Kendall Speak: Part 13

Kendall is five now, and some of the things she says is really funny.  Not even because she's trying to be funny.  It's funny in the sense that she's still figuring out this weird language we call English, and she phrases things in a really funny way.  Here's a few examples:

We were driving to someone's house, and we needed to turn around.  So Grant pulled off on the side of the road, which was angled a good bit.  Kendall said, "Am I leaning over or are we having fun?"

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When I change Tucker's diapers, sometimes the girls like to help me distract him from squirming.  One time Kendall came in and said, "Mom?  Uh, I hate to tell you this, but can I give Tucker this car to distract him?"

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This girl loves to wear headbands.  It's a rare day that she even lets me touch her hair, because she just wants to wear headbands all the time.  She has a favorite one - a Hello Kitty headband.  I asked her one day why she likes that one so much.  Was it because it had Hello Kitty on it?  Because she has others that have Hello Kitty on them, and she never wears them.  She said, "No.  It's because this one has porks.  And the porks help keep my hair out of my eyes better."  For those that don't know, "porks" are "teeth" on a headband.  I don't know why she calls them porks.

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A few weeks ago as we were eating lunch Kendall said, "And that's the earth in Florida, by Dr. Judy Bense."  I was thinking she was saying the name and author of a book they read in school, so I asked her if it was.  She said, "No, that's from NPR." (Daddy takes her to school every day)

Kendall Speak - Part 10

Grant was putting Kendall to bed, and he always goes over the catechism questions with her.  I guess she was really engaged in the questions, so she started having a pretty deep theological conversation with him.  They were talking about original sin and death and how that's related, and Kendall said, "Well, I not gonna die.  I don't do bad nings (things)...Cami does bad nings."

If you know anything about LA, you know that there's a ridiculous amount of interstates.  Kendall always wants to know which interstate we're going on, and she usually thinks everything is the 405.  A while back, we had to take two interstates to get to where we were going - the 710 and the 91.  Not the 405. 
Her:  "Mama, are we on the interstate?  Are we on the 405?" 
Me: "No, we're on the 710."
Her:  "Oh, I know all about the 710, you don't need to tell me about that."

She's doing this new thing, where she sits at her little table, "reading".  She'll sit there for the longest time, looking at the pictures of whatever book she's reading, turning the pages, etc.  I was getting dinner ready and I said, "Kendall, are you reading?"  She said, "Yeah.  It's called relaxin'."

The other morning, I got up early to sew, and Kendall decided to get up early, too.  I usually don't let her up before her clock turns green, but this was Memorial Day, and she was standing outside her door saying, "Mama, it's a howiday!  It's a howiday!"  So I let her get up.  So, she was watching me sew, and she said that when she grows up, she wants a sewing machine just like mine.  Except pink.  No, white.  Maybe purple.  Then she said she wanted her own kitchen and I said that someday, she'll get her own house.  She got very upset by that thought, then said that she would get a house right next to ours, and Cami would also get a house next to us.

What They Were Up To

While I was getting dinner ready, I noticed Kendall was very busy doing something...I just didn't know what that something was.  All I knew is my girls were playing nicely together for a long period of time, and that made me happy.  When I got a chance to check on them, this is what I found.

What They Were Up To from Kelly Spear on Vimeo.

Kendall Speak - Part 9

-Last night, Cami was getting into something, I can't remember what, but I scolded her which made her cry.  Kendall said, "Mama, I have to tell you something.  Don't make my sister cry."  Which of course, broke my little heart.

-Our pastor's oldest son is named Paul Jr., but he goes by just "Junior."  We saw him today at church, and when I asked Kendall what his name was she said, "Disney Junior." 

FYI, she used to call Junior's little brother Gino, "Tuna."  I wrote about that on the second edition of "Kendall Speak," which can be found here.

-Today in Sunday School, Kendall's teacher was talking about enemies.  Kendall told the teacher that "bad people live in San Pedro."  Another mom who was in the Sunday School when she said that told me about it.  When I went to pick Kendall up, I said something about it to her teacher who said that she was very serious when she said it.

On the way home from church, I asked Kendall what she learned in Sunday School.  She said, "Mom, you know about M&M's?  There are people in this world who don't love us."

I was so confused so I told her that was true, but what did that have to do with M&M's?  And then I realized, M&M's = enemies, at least the way she pronounced it.  So after I got done laughing, I told her that yes, there are people who don't love us.  She followed up by telling me that even though they don't love us, we still need to love them.

So love your M&M's, people!

