Glue Sticks

Max is developing faster than even I had expected. After church this afternoon, I brought Max into the house in his car seat and set him in the front room while I went to go put everything else away that we had taken to church. While I was busying myself with things like making lunch for the girls, Max must have seen an opportunity to act. He unbuckled his seatbelt, climbed out of his seat, and then somehow managed to find the lone glue stick which was left out after last night (more on that later). Incredibly, he then climbed back into his seat and got his buckle back on, so he could start gnawing on this forsaken sticky treasure. Either that, or Kaitlyn thought Max should have it for some reason and gave it to him.


So, as you can see, Max's biggest challenge in life isn't the cradle cap--which must itch like crazy because he has learned to stratch it incessantly--but rather, it's surviving his older sister Kaitlyn's "love." Today at church, for example, Kaitlyn was characteristically in Max's face pretending to be a lion and growling at him. ("It's OK Max, I'm not a real lion. I'm just pretending to be a lion.") Suddenly, she had the urge to cough and coughed squarely into Max's face with the full brunt and force of her open mouthed cough. According to Megan, "the whole ward saw and cringed."

Here's another picture from this week of Kaitlyn loving Max and Max looking up, as if to say, "Ugh...could you please take her away from me for just a couple of minutes?"


Aah...Kaitlyn is a wonderful girl; she just needs to learn how to tone back her loving a little bit. But, she is quite perceptive. She carefully explained to Megan the other day when to utilize different common English phrases:

When you smile, you say "cheese." And, when you "toot" you say "excuse me."

Now, on to last night: "Estrogen Night", as I like to call it. I was still reeling from the postponing of Friday's Van Halen concert, and was trying to console myself in a book. As I cruised through "The Little Book That Beats The Market" (which I would actually recommend as a sort of a 2-hour summary of what every non-MBA really should know), I got to hear Megan, Sarah, Sarah, Amy, Karie (not Underwood) and Christine using those pesky glue sticks, hole-punching and stamping cards while talking about labor, pregnancy, girl-stuff, estrogen, etc. It didn't really bother me as long as there were enough chocolate chip cookies around. I think they all had a great time, and I got an excuse to eat cookies while reading about buying good companies at bargain prices.

Ali had a great time this week. First of all, she enjoyed pretending to be the Statue of Liberty with a strawberry.

Next, she enjoyed playing YMCA basketball at her school on Saturday morning. The coaches made the kindergarten participants go through dribbling and passing drills, and then finally turned them loose to play a game. Ali has been practicing dribbling the basketball since Christmas in Indiana, so they tried to have Ali dribble the ball down the court. As she dribbled the ball down the court (and pretty well for a 5-year old I might add), she was literally tackled by about 7 other kids who were trying to get the ball. As she was finally able to climb out from under the dogpile, she came running in tears to me on the sideline. I wasn't sure if it was her legs that were hurt from being tackled, or if was her feelings that were hurt because they dared to try to take the ball away from her. Come to think of it, the coaches never ran any drills explaining the concept of "fouls." So, it was a good "no call."