Caulder Speaketh… Nonstop

Caulder: Pretend I'm an English ninja Star War.

Me: Hello, English ninja Star War.

Caulder: Hola.

Aunt Rylee: Are you too full for ice cream?
Caulder: No! My breakfast just scooted over and made room for the ice cream, and now the ice cream is gonna go visit it.

What kind of a person would steal a guy's shoes? (he said in disbelief when a little girl played a joke on him by taking his shoes)

You're the best mom in the promised land. (after our FHE lesson on Nephi)

Hey! This is just like real life. Some people having a party and one guy watering the grass! (at a bbq at my aunt's house)

Whoa! Look at these muscles! (after lifting 2-pound weights for 10 seconds)

Me: What are you laughing at?

CJ: My imagination.

Me: How did you get your ship up on the counter?
CJ: With my sweet skills. I just lifted it off the coffin [coffee] table like this, then walked carefully over to the counter, then tried – and it took a while – and then I got it up here. And then I was like, "Whoa! How did I do that? Oh right, I have sweet skills."

My dad can do anything. He can jump on the trampoline, eat stuff really fast, watch movies all day, he has a job. My dad is awesome.

CJ: I can't clean my room right now because I'm relaxing.
Me: Well, how long do you need to relax?
CJ: Probably like 2 minutes.
Me, 30 seconds later: Okay, it's time to clean now.
CJ: Didn't I just say that I needed 2 minutes?
Me: It's been 2 minutes.
CJ: What am I, a piece of meat or something?

Mom, do you know what the strongest building on earth is? It's half protective shield that's as tough as 3 skidsteers, 10 houses, 85 skyscrapers, and 10 tent trailers.

"Wanna know what my dad does when he's naked?" Then he started running around the house slapping his butt. (CJ shared this little nugget with my grandma and my aunt Jodi. Those of you who know Grandma Sara & Aunt Jodi can imagine the cackling that went on after they witnessed this. Serves Cole right.)

Someone around here has an RV. Oh, how I wish we had one. Just imagine it. You're driving to go camping or something. You have all the food you need. You don't have to hook the trailer up. You just get in and drive. And the TV is ALWAYS ON in it!

I'm dancing to entertain a girl. I'm still in love with padmae, but it's okay to entertain other girls as long as you still love the girl you love. (he better not have learned that concept from his dad)

I have plates on my back, short legs, and a spikey tail that I use to get creditors away. What kind of dinosaur am I? (An antibillpayingosaurus?)

Okay Mom, I'll do it. If you exist. (insist?)

I can switch into a Jedi or a grizzly bear or a ninja or some cotton candy, so I can eat myself.

It's a good thing I can run really fast, because I bet in first grade all the girls will be chasing me!

*Sigh.* Sometimes you guys drive me crazy. But the other times you drive me sweet.

Our New Pet

Cole saw this adorable little thing walking down the canyon road, and thought to himself, "I should catch it and take it home for my boys to see." So he did. And now it's residing in my kitchen. My boys saw it and thought their dad was the coolest, and then they all went out and caught crickets and grasshoppers to feed it.

I saw it and thought, "I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd had girls?"

San Diego

We finally got brave enough to venture out on an amusement park vacation. The thought of dragging our two boys through lines, crowds and baking heat was terrifying, but we decided to give it a shot. We woke the boys up early and crossed our fingers that we'd clear the standby list and get on a flight. We lucked out, and after driving to the aiport, then flying to San Diego, then taking a bus to the rental car place, then driving to our hotel, then swimming, this is what happened: Tukker didn't even make it back up to the hotel room before zonking out. He crashed while I warmed him up in the hot tub, then stayed asleep while Caulder finished swimming, didn't budge when we carried him back up to the room, and kept sleeping for about 2 hours after we tucked him in bed.

After we all recovered from our comas we drove down to La Jolla Cove to see the sea lions and tidepools. I love it there. I wanted to spend more time there, but Tukker was hungry and kept begging for donuts the whole time. We finally caved and drove 15 minutes out of our way to find a Krispy Kreme. When we drove into the parking lot and he saw the pictures of all the donuts on the windows he almost exploded with sheer excitement. I'm pretty sure that was the highlight of his trip.




On the way back to our hotel Caulder stopped talking for about 15.2 seconds. We should have known something was seriously wrong when he actually went silent long enough to take a breath, but before we had a chance to enjoy the rare moment of quiet he launched a stream of vomit all over the rental car. When he finally stopped puking he said, "Oh man, how did that happen?" and then started talking again.

We got him up to the room, put him in the tub, and then poor Cole had to go back to the parking garage to try to clean up the car. Bless him. CJ didn't puke any more after that, but he had an explosion of an even more horrific nature in his sleep that night... all over the hotel room bed. So the next morning we had a pile of wretched-smelling bedding in the hallway, a mound of puke-covered towels in the bathroom, and a room that smelled worse than a frat house after an all-night bender. The Botts know how to par-tay. I apologized profusely to the cleaning lady, then we slunk back out to the Avis vomit rocket to continue our vacation while the poor maid cleaned everything up.

