Oliver's Latest Projects

Oliver is constantly involved in different projects. Once he gets an idea in his head, he works on it all day.

Here are the latest two projects he's done:

1) Transformers. Oliver really, really loves Transformers. He has seen the movie and loves it and talks about it constantly. Then I ordered him a Transformers book from a book order, and he loved it so much he decided to make his own Transformers book. So he drew each of the Transformers and whatever vehicle-type thing they transform into, and then carefully labelled them each with their own ability ratings, just like in his book (strength = 9, skill = 8, speed = 6, etc.). Here he is with all of his pictures before I made them into a book for him:

2) Oliver's Restaurant. This is what he worked on all day yesterday, and as soon as he woke up this morning he started right in again. It all began with a few cookies - he drew some cookies on some white cardstock, cut them out, and pretended they were real. He served them to everyone in our family several times. He had so much fun he decided to branch out into different kinds of foods, and from there he created french fries, chicken nuggets, and a bunch of other random things. He told me he was working on making a whole restaurant full of food. Each little food piece is colored front and back (to make them look more real, he says).

He keeps saying things like, "I can't believe I made my own restaurant!", and "Okay, Mom - if my restaurant was real, which would you like better - McDonalds or my restaurant?" (I answered truthfully that I would prefer his restaurant, because McDonalds doesn't serve corn on the cob or mint chocolate-chip shakes). Here's what he's come up with so far:

So, if any of you are feeling hungry, make sure to stop by our house for some good dining at Oliver's Restaurant (that's what he decided to name the place).

Make sure you bring plenty of money, though, as things tend to run a little pricy (the breakfast that he served me this morning cost me $30, and he told me that the corn on the cob alone goes for about $20).

Update: Oliver asked me if I thought it was okay that he didn't have any cake at his restaurant. I told him I thought it was fine, because usually only really fancy restaurants have cake for dessert. He said, "Uh, Mom? Maybe you didn't know, but this IS a fancy restaurant." Five minutes later he came back in with this beauty:

Oliver's Cleaning Hobby/ Best Out of Three Moms (Maybe)

Oliver entered into a big cleaning stage a few months ago. He loved to surprise me by disappearing upstairs for awhile and then coming down and announcing that the whole playroom was clean. He also branched out into cleaning up the kitchen for me, which was fun because I would find things in all sorts of unusual places. For instance, cereal bowls and spoons in the garbage can.

Anyway, it has been really helpful, but after awhile I started to feel bad because it seemed like Oliver was getting trapped in his cleaning behavior - I always complimented him a lot when he did it and told him what a good cleaner/helper he was, and I think he thought if he stopped, I wouldn't think he was that neat anymore. His cleaning was almost getting excessive, and he kept asking me if it was just making me so happy when he cleaned the whole house up. I had to start telling him that he made me happy even when he didn't clean the whole house, and at one point I even said he wasn't allowed to clean up after the other kids anymore, because he shouldn't have to do that every day. I had to convince him that it would make me happy to see him take a little break once in a while. Since then he's gotten a little more practical about it, and I even think he might be a little relieved to not feel that pressure to clean all the time.

He still is proud of his cleaning abilities, though. The other day I was cleaning up in the kitchen while he ate, and I guess I was feeling tired or something, and he heard me do a little sigh. This was our conversation after that:

Me: Sigh.

Oliver: What happened?

Me: Oh, nothing. I'm just a little tired.

Oliver: Well, that's just one of the things that happens when you clean.

Then, in case I started doubting his cleaning powers, he kept going -

Oliver: I'm sorry to say this, but I'm just telling you the truth - I never get tired when I clean. Maybe because it's one of my best hobbies in the world!

Me: Oh. Wow. You are lucky.



Last night he did something cute. As I mentioned above, he is starting to be more moderate with his cleaning, and is not always as super eager to do it as he was. He and Tristan were outside playing catch, and I was getting dinner ready. They had been drawing and making crafts at the table, so it was a big mess, but instead of having them come in to clear the table for me, I just quickly did it myself, as a little surprise for them. Then when they did come in, I asked if they'd run upstairs to help Rachel clean up the playroom while I finished dinner. Oliver actually started to complain a little bit, which was a surprise to me, but then he glanced at the clean table and stopped mid-sentence. He got a huge grin on his face, pointed at me, and said, "I love my mom!" He then went happily upstairs to help Rachel. Now that I think about it, it was pretty rewarding to do that little surprise and then have it get that kind of reaction - I can kind of see what the appeal has been for Oliver.

