Hope-isms and Noah-isms of the last few weeks

So, there have been some funny stories going on here in the last few weeks that I need to write down before I forget.

*Hope and I were leaving the grocery store last week and there was a woman smoking a cigarette standing near our car. Now, I am not a fan of smoking, but to my knowledge, I have not had the "smoking is bad " conversation with my daughter. Anyway, she starts hacking up a lung and saying as loudly as possible "EWWWW she is SMOKING! ...Smoking is BAD...Smoking is NASTY!...Cough Cough..." and on and on again, and the whole time I am saying shhh and trying to shove her in the car as quickly as possible and looking for a hole in the earth that I can crawl into and hide. Then, right before I shut the door, Hope says "SHE'S GONNA DIE, RIGHT MOM?!!" Oh Lord, please help me was my prayer. Where is the hole? I just said "oh honey, I hope not." And tried to smile at the woman who was understandably looking away from me and probably looking for her hole to crawl into as well.

* My mom was so graciously bringing my children home to me on Thursday and was getting near my house while I was talking to her on the phone. Hope starts crying and trying to tell my mom something, so we get off the phone. My mom calls me back to say, meet us outside. bring your camera. There was Noah, covered in chocolate, with not one, but two chocolate chip cookies, one in each hand. My niece Riley had put two cookies in my mom's purse to save them for later. My mom had put her purse in her market basket, which she had sat between Noah and Hope's carseats. Noah had swiped the cookies and was going to town. Hope was so mad that HE was eating those cookies and not her. My mom thought that Hope was crying because she was scared for Noah, but no, my girl wants the cookies. Apparently so does the boy. After I took pictures of him, I handed Hope a cookie. She was totally disgusted by the slobber on it, but decided to eat around the slobber. I told you, she wants the cookies.

* Hope takes Spanish at school. I am aware that she takes Spanish, but I never push the issue and ask what she learned or anything like that, I just have thought, oh it's good exposure, but never really even thought about her actually learning the language. Something that I should have considered, since I myself do not know any Spanish. A few weeks ago, John was chasing her around the house and she cried out "Mas de espacio!" He stopped and said "what?" She repeated it back to him. And then she remembered she had spoken in Spanish and said "It means SLOW DOWN." John cracked up and ran and got on the internet to see if she was right. She was. She was thinking in Spanish. Crazy. She has said other things here and there not thinking, like saying playa for beach, etc. Then, this morning for breakfast she said to her daddy, "For breakfast I want a manzana. With some leche." (Apple with milk.) I have bought a Spanish to English dictionary for our house for obvious reasons.

In other news, these are not particularly funny, but things I want to remember as well:

* Hope is always looking for affirmation. She ends a lot of statements with "Right, Mom?" Like, "I am a great helper, Right Mom?" Or, "Noah is very little, right Mom?" Or, as explained above, when she sees a smoker..."SHE'S GONNA DIE, RIGHT MOM?"

* She knows her right from her left.

* She is going through a very pouty stage right now. She gets her feeling hurt and she just folds those arms and will not answer, will not eat, will not look at you, will not move until you can snap her out of it. I have recently found that imitating her usually make her laugh and snap out of. Oh, and I also try to take a picture of the pout. She really hates that.

* She is starting to understand math concepts. She can add and subtract just about any numbers under 10.

* She loves to cut paper with scissors. I bought this awesome Kumon book at Target for her called "Let's Cut Paper." If you have a preschooler, get this book. It has pages and pages of pictures, designs, games etc of things for her to cut out. It is really a good buy.

* Her reading is really out of control. She can now sound out many not so simple words. She has several easy reader books that she can read all the way through without any help at all.

* She also memorizes books that we read often. She can recite "Pinkalicious" with or without the book. Her favorite pretend game right now is to pretend that she has "a very acute case of pinkititis." We have to pretend to go see Dr. Wink (usually played by yours truly) and pretend to eat lots of green vegetables. If you have never read the book, I realize you have no clue what I'm talking about. Go get the book. It's a good one.