CJ was feeling much better, thankfully, so we headed to Sea World. Caulder thought the animals were amazing. He kept telling us all about how killer whales are actually a type of dolphin and the walrus was probably swimming on the bottom of the tank because he was using his whiskers to look for clams to eat and clown fish and sea anemone live in a symbiotic relationship. Thank you, PBS.

Tukker, on the other hand, just wanted to talk about ice cream as he attempted to climb in the shark tank. We spent some time with Shamu.

But these guys really stole the show:

The sea lion show was hilarious. My favorite part about it was seeing this little guy's face light up:

I'm pretty sure Cole enjoyed it more than any of the kids in the entire audience. I had more fun laughing at how hard HE was laughing than actually watching the show.

We also spent some time in the shark encounter building:Played with sea stars:And watched Tukk cool off in the splash pad: I think the boys liked the Arctic encounter building best, because it had a polar bear cave they could explore with speakers piping in the sound of a sleeping bear. About every 2 minutes the "bear" would wake up and growl, and then they'd run screaming out of the cave and laugh their guts out. I think they did that for about a half hour.

On day 3 we stayed in Carlsbad and visited Lego Land. We didn't tell Caulder we were taking him there until the night before. He was so excited he could barely stand it. The dude is a serious Lego freak. There were quite a few rides that Tukker was too little to go on. He was not happy about this. He pitched a giant fit, tried to run away, then pouted for about an hour. Luckily we found some cars he could drive, so he cheered up for a few minutes.

California was also experiencing a heat wave that day, and it was about 90 degrees. You already know how Caulder feels about getting hot, so you can imagine how much fun he was having around high noon.

Star Wars Mini Land seemed to help, though. He switched into droid mode, and apparently the heat doesn't bother droids as much as it does humans, so that was good.Then both boys got hungry, hot, and tired, and things went downhill rapidly. We almost had to beat them publicly, and we vowed we'd never do an amusement park again. Ever. Then we had a snack and a drink and we magically all felt better.

The rest of the day went much better, especially when we took the kiddos to The Big Shop (possibly the world's biggets Lego store) and told them they could pick out a souvenir. Caulder almost fainted when he saw all the options. He had a list of about 542 Lego sets he wanted to buy, plus a styrofoam sword, shield, and mask set. We would have had to take out a second mortgage on our house to afford everything he wanted.

Tukker's decision was much easier. He came running up to me yelling "I have dis my prize?!!" with his hand clutched around the most amazing thing he could see in the whole gigantic toy shop: a package of Rolos. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed those Rolos even more than Caulder enjoyed his new Star Wars Lego ship. Tukk is a man after my own heart.

So despite the puking, pooping, heat wave, billions of dollars spent, and near child throttling episode at Lego Land, the trip was totally worth it, because the night before we flew home Caulder made this list. It says "Going to Sea World" and "Going to Lego Land": He told us it's his list of his best days ever.

A Cry for Help?

I was eavesdropping on Tukker the other day while he played with a couple of Caulder's Lego guys. The one on the left with the hairy chest and overalls was Grandpa Babe. The firefighter on the right was Yaya. The Grandpa Babe guy kept saying, "Yaya hit me! Yaya push me off!" and there was lots of fighting and yelling going on between the two of them.

It made me wonder: just what, exactly, has been going on at my parents' house? Is The Babe a victim of domestic violence? But more importantly, would he look as good in a stained wife beater as his Lego avatar? And why do we have a Lego that's wearing a stained wife beater in the first place?

I Think He's Falling Hard

Caulder's first week of kindergarten was pretty rough. And then, suddenly, he couldn't wait to go back to school every day. We weren't really sure what made the change, so I asked him if he had some new friends. He said, "I have lots of friends, but only two I talk to."

"Interesting," I thought. That reminds me a lot of myself. Then I asked him about his new friends, and we had this conversation:

CJ: "Their names are Presley and Raul."
me: "What are they like?"
CJ: "Raul has brown skin. Presley has brown hair and a Tinkerbell backpack and today she had a flower in her hair."

"Hmmm," I thought, noticing the vast difference between the descriptions of Presley and Raul. The next day when I dropped him off CJ made sure to point Presley out to me, even though I didn't ask him to. The day after that when Cole picked him up from school CJ told him, "Presley looked extra cute today, Dad. She had her hair in a ponytail."

And every day since then he's given us some little tidbit of information about Presley. She was wearing a dress today. She asked where he was when he'd been out sick the day before. She was playing princesses at recess, and even though "usually I would never play a girl game, I pretended to be a ninja knight so I could rescue her."

The week before last I told him he'd get to ditch school on Friday to go to Idaho to see his cousins, and he - the boy who would have given anything to skip a day of preschool the year before - said, "I don't want to miss school, Mom. I need to go so I can see how cute Presley looks today. She always looks cute. It's kinda complicated."

Aunt Rylee and Uncle Andrew were teasing him about Presley (he's told everyone in the family about her), and they asked if Presley was his girlfriend. He said, "No! I don't have a girlfriend." Then he raised one eyebrow, grinned and said, "But I think she might have a boyfriend!"

And one day he came home from school and told me he'd found a roly poly in his classroom... and gave it to Presley. That's right people. HE GAVE A GIRL A BUG. I almost died right there from the cuteness of it.

Ahhhh, young love. All I can say is this Presley is one lucky girl.