Claire: “I’m thirsty.”
Me: “Okay.”
Claire: “Mom, I’m thirsty!”
Me: “I heard you just fine, sweetie.”
Claire: “MOM! I’M REALLY THIRSTY!!!!”
Me: “Claire, that is not how to ask someone for something.”
Claire: “Okay, can I have some of that thirsty stuff?”
We were talking at the breakfast table about everyones’ full names, informing Benjamin that his is Benjamin Graham Cash. Then we asked Adam what his full name is, and he said Adam Elliot Cash. And then we asked Claire what hers is, and she replied, in all seriousness,
“Clairebear Elizabeth Cash.”
This morning over breakfast, Claire was reading everything in sight (as is her most favorite hobby these days) and read the milk carton–Organic Valley Farm.
Adam, nary missing a beat, despite having been just a few minutes since roused from his sweet, sleepyheaded stupor, sang with a goofy smile,
“Old MacDonald had an Organic Valley Farm! Ee Ii Ee Ii Oh!” Then laughed at himself and took another bite of omelet.
It’s so much fun having kids with such great senses of humor. 
Okay, so somehow I have volunteered myself for a duty at church for which I am wholly inadequate–translating the Japanese-only songs into English. But, Lisa, you don’t know Japanese, you might be saying. Why, that’s correct! But there is this handy little tool online called translation software which very ROUGHLY translates text from any one language to another, and I do happen to speak very fluent Christianese, especially the praise and worship dialect, so I just volunteered to do it. And I have to tell you–every week as I sit here and try to make sense of the English jibberish that pops up on my screen, I am just in stitches. (Keith thinks we should start a T-shirt company using these odd, crafty phrases.) Tonight, my prenatally-weakened abdominal muscles are aching from the following two phrases:
“Praise be to a Chopper!”
And
“It is a god, and I, a spy.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not what they’re trying to say. Anyway, thankfully, I’m not the last link in the chain before these slides hit the screen Sunday morning. Praise be to a Chopper for that one!!!
Okay, so we have an interesting method of potty-training. There are actual experts who recommend this method. And it does work really quickly. Anyway…
We do bottom-down nude potty-training. You heard me. When said child is deemed ready for potty-training (at approximately age 3), we make a point to stay home a lot for about two-three weeks, and generally deprive them of their pants for that duration. It’s kind of odd, I know. But with both Claire and Adam, they were accident-free in no time at all. Right now, the method is being tested on Benjamin. And there have been a few very funny incidents related to this, which I’d like to share. Warning: Potty-humor to follow.
1) Last week when we were Christmas decorating, Adam found the stockings, cleverly noticed their resemblance to socks, and began to walk around in them. Well, Benjamin imitates everything his brother does. And, well, Ben clearly stole the show. Don’t you think?
2) I do draw the line at mealtime nudity. That’s just too weird. But last night, as I was putting plates on the table and telling Keith to put pants on the little man, Ben dug in a little prematurely, and took a big swig of milk. Before Keith could comply with the request, Ben was standing on his chair and proclaiming that there was food on his penis. Indeed there was. Ewwww. But funny.
3) And finally, the reason for my sudden motivation to make this particular posting. Just a few minutes ago, I heard Ben giggling in the bathroom, and went to check on him. He was sitting on our Japanese toilet, with the bidet’s warm water squirting him, and said to me.
“Mom! The toilet is kissing my bottom!”
This might not be interesting to anyone but me. Sorry about that. But did you know that when you call customer service at your friendly computer company now, they can actually access your computer from wherever they are and just fix it?? Instead of being on the phone with them and trying to follow their mundane directions (and Indian accent) for 2 hours–they just DO IT FOR YOU! There’s a lady over there going all over the place on my PC, and I’m on the laptop and eating Starbucks Ice Cream, and NOT stressing out! How cool is that??
Of course, the continued coolness of this situation is contingent upon said Indian lady actually being able to fix my computer. I’ll let you know.
We have many family traditions. One of which is that the day after Thanksgiving, we must put up our tree and with great fanfare, welcome the Christmas season. Last year, our very cheap tree, which had amazingly survived 10 Christmases, died a sad but inevitable tree-death, toppling over one night when we weren’t home. We came home to quite a mess of broken ornaments.
So this past Friday, day after Thanksgiving, the first thing on our agenda was to go buy a new tree (a pre-lit one!) and new ornaments. We went to the store, picked out a tree we liked, a nice pre-lit slim tree (space constraints). Paid. $159.99. Hmmm, that’s funny, I thought it was $119.99, but alas, the box we dragged up to the register indeed said $159.99. Even still, not too bad. So we got home and Keith spent a couple hours lugging the thing in the house and putting it together while I took our elder children to piano lessons on base. We came home to an almost-assembled tree. But the wrong tree. It was too tall, too broad, the branches went all the way to the floor (as in it would be impossible to put gifts under it), and it had pinecones. Ewww. How could we have gotten the wrong tree entirely? Oh well. This one would do. It would have to because Lisa had a plan! We MUST decorate tonight!! Except that when Keith plugged it in, the center section of lights didn’t work. No matter what he did, he couldn’t get them to work. And of course, that just wouldn’t work. The dream began to die that we would be able to decorate a tree that night.
So I called the store on base, upset because he’d have to drive all the up there (about 40 minutes each way), get a new tree, come come, and assemble said new tree. Day-after-Thanksgiving plans officially pooped on. But wait! The manager had an idea! They already had our tree assembled as a display tree, and she would give it to us and take ours back all assembled as well. So Keith quickly split our tree in half, stuck it in the van, and went to get the other tree. An hour and a half later he returned, with a cellophane-wrapped tree, and began to unwrap it and put it into place. But it wasn’t the same tree. Skinnier, thinner, no pinecones. But it was pre-lit. Truth be told, I liked this tree better than the one we accidentally bought. But I was just certain that this wasn’t a $159.99 tree. So AGAIN I called the manager–what the heck??
Long story, short–we ended up getting a full refund on the $159.99 tree and got the pre-lit slim tree (which was ironically the tree we were trying to bring home the first time!) for only $49.99! Sweet! And we were able to decorate that evening, and make our Christmas cookies and drink hot cocoa, and take turns singing each persons’ favorite Christmas song. And it was ALL worth it when I overheard Adam gazing at our tree and whispering from his heart,
“Merry Christmas, Jesus.”
