Bad BYU Mom???

Sometimes you think you have taught your kids, and then you realize that somewhere along the line you must have overlooked something. The following are real conversations I have had with my 9-yr-old son in the past month. (I hesitate to post these because of how bad it makes me look.)

First, at the beginning of December, he came home with a spelling list from school. I asked him to tell me what words were on it, and he started reading from the list. After awhile, he paused and said, "I'm not sure how to pronounce this one, but it's spelled C-O-U-G-A-R." I yelped.

(The funniest part about this was that it was literally *days* after we had driven home, elated about BYU's win over Utah, and we assigned each person in our car to shout B - Y - U - COUGARS, and his assignment was COUGARS.)

Then, this past weekend after their last-second win over UCLA, we were all shouting in utter joy and amazement, when he came over, wearing his BYU blue football jersey and "Cougars" cap, and whispered in my ear, "Mom, are we the yellow team or the blue team?"

Maybe it's time to cough up the money and pay for cable.

Growth Spurt?

Today my 4-yr-old girl, who usually eats next to nothing, had the following for lunch:

2 Tuna sandwiches
1 Peanut butter sandwich
1 grilled cheese sandwich
a bunch of baby carrots
some oyster crackers
some raisins
2 glasses of milk
a glass of water

I nearly went into shock.

And Tonight's Forecast:

So last night was a really hard night, with my baby crying and us trying to put him back to sleep, and him crying some more, and him finally coming to our bed, where he flopped and arched backwards over my head, and flopped some more and tried to get comfortable, and flopped some more on top of me, and then on top of my husband, and finally fell asleep.

In the midst of the delirium that comes when most of me is trying to sleep and about 3% of me is awake trying to take care of a flopping baby, I had the following thought:

It's too bad you can't measure crying the way you measure snow; and I wish we could get baby forecasts the way you get weather forecasts -- something like, "and tomorrow night will have partly peaceful evening followed by scattered storms, and a chance of 3-6 inches of crying and flopping."

OK, really, I have no idea what I was thinking other than this distant memory of wishing that somebody could tell me ahead of time when I am going to have horrible nights!