Today I Taped a Leaf

My 3 year old is big on doing stuff himself so now, I find myself putting his blanket back where I found it and undoing things that I have just done -- all so HE can do it HIMSELF.
But the funnest thing I did lately -- tucked a blanket in my collar (for a cape) just like him and played "jedi warriors" for 45 minutes with drum sticks for light sabers. :)
Great post T..

If this makes you feel better, last night I had to put a stuffed pig in the time-out chair because he wouldn't stay out of the crib. Well, according to my 3 year old daughter, he wouldn't stay out of the crib (her brother's crib) because he wanted to eat all of the raisins. So, she wanted me to have a "talk with the pig and put him time-out cus he's bad." Yup, the stuffed pig is still in time-out.

I sewed clothes for a snake.
A couple of months ago, my 5 yr. old loved to play with this rubber snake and even tried to put clothes on it which would of course fall off. He begged me to get clothes for it but we determined this would be a common problem as the snake doesn't have 2 legs:). He has seen my sewing machine which I rarely get to use anymore and really wanted an outfit and pjs for the snake. We made the snake pants (with one leg of course), and tops he can change and he carried that snake with it's clothing everywhere we went for the next month. So cute and I must say, I am glad I took the 30 minutes to sew the snake some clothes as it mean't that much to him.

Your post caught my eye because a few months ago my 12 year old, yes 12 year old, asked if I could fix a branch on the apple tree that was broken by a friend of hers while they were swinging. Evidentally she aims for that particular branch with her feet when she swings and had for years. So we wrapped it with gardening tape and it actually lived!!
Those are the little things I think we will remember forever.
Take care,
B.

My daughter's favorite toy is a stuffed dog named Shasta. She took Shasta with us on a walk last year, and somewhere along the way, Shasta fell out of her pocket. We didn't realize Shasta was missing until bedtime, and by then it had started snowing, so I went out in the car and drove around our neighborhood, trying to find my daughter's beloved toy. When I had no success on the road, I took a flash light and trudged around in the dark, following our exact route, until I found little Shasta under a layer of snow in the empty lot near our house.
My daughter stayed up until 9:30 waiting for me to find her little friend!

We usually have a birthday party for our favorite doll in August. She even gets Christmas presents.

Ok, this isn't something we do to make our kids feel better, but it definitely keeps the fighting to a minimum when the kids know Christmas is coming soon. We tell them that the smoke detectors have cameras in them so that Santa can see them, so they better be good if they want Santa to come this year. You should see their little faces when I remind them about the cameras. They always stop fighting and stare at the "cameras." My husband is an electronics freak, so there is always some new gadget coming into the house, so they never questioned why there would be a camera in the smoke detector. Works like a charm. My grandparents told my mom and uncle the same thing when they were young...back in the 50's, and it worked for them too. Great question!

One that just happened recently, my son lost his 4th tooth, and just before my husband was going to work(it was still dark and early)I slithered like a snake into my son's room to leave the cash and note from The Tooth Fairy. My husband was peeking in at the door, and as I was slithering back out, I slithered right on top of a noise making monkey! My sweet husband hurried into the room as I dashed out, and he told our wakening son that he had accidentally stepped on the monkey on his way to kiss him good-bye. Thank God for teamwork, or "The Tooth Fairy's" cover might have been blown.

What a fun post! It sure has taken me down memory lane. Last year my boys age 9 & 6 were obsessed with spiders, they read about them, they searched for them and they even had a "pet" spider in our garden that they caught and fed flies to. One night my oldest son had a friend stay the night and he wasn't as excited about this eight-legged creature as my boys. (Gee, I wonder why!) They were messing around and he accidently threw a stick and it hit the web and the spider. Luckily, I am the only one who saw the spiders dead body, so I quickly hid it. My boys were upset. Actually a better way to put it is they were devastated. We kept trying to reassure them to no avail. A little while later they went to a neighbors b-day party. So my husband and I combed the area and tried to find another spider that we could take a picture of that looked similar. Now I have to tell you my dear husband is terrified of spiders, any spiders so this was huge for him. We looked so funny searching for a spider, it was quite humerous, our neightbors behind us thought we were nuts, at the time I kind of agreed. However, we found a spider, took a picture and showed the boys that, "Spidie" was ok, but he moved on because it wasn't safe anymore. It seeemed to work. They still have that picture on their wall.

