Not much new over here at the Hammond house. We are getting into the part of winter that is so very fun, you know the-everyone has been sick for like a month straight and I am so over it-part. I have also become the official house nag. Between making sure Zeke is eating enough and Pantera is doing her homework I feel like that is all I do, give out medicine and nag. Being an adult is so very fun.

 Okay, okay it's not all that bad. Katurah is so stinkin' hilarious with her speech impediment. She was asking Pantera if she could watch her play "Minecrap" on her ipad tonight. She loves to play kitchen with the new little kitchen set I built them. She wears any random hat and magically is the chef. She loves to make smoothies or "lemade" she is quite the cook.

Amari had her hair all planned out before she went to bed the other night. She asked me to make her "bangs up" and she remembered that I agreed to it the next morning. After I did her hair she very sweetly asked "Are you going to do your bangs up today?" I asked if she wanted me to and she very excitedly said "YES!" So we were twins for the day and she was so very proud. She told me that she wants to be just like me when she grows up. So sweet. Katurah can be so sweet or so very crabby, so when she was is a bad mood I asked her "Katurah what is wrong?" Amari inserts "Her bad attitude! That's what's wrong!"  Amari also informed one of the Elders "You don't know ANYTHING Missionary!"

 We watched Big Hero 6 on Tuesday. They all thought I was going to cry at the sad part. I did not. As soon as the movie ended Zeke bolted to his room. I went up to check on him and he was sobbing. He was so sad because of Beymax. He has such a sweet heart.

Mind your business

 

Oh it has been a rough month or so. Zeke has kept me pretty busy with his tummy troubles. He goes for a colonoscopy on the 25th, waiting and watching him be so very miserable until then is so hard. He has missed a lot of school so I started looking into homeschooling. I don't want to homeschool him and he initially said he didn't want to either. Then he told me "Mrs. Winslow told us all to clean up today, so I think I will be homeschooled." We are keeping him in as long as possible, I just get to go pick him up several times a week when he doesn't feel well. He threw up at school and it was so sad "Mom, I threw up on Brandt and my laughing brother Jace." He is such a sweet boy through all that I have to do to him, takes his meds like a champ and even if I have to give him something he really hates he still hugs me afterwards and tells me he loves me. So this has been  my life and where I have been, mostly in the bathroom with my son.

Katurah and Seneca are going through there terrible twos at the same time I think. One of them is always crabby. Katurah is the a blast to play games with though, she loves to play match and lets out the cutest "YESTH" each time she gets a match. She cheats like nobody's business too, but I love to hear her all excited so I don't call her on it. When she is arrested for counting cards at the casino don't blame me.

Seneca has learned to climb up the couch and onto the bay window. All of my kids have loved to sit/dance/jump in the window. I'm sure it is quite the spectacle for any passerby's. Seneca thinks herself quite the dog whisperer. I do think she could give Cesar Milan a run for his money. Her trick is: share everything. Not with your siblings, that would be ridiculous but with the dogs. Toothbrushes, lollipops, ice cream, your dinner, you name it she has shared. She loves her puppies and they really do love her.

Amari is just full of it as usual. She told her Sunday school teacher "Just mind your business." When she was told to sit down during class. When I asked her about it she said "Sorry, it's just she was making me mad. So she needed to mind her business." She and Katurah are the best of pals, they always want me to play with them, but they really play better and more creatively when I am not involved. I hate admitting that. Amari is an amazing little artist. She loves to color and puts so much detail in her work.

Pantera can't go 10 minutes without breaking into song. She does have a very beautiful voice, but I feel like we are living in High School Musical. She is actually singing in my ear as I am typing to annoy me. She put on a pretty awesome half-time performance during the Super Bowl on Sunday. We had some friends over and most of the kids got involved, it was spectacular and no one had any wardrobe malfunctions.

Lovely music

Amari has an amazing "pop" voice. I think this is a normal phase most little girls go through thinking they sound so awesome with there vibrato belting of random lyrics. She was singing a lovely little number last week that I just must share it went a little something like this:

"You don't wanna be messin with me-e-e or my family. Cuz you wanna live you don't wanna die. You don't wanna be messin with me-e-e-e!!!"

