Thursday, December 7, 2017

The Trim

I try not to write about only one of our children, but Peter is just at that amazing age where you wish you could remember all the funny things he says. So here's my attempt to capture a few. But first let me give you an image of this funny, creative little man (who lived a few weeks bottomless to work on his potty skills).
The jagged drywall around the window without it's trim will serve as a before picture
The first story relates to the window trim, which I've been meaning to blog about. Remember when I used to blog updates on our house renovation ALL. THE. TIME? I suppose it's natural - and a good thing - that eventually you finish most of the projects so there is less to blog about. But anyway, the trim. Most of our windows have interior trim on them! The best story I never want to forget was a conversation between Peter and Nate and they came up from the basement shop with jams for the main floor windows. Peter is slowly climbing the basement steps behind Nate and says, "and those are the jellies?" Oh man did we laugh.

The playroom window, after, with curtains my mom saved from her time in Japan
Peter's first memorable airplane ride was in September. He loved it and these days, airplanes are central to his prayer requests. Perhaps I should call them prayer interjects. While someone is praying, he'll quietly say, "and airplanes." So whoever is praying will quickly add "we pray that someday soon we'll be able to go on an airplane together," or something like that. He also requested an airplane song before bed a few weeks ago, so Nate started singing Leaving on a Jet Plane. One line from the song got his brain thinking hard: Oh babe, I hate to go. We've explained many times that this is a time when it's okay to say that you hate something. A few days later, he looked me in the eye and in the sweetest most enduring way, said "I hate you mama." Oh boy. He also loves to ask (every time we sing the song), "what means babe?" We tell him that's what the singer must call his wife.

Sometime in the past month, Peter finally embraced potty training. We have a jar of M&Ms in our kitchen, so he'll come running in to announce his successes. He recently shouted, "I peed and pooped!  One M&M for pee and two for poop!" Helen asked him how many he gets and he replied, "Um, um, um...A LOT!" This was a similar computation he did back in August at Cora's school open house. Mrs. Douglas has a jar of starbursts for kids to practice estimation. Peter ran up and wanted to take one from the bowl (labeled For Eating) but I explained that first you had to guess how many were in the jar. He looked at it for a couple of seconds, then said "a lot."

I imagine this is the same concentration employed when he was trying to compute 1 + 2
One night the kids were having dinner with Oma while Nate and I went out with friends. They were talking about the difficult times in Puerto Rico while Peter was minding his own business. He all of the sudden started annunciating "Puerto Rico" pretty well, as the story goes. He occasionally says it now from time to time and it reminds me of the Fransisco scene in Elf.

On Saturday we were driving home from Home Depot (or Depots, as Peter calls it) and Peter must have seen some decorative candles lights in someone's windows or yard. He announced, "I saw some Roman Candles!" The only reason I can think that he would call them that is that last year, Cora's class went on a field trip to a local pizza place called Roman Candle, so now every time we drive by it, she get's excited and yells "There's Roman Candle!" It's just funny what a two year old stores away in their brain, only to pull it out six months later.

One last story. A favorite book of Peter's lately has been Dear Zoo. In it the child writes to the zoo, to send him a pet. The lion is too fierce, the camel is too grumpy, the frog too jumpy. Today he was playing with the camel from our PlayMobil Nativity set when I heard him say, "He's not too fierce. Guess he's mad."

We love your cheery soul and the way you make us laugh Peter (aka Buster Brown, Buddy, Pizza). And finally, a few more images of the newly hung trim!

Our bedroom 
Nate working hard while the kids eat breakfast
Guest room

See Where Our Pictures Were Taken