While JE & RN were in India their two other children were picked by JE's sister and taken to Camp Aunt. Our oldest is nicknamed Kermit while our youngest is Two as in Two of Three an homage to Star Trek's 7 of 9.
The Players
Kermit age 3 going on 4
Two age 1 going on 2
FSIL, JE's older sister a principal at a local school, nickname given by RN
Buckwheat, JE's younger sister, my nickname for her, also known as FSIL but that would just get confusing here
Cousin1, Kermit's first born cousin, offspring of FSIL
Cousin2, Kermit's 2nd born cousin
Cousin3, you figure it out
KW, a friend of the family
Mamma Dee, JE's mom
Kermit and Two -isms
09FEB09
One of the first things Kermit asked me after I arrived on Monday: “Aunt Buckwheat, are we going to fly on an airplane?”
Buckwheat: “No, we are going to drive in Aunt FSIL’s big green Suburban.”
Kermit: “Okay!” (Planes hurt her ears.)
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Buckwheat: “Kermit, how old are you these days?”
Kermit: “5!”
Buckwheat: “Wow! You went from 2 to 5 in one year! Did you know your cousin Cousin2 went from age 2 to 16?”
Kermit’s response: Wide eyed and silent – definitely processing that one.
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Kermit: “Mommy, I’m perturbed.”
RN: “Why’s that?”
Kermit: “Because I’m tired”
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Tuesday night after JE and RN had gone to bed and I was still watching TV in the living room, Kermit walked in. I asked if she needed something. She looked at me and ran from the room straight to her parent’s bedroom. The next morning I asked her if I scared her.
Kermit: “No. You woke me up!”
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While I was getting dressed Wednesday morning, Kermit joined me in the bathroom. I had my hair wrapped up in a towel. I asked her if I should wear my hair like that to work. She laughed and said, ‘No!’ Two, who was nursing off her mom in the adjoining bedroom, shook her head, ‘yes’!
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Wednesday morning as we were all getting ready for work, everyone happened to be in the kitchen and Kermit was whining about not wanting to go to the babysitter’s house.
Buckwheat: “Hey Kermit, I have an idea! How about I go to T ’s house, and you go to work for me?”
Kermit (after pondering that offer for a minute): “Buckwheat, I’m little!”
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Thursday evening as Kermit, RN and Two were driving home…
Kermit: “Mommy, is our friend going to be there when we get home?”
RN: “Our friend? Do you mean Aunt Buckwheat?”
Kermit: “Yes! Is Aunt Buckwheat going to be there? Is she going to sleep over again?”
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While I was getting Two into her pajamas on Thursday evening, Kermit was jumping on the bed (yes, I had the ‘5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed’ song running through my head, but didn’t sing it out loud as she did not need to be encouraged). She stopped when I got done dressing Two and jumped in my arms and said, “Carry me”. So I picked her up and then scooped up Two.
Kermit: “Can you carry two?”
Buckwheat: “Yep, I have two arms!”
Kermit: “Why?”
Buckwheat: “Because God gave me two arms to carry two kids.”
Kermit: “Oh.” And you could see the wheels turning.
JE said tomorrow, Kermit will be carrying around her two baby dolls all day.
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RN: “Kermit, did you do that?!
Kermit: “No mommy. Camille did it. I told her not too!”
Poor Camille, already getting blamed for stuff and she is still in the orphanage.
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Saturday morning while I was getting out of the shower, Kermit comes in.
Kermit: “We are having oatmeal for breakfast!”
Buckwheat: “We are?!”
Kermit: “Yes! Can you make it?”
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Saturday morning:
Kermit: “Buckwheat, we have to say good morning to Jesus.”
Buckwheat: “Where is Jesus?”
Kermit: “In our hearts!”
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I think we are going to have a blast on our Grand Adventure to Camp Aunt next week!
More 10MAR09
I was ratted out twice before 6:15am on Tuesday, 17 February 2009:
#1 – While Kermit and I were brushing our teeth, she attempted to hand me her toothbrush (but due to our proximity, it seemed more of an attempt to put it in my mouth). I told her not to do that, as that was how germs and bugs were spread around. She ran off saying, “I’m going to tell my mommy!” I finish up, and Kermit comes back in followed by RN:
Kermit: “Buckwheat, you need to verify!”
Me: “Verify what?”
Kermit: “That my teeth are clean!”
Me: “Oh! Is that what you wanted? I thought you wanted me to use your toothbrush. That would have been gross!”
#2 – KW made the road trip with me. He was still laying on the couch all snug and warm in his sleeping bag.
RN: “Kermit, shhh…you woke up KW.”
Kermit: “No I didn’t, Buckwheat did!”
Kermit: “When is your boyfriend going to get up?”
Buckwheat: “KW is not my boyfriend, he is my friend.” She got a strange look on her face when I told her that I changed his diapers when he was a baby!
Driving by Coalinga on Wednesday, 18 February 2009:
Buckwheat: “Kermit there are the cows!”
Kermit: “It stinks!”
At a pit stop in Patterson, while I was changing Two’s poopy diaper:
Kermit: “That smells like the cows!” [Sad part was, it was true - Two's diaper smelled like Coalinga.]
The next day while driving to the store:
Kermit: “I want to smell the cows again!”
Too bad Kermit was asleep when Two had another Coalinga smelling load after her nap!
19 February 2009:
An attempt at ratting me out again...
Kermit: "Buckwheat you didn't squeegie down Aunt FSIL's shower!"
Buckwheat: "Aunt FSIL doesn't have a squeegie in the shower, so I couldn't!"
Kermit, looking at a picture of Cousin3 on the refrigerator:
“When is my friend coming?”
