Our new names

This 2 year old age is such a fun part of growing up. My youngest is learning new words at such a quick pace, it is hard to catch up. She's renamed a few people in the family. Uncle Nofre is named, "Nana." Those of you who know any Ilocano are aware that nana = auntie, but tata is uncle. I think he's just tickled that he's got a name. My mother, who should be referred to as, "Lola," is now, "Mom." That hurt a little, but I'm over it. My other daughter has been renamed with a 'd' as her first initial instead of a 'c'. But my son is known as, "That."

My son was feeling a little bad because he's not being called by his name, but I figure it is okay. Think of the possibilities. Every time somebody says, "That's cool," they would be referring to him. How about, "That's awesome! That's amazing! That's my boy!" See, it's not all bad.

So when he starts grousing about how the baby won't say his name, I commiserate and say, "That's a bummer."

A private funny

My brother and his wife invited us over for a pumpkin carving party. It was a blast. My sister-in-law has an awesome green thumb and her pumpkin harvest this year was amazing. She set up a vinyl tablecloth on the patio and put the pumpkins along with tons of tools and patterns out there for the pumpkin fun.

I really liked the pig/dog her sister Colleen made. I asked her boyfriend to mention that I'd like to take that one home with me, but I guess it was already spoken for.
My son worked all day on his, and as soon as it is finished, I'll take a picture of it. My 6-year-old didn't fare as well because she lost interest after the guts were pulled out of the pumpkin. But today's post isn't really about any of that. It is about a little funny that nobody but one person noticed.

One of my brother's guests was wearing a pair of pants that rides a little low on the derrière. It is very fashionable now, and this guest looked perfectly smokin' in these pants, so it wasn't a muffin top situation. Problem is that when you're carving pumpkins on the floor, you kind of bend over a bit. My sweet toddler was walking around, observing all the great carving, when she spotted this little bit of plumber crack. So she walked behind this person, pointed at (and maybe even touched) the crack, and with her little barely intelligible 2-year-old speak said, "Tinky butt." (translated = stinky butt)

What is priceless about this moment is that it was only witnessed by one person and that witness related that story to me. But when the incident happened, the owner of the low rise pants didn't even notice. So a private funny was kept private until just now, when the whole world can read it.

Right now, I'm wondering if this is only funny to me. Ah well. Happy Halloween!

Cookies, anyone?

We had our first Girl Scouts meeting this evening. What a blast! It was a parents with kids meeting. Most of the time we spent speaking with the parents while one of my co-leaders worked on some Halloween crafts with the girls.

But what was most fun was talking about cookies. See, here's the thing. I don't think people know how big a deal the cookies thing is. As an organization, Girl Scouts doesn't turn any girl away because they can't afford to pay. And where exactly does that money come from? That's right, you clever cookie, it comes from those Thin Mints you ate last year. But aside from that, the girls get to keep about half of the money they earn from the cookies to pay for whatever they want to pay for. One of the high school troops last year took a trip to a foreign country. I thought that was pretty cool. But you should have seen how enthusiastic some of our moms got at the mention of maybe TRAVEL from selling cookies. They were on fire. I think we'll have a great year and I think also we're going to have some moms who will sell cookies until they're sunbathing in Tahiti! (We did consider Tahiti. There's a lot the girls can learn about by visiting Tahiti. Like the health of coral reefs and how to speak French. Not to mention the importance of sun screens and how to cook out on the beach. These are all important life skills that can be achieved by cookie sales.)

So since you've read this post, how many boxes can I set aside for you?

Short attention span readers

Okay, I've heard enough whining about how long my blog posts are. Here's what I've done. I've gone through all the vacation posts and put in little headings. This way, if you are overwhelmed and cannot finish reading one of the vacation posts, you can just go back to the heading where you left off last time. See. Don't say I never did anything for you.