Speaking of love, Oliver has been saying he loves me in a fun way. He started by saying that I was the best mom he had ever had. I think he quickly realized this wasn't really saying much, so then he changed it to, "Mom, even if I had TWO moms, you would be my best one." He loves to say this to me all the time. I feel so honored.

Rachel, as always, started copying Oliver, but in typical Rachel fashion, she had to take it a step farther. Her favorite thing to say now is, "Mom, I love you so much that even if I had THREE moms, I would still love you the best."

Except the other night she confessed to me that she has been thinking about it, and she decided that if she really did have three moms, she would probably love them all the same, because, as she put it, "Mom, how would that make the other two moms feel if I loved you the best? That wouldn't really be fair."

I guess I should be glad that she's so concerned with being fair to others. I will try not to let this imaginary situation hurt my feelings.

Valentine's Day Fun

We had quite the Valentine's Day adventure yesterday. Oliver and Rachel were a little bit jealous that Tristan got to have a Valentines party at school, so I had been telling them all week that we could do our own little party at home and make heart cookies to decorate. They were very excited.

They had a lot of fun making the dough, eating the dough, and cutting out heart shapes. After a lot of work and mess, we finally had three trays of cookies ready to bake. That's when disaster struck. I thought the oven had been preheating the whole time, but when I took our finished cookie sheets over to put them in, I realized it was still very cold.

To make a long story short, it turned out that our oven was broken (the ignitor had gone out). The kids were devastated (and I was a little bit, too - and not just because I knew we had to get the oven fixed - I was really hungry for cookies). They were so sad that we couldn't cook them. I started getting on the phone trying to call different repair places to figure out what to do. It was very stressful. Both Oliver and Rachel kept asking why we couldn't make them. Oliver kept trying to convince me that we could cook them in the microwave, and Rachel wanted to just frost the dough and eat it.

Oliver came in to the study and kind of shyly asked, "Mom, what are the kinds of things that we can say prayers about?" I thought it was so sweet that he had thought about that (for the record, I had already said several prayers in my head). I told him he could say a prayer if he wanted. When Rachel heard that, she said she was going to go upstairs to her room and say a prayer, too. This was her prayer: "Dear Heavenly Father, please help Heavenly Father to know how to fix our pan." (I guess she was not clear on what the exact problem was. Either that, or she thinks our oven is called a pan).

I finally found someone who could come fix it for a reasonable price, and three hours + $140 later, we were able to bake our cookies. When the kids woke up from their naps and Tristan got home from school, the cookies were nice and cooled and ready to frost. The kids had so much fun and the cookies turned out great, but I'm not sure they were worth all the trouble.

At least we got some good pictures:

The Case of the Nasty Princess

A few days ago while I was making lunch, Rachel came in to tell on Oliver. This is how it went:

Rachel (in a very grumpy, complaining voice): Mom, Oliver turned me into a princess!!

Me: Well, isn't that a good thing?

Rachel: Mom - he didn't turn me into a normal princess! He said he turned me into a nasty princess! Do you think I want to be a nasty princess?!

Me: What is a nasty princess?

Rachel: You know.

Me: No, I don't. I have no idea what a nasty princess is like.

Rachel (very frustrated with her clueless mother): Sigh. It's just hard to explain.

Me: Try.

Rachel: They just have all this nasty stuff, okay?

Me: Like what?

Rachel (in a disgusted voice): Like, they have a nasty black wand. Okay? Just nasty stuff like that. Do you think I want a nasty black wand?

Me: Probably not. That doesn't sound very fun. But Oliver's not really in charge of what kind of princess you are.

Oliver (quickly stepping into the conversation, probably to avoid getting in trouble): Well, guess what, Rachel? Ta da! Now I turned you into a TERRIFIC princess!

Rachel (smiling and giggling and basically overjoyed): Thanks, Ollie!

