I'd like to take a moment and celebrate my stage...

Joshua was coughing, his eyes bugged out in slight panic, and his face turning red as his body struggled to remove whatever it was that went down his windpipe.

"Raise your arms over your head!" I exclaimed.

He looked at me skeptically.

"That doesn't work," he finally managed, coughing slightly.

I gave him my mom stare (like the Care Bear Stare, but less nice, and with better results).

"Yes, it does..." I said, letting my glare sink into his soul.

He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"So...you mean I need to raise my hands up like people do when there's a bank robber?"

I thought about it for a minute.

"Yes."

Eva threw me a semi-vacant stare.

"Mommy?" She began.

"Yes?"

"Do bank robbers raise their hands up when they are coughing?:

I thought about it for a minute, amused by the idea.

"Probably..." I started, then revised my answer. "Yes...yes, they do."

Later, after this exchange, we found all the kids in Joshua's room fooling around. Josh had put his blanket at the bottom of his door so we couldn't see his light on, thus attempting to deceive us into believing nothing was going on, despite all the giggling going on and sounds of general rowdiness.

Jeremy and I stalked in there, and Joshua began protesting.

"EVA DID IT!" He lied. "SHE SAID THAT THE BLANKET HAD TO BE THERE!"

Jeremy and I gave him the "look."

"...and..." he faltered. "...she, uh, said she would kill me if I moved...uh..it."

The look on his face clearly indicated that he was hoping his lie would work, but was pretty sure it wasn't going to.

During another similar episode, I looked at Joshua and said, "You must really think I'm stupid."

He gasped in genuine shock.

"I never think that..." his tone expressing how completely scandalized he was.

Eva usually follows up these incidences by being over-the-top obedient, loving and sweet.

"Yes, mommy," she says, as she quite primly puts her underwear in the laundry, throwing a look of triumph in Joshua's general direction.

She does have her silly side, though.

She walked into the kitchen this morning with her Tinkerbell notebook in hand, and proudly showed me what she had drawn.

"Look, mommy!" She exclaimed. "This is you, and you're GROSS, and this is you, and you're GROSS!"

I looked at her.

She waited a minute to let the suspense grow. Finally she couldn't contain herself any longer.

"You're gross because you are NAKED!" And then she ran away squealing.

I shook my head at her silliness, but quickly turned into cranky mamma when Joshua came into the kitchen with an Eva-inspired drawing of me, but this time instead of me being a stick figure, I was anatomically correct (he apparently saw me in my birthday suit by accident one night after I had a shower...hopefully he isn't irreparably damaged), which earned Joshua a stern setting down and a bout of time out. Hopefully, that will curb any other desire to draw nudie pictures of his mom in the future.

As trying to my logical mind as these events are at times, I am genuinely enjoying the stage of life I am in right now. I know I'm going to miss my children's incessant questioning, and their marveling at the world, and watching them figure things out. The thought of them being teenagers scares me. I'm still semi-omniscient to my children. All bets are off when they hit 13. By then, they will probably be taller than me, and that will give them a sense of dominion over their mommy.

Except for Lily. Lily is always going to be tiny.

You wouldn't think so with how much food she packs in. She rivals Joshua when she is in a growth spurt. That girl can eat an entire baked potato. I'm not talking about your average baked potato. I'm talking about the freakishly enormous, "enhanced" potatoes from Costco. And she gulps it down, skin and all, and looks around the table hungrily at everyone else's food. Or, she could be looking at us, wondering if we're edible as well, I'm not sure.

Not a day goes by when she doesn't follow me around announcing in her tiny voice that she is "super hungry."

The other day, I was walking through the kitchen after we had come home from our walk. Lily looked up at me with her ginormous eyes and asked, "Egg?"

"Hang on.." I replied, turning my attention to some task at hand.

"I want eeegggggggg..." she said again, twisting her body into different shapes, hoping that her body language would convey her dire need for ovum.

I finally turned to her after she kept at it, completely exasperated.

"How do you ask??"

She looked at me blankly for a minute.

"I ask a egg."

How do you argue with that? But I tried anyway.

"You say 'please.'"

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!" she replied brightly.

And then she was rewarded with an egg.

Lily has been really good at teaching Eden new words. We were driving in the car to the store, and Lily turned her tiny mind towards her sister next to her.

"Tinkle," Lily said expectantly.

"Tinkle," Eden replied.

Lily laughed.

"Cat," she tried again.

"Caahhtt," Eden obliged her.

Again, Lily laughed.

The exchanged went on for a while, Lily quite pleased with herself.

Lily inadvertently taught Eden another word.

"MYYYYY!" Eden screamed, her voice echoing through the kitchen.

"No, baby," Lily replied sternly. "MINE! Stop it."

"MMYYYYY!" Eden protested, struggling with Lily to get whatever coveted toy was being fought over. It's a pretty even match, since they about the same size and weight.

"MINE!" Lily stated finally, and ran off with whatever it was, much to the shrieking chagrin of Eden.

Eden has since added to her repertoire, "My Turn."

She is still testing it out, since I'm pretty sure she doesn't entirely understand what it means. But she hears it enough that she deems it important to learn to articulate it. She tries these words out as she walks around the house cleaning up messes.

Jeremy commented on her while she was walking around the kitchen yesterday. Her pajamas were low-slung, making her legs look stubby, and she was moving stiffly.

"She's like a little bear!" He said, completely delighted. It was so perfectly fitting! So, she wanders around, like an upright bear, picking up toys and putting them on the shelf, or she can be found industriously taking all my Tupperware lids from the cupboard one at a time and meticulously placing them just so on the little table next to the wall. I don't know it all means, but it must be very important for her young mind.

It's odd for me to realize that she will be two next year. Lily will be four, Eva six, and Joshua nine.

Some of the best advice I ever got was to enjoy every moment when my kids are small. And, though it is hard sometimes, and I lose patience, and get exasperated, I do. I know that all too soon I'll have well-behaved big people, and I'll not know what to do with myself. The idea of having my children sit still in church is so foreign. Some day I will actually get something out of sacrament meeting that doesn't involve candy, cheerios, or frequent trips to the hallway drinking fountain. And I have to admit....

I like wandering around the hallways. 

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