How do you know when you are a really great parent (LOL)?

When your 3 year old sings Home on the Range like this:

“Home…home on the wange. Where the deer and antelope OBEY….”

I heard Tanner singing his version yesterday and I LOVED it! I must be such a great mom if even the deer and antelope obey in our house!!!! And Brooke would say….get all your bragging done now because Ty will be singing:

“Home…home on the wange. Where the deer and antelope spit hay…”

LOL

WeeMote

Tanner has a new favorite. His daddy bought him a WeeMote. Pretty cool little deal. It is a child size remote with only a few buttons that are colored. They can turn the tv on and off, mute the sound, affect the volume (though you can limit this), and then have 5 channel options that they can surf through. Working well! We got it off ebay if you are interested.

XBox Groundation

Tanner is officially grounded from the XBox. He is so serious about this sport that he can’t quite make it to the potty in time if he is playing. HE NEVER has this problem any other time either!!!! We decided to ground him from XBox for one week to see if that would get the point across. If it doesn’t, than he is apparently to young to be putting this kind of attention into something. Good grief.

However, I am TOTALLY AMAZED by his ability. Before his groundation, he asked me to watch him play. I can’t tell you how blow away I was by his skills. I would think that a 3 year old, IF they could play an XBOX game, would do everything the same way everytime, same weapons, same characters, same planets, etc. Nope. Jim has actually taught Tanner strategy. Here are a few examples:

* He knows what landscape is on each planet and cycles through where he will play.
* He doesn’t play the same character twice in a row because he likes the different advantages of different characters and he can tell you what they are (example…certain guys can fly…apparently)
* He knows how to operate the vehicles as well and even knows how to alert the vehicles and tell them to wait for him as he is running to catch them.
* I saw a stand alone weapon unit (revolving machine gun thingy) and I asked Tanner if he knew how to operate it. He demonstrated how if you push a certain button you can jump in and out of it to take it over. THEN he told me that there wasn’t anyone to shoot right now so he had to go “help his guys”. In other words, “Mom I don’t have time to be showing you tricks of the trade because my men need me.” Sheeshh.
* I watched him go after his enemy, advance from behind a wall, decide to change out his weapon, back up behind the wall again, change to a different weapon, advance and destroyed his enemy. All done quickly with obvious skill. My mouth dropped open.

The PINK Book

Sometimes I get a little organizational crazy. Recently I put all of our CD’s and DVDs in DVD books. I then realized that it was hard to find what I was looking for so I put a number label on each page and made an access database to categorize them and print out reports referring to the label. These reports were put in a pink book and is stored alongside the DVD books. Aunt Beck came over to watch the boys this week for a bit while I went to the Dr. with Jim (Jim is having terrible allergy issues right now). While we were gone, Tanner asked to watch Lord of the Rings. He brought Aunt Beck the DVD Book and then gave her the Pink Book. He showed her how to look up the movies, find the number, and then look up the corresponding number in the DVD Book. What is impressive to me about this is that I had no idea he knew I had this system going. I have never shown this to him, nor have I looked up stuff in his presence (that I can think of). I am always impressed with how much he observes. A little scary isn’t it?

The Bear Hunt

Tanner’s new favorite game. We play it like this:

Both of us clap our hands on our legs (walking sound):

Mommy say’s: I’m going on a bear hunt

Tanner say’s: I’m going on a bear hunt

Mommy: I’m not scared

Tanner: I not scared

Mommy: Are you?

Tanner: Nope

Mommy: Not Me!

Mommy: STOP! I see a big creek! How are we going to get across it?

Our story goes on and on and on until I am begging to kill that dumb bear and get on with my day. We never actually find the bear either because we spend too much time hunting dinosaurs and killing rattlesnakes and cooking them for dinner. Tanner even caught me some Koala bears this week. I usually start out with the STOP but generally he doesn’t like where I take the story so he insists each time that it is HIS turn and he gives me the stop and sets the story up. Tanner is very good at pretending so I am very amused by this game. I do get tired of the dinosaurs though. Somehow they make it into every story. As a side point, he always makes sure to mention which Jurassic Movie the dinosaur is from. Yes…he actually knows this information. Weird.

Morning Glory

Have I mentioned that both of my boys wake up happy happy? What a wonderful way to start the day! Tanner is especially happy when Ty wakes him. He gives Ty this look that say’s “THANK YOU for being the first face I got to see today”. Nothing more precious.