Category: Mara Joy
Random Mara Quotes
Soooo, here’s a draft post I started months ago and never posted . . . I still want to remember . . . so I’ll just post it now.
Explaining why she couldn’t pick up the piece of trash on the floor:
“Yucky yucky! Little piece . . .”
“Of what?” I asked. “A little piece of what?”
“Little piece of . . . I tan’t pict it up! It’s DOSE!!! [gross]”
Explaining to Daddy that we really did make him a birthday cake, after I told her it was top-secret:
“We made TAKE!” she shouted as soon as Daddy walked in the door. Then running into the kitchen and pointing at the stove, she yelled, “TAKE in uh-nen [cake in oven].”
“No, honey, that’s not a cake,” I said, hoping Daniel wouldn’t figure it out. “That’s our dinner.” It was indeed our dinner, but Mara had gone down for a nap with the cake in the oven, and awoke to find the oven still on, and the cake hidden, so she firmly believed it was still in the oven.
She wasn’t backing down: “No!” she firmly insisted. “Not ‘not take’! Iss take!”
[Sigh.] The secret’s out.
New Names
With the first two children, we didn’t start discussing names until we learned the baby’s gender. We’re planning to wait (once again) to discuss names, but hopefully not as long as we waited with our little preemie Micah, who didn’t have a name until he was 3 days old, and we would have had to go to court to change his name if we waited any longer to think of one . . .
But Mara is already thinking about baby names!
We were talking about the baby one morning and Mara asked, “What’s gonna be its names?”
“We don’t know yet,” I told her. “We’ll have to think of one.”
————
On an unrelated, yet semi-related, note . . .
I was sitting at the computer last week, when Mara came up to me, and in a most pedantic tone asked, “Can you say ‘MIX-ee-ah-WUNK-ee’?”
Not sure I heard correctly, I repeated: “Mix-ee-ah-wunk-ee?”
Mara looked quite pleased, as if I had “passed” her test. “Yes!” she smiled. “My name is MIX-ee-ah-WUNK-ee.”
Which seems to me a very good reason not to let Mara name the new baby
Mara’s Reaction to The Announcement
Daniel said Mara wouldn’t understand–she is just too young. But I still wanted to tell her. I didn’t want my daughter to hear from someone else that we’re having a baby!
I told her: “Mara, Mommy is going to have another baby!”
She looked at me blankly and then said, “Can I throw the baby up in the air?” 🙁 Daniel was right. . . She doesn’t get it. She’s “just too young.” I believe those were his exact words.
No, Mara, you cannot throw the baby up in the air.
Maybe she’ll be excited about the next one, I thought.
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Saturday morning we were praying before eating our french toast, and Daniel prayed, “And please keep our littlest one safe.”
Mara asked, “Why Daddy says ‘please keep our littlest one safe’?”
Daddy said, “Because Mommy has a baby in her tummy.”
Mara’s eyes lit up. “Mommy has a baby in her tummy!”
“Yes,” Daddy added, “just like Aunt Sarah had a baby in her tummy for a long time, and then baby Sophia was born.”
I had to go upstairs to change Micah’s poopy diaper.
While I was upstairs, Mara asked, “Why Mommy has a baby in her tummy?”
And Daniel just told her, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
Maybe she does get it!
————
Mara was playing in her room. She had both of her toy car seats out: Perkle Baby was in one, Pink Bear with Hearts was in the other.
Mara picked them both up, and said enthusiastically, “Now we will have Little Micah-man and Little Baby! Because I have a baby in my tummy!”
Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
Grilled cheese sandwiches.
The kids love them! Mara dips hers in “dub-dup” (catsup). I’m not sure whether she really likes the sandwich–or just wants to lick off the catsup!
Micah loves most all food at this point in life. Although the thing he enjoyed most last night was tearing the sandwich apart and watching bits of bread “dangle” by strings of cheese. This made his day . . .
Welcome toooooooooo “Dinnertime With Kids, when your husband works late” . . . but, wait, it’s gets better!
I had to run upstairs during dinner, and when I came back, I heard Mara say very calmly, “Mommy? There’s something in my nose.”
I had her tilt her head back and could see nothing, as far up there as I could see . . .
“What’s in your nose?” I asked, since she so often lives in an imaginary world.
“Cheese,” she stated.
“Are you sure there is cheese in your nose?” I asked. “Because I don’t see any.”
“I put it there,” she said, once again very matter-of-factly.
At that point I too was sure she had cheese in her nose. Somewhere up there. I showed her how to “snort” and then I held the opposite nostril shut, and covered her mouth with my other hand, my mind going back to childhood days when my little sister put beads in her nose. She had survived beads. So I figured Mara would survive cheese.
I was hoping Mara would actually snort (instead of sniff and inhale the cheese into her lungs). Thankfully, she snorted!
And out it came–yes, a cheese booger!–about the size of my fingernail. GROSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!
As I’m racing toward the trashcan, Mara says, “Why you are throwing it away, Mommy?”
Dinnertime. With kids.