Henry's Fossilized Marshmallow

By Grandma's request, I'm finally doing another Henry post. While his younger brother is making us laugh, Henry is confounding us on a regular basis. Every day he increases my understanding of how all those boys in elementary school already knew EVERYTHING about science, animals, volcanoes, dinosaurs, etc. before we ever learned about them in school. Boys like Henry CRAVE nonfiction books and can't wait to learn more and more about all that crazy stuff.

We recently got a great book from the library called One Million Things: Planet Earth. Henry would look at this for hours and hours at a time and run back and forth to wherever I was, reporting his latest find. "Mom, did you know that there are palm trees on the western coast of Scotland?"

During the six weeks we had this book from the library, Henry was also lucky enough to find this "fossilized marshmallow" in our backyard.

What a discovery! Who knew our backyard was such a treasure trove?

The next awesome book we found from the library was Animals: a Visual Encyclopedia. If you want to catch a glimpse of Henry's excitement about this book, watch this clip:

Henry Reads about Animals from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

This kid knows more than I do about . . . pretty much everything.

We had to renew this book after our six-week stint, because Henry wasn't ready to let go of it. It's too exciting! "Mom, did you know that only one kind of tortoise is endangered, but NONE of the turtles are endangered? BUT some of their numbers are declining . . ."

We brought this book with us on our Thanksgiving road trip, and Henry spent over 2 1/2 hours reading it. Literally. He started at 7:45 and finished the book around 10:30. And then he turned back to the beginning and started reading it again. This kid, I tell you, may not actually be my child. Okay, so when you look at his face, you can't deny that he's mine. But his brain must be directly from B.E.N.

Iverson Day!

We celebrated our 7th anniversary on Sunday. Ben and I had a nice date on Saturday night . . . but we are starting to feel like there is now even more to celebrate as we commemorate our wedding day. We wanted to celebrate the day the Iverson Family was born! Hence, Iverson Day -- our new family holiday. The festivities included watching the "Mommy Daddy Show" (our wedding video), as well as:

a candlelight dinner with sparkling grape juice

cute boys in fancy clothes

Strict adherence to one of our favorite family rules: Rule #28: There's always a beater for everyone!

Did you know that one of our favorite newlywed memories is the night we had frosting and graham crackers for dinner?

Did you also know that one of our other family rules is: Rule #3: You can eat as much cookie dough as you want. ? Go on and judge me or worry about my children and the worms that will grow in their stomachs. I still think it's a good rule.

That's not to say that I remind the boys about the rule on a regular basis . . .

Raking and Leaf Jumping

Leaf Blowers

Leaf Blowers

I loathe you,

thick-skinned men

with your crude weapons

strapped around your waists.

You enter an innocent morning,

a perfect crisp day

and start firing --

haze into the clear white sky,

noise into my cloudless thoughts,

leaves and leaves into ugly swirls

and then nice, neat piles --

producing order

in place of the glittering

chaos of Autumn.

Darn Squirrels

When I came home and discovered one of our pumpkins had bite marks in it, I thought that Ellis must be the culprit.

"Ellis, did you bite the pumpkin?" I asked.

"Yes . . . I did!" he responded, with that cunning naughty-boy look on his face.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"I bite da pumpkin!" he declared.

I was pretty bewildered (Why would Ellis eat pumpkins and not macaroni and cheese?), until later that day when we returned home again, only to catch a guilty squirrel in action. He made quite a mess of pumpkin #1, and then he or one of his relatives got pumpkin #2 the very next day. As if we were just kind-hearted animal-lovers putting out a nice snack for the squirrels! Arghh. Someone told me to coat your pumpkins with Vaseline and the squirrels will leave them alone.

I wonder if Ellis would bite into a pumpkin if it was coated in Vaseline . . .

Little Angel

Other times I think there is a little angel living inside Ellis. He surprises me sometimes with the things that come out of his mouth -- usually things I don't think I ever taught him.

Here is Ellis' rendition of "Come Follow Me" - a hymn we had been practicing with Henry for the Primary program. Who knew that Ellis was not only listening, but learning all the words? "Come Follow Me" is now definitely one of Ellis' favorite songs:

Come Follow Me from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

And then here are a few clips showing Ellis' recent obsession with our Church's General Conference and the prophets and apostles. Both boys were shockingly well-behaved for Conference this year, and Ellis really got SO excited about each new speaker and wanted to know all of their names, especially "Present Monson" and "Present Oof-dorf." He has been talking about them several times a day for the last six weeks. Well, yesterday he discovered that you can watch General Conference anytime -- on the computer! What a revelation this was! He watched several clips last night, and asked to watch "Conference" for at least 30-40 minutes today (I showed him Mormon Messages on YouTube). Since Ellis is still only eating his food if he's plopped in front of the computer screen watching a show (we're pathetic parents, I know), he chose to watch Conference for all of his meals today. He chose Present Monson and Present Oof-dorf -- hands down -- over Diego, Dora, or Thomas. I'm wondering how long this will last, but for the meantime it's pretty sweet.

I love his excitement for Present Monson in this one:

Watch Present Monson from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

And in this one, totally un-prompted, he confessed his "nuv" (love) for "doze guys," meaning the prophet and apostles. Who wouldn't nuv doze guys?

I Nuv Doze Guys from Ben and Jenn on Vimeo.

Lastly, here's Ellis' favorite of the Mormon Messages we watched today. It was a hit because it includes several of his favorite presidents and elders, and another favorite . . . Jesus! Check it out:

Little Rascal

There is one side of Ellis that thinks it's really fun to be naughty. If you ask him if he is naughty or nice, he will almost always say "naughty" with a little smirk on his face. There is something fun about being rebellious! You can really see that look on his face in these two pictures.

This little rascal thought it was pretty funny to sit and stand in the "GPS Truck."

Another funny incident occurred the other day while Ben was driving with Ellis in the car. Ellis called out, "Dad! I took off my shoes! I'm turkey!!!!" and then laughed his little evil laugh. Apparently he gets a kick out of when Ben calls him a turkey for being mischievous.

When teaching 6th grade, I always had a special place in my heart for the naughties, especially those hilarious boys. Looks like I've got a little naughty boy all to myself now ;)

The Smartest Kid Ever

We have been using these pictures from the Gospel Art Picture Kit to teach Ellis the scripture stories every night. Thankfully, he's really interested in them! So on Friday, I left him for a few minutes and returned to the room to find something similar to the picture above: Ellis surrounded by hundreds of gospel pictures, all once numbered and in order, now scattered randomly in piles all around him. On one hand, it was great that he was so interested in them; on the other hand, I wanted to scream! Only because I'm the annoying kind of person that really likes to have things in order. So I spent the next 20 minutes getting the pictures all back in numerical order.

Well, I should have learned not to put the picture box right back in the very same spot, because this picture was taken Saturday morning, when he did the exact same thing and scattered all the pictures once again. I came in the room and tried to not lose it. "Ellis!" I said, "What did you do? Did you take out all the pictures again, you little rascal?" In his most enthusiastic and sincere voice, he responded, "Yes, I did it! And . . . I LOVE Jesus!"

I don't know if Ellis is just the smartest, most clever kid on the planet, or if he was intentionally trying to provide me with one of those rare it-must-all-be-worth-it moments. Either way, it worked. I let him keep taking out the pictures and scattering them one by one, while I listened from the other room reveling in my success as a mother as Ellis rehearsed all the names of the prophets he knows and got ecstatic every time he saw a picture of Jesus.

Hmmm. I like being the Mommy of this sweet little boy.