Sisterly Love

After breakfast this morning, I got Cami out of her high chair and I cleaned up the kitchen. Kendall was sitting in the recliner, and then I heard her say, "I gonna read to you Cami, come sit in my wap (lap)." Somehow Cami got in the recliner - not sure if she climbed or if Kendall pulled her, but whatever.

Kendall then started reading her the "Demon Bears" (that's apparently how she says Berenstain).

Life

Story Time with Kendall from Kelly Spear on Vimeo.

Kendall Speak - Part 8

I overheard Kendall "reading" to her babies: Once uponce a time, there was a baby named Jesus. And Jesus name was God. Does that make you happy, baby? Aww, baby still cryin'. You stop cryin' baby, and wisten to the story.

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We're at my mom's house, and I heard Cami crying in the play room, so I went in to see what was going on. Grant and Kendall were putting together a puzzle, and Grant said that Cami was trying to steal the pieces. He gave her one piece, and I was holding her, then she started pointing to the puzzle. I said, "Awww, Cami just wants to do the puzzle like her big sis." Kendall said, "You can do the puzzle, Cami. Just don't steal!"

*****

I was dropping Grant off at his mom's house, and he was dancing in the driveway as we pulled away. Kendall started laughing at him and said, "Daddy's a funny guy. I wuv Daddy."

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We were getting ready to go out to eat with my parents, and my mom put on this really pretty blouse. Kendall came up to me and said, "Did you see Grandma's clothes? Is she going dancin'?"

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Now that we're home, Kendall's revisiting all of her gifts she got here for Christmas and her birthday, one of them being a guitar from her BFF "Mookie." We currently don't have batteries for the guitar. She just said, "Mama, you been thinkin' 'bout goin' to Target? I think we need to get battwies, cause I need them for my 'tar, cause I need to pway muzic. So we need to get battwies fwom Target."

40 Minutes in a Stranger's House

Wanna hear a story? It's a good one! Well, I think it's a good one...it could be one of those things where you think you had to be there.

Okay, so we're here in Florida for the holidays, right? It's Wednesday night, and we decided to go check out some Christmas lights. Growing up here in Pensacola, one of the local catholic churches always had this HUGE display of Christmas lights. At some point they stopped doing it, but I heard they recently brought it back. So we headed out with the girls and Grant's parents to go check it out.

We get there, and the parking lot is E-M-P-T-Y. Okay, there maybe was one other car. But that's it. Not quite the crowds we were expecting. Grant's mom gets on the phone and asks her friend if she knew anything about it, and she said that they are doing lights, but only on the weekends.

So there went that idea.

We already had the girls in the stroller, so we decided to walk around the grounds a bit. Not only did this church used to do a Christmas lights display, but they also used to have the annual "Saint Anne's Round-Up," which was just a fun thing to go to. So walking around really brought back alot of memories that I hadn't thought of in about (I hate to even say this) 20 years (that can't be right!).

While we were walking around, we noticed there were people in the chapel, so we peeked in and saw a choir director leading a practice. This might seems like a trivial detail, but keep this in mind for later.

We made our way back to the car, but Grant's mom got another idea for something to do from her friend. She had a flier for this house out in Beulah (out in the country) that supposedly had 3,000 lights and all sorts of decorations, and this was the last night to see it, so we should probably go there.

Beulah wasn't too far from Saint Anne's, so we said Why not?

So off we went to some random house out in Beulah. We finally get to the street that this house was on, and we were expecting to see a long line of cars, or traffic, or SOMETHING. But there was nothing. Just a nice little quiet neighborhood.

Grant's mom told us the house number, and when we saw it, it had a few modest decorations out front, and some decorations visible through some of the windows, but nothing that stood out. Well right after she said the house number, she mentioned, "And we're supposed to go in," kind of nonchalantly.

Grant said, "WHAT? We're going IN there?" To which I replied, "Uh, NO we're NOT!!!"

Everyone in the car just starts cracking up, because really, there was nothing special about this place. Grant drove past the house to the end of the street, turned around and drove back past. His mom said she wanted to go knock on the door, and as she was getting out, I kindly suggested that maybe he should just ditch her, but of course he didn't.



Betty actually got out of the car, walked herself right up to that door and knocked. What she and the lady talked about, I don't really know. What I do know, is about 30 seconds later, I heard, "We're going in!"

So we parked in the driveway, and Grant made a comment about not wanting to get killed. When he turned off the car Kendall said, "Daddy, don't let me get killed." And that, folks, is why we will not be winning Parents of the Year.

Okay, so we go inside, and apparently, this lady was trying to promote her house as something to come see, but it hadn't really caught on. She wouldn't tell us how many people had come, she would just say, "Not many." Which we took to mean "You're pretty much it."

