Recent Quotes and Other Craziness

While eating dinner tonight, Malachi asked for some dip for his fries. Josiah responded with, "dip, baby, dip!" with perfect inflection from that one certain song from my high school days. As long as he doesn't know where it came from, it's innocent, right?! 

While eating dinner another night, Josiah looks over at Michael and asks, "Daddy, is your skin brown because you eat too many Crunchy Balls?" {"Crunchy Balls" are what we call the Chinese equivalent of Cocoa Puffs.} Of course, we all died laughing, but then Michael replies with, "And did you eat too many Cheerios?" 

On a recent Mommy-Josiah date (along with 10 other people), we walked into a 四川 (part of China known for spicy food) restaurant. Josiah started coughing, then said, "Mom, I'm coughing because I can smell the spicy." And so we ate a little spicy, then got ice cream to balance it out. 

Malachi potty trained himself. I'm not really kidding. He had 2 other men-folk to watch (TMI?), so maybe that was it. He was very ready before we went to Thailand, but I wasn't about to deal with all those potty crises there!! So, the week after we got back, I took off the diapers (except nap and nighttime..still waiting for that to "click.") He had maybe 3 or 4 accidents the next few days, and now he's great! I don't even have to remind him. He can hold it for a few hours at a time, then yells, "Mommy, Mommy, I gotta go potty!" and takes off running to the bathroom. #2 took a few days, but after telling him how nasty it was to poop on whichever character was on his underwear, he figured it out. Am I writing all this to brag? Absolutely not. I seriously had very little to do with this. So, I can do nothing else but give God the credit. He cares about the littlest of people and the littlest of bladders, too.

Lately, the boys have their non-stop antics. Malachi winks constantly. Although, maybe it's not considered a wink if his right eye is always closed. He thinks he's a pirate. Josiah has been tilting his head back and laughing hysterically. But when he does this, maybe his throat closes a little or something, and it comes out sounding like a wheezy old man. He knows it makes us laugh, so he continues.

Our ayi (helper) comes once a week and loves hanging out with the kids. This week, Josiah showed her a book that had tons of animals listed in Chinese. She sat with him and they repeated the words back and forth for 30 minutes. He was soaking it up, then said, "Mom, I want to learn more and more Chinese!" May the Father bless him with a gift of this language!!

And finally, Spring is coming! Maybe I should put "Spring" in quotation marks because it sure isn't the Spring this mid-western girl is used to, but after 5 months of temps below freezing, rounding the 40* mark feels wonderful! We can only hope that they keep climbing and don't slip back, especially since they're going to turn off the heat in a few weeks!