"I Already Mowed My Lawn!"

Like a lot of evenings, our little family of four ended up over at my parents house (who were surprisingly eating dinner! At 6PM! And invited us to join!) For those of you who may not know this, we live across the street from my parents. Which works out well when they're eating spaghetti with fresh minced squash and zucchini. Or when we need a babysitter. All around it's a pretty posh deal. (OK, to my credit, we didn't go over there last night just to crash dinner. We had our insurance agent over taking blood and stuff for life insurance purposes, and my Mom took Annie over to her house to get her out of our hair during the paper signing and whatnot. Then afterwards we went over to pick her up and voila! My Mom had fed her, then made up plates for Greg and me. And since we'd been fasting for our blood draw, we ate it up like ravenous wolves. I was hoping to post an incredibly nasty picture of my mangled and bruised arm from the most painful blood draw I've ever endured . . . but for some freaky reason, despite the fact I can barely move my arm this morning from the soreness and pain, no bruise. Even with part of it being swollen and bumping way out, no discoloration. Freaky.)

Anyway, while over there, my 17-year old brother and my Mother were, shockingly, bumping heads about chores. In this particular case, Cody was supposed to have mowed the lawn something like three years ago, but still hadn't gotten around to it. Because of homework, of course. Cody, whining far longer than it actually takes to mow the back lawn, called out to Annie, "Annie, why don't you mow the lawn for me?" Annie replied, exasperated, "I tan't Tody! I already mowed the lawn at my house!" Oops, I guess our secret is out. We have our two year old to mow the lawn. She explained to 'Tody', that "You are big Tody, you have a big lawn mower. I have a leeeeetle [hands held super close together in emphasis] lawn mower at my house. 'Cause I'm little." She does like to claim that she mows our lawn, (while more accurately it would be considered our front room), because she does have a lawn mower toy she loves to push around whenever Daddy mows the lawn. She couldn't see what all of Cody's a fussin' and a feudin' was about, because, as she assured me, "I LOVE mowing the lawn!" The best part though, was the entire time Cody and my Mom argued about Cody mowing the lawn (like the entire 20 minutes leading up to and then all during the actual lawn mowing . . . Cody will just not shut up!), Annie would call out helpful suggestions, or back up my Mom. At one point when Cody was complaining on and on, Greg finally called out in exasperation, "Cody, how long can you keep arguing about this with your Mom, you're going to be done soon!" Cody called out, "I can keep this up all night long!" (It's true. Long after he's done with them he can still be whining about his chores. Did I mention he's 17.) Annie cried out, "No Tody, only two more minutes!" That's telling him. Cody also offered Greg a dollar to do it for him, which Annie counter-offered, "No, eighty dollars Tody!" Surprisingly, Cody didn't go for that. Everything my Mom would call out, Annie would mimic, or add a forceful, "Tat's right Tody!" She's quite the Cody-taskmaster. I suggest my Mom hire her out! We're cheap, like eighty dollars. (I find the 'eighty' interesting, 'cause it's quite the bump up from when everything she said was, "Eight dollars," and "Thirty dollars off." Like the money thing she always throws out, things are almost always happening in "two minutes", temperatures are usually "a hundred degrees," and now everytime we get in the car to go somewhere she asks, "Is it on thirty one hundred west?" It's funny on how she's picked up things like dollars, degrees, directions, and can use them, but with just completely random numbers.

Ellie was so funny all day yesterday. She learned to make wet razzing noises, or lots of wet bubbles from her mouth, on demand. You could just watch her trying, like warm-up lip blowing, then all the sudden, she looked right at me and blew like hundreds of slobbery bubbles all out her mouth and down her face. She looked up at me and grinned like, "Am I the coolest baby in the world, or what?!"