Say What???

It's been a bit quiet in my little blogworld the past week or so because this entire week, we've been sucked into the vortex of VBS. Loads of fun, but exhausting! However, I found it quite humorous that I had two incidents just today noticing the extreme Texan accents that you would think I would be accustomed to by now. Even though I hear them often, that doesn't mean I always understand it clearly. Some accents are so thick that they might as well be speaking a completely foreign language to me. For example, today, I received a phone call from Steven's cell phone, so I picked up and said "Hey!" Then after a sentence or so, I realized I had no idea whatsoever of any single word that sentence contained, so I said "What?" The caller then repeated the sentence over again and I realized that I heard some twang in there and that even though this was my husband's phone, it was not him on the line with me. I then had to request, "I'm sorry, can you say that one more time?" The poor guy on the other end then said very slowly for my benefit, "Ma'am, this is so and so from Barnes and Noble. We found this cell phone on the floor and this was the home number." Ah. Yes. That I understood. The other funny incident was at dinner this evening. As we were finishing up our food at one of the restaurants by our house, the manager was coming around from table to table saying the same thing to each group he approached. It sounded a little something like this: "Howzhyallzmealz?" or perhaps it was more like this: "How zhyallz mealz." This happened to a couple tables before ours, so I had time to interpret before he actually got to our table. Apparently, he just wanted to know if we were liking our food or not. Go figure.

Somebody Stop Them!

Steven has been away at a conference this entire week, so as a fun thing on our last night as 3 bachelorettes, the girls and I went to eat at TGI Friday's. Well, Kyra and I ate, Siana just sat there and grinned at passersby. =) On the way there, I asked Kyra what she was going to eat at Friday's. She thought about it and surprised me by saying Spaghetti, rather than her usual standard of chicken strips. I asked her what she wanted for dessert since this was a special girls night out before Daddy came home. She said we could get Oreo Madness (my favorite). I told her with much regret that someone crazy had decided to discontinue the Oreo Madness and we couldn't get it anymore. She looked confused and said They can't do that!!! I agree with the sentiment, but told her that there wasn't anything we could do to stop them. She then started thinking hard and said, "Well, who can stop them?" I said, "Probably nobody." She replied, "Bad guys?" I just chuckled because I doubt any bad guys would take up our case and stop them from taking our beloved Oreo Madness off the menu.

Kyra Quote of the Day

"I wish my hair was yellow and puffy like Cindewella's"

Favorite Things, Part 2

So I decided to take the same route as Steven did and ask Kyra what she would like to get her Daddy for Father's Day. I once again got comical and unusual responses.

Me: Kyra, what should we get Daddy for Father's Day?
Kyra: Flowers!!!
Me: You want to get Daddy some flowers?
Kyra: Yeah! Flowers!
Me: Ok. What else should we get him for Father's Day?
Kyra: A sticker. Maybe with a monkey on it.
Me: You want to get Daddy a monkey sticker...?
Kyra: Yeah. Or we could get him a sticker with an elephant on it! Maybe they have a sticker with an elephant on it store!

So Mommy gets Wal-Mart and Taco Bueno and Daddy gets Flowers and Stickers. It cracks me up the way her little mind works! But why couldn't I get the flowers???

Technology

I am a technology buff, just like my husband, father, and now daughter. It constantly amazes me how far technology has come since the days of my youth where I played Wheel of Fortune on our old NEC computer in our basement back in the 80's. You know the kind of game with the "melodic beeps" pumping out the theme song and Vanna moving across the screen in exactly the same position but side to side...you know what I'm talking about Ad. =) For those of you who've never seen a game this old and cheesy, I do a mighty fine impression of the stellar graphic movements of Ms. White. haha But back then, we thought it was the coolest thing ever to be able to play Wheel just by putting in a floppy disk the size of your head. We also had Jeopardy and $10,000 Pyramid, which of course had similarly stellar graphics.... Anyway, it's incredible the advancements in technology in the last 20-25 years. I am so thankful for the fact that even though my family now lives 1000+ miles away from my parents, sister, Mammaw, and in-laws, my daughters can see any of these family members any time they want because of the miracle of internet video chatting. Kyra and Siana will never know a time where they can't just hop on the computer when they miss their family and see them and hear their voices. And all this for free even!!! It's not as good as a great big hug, but it certainly shrinks the miles to a manageable size. And Kyra, through instant messaging, is learning to spell all kinds of words. She can carry on a decent typed conversation for a while all on her own through the skills she's learning from this technology. It keeps us connected to family across the country and it's educational at the same time. What more can you ask for? Well, maybe an interactive hug vest, but I'm sure that's not far down the road....

