We Could Be Heroes

Patricia chose me to hang out with this Sunday!  Julius went to his friend’s party and we asked Patricia who should hang out with her and she said “mama!”  That’s me!  Patricia never ever picks me to be the one for anything.  Will always reads to her before bed and puts her to bed.  When she’s sad she wants dada, never mama.  I guess now I know how Will felt with Julius.  Actually Patricia picked me to hang out with her on two separate occasions, including when she was sick.  When we hang out she frequently tells me “I love just only mama”.  So I guess she’s trying to butter me up, and let’s be honest it totally works.

When Patricia was sick she had some scary petechiae rash the other day so the doctors requested blood work – which meant Patricia had to have blood drawn from her arm.  This process involves 3 people (not including the patient) – one to draw the blood, one to hold her arm steady, and one to hold everything else immobile (especially her other arm).  She did a good job and I made sure to tell her many times.  Afterwards she recounted the story to Will, “I was SO brave.  I cried when the pointy thing went into me.”

Patricia’s pet name for me is Mommy Llamy.  (An adorable parity on Patricia-licia.)  She is so smiley and cheerful 90% of the time, but that other 10% of complete obstinance and disobedience is so much worse than the Julius “terrible” twos.  I told Will the other day we are so lucky we ended up with two kids because it’s so interesting to see how unique they are and yet how similar they are.  Speaking of which both Patricia and Julius frequently say “what the heck!” and Julius always says “c’mon dude” which I assumed they had gotten from somewhere else.  But the other day I was in the car, and I said, “c’mon dude” to someone doing something questionable and Will said “now we know where he gets it”.  And the worst part, I hadn’t even heard myself say it.  Glad I curbed my swearing…

The other day I talked about Julius defending Patricia and including her made up stories as part of his own tales.  Well Patricia also defends Julius.  The other day the kids were getting their after dinner treat.*  Will told Julius he could have half a cookie dough bite and Patricia responded indignant, “Why?!  He’s a big boy!!”

Okay going to drop a few more stories/Patricia-isms before I show you the silly thing we did this weekend.

Cupcapes  (cupcakes)

Teeny leenies (tortellinis)

This one cracks me up still:

Patricia (sobbing about the train going by):

I do want to ride a choochoo.

But I don’t want the choochoo in my ears.  It’s too loud

Patricia and Julius and I went to Davis Farmland by ourselves and I was a bit discombobulated chasing after both kids so at some point a sheep got a hold of my tea container and licked the top of it.  The next day Patricia reminisced:

Lambs drink their mama’s milk.

Lambs don’t drink Patricia’s mamas tea!

Last one (sorry it’s about poop):

Julius is being silly trying to spell “poopoo”.  He guessed “p-o-p-o” which we told him was pronounced “poe poe”.  He thought it was hilarious and said:

I’ve got to go po po!

Patricia wanted to be silly as well so she said:

I’ve gotta go pee pew pee boo!

She then erupted into raucous (contagious) laughter

Okay so this weekend we went to the Davis Farmland Member night.  It was super hero themed and I had big plans to make us all capes** and masks, but that didn’t happen.  But Patricia and Julius already had incredible capes from Sugar and Daddy-o from Christmas so I made us all masks instead.  As you can tell they double as adorable headbands if you prefer. 

Super Hero Masks

What you’ll need:

• Scrap Peltex 70
• felt
• matching thread
• 1/4″ elastic
• Templates here

1. Choose a template to fit your face.  You can modify the design however you want, you just want the eye holes to be in the right spot, and you want the mask part to be about an inch wider than your eyes on each side.
2. Cut out one piece of Peltex 70 and one piece of felt.    
3. Pin or clip the peltex and felt together. 
4. At the edge of the fabric starting just below the eye hole, stitch around the outside of the mask.  When you reach the opposite eye hole insert elastic, stitch and then backstitch over the spot.  Continue to stitch until you reach just above the opposite eye hole. 
5. Backstitch and remove from machine.  Fit it snugly around person’s head, using the elastic still attached to the roll.  Clip where the unfinished elastic meets the mask on the unfinished side.  Insert elastic 1/2″ into the mask and sew in place.  
6. Wear with pride

*Sidenote:  giving Patricia 2 m&ms at the end of every day she was completely dry was the only thing that has worked for us for potty training.  And trust us we’ve been at this for 8 months now.  She is not motivated by our happiness or lack of happiness.  She is not motivated by being a big girl or self pride.  She is motivated by m&ms though.  So for the last few months we started giving her 2 m&ms after dinner as a reward for her good potty behavior.  This has backfired though because Julius, who never needed bribery for potty training, started asking if he could have 2 m&ms as well since he had no accidents.  The kid never had accidents.  So we acquiesced and give him 2 m&ms when he doesn’t have accidents either.  So Patricia forgets about the m&ms sometimes, but Julius NEVER does.  He will even ask Patricia after school, “how many accidents did you have today Patricia?”  So we are going to have to keep giving them both m&ms until they go to college.

**Second footnote: I did technically make Will a cape.  I made Will a beard cape for his birthday.  The kind for shaving beards.  Julius assumed this was some kind of beard themed super hero cape so he kept referring to Will as “beard man” all night.  Later I realized it was because I told Julius I was making Will a beard cape.  Will called himself the “bearded beauty”.  I dubbed myself the “purple people pleaser”.