Problem solved, I guess. I probably should have thought of that at the very beginning and waved my magic wand and changed her into a terrific princess myself, but I was too busy getting to the bottom of the "nasty princess" issue. I really was curious as to what that was. I had never heard of one before.

I'm wondering if they might look something like this:

Pictures from January

You Just Don't Look That Young

Last night at dinner the kids were discussing everyone's age in our family. There was a little debate over how old Elizabeth is. Rachel had claimed that Lizzy was already two, but Tristan was correctly insisting that she is still one.

Tristan: Yeah, there's no way Lizzy's two yet. You can just tell. Even though you might not know exactly how old someone is, you can always tell kind of what age they might be close to, you know?

Like, Mom - if I didn't know you, I would guess you were 30. And guess what - you're 27! So, see? It would be easy for me to kind of guess about how old you are.

Me: You think I look like I'm 30? How come you wouldn't guess that I'm 20?

(in hindsight, I should never have asked that question to Tristan, of all people, who could never tell a lie to save his life, let alone to avoid hurting his mother's feelings.)

Tristan: Mom. . . Come on. You just don't look that young. There's no way you could be 20.

And here I was thinking I could still kind of fit in with high school kids if I really had to. Don't you love the blunt honesty of kids to bring you back to reality? I guess I'll have to get used to 30 being an okay age.

Tristan was not yet through with me, though. He had thought up a fun little math problem.

Tristan: Mom, I'll not tell you what age it would be weird to be and still live on this earth, but I'll give you a math problem for you to figure it out.

Me (in my head): What are you talking about? That is a very confusing sentence.

Tristan: Okay, here it is - Your age, minus 127.

Me (after thinking for a minute): Um . . . . . . . negative 100? Yeah, that would be a very weird age to be.

Tristan (laughing): Ha ha! Did it really take you that long to figure it out?

What am I going to do with this child? I have a feeling his questions will only get more challenging as he grows up.

Hooray for Chapter Books!

As you can see, there has been a lot of reading going on at our house since the discovery of the Magic Tree House books at the library last week.

Tristan had shown an interest in reading chapter books, so I checked out five from the Tree House series, thinking they'd last him for quite awhile. Both he and Oliver have blown right through them and are begging for more.

They have always liked reading and being read to, but these books have opened up a whole new world for them. I just started letting them have their own "reading time" in their beds at night - I usually read a little book to all the kids, and then go put Rachel and Elizabeth to bed while the boys read for 20-30 minutes (or until 8:00). They love this new system. Lately they've been wanting to go to bed earlier and earlier so they can have more reading time, which has been nice. The other night they had cleaned the whole upstairs and were in their pajamas ready for bed by 6:55. They were unbelievably excited to have more than an hour to read, and I was just as thrilled with the idea.

My favorite thing is when I go upstairs to turn off the lights and they beg me to let them finish "just one more page". It's so fun to see them get so excited about something that I also love (I spent many nights as a kid secretly reading long past "lights out" time - although now that I think of it, maybe my parents knew all along, and were just happy to let me).

Tristan has also started trying to squeeze in a few minutes of extra reading time before school in the morning (he doesn't have Oliver's luxury of staying home and reading all day). He asked me if he could start waking up at 6:00 a.m. so he could have more time to read before breakfast. I said no. I'd like to just stick to the earlier bedtimes, please.

The only one who has not been so happy with this new passion is Rachel. She just does not understand why Oliver would rather be curled up with a book somewhere than playing with her. She finally started cuddling up next to him and convincing him to read aloud to her, and they both seem okay with that arrangement.

I feel bad that I didn't introduce chapter books earlier - I had no idea that they were both so ready. It's just funny when your kids jump to a new stage and you don't realize it for awhile. That happens to me a lot. I think I tend to assume they will stay the same forever, and it's not till I try something new that I realize, "Oh, maybe they were ready for something different."

Anyway, we're probably headed back to the library soon, and I have a feeling they'll be done with this Magic Tree House series before long, so does anybody have any other favorite chapter books to recommend for 5 and 7 year old boys?

Daniel suggested starting Tristan on Louis L'amour books, but I'm not quite sure that's the next step (I think my grandpa waited until I was at least eight before starting me on his collection).