Normal

As much as I love my kids, sometimes I wonder if they'll ever be 'normal'. I know most of you think they look perfectly normal, and I'm here to tell you looks can be deceiving. My children are weird.

Some examples from the past few days:

**CHILD #1 (known to most of you as TJ): Only has outdoor recess on Fridays during the winter. I don't blame his teacher at all, since getting the kids in and out of their winter gear probably eats up a half hour. Anyway, as he's walking in the back door after school yesterday he casually mentions that he thinks his socks might be a 'little bit wet'. I asked him if he'd like to change them, and he said yes. I asked him to put the damp socks in the hamper, but being his father's son, he left them on the floor. I picked them up later and was shocked. They weren't a 'little bit wet'! I could have easily rung a cup of water out of each sock!

**CHILD #2 (alias--Sam): Yesterday he is busily playing with Duplo cars at the Lego table in his room. He is carefully hooking each of the cars together, so it looks just like a train. He then turns to me and says proudly, "Look Mama! I coupled all these together!" For those of you who don't know train lingo, he's absolutely right. Train cars that are hooked together are 'coupled'. I was shocked and highly amused to hear him say that.

**Also CHILD #2: My mom was here yesterday since I work every other Friday morning. Sam came to her with a roll of toilet paper and says, "Look Grandma! I have a organ!" He then proceeds to hum into the roll of toilet paper. She laughed and that encouraged him to pull the other roll of toilet paper from the main bath and bring it to her to show her a second 'organ'. His Daddy had shown him how to blow into an organ pipe in order to hear the pipe's tone. In Sam's mind, an organ pipe and a toilet paper roll apparently look similar.

**CHILD #3 (Nolan, my very own caboose): Does not like his vegetables, with one exception: sweet potatoes. He loves them! Barely tolerates squash, green beans, and avocado, and peas he gags on. I can understand that, but I hate sweet potatoes, so I think it's very weird those are the one vegetable he will gladly eat. I can hardly stand the smell when I'm feeding them to him. And trust me, his diapers also smell like sweet potatoes. Blech.

One last story about Sam...we were at my mother-in-law's tonight. As we were getting coats on, Bill asked Sam for a hug. Sam obliged and sweetly said, "You're welcome."

Kids are great.

Edited to Add: How could I forget about Child #4? Most of the time I refer to him as Bill. While I was eating lunch today he was walking around the kitchen carefully splicing some wires with my kitchen scissors (I'll have to see if he remembered to return them to the drawer). I asked him what he was doing and he said he was re-wiring the pedal board on his organ, as it wasn't working. In my mind, not a normal thing to do on a Saturday. Later, I hear "music" coming from the basement. It was TJ playing the organ. Bill had given him permission, because "the organ is really dusty and the more he plays it, the more dust he gets out for me."

I wonder who the boys are taking after????