A few more funnies from the kids

--On my birthday (of course, they had to make it memorable!) I was upstairs when Felicity came into the room leading a sludge-covered, slightly stunned looking Abby.  Well, I didn't know what it was, just this green slime that was throughout her hair, dripping down her face, shoulder, and arm, and her hands were covered as she tried to keep it from getting into her eyes.  My first panicked thought was that it was some kind of cleaner, but Felicity told me that Seth had dumped some shampoo on her. I managed to get it off without getting any in her eyes (whew) and then I interrogated Seth. Apparently, and this is filled with some details that I'm guessing at because he was a little embarrassed and not keen on talking, they were playing hide and seek and decided to hide in the bathtub downstairs together. They were waiting quietly when Seth saw the shampoo sitting there and thought he could wash Abby just as well as Mommy could.  This is where he stopped talking, but I've figured it out with some help from Felicity.  He dumped about a third of the bottle on her head when he realized this wasn't as good of an idea as he had thought and  he was probably going to be in trouble.  So he got out of the bathtub, turned out the light, shut the door, and went to tell Felicity that "Abby is in the bathtub with the lights out."  Felicity ran downstairs to find Abby who was forlornly and quietly waiting for someone to rescue her. She smelled Rain Forest Fresh the rest of the day.
--Abby loves my chapstick in my purse. One day she grabbed Felicity excitedly and told her, "I show you something!" She triumphantly pulled out the chapstick, and told Felicity, "This makes me happy!"
--At dinner sometimes we play an animal guessing game where one of us will think of an animal and everyone else asks questions until someone guesses the right animal.  Tonight, Seth's three guesses were: A dinosaur.  A dragon. And Captain America.

I'm sure I'll have more to add to the collection soon.

A Sethism

I have to write this down now so I don't forget his exact wording:  "It's not a chair, it's a one human couch!". And when I laughed, he explained his logic by pointing to the couch and saying "See, that's a three human couch.". Makes sense, Sethy-boy.

Searching for Joy

This morning Abby told me she wasn't a baby, she was a girl. Then tonight she fell asleep at dinner so I was able to snuggle with her after I had carried her to bed and put her in footsie pajamas.  It's a little scary letting go of the baby phase--I mean, I've been in it for 12 years! So I'll snuggle her while I can.
While I was curled up with her in the tiny toddler bed Farris made years ago, my mind was busy.  I was thinking about how nice it was to listen to the quiet (in my house! Amazing! --Joseph was gone) chatter coming from the kitchen as I held my mostly angelic 2 year old. A blog post (Pinstrosity) I recently read was about picking a Word for the year, a simple theme or focus.  The author talked about how she knew someone who had picked Joy.  And I had thought, that would be good idea for me.
I tend to be very pessimistic. And skeptical. And easily annoyed. And too caught up in unimportant details, with less focus on the simple, beautiful things in our world.  Such as yelling at a kid about a backpack on the floor (for the eleventith hundred time) instead of enjoying having five healthy kids surrounding me. How blessed have I been in my life? And how often have I forgotten that?  
Joy is good for me.  I love that word, it's a major reason Felicity is Felicity instead of Ruby.  Well, maybe not Ruby, but you get the idea. Joy is good for me because it's hard for me to get through a day without yelling or remembering something someone once said that made me feel bad and having that resentment hit me again, or feeling like I just don't quite make it to who I'm supposed to be. I'm hoping that a year of searching for joy can help change me, even just a little.  
So I'm going to try it.  And I'll even try to document it on here every now and again.  Since I'm soooo good at documenting things here...last blog post? NOVEMBER. But maybe by putting it in here I'll remember a little better and you guys can even remind me a little.   Think Joy, DeeAnna.  Joy.

PS, I might be able to catch up a little on the whole documenting thing when we get our laptop back.  We sent it to be fixed so I'm trying to get used to the tablet, and I'm not finding much joy in that.  Hmmmm, maybe I should say I remember our laptop with joy.