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My wife had some alone time (AKA grocery shopping) earlier this week. That left me at home with the three boys for the evening. The boys immediately started asking to play the Game Cube. “Spend some time outside first, and then you can play Game Cube while I give Gamma his bath.” was my reply.

We all went outside. Alpha and Beta went straight to the trampoline, and I put Gamma in the the gravel pit. I set about my spring chore of spreading crushed rock over the driveway (stay tuned for an upcoming blog post).

Alpha and Beta can play happily on the trampoline for at least 45 minutes, provided no one gets hurt or needs a potty break. Today, however, they saw that I wasn’t doing anything that couldn’t be interrupted and called me over to the trampoline to play a game.

I was unaware of any games for the trampoline, so I asked “What game?”

“The monster-under-the-trampoline game!”

Of course…have they been reading the fairy tales book again?

“You can be the monster. You get under the trampoline and then you pop your head up to our feet and try to make us jump.”

That certainly does sound fun for those on the top side of the trampoline, but you can’t just tell your kids no. So I had to break it to them gently that the “monster-under-the-trampoline game” was not a good idea.

It sounded like this: “That might hurt my head. How about if I lie on my back under the trampoline and kick you up in the air with my feet instead?”

And then I added “Hey, what’s this game called?” They each shouted undecipherable phrases, mostly involving baby sounds such as kah, koo, and gwah. But then Alpha started calling it the “bouncy-monster game” and that’s the one that stuck. So let it be written.

(Fifty internet points for you if you mentally added “so let it be done” after that last sentence.)

My contribution for the name of the game was “Something we do when mom isn’t home” but that doesn’t flow as well as “bouncy monster”.

So that’s what we did – I lay on my back with my feet on the underside of the trampoline. It’s the perfect height for that. I bounced the trampoline with my legs while they ran around and tried not to fall.

After a little bit of that, they thought it would be more fun to stand right next to my feet and just be launched into the air. That kind of worked, except their legs would buckle on lift-off and absorb most of the energy. So they collapsed more than flew.

Finally we figured out the best method – the launchee would sit right next to my feet and then I would kick. Note, be sure to tuck your feet and knees down low after kicking, since kids don’t like landing on them. And no, we didn’t find that out the hard way.

Then Gamma wandered over from the gravel pit – either he was done playing with the toys or he was full and couldn’t eat any more pea gravel. Or maybe he heard all the laughter and wanted in on whatever it was.

I certainly was not going to put the baby on the trampoline and launch him. I know better than that. He liked being under the trampoline with me. His problem is that he is almost as tall as the trampoline, so his hair brushes the underside of the trampoline as he walks. That’s fine as long as there are no boys bouncing on top of the trampoline, which there were so it wasn’t.

My next few minutes were spent launching the older boys while holding the baby down. No one got hurt, but Alpha and Beta were not being launched as well and Gamma was getting frustrated because he was being restricted.

“Bath time!” I announced, thus ending the Bouncy Monster game. Gamma likes baths, so he was happy. Alpha and Beta realized that meant Game Cube time, so they were happy. And I got to go inside and read a magazine article or two, so I was happy.

Please note that I read the magazine with only one eye, as the other eye was busy watching the bathtub.

In cooperation with LaanyKidsMom, here is my entry for this week.

Where did I find joy this week?
In and around Boise, ID

We flew to Boise. It was Beta’s and Gamma’s first time on an airplane. Travelling long distances together as a family can be stressful at times, but it does produce memories. That’s Gamma in the photo, of course.

The first stop after leaving the Boise airport was Camel’s Back park, where the older two (plus a cousin) climbed the hill. What gave me joy here is that we were out of the airplane and had no particular schedule or deadline. It’s a park – go run around and do whatever you want. When we’re done, we’ll go eat dinner.

The next item of joy this week was the view in Boise. We don’t get that here in the Midwest. I did miss the trees and general green-ness of the Midwest, but the scenery there was picturesque.

The final item for this Finding Joy Friday is the prairie dog exhibit at the Boise Zoo Zoo Boise. Prairie dogs, by themselves, are amusing enough. But when there are several clear domes into which the kids can climb, it becomes even more amusing. That’s Beta in the photo, by the way.

That’s all for today’s entry. Maybe next week I’ll post some more pictures and descriptions of our time out west.

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday. Head on over to her blog if you want to see what she has been doing, or not been doing, this week.

Note: Understanding this entry will require you to have a background in the Doodlebops. Readers with young children will probably not need any introduction, as the Doodlebops is a show about the Doodlebops. The Doodlebops are Deedee, Rooney, and Moe – a colorful cast of characters who sing and laugh and entertain children. Not unlike the Wiggles, the Teletubbies, etc (but with catchier songs).

One of their bits is a slapstick-type exchange between a puppet and Deedee. The puppet says he can’t hear Deedee because he has celery in his ears, and he actually does have celery in his ears.

Now on to the story . . .

