Bein’ Franklin

Posted by mommyfranklin at February 3rd, 2007

Yesterday, Scott and I saw a commercial that spurred a conversation. I don’t know what was being advertised. I am guessing it was for laundry detergent since it shows a bunch of kids playing in mud. Scott commented that there is really no situation that we would allow our kids to play in mud like that.

Well, today we had a chance to test that theory.

This is the first weekend in three weeks that we haven’t had snow and ice covering the yard. The snow has finally melted. The sun was shining and temperatures reached 52, so Timothy asked if he could play outside this afternoon. Scott obliged and took the boys outside to play while Emily and I rested (we’re both dealing with nasty colds).

What are you left with when snow melts? MUD!

Timothy had a blast! I went out for a bit and he very excitedly ran up and told me all about the mud.

Zachary enjoyed getting the mud on his shoes, but was really more excited to find his toy duck that has been buried the last few weeks. Scott said that was the first thing Zachary picked up when they went outside and that he didn’t put it down until it was time to come in.

Emily wasn’t too upset about not getting to play in the mud. She did finally come out to play a little, but she chose to walk around the mud rather than walk through it.

Our first experience of letting the kids play in the mud went well. We took off the boys’ shoes and pants before they came in, so we managed to keep the mud off the carpet and the furniture.

The “drums” being referred to in the title of this post is actually the sound of the shoes in the dryer now that they’ve been washed.

Posted by mommyfranklin at October 27th, 2006

** WARNING — THE FOLLOWING STORY IS NOT PLEASANT **

I’ve talked about how yucky boys can be before, but once again Timothy has enlightened me. On Wedneday morning, I gave the boys a bath. When I was done washing them, I let them play in the tub with the bath toys for a bit. I drained the tub because they have a tendency to splash and make a HUGE mess if I don’t. Once the water was gone, Zachary was ready to get out. So, I got him out, dry, and dressed. Timothy wanted to keep playing with the foam letters that stick to the bathroom wall. He was putting the alphabet on the wall. I heard him call out to me, “Mommy! I need water so the T will stick to the wall!” I told him I’d be right there to get him a wet washrag to use. Well, he didn’t want to wait. What three year old would? He yelled out again, “I got it wet mommy! I used my teetee water.” Time to stop playing with the bath toys.

The bath letters are now in the trash.

Later that day, Emily’s teacher called me. A child in Emily’s class had thrown up on Emily and one of her friends. Luckily, Emily has short hair so it was only on her clothes. The other girl has long hair, so she had to go home to bathe. The nurse had done a good job cleaning Emily up, but I did take her a change of clothes and checked on her. She was more concerned about her friend that had thrown up than the fact that she had been thrown up on.

Zachary does yucky things daily. It’d take too long to document all of them.

Posted by mommyfranklin at October 13th, 2006

The other night in 1st and 2nd Grade choir, I was teaching the Hymn of the Month, “This Is My Father’s World,” to the kids. We were talking about how everything that God made has it’s own way to praise Him and that God made people with the best way to praise — with our voices. To this, a 1st Grade boy (who happens to be a distant cousin of Scott’s, by the way) raised his hand and said, “God did not make me, I came from the factory.” Choir is really not the most appropriate forum for me to negate what his parents had taught him (or had not taught him), so I did my best to keep a straight face and kept going with our discussion about ways to praise.

Anyway, that’s not the factory I’m referring to in the title of this post.

During naptime on the days that Timothy does not go to Three Bears, Timothy and I have a special time together before it’s time for him to rest. We start by going through a few pages of his “mama-school” book. He is learning his colors, letters, numbers, and shapes. We do as many or as few pages as he wants. Today, he wrote his first name all by himself! When he tires of the book, it is time for him to rest. He chooses a movie to watch while he rests on my bed. The last few weeks, he has chosen the same movie every day. He always asks to watch The Letter Factory. This is a great movie produced by Leap Frog learning. In the 30 minute episode, Tad, the youngest of the Frog Family, is taken on a tour of the Letter Factory where his dad works. He goes into a different room for each letter and learns the sounds that each letter makes.

Along with the Letter Factory movie, Timothy also asks to watch the Talking Words Factory and the Code Word Caper, both of which teach beginning reading skills. It takes about an 1 1/2 hours for him to watch all three movies, which is just how long he needs to rest.