I have never taped a leaf but i sure have done some crazy things I told my son who was 3 at the time that the Diaper Pirate came in the middle of the night and took his diapers, it worked and he was potty trained in 2 days, then we went to the Reniassance festival and he saw a pirate and was so excited until the pirate just walked right past him. So I chased down this pirate and begged him to pretend to be the diaper pirate and my son was so happy that the diaper pirate came and talked to him.
Thank you for asking us mom's about the weird crazy things we have done for our kids because sometimes this stuff get tucked in the back of our heads and we forget. THe whole time I have been responding to this post I have had the biggest smile on my face. I love memories. And still to this day my son who is now 8 believes that the diaper pirate is real but of course he met him.
Candice

Oh, I love this post! Thanks for asking this question. I've loved reading other mothers' entries.

For the longest time as a child I believed in the Easter Bunny longer than Santa Claus b/c of my mother's ingenuity. Every night before Easter while we slept, she would make LARGE bunny footprints (with a handmade stencil) out of baby powder. The footprints would be throughout the house, leading us to where our Easter baskets were. Inevitably, there was always a note from him, which just sealed the deal for me. To this day, the smell of baby powder reminds me of that sense of childhood wonder. Now that I have three children of my own I love doing the same thing for them.

This is a really great question. I LOVE the things that little kids will come up with.

My youngest (2) will find the paper towels or a roll of toilet paper and cuddle it and walk around talking to it - asking it questions. Then she will bring it to me and tell me "This is my favorite toy". After which she finds me a roll of toilet paper and we have to carry our "toys" around with us all day. I get in a lot of toruble if I leave my "toy" behind.

There are tons of silly little things that we do as moms. I keep a journal for each kid so I can write things down about their childhood for them to remember. I love to go back and read their thoughts and what they do.

Thanks for a great question - and Ladies, thanks for sharing. Kids are crazy amazing!

What a fun post! I can picture all of these things so vividly as moms describe them because we all do these things...what a good reminder of how fun it is to be a mom!

Right now my 2 year old egged on I am sure by Toy Story firmly believes that her toys are alive. I remember having that fascination and wonder as a kid too, I knew that when I closed my eyes they would play. So I would put them by the ones I knew they liked to play with best to make it easier for them to freeze when I opened my eyes again, for me this was fed by the story the velveteen rabbit. Well, similar to pig going in time out...I often have to have conversations with my dd's animals and polly pockets. (which I have to mention whoever thought those up was genious! lots of toys very little space for storing lol) Today I had a very indepth conversation about naps with a 4 inch stuffed wolf. The upside is I can often convince my daughter of something we need to get done through a toy when all else fails. "Oh no sweetie, puppy says he is sad and needs to be in the basket with his friends!"

We also say Goodbye pumpkin to the pumpkin on my sister front porch whenever we leave her home right now so the pumpkin isn't sad we are going.

I love these posts...

Hi T., When the kids lost their teeth the tooth fairy sprinkeled fairy dust all over the room. It was just baby powder and glitter. The kids loved it and the oldest did it with her boys too. I am sure I read it somewhere I can't remember anymore if it was an original thought or not but it gave the tooth fairy some personality. She's a little messy with all that dust falling all over.
Our oldest was being really sneaky and lying about things that were done by her. Like writing on the wall with pencil and denying that she was the culprit. The proof was there for all to see SHE wrote her own name! We were so tired of her lies and sneakiness. So, after she went to sleep we went into her room and drew ornate sandals on her feet and ankles with black magic marker. When she woke up in the morning we did not know who would have done such a thing??? We gave her a little of her own medicine and we loved every minute of it.
I wonder if I asked them, what their memories would be? Probably, something I wished they didn't remember. Ha-ha K. K.

