A Peep Hole

There are moments that I'm so swirled up in the chaos of home, family, children, activities, and life, that I forget to savor the moments. For some reason, the moments decided to scream at me today and demand my notice.

A brief glimpse at my children's minds:

Aidan:
Aidan is into independence. His every actions hints that his mind is set. This week, it is all about the car seat. He has only refused to buckle up once, but gone are the days of mom and dad helping him into his seat. He insists on climbing in all by himself. He heaves himself up into the car (remember we have an SUV) and then around the seat, uses the diaper bag as a step, to make it into the car seat. Heaven forbid anyone try to help. "No help. Ayh-an seat." In a hurry one afternoon, I decided that I WAS going to put him in to make it "quick." After his screaming and fighting and twice as much time as it would have taken to let him do it on his own, I gave up the fight, since I really couldn't hold him in and buckle him at the same time. I let him down out of the car and he climbed in by himself.
(DISCLAIMER: Don't judge me too harshly...remember this is a glimpse into a sweet little 2 year old mind, not a glimpse a the parenting skills...)

Allie:
While riding to pick up their older siblings from school, Allie and Aidan were enjoying a "new" episode of "The Backyardigans..." (again, I must refer you to the previous DISCLAIMER). The episode was entitled, "The Journey To The Center Of The Earth," and was, in fact, a journey to retrieve a lost penny. Allie thought it was a little silly that they would go that far for just a penny. "It's only one cent, mom. I don't think they can even buy anything with that."

Aimee:
Aimee was making some changes to her ipod playlist and wanted help getting new songs from a few Cd's onto it. One of the Cd's was a mix of a few different genres that Dustin or I had made a few years ago. As we listened to the intro of each song, and I asked her if she wanted this one on her ipod, she replied yes, yes, yes, to each of them.
Song number 12 was "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman. "Yes," she wanted it on her new playlist. I thought I'd make it clear that Tracy Chapman was, in fact, a woman. "You know this singer is a girl, right?"
"Nuh, Uh." Brief Pause. "It can't be." Longer pause. "Mom, don't tell me things like that, or I might believe you and sound dumb when my friends tell me that's wrong."
"No, Aimee...Tracy Chapman...really is a girl. Her voice is nice, though, right. Just very low."
She only believed me after we found a video on youtube.
The following song, track 13, was "Hands" by Jewel.
Immediately following a couple measures of piano intro, as soon as Jewel's voice came in "If I could tell the world just one thing..." Aimee put on her sarcasm voice and said, "Oh, mom, let me guess, this is a guy, right...nice falsetto."

Alex:
Alex really hates that his school requires the boys to all wear long pants. Even in Washington, in freezing weather and snow, he would wear shorts. Directly after school, he makes a bee-line to his room to ditch the claustrophobia-inducing *gasp*pants! The shorts don't' come off until bed, despite any evening activities...at which point, they are traded for basketball shorts. He doesn't mind his fellow scouts razzing him for wearing shorts even when their activity is held outside. "Nobody should need pants for an hour outside when it's 50 degrees."
Tonight, it was 40 degrees. Mother insisted that he wear jeans to scouts. After a non-stop stream of "I should be able to wear what I want" "It's not cold" "They don't care what we wear, as long as we have our shirt and book" "Shorts are fine..." I informed him that I wasn't driving him there until he changed. I listened to more, "I was ready and I'd be there on time, and you're making me late..." from his bedroom as he changed.
A few minutes later, I called back to him, "I really hope you didn't just put jeans on over the top of your shorts and plan to take them off if the moment presents itself."
"Mom, why didn't you tell me that before I had my shoes back on..."
So, we waited a few more minutes before leaving to correct the shorts/pants issue.

I love it all! I just thought that today, each of these moments was sort of a peep hole view into the complexities of their little minds!