The purpose of this post is not to give a review of these movies. It is to say that something is sinking in! Timothy is learning! When I picked him up on Tuesday, he informed me that he got a “stucker” and he proudly waved a purple lollipop. His teacher prompted him to tell me why he got it. He told me it was because he was a star. His teacher explained to me that he correctly identified the letter of the week (F), the color of the week (brown), and that he stood up in front of the class and recited “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater.” WOW! Way to go Timothy!

Three year old’s are fun. Timothy has made it through a pretty difficult stage and has emerged as such a sweetie. This morning, he chased after Scott and Emily as they headed to the car. He was screaming, “Daddy, I want to ask you something!” Scott came back to him and Timothy said, “I love you Daddy” and gave him a big hug. That was all he wanted to say.

We won’t send him to college just yet.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 30th, 2006

Just a quick one that I do not want to forget…
I was mailing something to my parents. Timothy was helping me. I told him I needed to look up Granddaddy’s address to be sure I had the right zip code. He didn’t have a clue what that meant, which became very clear when he said “Granddaddy does not have a dress, he has pants.”

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 28th, 2006

During the first two years of his life, we often described Timothy as the strong silent type. He just didn’t say much. We weren’t worried, as he was quite capable of getting his point across. Besides, he had Emily to talk for him. Who needs to talk when you have a big sister who can say everything you want to say and more?

Well, Emily started school last year. This has given Timothy plenty of opportunity to use his words. There are a couple things he has said the last week that have really made me smile.

As you may recall, last week was Scott’s birthday. At lunch that day, Timothy started talking about how big he is getting. One of his favorites things to do these days is tell people that he is going to be four soon. Nevermind that his birthday isn’t for 9 months….

On this particular day, after Timothy had informed me that he will be four soon, he asked me how many fingers I will be on my birthday. So, I held up 3 fingers on one hand and made a 0 with my other hand. Timothy then exclaimed, “you will be 3! I am 3, but I am turning 4. I will be taller than you.”

The other instance occurred today when we were in the carpool lane waiting to pick Emily up from school. Her school is right next door to the football field of a private school. It is my goal to keep Timothy awake as we wait for Emily, so I directed Timothy’s attention to the football players who were practicing. They were wearing their football helmets and running around the field. He looked out the window thoughfully for a moment, and then said “they are not playing football mama, they are playing hat run.” I guess that’s what you call football without the ball.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 21st, 2006

No, I’m not 30. Scott is!

Happy Birthday Scott!

I am married to an old man.

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 12th, 2006

The phrase “take the cake” is often used to describe someone or something that is the best in the world in a specific category.

Today the phrase took on a whole new meaning around here.

We are having Emily’s 6th birthday party at 4:00 this afternoon. Her birthday is not for a few weeks, but we decided to celebrate early since school is starting next week and it’s always difficult to find a suitable party day around Labor Day. We have reserved a local gym called Ready-Set-Go, bought Barbie Fairytopia themed party decorations, filled the goodie bags and stuffed the piñata. All that is left to do is decorate the cake, go get the balloons filled with helium, and go to the gym at 3:45 to decorate. We are expecting 12 children to be there.

Last night, we baked the cakes. One 9″ round and one 8″ round strawberry cake. And they turned out perfect. We plan to stack them, ice them with pink icing, sprinkle colored flower sprinkles on it, write Happy Birthday on it with white icing, and top it with a Fairytopia Cake Topper that we found online. We set the cakes on the kitchen table to cool overnight so they’d be ready for the icing this morning.

While Scott and I were catching up on some much needed sleep, Timothy came into our bedroom to inform us that he was getting thirsty. This is his way of asking for things. He tells us that he is getting … thirsty, hungry, tired, hot… Scott got him to get him something to drink. A few moments later, we heard what sounded like Zachary leaving the bedroom too.

Ordinarily, we do not mind if the kids get up before us on a Saturday morning. Usually, Emily is the first one up so we know there is at least a little supervision going on. Well, Emily was sleeping in this morning too.

Remember — sitting on the kitchen table were these two beautiful pink cakes –

Scott said once he realized that Zachary was up too, it occurred to him that the cakes were in danger. We rush into the living room, and find that the boys had decided to help themselves. They had each taken several handfuls out of each cake.