• At dinner one evening, Alpha was asking about the peas on his plate. I told him I couldn’t hear him because I had peas in my ears. He understood the joke and laughed. Beta did NOT think it would be funny to put the peas in his ears, literally. And he did NOT get a firm lecture on the proper use of food (ears, no; eyes, no; nose, no; on brother, no; mouth, yes).
• At dinner the next evening, Alpha did NOT think it would be funny to say he couldn’t hear me because he had eggs in his ears (yes, we had breakfast for dinner – that is never a bad idea). And I did NOT look over and see Beta attempting to put scrambled eggs into his ears.
• At the doctor’s office, to get Beta and Gamma tested for strep throat, we did NOT have to remind Alpha not to touch various items in the waiting room. Alpha did NOT then proceed to lick the glass right next to the main doorway.

  Okay, he was joking with us and he did keep his tongue from actually touching the glass. But it certainly looked like he was touching it from where we were sitting.

And a Not Me:

• I did NOT procrastinate so long in setting my garage clock back last fall that it is now correct again, thanks to daylight savings time. Household maintenance is a high priority and I do NOT let minor things like that go.

On a related note: if I ever owned a store, I would call it “Daylight”. That way I could have an annual spring sale and get free advertising. Maybe in the fall too.

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday.

• My wife and I have not been reprimanding our children when they reference bodily areas or functions inappropriately (i.e. “No potty talk at the dinner table.“). Therefore, it was not our children who invented their own euphemism for such language (e.g. “Hey Alpha, Gamma is going to smack you on the potty talk!“).
• I did not tell the kids that they had to finish putting away their clothes before they could come downstairs and play Lego Star Wars on the Game Cube. We do not bribe our kids to do their chores like that. And if it had worked, I would not have tiptoed downstairs so that my wife and I could play Lego Star Wars before the kids came down.
• I did not notice all the food in Gamma’s bib when he was done eating, and I did not take his spoon and feed him several spoonfuls of whatever had collected in there throughout the course of the meal. That would be gross.

And now it is Gamma’s turn.

It is appointed to our children once to contract roseola, and after that the judgment umm… not to get it anymore.

When Alpha was 15 months old, he got roseola. I had never heard of roseola before, but by now I am quite familiar with it. It started off as a FOUO (fever of unknown origin), and then once the fever had gone and we thought everything was fine, the body-wide rash appeared.

Alpha

So, I learned all about roseola and it passed and was never a problem for Alpha anymore.

Then when Beta was 17 months old, he got roseola. Well, we didn’t know it at the time. We just knew he had a fever. It was very high, over 105, and it wasn’t coming down so we took him to the ER. Beta always did run warmer than the other children, so we should expect his fevers to be higher too.

The hospital gave him an IV and some over-the-counter fever reducer and ran a blood test. The fever came down eventually and the blood test did not show anything. The hospital didn’t know what else to do, so they gave him a course of antibiotics (through the IV – much more efficient, though of course totally useless against the virus that he had) and sent us on our way. We should have known what was coming, but we were surprised a couple days later when spots appeared all over his body.

Beta

Gamma has them both beat. He’s not even a year old and he already contracted roseola. His fever was slight, only 101. It’s hard to pinpoint when or how or where he picked up the virus, since the incubation period is over a week. But slightly over a week ago he, along with his brothers and mother, swam in a hotel pool. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Gamma

We’ll see if Gamma is ahead of the curve in his other developments too. Maybe we should add roseola to the list of developmental milestones. It would fit right in there with when your baby should get teeth, start walking, say his first word, etc.

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday, I am posting a Not Mine Monday.

• My children do not have the habit of saying “Bails hurt scores!” whenever they fall down. We have not been spending too much time playing THPS3. My children know the difference between TV/movies/games and real life and they never confuse the two.
• My child, who is way past the time of using the doorway jumper intended for babies, did not take a sudden interest in the doorway jumper contraption. And he did not use it for his own entertainment by yelling “snake in the toilet!” while reaching up through the leg holes, pretending that his hands were snakes and trying to attack his brother who was walking past.
• And I did not overhear one of my children say to the other child “Can you please move, or I’ll push you down the stairs“. Notice the use of the word please? See how polite our children are? Or, I mean, see how polite they would be, if they had said that?

Alpha was taking a bath and, as is standard for just about every child, wanted bubbles. A little while later, he called for me to come into the bathroom. He wanted me to see that he had put a bunch of bubbles on his face and was pretending to be Santa Claus.

I complimented him on his nice beard.

The bubbles must have tickled his nose, but he didn’t want to itch it and disturb the bubbles so he sniffed.

Bad choice – to inhale sharply through one’s nose when bubbles are directly under one’s nose

I noticed that he got a funny look on his face. I figured he didn’t like the feeling of bubbles in his nose. But I was wrong. After I saw him spit out bubbles, I realized he didn’t like the taste of bubbles.

That was our biology lesson for the day – how the nasal cavity connects to the mouth and throat.