Remember when?

First of all, Joey's been day trained for 3 weeks now - and only 2 accidents since then (both bowel), So he is officially trained and we are diaper free (except nights).

Now.

Remember when you were young and you did that annoying copying thing to your brother or sister?
"stop copying me"

Stop copying me

"MOM, they're copying me!"

Mom they're copying me

Cut it OUT
cut if out

Then they'd get wise to your copying so they'd say something like
"I'm an idiot"

And that's when you choose to stop and say "I know"

My kids do that. It's irritating and Mom, I just want to take the time to apologise now for all the fighting and bickering we did as kids and for the 3 grey hairs that I gave you (Janice and Daryl gave you the rest, so blame them!)

Matthew is the worst offender for the snarky mimic. Drives his brother crazy. As kids my sister and I used to get into word fights but boys are different - they want to solve their problems with brute force - so it usually ends up in a tussle with arms and legs and punching and blood and tears. And sighing and bandaids and apologies and 'go to your room" and 10 minutes later they are at it again, like squabbling cats in a bathtub, clawing and climbing over each other to get the upper hand.
It's enough to drive a mother batty, which I certainly don't need, as i'm quite batty enough thankyou.

Oh, i have to talk about my dryer - because for a week now, it has been an inefficient hunk of metal that sits next to the washer taunting us with it's so called drying powers and failing to deliver after 3 tries.
I have a lot of laundry. 3 kids who pull out 14 shirts in the morning to try on and put the 13 not-good-enough-to-wear-today shirts in the LAUNDRY because maybe if mum washes a perfectly clean shirt and puts it back it might be good enough to wear tomorrow, when I'm screaming for a shirt because there's none left in the drawer!
Suffice it to say, the boys generate a lot of laundry and if I were on top of it all the time, I'd just do a load a day and be done with it, but I procrastinate and save it all up for the weekend (I like to tell myself that I'm just doing it to save the energy grid during peak hours, but really it's pure laziness) We have a smart metre that charges different amounts for electricity during the week than it does on weekends, so in order to be cost efficient, we do all the laundry on weekends (or weekdays after 10pm - ha, right)
Chris is very good about doing laundry - I suspect he actually likes it. He seems to have forgotten that they also need folding and putting away, and that actually DOING the laundry isn't that difficult or time consuming and folding is. So when there is a small mountain of clean laundry piled up on the counter, it really is more daunting than a basket of dirty clothes - at least those you can put somewhere. there's nothing left for clean laundry except to fold it.
But getting back to our dryer issues. We were finding that laundry was taking longer and longer because the dryer didn't seem to be drying very well. A few days later (while I was actually folding laundry) I heard a noise behind the dryer - it sounded like flapping.
Yep, there was a bird in my dryer hose.
Long story short - Chris pulled the hose out yesterday and discovered a huge robins nest in there, with 4 little blue eggs.
He promptly went out to the Depot and bought a cover for the dryer vent - and our dryer has miraculously started drying clothes again.

I know I'm just rambling now, but it's been a long time since I blogged and the grandmas read this to keep up on the exploits of the kids.

So for Joey's 4th birthday, grandma had sent an e-card - that he watched about 10 times but it felt like 593857 times. Just that one day - and then he said nothing about it for nearly a month and today out of the blue while I was putting him in his carseat to take the kids to school he launched into a perfectly clear monologue:

"It's your Birthday! I Hope you have a day as special as you are. Happy Birthday."

And that was it.

Sometimes I wonder what is going on in his brain. Quite obviously he takes stuff in, and verbally vomits it weeks, and months later, with no context at all. The other day I heard him counting to 10 in spanish and saying "Red is Rojo, Yellow is Amarillo".
which may not seem fascinating to anyone else - but it is to me, since Spanish is not something that is generally heard in our area, and He hasn't watched Dora or Diego in at least a year. In fact we gave away all our Dora and Diego DVD's before Christmas because they never watched them anymore. So now all of a sudden, all this stuff that he learned before he could talk is now bursting out of his mouth in random spurts. He will walk around the house mimicking his brothers "No Matthew; Stop - I don't like that" (this is of course when the boys are at school, so I know Matthew is not secretly bugging him)
He has perfectly clear language when he's repeating something, but if you ask him an outright question, or try to engage him in conversation, you'll get one word answers and babblespeak. The babbling is almost funny because you can hear the occasional word in there and it sounds like he's just muttering nonsense to himself a la Fred Flintstone "
Ricking fricking mumble mumble, cookie mumble mumble mumble"
He has a session today with the speech pathologist so it will be interesting to see what she thinks. Most of his echoed speech is quite clear, so I know he is CAPABLE of speaking clearly and in sentences. He still has very little speech that he generates on his own, and it is largely made up of standard phrases that he has memorized and applied to various situations 'I want _____"
"I need help" "No" - This is usually in response to a repeated statement, like "Time for bed" and he'll say "No time for bed" or if I say "go get your shoes" he might say "No go get your shoes" - but he usually does because shoes means going out and that is usually something fun.

and now he's started to tell me "Matthew (or Duncan) pushed me" - He says Push for everything that they might do to offend him. "He pushed me" is his way of saying he did something to me that I did not like. we still have to play detective to find out the real offense, but they can't get away with pushing him around anymore - he TELLS me now!
Also when Joey gets mad about something he says "Achoo".
"Achoo" means 'something is wrong in my world and I don't like it"
If he asks for a cookie and I say no, he glares at me and says "Achoo" - I think he's swearing at me in his head.
If we're downstairs and we hear a loud "ACHOO" upstairs - it could mean that something is out of his reach or that he's frustrated with lego or that a puzzle piece is missing. But of course you can't ignore an "Achoo" - you must fix the "Achoo" or it becomes a roll on the floor tantrum.

well I think I've blathered on rather aimlessly for now....32 more days until I go to Boston. (That's a blog for another day)