Overheard while driving to Trader Joe’s:
Kermit: “I want to see cows.”
A few minutes later…
“I saw some cows!”
Two was a horse in her past life. When changing her diaper, she will suck her belly in and then push it way out when the diaper changer is trying to tape it up! Of course she giggles all the while.
20 February 2009:
Kermit: "You scared me last night. I thought you were a stranger!"
Buckwheat: "When?"
Kermit: "When you got in my bed."
Buckwheat: "Is that because I had to climb over you?" (She was on my side, so I took the side next to the wall.)
Kermit: "Yes."
Buckwheat: "So do you want me to sleep in the other room tonight?"
Kermit: "No, just don't scare me."
Buckwheat: "Then leave me some room, so I don't have to climb over you."
Kermit: "Ok"
Kermit to Cousin1: "You ask a lot of questions!"
(Kermit has met her match - they both ask a lot of questions!!)
Kermit learned to pedal her bike today, here is what she had to say when she started going:
"I can't do it! I can't do it! I can't do it! I can't do it!"
She went about a quarter of a mile total, not being able to do it!
At the end of her bike riding lesson:
Kermit: "I have to go potty!"
Buckwheat: "Ok, let's hurry home."
Kermit: "No, here."
Buckwheat: "You can't go potty here."
Kermit: "My dad let's me go potty in my yard."
Buckwheat: "Well, this is not your yard, it is public property, and we are in front of other people's houses and those are not toilet-trees!"
Kermit was quite concerned as there are no men here.
"Who is going to do the laundry?"
21 February 2009
Cousin1 kept calling Kermit by her dad's name, JE.
Kermit: "My name is not JE!"
Cousin1: "Well you look so much like your dad."
Kermit: "But I don't have a penis!"
Two has become my little "cling-on" like Cousin3 used to be. I was telling Cousin3 about it and she said, "Well us youngest ones have to stick together!"
22 February 2009
Cousin1 and Kermit were reading together on the couch. Kermit wanted Cousin1 to close her eyes, but Cousin1 wasn't cooperating.
Kermit: "I'm going to tell your mom!"
Cousin1: "Go ahead she is sitting right there."
Kermit: "No! I'm going to tell Mama Dee."
Cousin1: "Okay."
So I called up Mama Dee, and Kermit filled her in.
Kermit to Cousin1: "Mama Dee says to close your eyes!"
She then proceeded to talk a hundred miles an hour to Mama Dee. Explaining over and over how she wanted Cousin1 to close her eyes, then she put Cousin1 in time out.
Kermit to Cousin1 while talking on the phone to Mamma Dee:
"Stop talking to me! You are disturbing me!"
Two got 3 rides on the Merry-Go-Round at Arden Faire Mall since Kermit was too scared to ride. By the third ride she had figured out when the bell rings the ride is about to start.
Cousin1 and Kermit were reading/looking at one of the Anne Geddes books:
Kermit: "That's the baby I had in my uterus!"
Kermit: "And that's the baby I had in my uterus!"
Kermit: "And that's the baby I had in my uterus!"
Cousin1: "You sure have had a lot of babies in your uterus."
FSIL: "Well she lives in LA." [Just a dig on the Octomom and doctor that did the IVF!]
24 February 2009
When putting Kermit to bed:
Kermit: “Can you stay here with me?”
Buckwheat: “I have to go get some work done. I haven’t done anything all day.”
Kermit: “Oh. Will you come check on me?”
Buckwheat: “I will come check on you in about 15 minutes, and again before I go to bed. I’ll also check on Aunt FSIL and Two before I go to bed too.”
Kermit: “Why?”
Buckwheat: “Because I’ll be the last one to bed and I always check on everyone before I go to bed and tuck myself in.”
Kermit: “Who’s going to check on you?”
25 February 2009
Buckwheat had come home from team training right at bedtime.
Kermit: “Let me smell you!”
She then jumped in my arms and buried her face in my chest for a good whiff (gross!).
26 February 2009
While at the zoo the chimpanzees were in rare form.
Kermit: “Why did the monkey pick her butt and lick it?”
Buckwheat: “Because that is what monkeys do.”
27 February 2009
Kermit to Cousin3 (who came home sick): "You sound like garbage!"
All during Camp Aunt
Two with arms raised up to me: "Mama, mama, MAMA!"
She started doing the same thing to FSIL at the end of the week.
Kermit: “Tell my dad I want my flying monkey when I grow up!”
(She is afraid of her flying monkey and other assorted animals the go flying through the air making their respective animal sounds, so JE took them to work. Seems she is starting to work through some of her fears.)
When the day arrived to drive the girls back to LA, Kermit was hugging my leg as I was getting dressed in the morning and looked up at me and said, “After you get dressed, and we eat breakfast, are you going to take us home?”
Buckwheat: “Yes. We have a long drive ahead of us. Are you ready?”
Kermit: “I want to stay here!”
Buckwheat: “Did you have too much fun?”
Kermit shook her head yes.
Buckwheat: “Maybe you can come back to Camp Aunt again.”
While eating breakfast, Kermit told FSIL she didn’t want to leave.
FSIL said basically the same thing about coming back to Camp Aunt . Then we suggested she come in the summer time so she could swim and do other fun things that we couldn’t do since the weather didn’t co-operate this trip.
Kermit: “But I don’t have a bathing suit.”
Buckwheat: “We can get you one.”
Kermit: “Okay.”
During the drive to LA, and out of the blue, this is what I hear coming out of the backseat from Kermit: “Aunt Buckwheat! When are we going to stop so you can buy me a bathing suit? And Two needs one, and so does Camille!”
And the ultimate comment when we arrived at Kermit’s house after only one stop in Kettleman City for lunch: “My butt hurts!”