I will leave the interpretation up to you. I will neither confirm nor deny mafia ties.

Christmas 2015

Here's a little look at our Christmas morning...

Katurah was up until 1:30 am, I think due to excitement. Then when it was time to get up for presents around 8 am, she refused to get up. When we did finally extract her from her from her bed, she was less then thrilled. We started opening presents and when it was Katurah's turn to open one she stood in front of it with closed eyes and duck lips and refused to open anything.

 

The rest of the kiddos were quite thrilled and enjoyed opening there gifts. Zeke had the best reaction to his Disney Infinity 2.0 "I wanted this for Christmas!!!"  And Seneca was so happy for her Bubble Guppy toys, she just took bubble puppy and started barking.

 

Zeke has been under the weather for some time now. I am getting grayer by the day. One day when his fever broke he woke up all sweaty and said "Mom, I think the curse has broke again." We started him on a gluten/lactose free diet to try to help some of his issues until we can finally get into the stomach specialist at Children's hospital. I asked him if he wanted some ketchup with his chicken and he checked with me first "Is it gluten free?" Then he told  Jess "I hope mustard isn't gluten free, because I don't like mustard."

 Some habits are hard to break, Katurah can't stay awake if she sits next to Jess. I am terrible at laundry. I can never find matching socks for my kids...like ever. So the one time I found a pair and put them on Katurah she was SO EXCITED "Two of them?!? TWINS!!!" She was talking about Christoff from frozen but she still has some speech issues so his name is "Pissed off."

 Seneca's future husband came to visit before Christmas. Brady is such a cute little guy!!! They almost acknowledged each other this year. I wish there family lived closer, we miss you Buck and Chanie!!!

 Pantera was discussing going into Young Womens with me for like the 20millionth time. She likes a boy who just went into deacons quorum and has tried to find every loophole to skip the next 2 years of primary. She was telling me how excited she was to go into beehives and Amari became very concerned for her "Pantera, bees are very mean so you should probably just stay away from them."

Amari was so surprised by something and she said "It just blew my mind to smiths!" Not smithereens, smiths.

Seneca is learning to climb and loves to play with the big kids. They are usually pretty good about humoring her, but she can be quite the little pill. The older girls set up very elaborate games and Seneca loves to knock them down to see how mad they get. She is the youngest and that is her job after all.

Moohaha Gonna Kick Shlink

Seneca LOVES baby dolls. She is constantly carrying one around or pushing one in the stroller. I almost feel as though she is hinting at me. Sorry kiddo, you are the last. She also loves Bubble Guppies. She does some amazing dances to the songs from the show and even carries around a huge Molly doll that I bought her for Christmas and she found. It is the coveted toy of our house and whenever anyone else has it she will walk over to them and rip it out of there arms. See Seneca, being the youngest has its  perks!

 Amari girl is the perpetual mother hen. The other day Katurah wasn't listening and Amari said "Mom, let me handle this." She proceeded to scold her sister and send her to time out. Then last night Katurah wasn't eating (what's new?) and I tried spoon feeding her unsuccessfully. She again stepped in and took over and guess what? Katurah ate. Of course Amari didn't eat her food, but beggars can't be choosers now can they?

 Zeke has been invited to so many birthday parties over the past few weeks. One was a bowling party and he discovered that he absolutely loves to bowl. Although it was a little frustrating when the other kids weren't as focused as he was, but he was pretty patient considering. He loved it so much that we decided to take all of the kids bowling again last week...so fun. When he and Amari were making cards for one of the parties he helped her spell the words for her card. It was one of the sweetest things I have ever seen the way he encouraged her "You got it Amari now a Y." He did the santa workshop at school and was so happy to give us all our presents. He got Jess a pen but informed him "That is not what I wanted to get you. I wanted to get you a Golf Character Encyclopedia. But they didn't have one." That would have been perfect seeing as Jess doesn't even have one yet. Poor dude hasn't been to school yet this week due to feeling like garbage. Oh I hope this passes soon!

