's Sweet Thing?" - my father, thinking he was being funny, said "Check the freezer..."....so, there you have it. I knew about the kill...I witnessed the execution of countless turkeys, etc., but never a fluffy little thing I looked at as a pet...

So, I will refrain. As much as I know I want my kids to know where their food comes from...I hope to join a co-op for natural animal and vegetable supplies to bring our intake closer to home and healthy for our family...but tonight was not the night to make the connection....let CR have a little more time to crave the meatballs on his plate, and enjoy petting a cow at a visiting farm for just enjoyment alone...

Welcome to Needham

Scene from earlier today:

CR and I were taking a leisurely walk in the cold, with Baby C strapped to me in the Bjorn. It was mid-afternoon, and after over an hour of indoor games, and looking ahead to a welcome stretch before it got dark, I thought it might be a good idea to get outside for at least a stroll around the block.

We made it a couple of houses beyond a street that intersects our road, when I noticed a minivan backing up with aggression. With all the snow piling up along the roadsides, there is really only space for one car to get through at a time.

The driver of said minivan rolled down her window. I caught a glimpse of two occupied car seats in the second row of her family truckster, when I heard the following message uttered from the mother's dainty mouth:

I want you to tell me - what makes you think you are the most important thing in the world, BITCH?!

As the minivan hit Drive, a Jeep skirted by her, around the corner, parking three houses down from our place.

Angry Mom screeched down the road.

If someone, complete with children in the car, has that much anger and aggression on a side street without any other traffic, I cross my fingers I don't encounter her on any of my daily excursions around town...I am usually pushing a duallie with my kids in it...her random expletive will not even come close to what I would have to say if she screeched tires at me...