I'm not kidding when I say that Betty and I hid in a corner and laughed (we tried to be quiet about it, at least) for probably the first five minutes of our being there. Then I thought this lady might really think we're the crazy ones if we don't stop laughing, so we eventually stopped and started walking around. I snapped this picture of Betty and the lady of the house, and at first I thought it was a bad one of Betty, but now I really like this one because it was taken in the middle of our laughing fit. I think I was giggling when I took it...



She had 22 Christmas trees throughout the house. Twenty. Two. TWENTY TWO!!!!!! It sounds like a lot, but she actually had a really big house, and it was very tastefully done. Here's just a sampling of what some of it looked like...








Each tree had a theme (patriotic, under the sea, nutcracker, gingerbread, etc), and usually coordinated with something in whatever room it was in. I took particular interest in her craft room and how she decorated that tree...




When I told her I was a fellow quilter, she pulled out this beauty that she's been working on. Her mom actually started it 2 years before she died, which was 3 years ago!



We found out that the reason she was opening up her house was for a fundraiser for Navy Relief. Her husband is in the Navy, and they have lived all over the world, and have collected ornaments from everywhere they've been.

Anyways, after about 40 minutes of tramping throughout her house, taking way too many pictures, asking too many questions...we decided it was time to go, where we all laughed - alot.

While we were driving home, someone (I think it was Grant) asked where her husband was. Betty said, "Oh, he's the choir director at Saint Anne's, and they had choir practice tonight."

Remember what I said earlier? When we were at Saint Anne's, we looked in the chapel and saw the choir director leading practice!!!

Pensacola's not huge, but it's not small, by any means. So that was just totally random, that we happened to see this stranger's husband in a completely different part of town.

So that's my story! If you didn't think it was funny, I'm sorry. It was definitely a highlight for us, and we keep saying that nothing from the rest of our time here will top it.

Mixed Feelings

You tell me if any of this makes sense...

Yesterday, we were at Grant's Christmas party for work. Santa made an appearance, like he does every year. Every year, Kendall has freaked out. This year, was not only no different, but worse than the previous freak-outs. Now, I realize that a lot of kids don't like seeing a big, hairy guy with a red suit and hat, and it's not unusual to see some crying.

This is not that.

We're talking blood-curtling screams, crying, shaking, yelling "NO!!!!" It sounded like something out of a horror movie, and it lasted for several minutes.

Keep in mind, all of this was a reaction to just seeing Santa. We weren't trying to make her sit in his lap or wave at him - He simply walked into the room, and that's what she did.

So, she finally calmed down (a little) and I was trying to get her mind on other things, so I took her to the dessert table, with all sorts of cakes, cookies, and pies. I asked her what she wanted, and she said, "A cupcape!" So, I'm looking around at all the dozens of cupcakes, and I asked which one she wanted. Buried under a couple of stacks of cupcake boxes, she noticed a cupcake with a little plastic Santa stuck in it, and she excitedly said, "I want the Santa cupcape!"

Really?

Then there was another Santa-sighting freak out (while she was holding her beloved Santa cupcake), so we went upstairs to where they were raffling off gift baskets. So we're looking at all the gift baskets, and inside one of them was a Santa stocking. I didn't see it, but Kendall did, so she said, "I want that Santa stocking!"

When we asked her why she reacted that way to seeing Santa, she never really gave us an answer except for "Because," or "I was 'cared."

But as I type this out, she's happily watching a Christmas movie featuring Santa and she loves it!

I just don't get it...

DPP - Day 14

Grant went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch with his office today, and he brought home a fried chicken foot. Awesome.

Kendall Speak - Part 7

The other day, Kendall had a little lipstick case that my mom had left here...you know, the kind with the little mirror in it? She put bobby pins in the case, and then she'd open the case, look in the mirror and take her bobby pin to her cheeks and her nose and she'd say, "I puttin' goulash on my cheeks and nake up on my nose."

For those that don't speak Kendallese, that's blush on her cheeks and make up on her nose.

Just now, while she's avoiding eating her breakfast, she asked if I wanted to see a trick. Of course, I did, so she did a somersault. Then I told her what trick I really wanted to see, and that would be making her breakfast disappear.

She said, "Okay! I will put my breasksast under my table!"

Kendall Speak - Part 6

Usually, when something fun is coming up, I don't let Kendall know too far in advance, because she'll get really excited about it, and start talking about it non-stop. I didn't tell her about this, but she overheard me telling someone else about it (I need to remember, she's almost 3 now, she can actually eavesdrop!), so now she's talking about it non-stop. We'll be going to the San Diego Zoo soon, and she's pretty excited. So this was our conversation in the car yesterday (keep in mind, she says her L's like W's)...

