Bursting... with... stuff...

You will remember from this post, potty training is not our strong suit.  You definitely can't claim toilet training proficiency when it took the intervention of a dog with the IQ of a quail suffering from a brain injury to teach your daughter how to use the potty.
Enter Malakai.

He is a delightful young man in incalculable ways, but one of his more frustrating traits is that he is, in the grand tradition of children in our family, adamantly against anything that we feel strongly would be beneficial in easing the financial burden of a herd of children who eat like a camp of lumber jacks.  As such, he was profoundly anti potty training.  We thought confidently of his fixation on candy and decided that we would cave as we did with Meron and give him candy every time he uses the bathroom.  This was unsuccessful at first for two reasons: first, we don't like to clean pee off of the floor or poop out of underwear and second, we had a teen age nanny all summer long who was lovely, but not as committed to the potty training quest as we were.  So, after a highly unhygienic and incredibly disgusting experience of cleaning poo out of a pair of swimming trunks, I admitted defeat and retreated.
But lately, Kai has been showing unmistakable signs that he is ready. Interested in the potty, staying dry for long periods of time, etc. We decided to leap in again.  And he did great. Yay for Kai.  Except... he was scared to poop on the toilet. Not like, concerned about it. Terrified. Like a giant alligator would appear the moment the deed was done and bite his suspended tush.  We begged. We pleaded. We bribed shamelessly.  All to no avail.  Until he saw the truck. Oh, the truck.  Malakai is fascinated by fire trucks.  While wandering the aisles of a dollar store, Malakai saw this truck and his eyes literally popped out of his head. It wails. It beeps. It makes... all sorts of horrible screechy noises that are unidentifiable to me, but make him leap with glee.  So, we did what any terrible parents would do and promised him a fire truck if he would poo on the potty.  He ran desperately to the potty in the store, but with no satisfactory result.  He was disappointed, but determined.
The next evening while everyone was enjoying some post supper crazy time, Malakai suddenly disapeared. We didn't notice right away (do you need me to reiterate that we aren't great parents?).  He came out of the bathroom, sans pants and announced that he had produced "kaka."
I looked at Nathan. Our eyes met in mingled hope and disbelief.  Nathan sprinted to the bathroom to find said kaka in the toilet.
Now, I imagine that in finer homes, the discovery of poo in a toilet after the emergence of a child would be proof of depositor. Not so in our home. We have three small children, all of whom often forget to flush. We had been fooled before when Malakai claimed a kaka that clearly wasn't his (don't make me go into how we figured out who it belonged to).
Nathan frantically began interrogating the girls and I. "Is this yours?! Did you do this?! WHO DID THIS?!" I read it as excitement, but the girls apparently read this behavior as "Daddy has finally been pushed off the deep end by poop." and began to slowly back away while shaking their heads.  He advanced on me next, but I proclaimed  innocence ignorance.  He ran to Malakai who was standing proudly by the toilet and flipped him upside down like a rubber duckie flipped by a carny and roared with ecstasy "IT'S HIS! HE POOPED IN THE POTTY!!!"  Nathan then proceded to hoist him into the air ala Simba in "The Li0n King" while the girls jumped around in circles cheering and clapping. And then Nathan gave him an entire bag of jelly beans.
I seriously laughed so hard I fell over. I love them so much. And we're all proud.

Especially this guy.

Beauteous.

The much anticipated event...

One of the absolute best things about adopting older children is watching all of their 'firsts.' Babies have a first Halloween, too, but they don't care. Hana, however, was beside herself.
We talked about it for a long time leading up to the big event... she likes to know what to expect. It was funny trying to explain it to an intelligent, aware little girl.
 "So, I know you aren't supposed to knock on stranger's doors, but we are going to go knock on the doors of all of the people in the neighborhood. No, it doesn't matter if you don't know them... but look and see if their porch lights are on. Then you will say 'trick or treat' and they will give you candy. And you have to dress up in a costume. I don't know what kind... like a princess or a turtle or a ghost or something. Why? Umm... that is a long and complicated explanation. Ask your father. Oh, and we are also going to hollow out pumpkins and carve faces on them"

 

Yup... already prepping for Christmas. In fact, last night she started crying and said she doesn't like it when we tease her when Nathan told her that we will be bringing a tree into the house and will be putting decorations on it. And don't get me started on Easter... Ever tried explaining the whole connection between the resurrection of Christ and chocolate and bunnies to a child who has been in America for 3 months and doesn't really speak English? It went something like this, "Umm... well... the bunny hid the eggs we colored and was sorry and gave you some candy... because... I don't know. Put your bunny ears on and eat your chocolate. We're taking a picture." So, there was a lot of discussion on exactly what the costume would be. It is an important decision for any kid, but Hani didn't know what everyone else would be wearing. First she said a deer. Then a cheer leader, (although she didn't know the word for cheer leader and just started chanting rhythmically "My name is Hana, I'm a banana." when trying to get us to understand her). She finally settled on a ghost. Nathan gave her the option of scary or funny and she said scary. She wanted to be a brown ghost though, and not a white ghost. Which, because I'm an idiot, took me a while to figure out... in fact, I figured it out when she said, "But mom, I'M BROWN!" Oh... yeah... well, good! I'm glad she wanted to stay that way. Unfortunately we had no brown sheets we were willing to sacrifice, and were worried about sending her out in the dark covered in all dark brown. So, we settled on a white ghost with a brown face. But then she picked green. I don't know, it was confusing for all of us. She was extraordinarily cute. Although once she realized that Meron, who was unswerving in her dedication to being an Ethiopian Princess for the second year in a row, would be wearing eye shadow, the appeal of being scary began to diminish. So, Hani was a stylish ghost with shimmery eye shadow... which is more challenging than you might think to apply through eye holes in a sheet.

And Meron was an Ethiopian princess.

Malakai had an even harder time deciding on a costume. His first request was to be "Oh Susanna." I know... but he really likes that song. I didn't know what we were going to do... wig and cardboard banjo? Plastered in sheet music? Thankfully he changed his mind and wanted to be a car. Well... he wanted to be a princess car. Don't think less of me... but I really didn't want him to be a princess car. I mean, we don't believe in forcing strict gender roles on our children. He wears heels and purses and shiny necklaces all the time at home. He likes to get to be the princess when they are all playing and tonight at the taekwondo gym he announced to everyone that he had a big baby in his belly and he had to push it out (although he gave birth to a car... so... you know...). But I don't know what the hell a princess car is. A car a princess would drive? A car with a tiara? A car that has a princess painted on it? We are not that creative. Nathan stayed up until 1am the night before Halloween making this awesome car. Seriously, he loved it.

Until he tried to put a piece of candy into the bag and discovered his hands didn't touch. Nor could they reach his mouth, which was actually kind of handy since we didn't have to keep telling him to put the candy away and stop eating it... It was a little reminiscent of Randy's snow suit in "A Christmas Story" Way funny. Especially when he dropped his candy bag, because he couldn't see anything underneath him. And then he had to try to bend down and pick it up. Nathan is a much better person than I, because he helped him right away. He did confess afterwards that he was really tempted to just see what happened... after all, Kai had bumpers. He wouldn't have gotten hurt.

 All in all, it was a really fun night. A first that we got to share.

Now back to trying to explain the whole, pilgrams, Native Americans and turkeys deal... You see, there were these people who invaded a country they had no right to be in and decided it was theirs, but then the people who had lived there originally took pity on them and gave them a bunch of food, so now we eat turkey and sweet potatoes with marshmallows on them....