God, Backhoes and UFOs

Having a three year old is a lot of fun...one morning, on the way to school, we saw a lot of backhoes at the construction site across from school. So I purposely drove by the construction site and slowed down so Alex could look, and all you could hear from the back of the van was, "Wow! Mommy! Look at dat backhoe! What is dat, Mommy? That a backhoe?", etc., etc., etc. Then, when we got to the parking lot, every hole in the parking lot, which was caused by the recent rain, every cement glob in the parking lot, every crack in the sidewalk, Alex would ask: "That made by a backhoe?" Or "a backhoe did that?" Then, upon seeing the large sinkhole in front of the education building, Alex asked if that was made by a backhoe. I told him, "no, that is part of the Earth. It's a sinkhole. God made that." Alex then asked, "Did God use a backhoe?" ....I told him yes....now he thinks God is so cool for using a backhoe!

That's Alex's new word, "Cool", that, and "awesome!" You hear that a lot now, "wow, that's cool" or "wow, that's awesome". So if he thinks God is cool and awesome, then we're doing something right! I really think we are, because he now can say his own prayers, and, when we do the nighttime prayers and we ask God to bless everyone, he always says, at the very end, "And God Bless Jesus!"

However, one night Alex was playing with his wrecker truck. He noticed where the hook part on the back of the wrecker was missing, so he says: "Mommy, where my hooker? I need a hooker!" I was a little distracted from across the playroom and did not see what he was doing, so I jerked my head up real quick and looked over at him and said, "WHAT?" He saw my reaction and said, again, "Mommy, I need a hooker...now! Get me a hooker!" I could only think to myself, please, Lord, don't let him be saying things like this at school or church! It's so hard when they say funny things to not just burst out laughing! I say again, only Alex!

We had a couple of very gruesome experiences with more UFOs recently. Actually, Aunt Chris saw her first UFO the day of Andrew's surgery. She and dad were watching Austin and Alex while Mom, Pete and I were at the hospital during Andrew's surgery. She found a UFO (unidentified food object) in the play room. She said at first she thought it was a piece of sausage, but after closer inspection, she determined that it had, in it's former life, been some variety of pasta. The jury is still out on that exact determination. Pasta's good enough for me! And then last night, I had all three of the boys in the play room and was trying to turn Austin around on my lap. My hand grabbed his belly to turn him and I felt something around his belly button. I looked at it, and it was either: 1) the biggest, jumbo-sized, greenest, gooiest, stickiest booger EVER KNOWN TO MANKIND; or 2) a chewed-up, spit-out piece of green-grape Fruit Roll-Up. I do not know, but Austin and mommy underwent a sink full of handwashing right then, just to be safe. As anyone who knows me know....I'll trade you 10 poppy diapers to one snotty nose, any day of the week. Anything below the waist, I can handle...it's all the "stuff" from the neck up that I grow weak in the knees at...and with three little boys 3 and under...there's a lot of both!