So, I quickly ran to Wal-Mart and bought another cake mix. These cakes are now cooling on the kitchen counter. These didn’t turn out quite as pretty as the ones baked last night, as one stuck to the pan a little and I managed to turn one upside down on the oven rack when I was getting it out of the oven, but that’s nothing a little creative icing won’t fix.

Two cakes + Two Boys – Supervision = TROUBLE!

I am really hoping this is the only party mishap we have today. We’ll let you know!

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 5th, 2006

This morning we discovered we were out of oil. This meant we couldn’t have the waffles we were planning on fixing for breakfast. Since it’s Saturday, we wanted to have something besides the “regular” fixings for breakfast. After taking a quick poll with the children, we decided we would go to McDonald’s for breakfast. This was Emily’s choice. Timothy wanted donuts. So, in order to ease Timothy’s hurt feelings, we promised we would take some time to play while we were at McDonald’s.

Like most McDonald’s that I’ve been to, our playland has a large tube slide. It also has a big helicopter toy to climb into. There is a little area where kids (and parents!) can play arcade games. Behind those toys is a bench with a statue of Ronald McDonald sitting on it, like this one.


After playing on the slide for a while, the children decided to play on the helicopter toy. They pretended they were flying to various places. I didn’t catch all the locations, but know they included Cinderella’s castle, church, school, and Grandmother’s house.

At one point, I noticed that Emily and Zachary were both climbing on the climbing toy and that Timothy wasn’t anywhere around. I quickly found him playing on the bench with the Ronald McDonald statue. I snuck up behind him and grabbed him off the bench. He immediately began shrieking — “I’m playing with Grandmother!”Later on, he even told a little girl not to climb on his Grandmother.

I don’t see the resemblance…

Posted by mommyfranklin at August 3rd, 2006

Sometime over the last year, we taught Emily how to play Twenty Questions. We often play Twenty Questions, I Spy, Alphabet Bingo, or various other games that Emily creates as we travel to and from Amarillo for Scott’s class. She makes a really good activities director for our trips.

Over the last couple weeks, Timothy has started getting into the games with us. He’s pretty good at I Spy. He’s not real sure of Twenty Questions as of yet.

Every round of Twenty Questions starts the same. The person who is “it” says “I’ve got one, I’ve got one!” Then, the rest of us start asking questions.

The first question is usually — “are you a girl?”
Followed by “are you a person?” “are you a grown up?” “are you in the van?” “do you go to our church?” “do you work at Wayland?” and getting more and more specific until we figure out who or what the answer is.

It disturbs Timothy greatly if the answer to the question is not true about the person who is it. For example, let’s say the person Emily is thinking of is Daddy. We ask “are you a girl” and she says “no.” Timothy then informs her that she is a girl. Quite the argument follows. This just get worse as Emily replies “yes” when asked if she is a grown-up.

When Timothy is “it,” here’s how it usually goes…
“Are you a girl?” “No”
“Are you a grown up?” “No”
“Are you in the van?” “Yes”
“Are you a baby?” “No”
“Are you Timothy?” “Yes!”

He’s right. He is Timothy…

Posted by mommyfranklin at July 5th, 2006

We really should have known better. We really should not have allowed the silence to go on as long as it did.

After a day filled with swimming lessons, work, and church, all Scott and I wanted to do was have a few moments to relax. You know, go through the mail, read some email, maybe watch a little tv.

Emily was taking a shower (NOT a bath!) and the boys were playing quietly in their bedroom.

TOO QUIETLY.

After Emily got out of the shower, she asked if the boys were asleep. I told her they were still awake, and that she could go play with them in their room.

She opens their door and out comes this sweet smelling little person with white hair, white eyebrows, and white skin. He was reminiscent of Casper, the friendly ghost.

Uh oh… This ain’t good.

Rest time was over. Scott and I had to go check this out.

The room was covered in a layer of — can you guess? — baby powder! Timothy had had a blast emptying a fairly new bottle of baby powder not only all over his brother but also over all their toys.

After shaking out the toys, running the vacuum, and giving the boys a bath, everything has returned to its regular color.

As an added benefit, the room smells great.