My 3 year old liked to carry my purse and when I got one that looked like a small backpack, suddenly he needed a backpack and he found one. He uses the canvas mini dvd holder that attaches to the back of the headrest in the car. He even wears it to preschool and I just remembered that I haven't seen it in a while, so I'm going to have to look for it and take a picture.

When my son was little he had a matching pair of plastic dinosaurs. One was the "mommy" and the darker one was the "daddy". We were dog-sitting the neighbors 2 house dogs while they were out of town. They neglected to tell us that one of them was a chewer who ate anything he could fit in his mouth. My son had left his dinos out on the floor only to find that mama's leg had been chewed on and was barely dangling from the body the next morning. My son was devistated. I was an EMT for the town fire department at the time so he asked if I could fix mama dino since I know how to fix people and make them feel better.So I whipped out my first aid tape and we made a cast for her. :) He never did take the tape off.

Although this wasn't me, I thought you'd like to hear about my SIL and her husband who turned the car around after driving for 20 minutes, because their daughter's invisible friend got left behind at Grandma's! Apparently the 'friend' had run over to the house next door when it was time to go, and my neice waited a bit before announcing this 'fact'. She quickly became hysterical. Dad had to drive all the way back, pull up to the neighbor's house, get out of the car and call for the 'friend' who was by that time hiding in a bush! Dad hoped the neighbors didn't happen to see him, they would have thought he was nuts!

I used to have to beat my toddler son's clothes in his closet with a red plastic baseball bat every night to reassure him that there were no monsters in his closet. How is that for silly and wierd?

Yet another one - When my son left his toys out, the Gunny Bag "ate" them and would not disgorge them unless and until he did some chores to redeem them. He was absolutely terrified of the Gunny Bag, and was convinced that it was alive and had a malevolent personality. What was the Gunny Bag? It was an old, faded, yellow pillowcase with an ugly face with an open mouth drawn on it with a black felt pen. The good news about the Gunny Bag is that even the threat of it emerging would get him to clean up his toys. Silly, wierd, and somewhat effective.

T.,
This elevates you to the status of "legend"
Do you remember in "It's a Wonderful Life" when Jimmy Stewart is sitting with his daughter and her rose loses a petal? She says "Paste it, Daddy. Paste it."
I cry every time.

Perhaps the secret to motherhood is liberal use of scotch tape and bandaids!

Nice work and thanks for sharing. You got my day off to a warm and fuzzy start!
J

When my kids get hurt I have tried to lessen the mommy panic. I always ask what I can do to help them feel better instead of immediate reactions. Last year when my son was three he had hurt his head, he came crying to me and I tried to comfort him, he sat up and wiped his eyes and said "well, a few m&ms would really help the boo boo go away". So I doled out three m&ms. Now my daughter has picked up on this and now our tradition is if they get hurt, it is registered on a level of pain due to the m&ms needed to make it better!
Like my seven year old will come to me and say "this is a six m&m boo boo and it really hurts, crying the entire time she is saying it", then they curl up in my lap and have their few m&ms to help ease the pain!!! :)

What an adorable post. A good reminder of what motherhood is all about - enjoying the innocence of childhood! Reading all the responses was also a good reminder to me that I need to be keeping a better journal of these things. I remember feeling silly at little things I would do to make my children feel better and you know, I can't remember any of them right now! I do remember one thing recently...
My daughter had worked VERY hard to get a loose tooth out that wouldn't budge for the longest time. She was so PROUD! Well, that night, we went out with friends while my mom watched the kids. We didn't get to bed 'til one and I was SO tired, the tooth fairy completely slipped my mind! ( I know - I understand if all moms want to throw something at me!) So - she comes in the next morning and told us the tooth fairy didn't come. :( My heart sank! Well, I just couldn't have it. I grabbed $2 when she couldn't see me and I walked into her room. I dropped the money behind her bed, and then told her to quickly come. When she came in the room, I asked her if she had looked anywhere besides under her pillow. She said, "no". So I said, "well, look what I see behind your bed!" She found the money so excitedly and rushed through the house exclaiming it! (Phew!) I told her, "I just knew the tooth fairy couldn't forget, so I thought I would look around to see if maybe it had fallen off in the night!" She agreed! The things we'll do...
Thanks for the fun post!