With their wild imaginations, brutal honesty, and ever-expanding (though sometimes inaccurate) vocabularies, kids are the best, and I love the things they say.
Hi, I’m Mary and I’m new. I just got encouraged by my mom to write down my thoughts. Because we looked at mom’s old posts, and realized how fun it was to read our old stories. By the way you can make an alien snowman if you use toesocks.
We finally made it back to Grandmas. Not that we’re here infrequently (we don’t have our own washer and dryer right now) but the kids have been begging me since Wednesday or so, because they’d accidentally left their homemade snowman, “Snowy”, and his larger homemade snow-mother here.
These snowmen crafts are very easy to make, by the way. Turn a kid-sized white crew sock inside out & fill the foot area with rice. Section off a head using a strong rubber band, and use another rubber band to close the tube just above the ankle area. You can turn the tube part inside out for a beanie, tie a fabric-scrap scarf around the neck, and sew on buttons for facial features. Or if you’re lazy like us, you can just glue on googley-eyes and a pom-pom nose.
Hindsight being 20-20, I suppose we should have sewn ours on. The kids walked through Grandma’s door tonight just in time to find their beloved snow-toys in the grips of my three-year-old nephew, Malachi. Mary cried out, and Malachi instantly dropped them and buried his face in the floor while she tearfully surveyed the damage. Snowy was fine, but his mom was in bad shape. Worst of all, her eyes were gone all together.
“Oh sweetie. That’s rough. He didn’t mean to hurt her, though, and I’ll bet you can just glue the eyes back on again.”
“Well” she sobbed, “It’s not like the eyes fell directly into a little box and then wrote themselves a little letter on top that said, ‘Here we are; you may glue us back on now.’”
Could she have simply said, “The eyes are lost!”? Sure, but then she wouldn’t be Mary, so the adults in the room just stifled their laughs.
“I’ll bet Malachi would be happy to help you find the eyes. He feels really bad, you know, and I bet he’d feel better if you let him help you fix things.” At this, Malachi glanced up hopefully, then stood.
“Actually,” she explained while wiping away her tears, “I’ve already managed to find one of them, so we just need to find the other.” (Yes, my eight year old talks like this, and yes, she still uses the “just-add-Y” naming scheme for all of her favorite toys.)
“That’s great!” I took the eye and held it out to my nephew, “Malachi, this is one of the snowmom’s eyes, but she needs two. Could you help us find the other one so she can see again?”
His face lit up, “Well, Mike can see with one big eye!”
Good answer! “That’s true… but see, these eyes are very small, so she’ll need both.”
He had a response I couldn’t quite decipher at the moment, something about someone else only needing one small eye because they were very little. I’m thinking now he must have been talking about Plankton & it just didn’t register with me. Anyway, Malachi was still pretty excited about his one-eyed snowman idea when I went to start our laundry, and by the time I’d closed the washer they were all giggling. Another crisis averted? Here’s hoping. And in the meantime, perhaps tomorrow we’ll invite Malachi over to make his snowclops.
Found.
Mary's self pep-talk
I should add that at one point a few days ago she was asking, “What is the word that means ‘explodes easily’?” Apparently she needed a replacement for the word “fragile.”
If only every conversation ended this way:
“Thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I can tell.”
I’m so glad to have my kids home again. First I got hugs… much needed after a few days without! (Do I feel that way every time they’re gone, you ask? To put it simply, yes.)
And now I’m just enjoying their cuteness. Mary asked, “Would you like a mini cell phone?” She then produced a tiny paperclip model of my old flip phone. “Clip this behind your ear. I’m wearing one too, so if you want to chat, just give me a ring.”
Good to know I can now call her anytime. 
But I am so glad to have them here with me.
P.S. … This is my first post from word press for droid. Woohoo!