The Hills Are Alive....

with the sound of music coming from our entertainment center day in and day out. The Sound of Music is Kyra's new obsession. She asks to watch it pretty much every day. This is no small feat because the thing is long enough to have an intermission. It's a great movie and we like watching it, but just not every single day. She is quite amusing to watch the movie with as she is a nonstop barrage of questions from the beginning credits to the ending ones. The most common of which is, "Where is the singer? Where is the singer now? Where did the singer go? When is the singer going to come back?" and so on and on and on and on. It also amuses us to hear her rendition of So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye. And so I say to you, in Kyra's own words, so long, farewell, 'it's time to say' goodbye....

The next Bill Gates???

Ok, I've blogged before about Kyra's emerging tech savvy, but she crossed the line of all I've blogged about before over the course of the past week. A couple days ago, she hopped on the computer and after a couple minutes, we heard music playing. We thought she'd opened iTunes by chance and randomly started up a CD. How wrong we were. Mac has a feature accessible from the desktop called Spotlight that is basically a search feature that searches for your keyword throughout your entire computer and pulls up everything with that word in it, whether it be in the middle of a Word document or an email you have in your inbox. Well, we discovered that Kyra had clicked open Spotlight and typed in her name. Spotlight pulled up everything in the entire computer with her name in it and displayed it for her to peruse. So she had quite a few pictures open and was currently watching a movie of the kids that Steven had made, which was where the background music came from. What 3 year old opens up a computer search engine and does a search on herself??? That cracked us up. So today, I was making dinner and Steven was snoozing on the couch after work. I called to them that dinner was ready, and Kyra replies, "Hang on, I'm doing sometin' on here." I chuckled and assumed she had opened up one of her games and was in the middle of playing it. After a couple minutes of nobody making any indication that they were coming to dinner, I went into the living room myself, woke up Steven, and noticed that Kyra was playing a game on the Playhouse Disney website. I smiled and asked Steven, "Did you log onto Disney for her?" He looked at me, still a little groggy, and said no. We both kind of looked at each other for a minute, then looked back at her in amazement. We then set about to figuring out how on earth she got onto the Playhouse Disney website because although she's becoming quite the little typist due to internet chatting with my parents, we both know for a fact she can't spell something as long as 'Playhouse Disney.' I was especially confused because yesterday, I had taken the internet browser icon off her desktop to prevent her from getting on the web unsupervised.... Yeah, that almost worked. I'm going to have to be smarter than my 3-year-old. *sigh* Anyway, we asked her how she got to that website. She goes into this long monologue that went something like this, "Well, I clicked switch user and got onto my account and then I clicked Mini HD (kind of like the PC start menu) and clicked 'Users.' Then I clicked 'Kyra' and then I clicked 'Sites.'" We were doing all of this as she described what she'd done and ended up with a dummy webpage, but it was in a legitimate web browser. She couldn't remember what she did after that, but we surmised that somehow she'd gotten the address bar highlighted and must've clicked the 'D' key, which would pull up past webpages because Disney.com was the first 'D' page to come up. Then all she had to do was hit return and off she went to the Disney site. All of that makes perfect sense, except for the fact that it was done by a 3-year-old!!! Steven and I were just wide-eyed and laughing, but more than a little concerned. She had been surfing the web for at least 1/2 hour without any supervision, which can be a recipe for disaster at any age. I made a joke before about having to get internet parental controls for my preschooler, but now we're actually going to do just that. Holy cow!

On a Schedule

A few days ago, Kyra declared that she was "not feewing vewwy good...I fink I'm a widdle bit sick." (Ended up she was just hungry.) But in response, I told her how sorry I was that she was feeling yucky and said I hoped she felt better very soon. She replied back, "Oh, I will be better soon. I'll be better in June." I chuckled and told her that it was indeed June. "Oh," she says, "well, maybe next January then." Ok. I'll be waiting.

Who ya gonna call?

We were in the Kohl's dressing room today minding our own business and Kyra was of course, providing a running commentary on every thought that passed through her mind. =) Another woman had entered the dressing room around the same time we did and was accompanied by her son of around 9 years old or so. The boy was acting as her runner whenever she needed something else in another size. Well, while we were in our dressing room and she was in hers about 4 stalls down, and during a rare lull in Kyra's monologue, we hear this woman call for her son, "Austin...pausepausepause...Austin?" So Kyra, being the helper that she is, decided to help this woman summon the boy and yells as loud as she can, "AUSTIN!" From down the hall, the woman starts cracking up and I am chuckling, silently thanking God that at least we were behind closed doors.

Hack-Hack-Grin

The innate knowledge that babies are born with amazes me. They are born knowing the proper technique to get their food. They are born knowing that you're supposed to be scared of falling. And apparently, they're born knowing that when you cough, someone will turn and look at you. I know that all babies do this, but actually seeing my own babies do it cracks me up. Siana, for a couple months now has been frequently performing the trick where she does this goofy little fake cough and then waits for someone to turn and look at her. Whoever does turn and look is then rewarded with a huge toothless grin and often a cute baby giggle. Who teaches them this? It's not like we sit around as a family and cough when we want attention. It just amazes me that she figured this trick out all on her own, as did Kyra, and as has every other baby on the planet.