Kendall: Do you wike ewephants?
Me: Yes, of course!
Kendall: Ewephants are aweways at a zoo. They wive there.
Me: Yeah, some elephants do live at the zoo.
Kendall: Mama, do you wike giwaffes?
Me: Yes I do!
Kendall: Giwaffes have big necks and ewephants have small necks. Giwaffes have big necks so they can eat weaves. But ewaphants don't have big necks. Ewephants don't eat weaves.
Me: If elephants don't eat leaves then what do they eat?
Kendall: They eat ewephant food.
Me: Oh, I see.
Kendall: And tigers don't eat weaves, either. And they don't eat ewephant food. Tigers never eat anyning.

Kendall Speak - Part 5

I was pretending to eat Kendall's side, and Grant was "eating" her foot. We told her how yummy she was and she said, "I not yummy! I taste tewible!"

Kendall tried to give me some candy and I said, "No thanks, I'm not hungry right now." She said, "Yes you are!" Then she put her ear to my stomach and said, "I hear your tummy grummin'!" (that's grumbling, by the way).

When we were at the beach in Oxnard a few weeks ago, Kendall wanted her sand toys to play with. I told her I forgot them at home. She was quiet for a few seconds, then she asked where Target was.

One afternoon, after a very short nap, Kendall came downstairs. I said, "Kendall, did you sleep? I don't think you slept." She said, "Yeah! I sleep tight!" (Referring to when we tell her to sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite).

Stuffed

Someone once told me that in case my kids ever do something drastic, like use the wall as their own artist's canvas, or put fingernail polish on their face, or other situations like that, to try to be the kind of mom that laughs at whatever it is and take a picture of it.

I had my first real opportunity to do that. This isn't nearly as drastic as those kinds of things, but Kendall was supposed to be taking a nap. I heard her open her door, and she was talking to herself in a really quiet voice. I asked her what she was doing, and just then, she appeared on the landing of the stairs, holding her pillow that was completely stuffed with random things. For one split second, I wanted to be upset that she wasn't taking her nap, but that person's voice ran through my head just in time, and I started cracking up! These aren't the best pictures, because I just grabbed my phone really quick, but it gives you an idea of the objects in there. Actually, it still doesn't give you a great idea, because there's easily 30 things stuffed in that pillow case. She was so proud of her accomplishment.

Ouch - A Lesson in Contentment by Kendall

While I was cutting up some fabric today, Kendall was playing with play dough. She said she wanted more, and I told her to be content with what she had. I then went on to explain what contentment means.

About a minute later, she says to me, "Mama, you be tent with fabwic. You don't get more fabwic. You be tent."

She told me!

Kendall Speak - Part 4

While "reading" a coupon...

"Once 'pon time, don't be fwustwatwed, and you be happy."

Kendall Speak - Part 3

A couple of days ago...

Daddy, you a old man.

Today...

Daddy, you not a old man. You a daddy.

A Little Nursing Won't Stop Me...

...from getting really funny video of my oldest. At first, I was just enjoying watching her, but then I realized I really needed to get this on video. So, even though I was nursing Cami at the time, I still broke out the camera. That's what I call multi-tasking. So please excuse the lack of good focus and the burps and slurping you hear in the background.

Mini-Me from Kelly Spear on Vimeo.

Oh, and right after I took this video, she accidentally broke those sunglasses. I had to refrain myself from laughing when she said, "Oh, dear. I so sad!" when I told her they were broken. Wish I had gotten that on video, too.

Kendall Speak - Part 2

This is going to be my version of Megan's "The Things They Say."

When we were in the car coming home from church today, I was telling Grant about something that happened a while back, and I said, "And I was freakin' out!"

A couple minutes later, Kendall kept saying something that we weren't quite getting, so she said it over and over again. This is how it went...

Kendall: "Go tuna house?"
Us: "Go to the house?"
Kendall: "No, go tuna house!"
Us: "Go to our house?"

This went on for a good 5 minutes probably.

Then this happened...

Us: "Yep, we're going to tuna's house!"
Kendall (as she's getting frustrated that we're not understanding her): "Kendall freakin' out!"

By the way, we finally figured out that "tuna" is her friend Gino.

A Follow Up to Kendall Speak - Part 1

When I told Kendall we were going to Chick Fil A today, she had the same response that she had in the previous post.

Oh well, it still made my day.