 Pantera is just plugging along through fourth grade. She is quite the devoted class mayor, she refused to stay home sick for fear her classroom would be left in the hands of her vice mayor. She was chosen as one of 5 kids from her school to participate in an English festival, this is quite an honor. They will have to read 4 novels and write questions about them, then participate in events and competition in May. They get to meet one of the authors of the books they read. Way to go Pantera!!!

 Katurah is 3....

 See.....

 That face says it all huh? She loves to scowl for the camera little stinker. She constantly pretends to be someone other then herself. Mostly Marshall from Paw Patrol or Slink from Toy Story. She will correct you if you call her by her name and not the one she is pretending to be. We have a long standing tradition with the girls in my little family playing what I mournfully call "you have to say." Pantera started it and would ask me to play with her, ok great, then control the entire game until I wondered why I was even there. "You have to say 'look at the cat over there'" oh and if I go off of the mental script which I am not given a copy of I get yelled at. Sounds fun eh? Well Katurah wanted me to be a super villain and she was super Slink (but she can't say s so it is Shlink). What is the meanest thing a sheltered kid could come up with for a super villain to do to our games hero? "Have to say Mooohaha, gonna kick Shlink!"

Jess took the girls on a date last week. Amari takes her dates with dad very seriously but was ok with Katurah being the third wheel. You girls are just lucky I am willing to share. Love that guy.

Arm Wrestles

We had such a nice Thanksgiving! Jess got a nice 4 day weekend, I love it when he gets to be home with us.

Amari has said some pretty great things over the past few weeks. We were at the post office and there is a door that says "Post Master" on it. She asked what it said and after I told her she pretended to shiver and said "Post Master, nobody wants to mess with him!" When we say our prayers often the phrase "please bless that no harm or accident will befall us" is used. I guess this entire time Amari was hearing something completely different. When she said the prayer she said "Please bless no arm wrestles will fall on us." Then today Zeke told me "Mom, I arm wrestled at church one time. Can you forgive me?" He was so worried. For the record, we have nothing against arm wrestling.

And happy day Amari has found a cure for head lice! You see I have been terrified of them since I was about 12 and all of my kids know this. We have yet to face this in our home (although I am sure it will happen at some point) but never fear we will now be prepared. Amari asked me "Mom, are you scared of tarantulas? No, that's good because if you ever get those bugs in your hair just put a tarantula on your head and BAM no more bugs!" Excellent, we are going to be millionaires I tell you!

Zeke had 50's day at school a few weeks ago and they dressed up as greasers and did all things 50's like. He brought home a paper that said "If I could have 50 of anything I would want 50 __________." And it had a space for a picture. He picked 50 socks. Way to shoot for the stars Zeke.

Seneca is still obsessed with dancing. This might be my favorite thing she does, just swings her one arm and turns in a circle. Then if she sees me she lifts those chubby arms up and says "Da" for dance. She also barks whenever she sees a dog. She is so big and funny. I need to go put these crazies in bed.

3

This happy little girl just turned 3!!!

 She is at that age of professional quality pouting, she is quite amazing at it. She spends the majority of her days pretending to be a dog, sometimes it's Clifford, sometimes it's Bubble Puppy, other times it's Slinky, or perhaps a Chihuahua. On her birthday she was "Birthday Chihuahua" and if you called her Katurah she would quickly correct you. She also has different barks for each type of dog, our favorite is Clifford because she sounds like a dog who has smoked for a good portion of his puppyhood.

She requested a Bubble Puppy cake and was pleased with the results. She got a lot of Toy Story toys (yes, yes the same ones I donated to goodwill a few years ago...ugh) and was so thrilled. Her Bullseye toy is her prized possession now. She has lost said doll like 100 times since she opened him, I love to be the one to find him as her reaction is amazing and sweet every time.

She has quite the attitude these days because she can. The other day she wanted to get in bed with us and we told her there was not enough room. She got so mad and said "I SUGGLE MAMA, HMMMM!!!!" And she climbed right up and forced me to snuggle her. She is still hooked on the pacifier or lala as she lovingly calls them. She steals Seneca's but gets so mad if Seneca takes hers. Katurah is currently sleeping on the couch and Seneca walked over and took one right out of Katurah's mouth as she is sleeping. Payback sister!

We sure love this crazy 3 year old.