I think not

After disobeying this morning and having done the time for her crime, I asked Kyra if she understood why she'd gotten into trouble. She said no. So I told her to think about it and think about what she had done to cause her punishment. She turned to me after a second and said, "I don't have any thinks."

These are a few of my favorite things...

Steven told me last night that he had some trouble in assisting Kyra while finding a Mother's Day present for me. He asked her what she wanted to get me several times and she just kept saying she didn't know. So he thought he'd simplify and suggest that they get a gift certificate for me. He asked her, "What store should we get Mommy a gift certificate for so she can go shop there?" Kyra naturally said, "Wal-Mart!!!" Daddy tried to clarify a little a said, "Well, let's think, what is Mommy's favorite store?" To which she again replied, "Mommy loves Wal-Mart!" Amused, he then tried another angle and said, "Well, how about a restaurant? What is Mommy's favorite place to eat?" Kyra got very excited about this one and enthusiastically exclaimed, "Taco Bueno!!!" The store and restaurant she chose are not necessarily typical Mother's Day fare, but I've got to give it to her, the girl knows her mama. =)

Accuracy in Artistry

Last week at church, Kyra was drawing a picture of her Daddy leading singing. After she'd finished her masterpiece, she was whispering to me the details of what she'd drawn. She pointed out, "there's his head, his eyes, his ears, his mouth, his belly button, and there's his hairy bottom." I don't think I needed quite THAT much detail.

Boots-Boots-O

I don't know if it is the "official" logo or not, but scattered in several places in Amarillo is the word Amarillo with both L's replaced by a pair of boots. One of these is on an overpass on the highway, and another is in a restaurant called Cattle Call that we eat at occasionally. We were sitting in Cattle Call one evening having dinner and Kyra looks up at the wall where this Amarillo logo is painted. She says, "Look, that says Amarillo!" She then proceeds to spell it out, "A-M-A-R-I-Boots-Boots-O." She then gets a rather confused look on her face and repeats, "Boots-Boots-O???"

Surfin' USA

My 3 year old is officially a tech nerd (just like Mommy and Daddy). Today I got a mailing list email regarding some videos Kyra likes to watch (Signing Time). I stepped away from the computer because I was done checking my email and Kyra said she would like to look at the Signing Time pictures. I said sure and pulled up the email for her to look at. I went across the room to put Siana down on her little jungle gym toy and suddenly heard the Signing Time theme song pumping through the computer speakers.....????? I turned around and saw that Kyra had clicked from the email to the signing time website, had clicked through to the "products" page that listed all the available videos, had found a video she didn't have, and was checking out the sample video clips from that video. Holy cow! I then watched as the video clip ended and she moused up to the corner, clicked the red "x" button to close it and continued browsing the signing time videos. When did she learn how to do all that???? I'm going to have to set up parental internet controls for a 3 year old!

National Monuments

Kyra picked up our broom today, stood it on its end so the handle was on the floor and the bright yellow bristles were straight up in the air and said, "Look Mommy, the Statue of Wiberty!"

Naked Bunnies

Kyra was drawing pictures today and after she'd finished drawing a bunny, I asked her if she was going to color her bunny. She replied, "No, it's ok if he just be's naked."

Kyra on Crying

Kyra, Miss Loudness that she is, decided that Siana was too loud for her liking today. Siana has been fussy today, I think because she's about to have some bottom teeth. So during an unusual crying episode, I heard Kyra sternly telling the baby, "Siana, stop cwying! We weawwy can't hear anything! You're weawwy good, but now you're bad...stop cwying! You're fweakin me out!"

(weawwy=really)

No Smoking Zone

As Kyra was brushing her teeth tonight, she made the comment, look Mommy, it's like smoking. She then proceeded to blow air down the handle of her toothbrush. I was a little stunned as we've never talked about smoking before and I don't think she knows anyone who does it (at least not that I'm aware of). I asked her what smoking was and she once again sucked on her toothbrush and then blew on it. I figured we probably should have some sort of conversation about it, so I asked her how she knew what smoking was. She said she saw somebody do it when she was with Daddy. I then asked her if it was good for our bodies or bad for our bodies. She said it was bad for our bodies and that when she grew up, she was going to be a "Smoking Challenger" and was going to tell smoking to go away. She then said, That's when I grow up. I'm going to tell God that."

Big Girl Einstein

As we were out for a walk today, Kyra randomly mentioned that she wanted to buy a new Baby Mozart movie because ours is broken. (It's been broken for a couple of years). I responded that if we bought a new one, it would actually be for Siana and not for her because it would probably be pretty boring to her since she's a big girl now. She contemplated this for a minute, then said, I bet they make Big Girl Einstein too. I said, Really? She said, Yeah, and Big Girls that Go Potty Einstein. Hmmmm...that would be something.