Toone Family

I know I just barely posted about Lily's "dreams," but here's a reprise. (This just happened a few minutes ago). Lily and Amanda had been in bed for a few minutes, but based on the noises we could hear from their room (jumping, screaming, playing, singing, banging feet on the wall, etc.) there had been no sleeping whatsoever. We heard Lily walking downstairs making kind of a soft whimpering noise that vaguely resembled crying. When she came into view, she had the biggest grin on her face -- yet she was still fake crying. Suppressing our laughter, we asked her what was wrong. She said (smiling and "crying" at the same time.) "I have a very bad dream." Kara and I smiled at each other with that "we both know where this is going, but we still need to ask anyway" look. So I asked Lily what happened in the dream. She lifted her nightgown, pointed to that dang freckle, and said, "It's this light brown one, right here." We re...

Not all of these are recent -- but they are ALL real. Amanda: When Lily declared herself "The Princess," Amanda's brow furrowed momentarily -- but her face suddenly brightened considerably , and then she said smugly, "Well, that must make me the queen." In Primary singing time the other day, children were being called on to share their favorite song, which all the children would then sing. Amanda's teacher leaned over to her and whispered, "What's your favorite song, Amanda?" "' I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night and Party Every Day'," she replied nonchalantly . When Amanda was called on by the song leader, she leaned over to her teacher and whispered, "I changed my mind." She selected "I Am a Child of God" instead. Lily: Like most two-year- olds , Lily doesn't pronounce every word with exact correctness. We'll sometimes try to coach her by repeatedly saying the syllable she's having trouble w...

Amanda sometimes has dreams which she finds to be rather upsetting. However, hearing her description of them is really quite entertaining. As she relates her dreams to me, I often find myself having one of those "even though it requires the use of every muscle, I am suppressing my laughter for now, but the minute I get a chance, I'm going to walk up to my room, close the door, and laugh out loud until I'm done" moments. Everyone who has ever been a parent of a young child knows exactly the kind of moment I’m talking about. One of my favorite dreams is the one in which Amanda's Granddad (actually her great-granddad) “turned into a fish”, chased Amanda down, and gobbled her up. Apparently the whole thing was realistic enough that it was scary to her, but to me, Amanda’s report of a kind old man morphing into a crazy child-eating fish was just odd enough to be funny … Of course, I wasn’t the one that got eaten … I may have reacted differently if I had been the victim...

Am I the only person whose children do VERY naughty things in the wee hours of the morning? From what we can piece together based on the evidence, the morning at our house went something like this: Lily got up to use the bathroom at some point (this would have been worthy of praise, since this was the first night she didn't wear a diaper to sleep and managed to keep her bed dry). From what we can tell, her billowing nightgown may have impeded her in getting to the toilet in time...so it was left in a soaking heap on the bathroom floor, along with her underwear and the innocent-bystander bathmat. However, something else must have gone awry, because there was also a trail of something-gross-that-rhymes-with-"floop" smeared on the toilet seat. Sigh. Anyway. Whether it was to reward herself for staying dry all night or to drown her sorrows about not getting to the toilet on time, we do not know -- but Lily then proceeded to the kitchen where she unscrewed the lid from the bot...