7 Quick Takes about Speaking English, Stupid Time, and Torture in a Tropical Forest

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday!

—1—

Well, that was an exciting Superbowl. 

Just kidding, I don't care.

I heard the Patriots won. I live in New England so I guess I'll try to rally a little enthusiasm.

—2—

You'd think after the 34" of snow we got last week we'd get a break, but Monday brought almost another foot of snow. Of course school was cancelled again. My kids have started to ask me every day, "Is there school tomorrow?" 

Shoveling snow in my pajamas is my new favorite activity.

It's funny how you get used to things. Having used up all their enthusiasm on last week's storm, the kids just glanced out the window at the foot of snow on the ground and said, "meh."

—3—

Before we were married, Phillip lived in Venezuela for 2 years as a missionary for our church. The Spanish-speakers in Venezuela say that English sounds like "witchy watchy, witchy watchy."

I'd forgotten this until I heard myself at bedtime the other night shouting, "Go putcher pajamas on!" Go on, say it 5 times fast. Witchy watchy.

No wonder the kids aren't listening to me.

—4—

Does anyone use Skype to talk to faraway family members? We have for years, but it's never worked well for us. To our kids, the Skype ring really means "Get ready for Stupid Time!"

Normal conversation lasts for 5 minutes max before they remember they can make dumb faces and see themselves in the little box in the corner of the screen. And once they've started sticking out their tongues and crossing their eyes and making pig noses, there's no reeling them back in. 

Sorry, grandma and grandpa. Maybe when they're teenagers.

—5—

For the last 4 years, at least one kid in our house has been nuts about Harry Potter. The youngest Evanses are too little to have read the books or watched the movies, but they've soaked it up anyway.

Our copies of these books are held together with packing tape and a prayer.

This week I bought flowers for a friend's birthday and let my 3-year-old carry them to the front of the store. To the bafflement of onlookers, she kept thrusting the bouquet at me and yelling, "Incarcerous!" all the way to the register.

—6—

I don't usually watch sports (see #1) but we all went to see my older daughter play in a fundraiser basketball game at her school. It was crazy crowded. Trying to find a block of seats for a family of 7 was impossible, so we had to get a little creative and farm off the kids.

Oh, look! There's your friend Erin — why don't you go sit by her?
That kid looks familiar, do you know him? No? Well, go sit with him anyway.
The rest of you need to stand. Tough rocks.

We enjoyed the game, we just sat (and stood) sprinkled throughout the stand instead of together. 

—7—

Perhaps the most exciting development of this week was getting white noise machines for our kids' rooms. Why did we suffer for years when all our problems could've been solved with a $22.19 purchase on Amazon?

I resisted so long partly because of the sheer ridiculousness of buying a machine whose sole purpose is to make noise when we're already the loudest family in the universe. But it turned out to be money well spent.

My favorite sound setting is 'waterfall.' The worst is 'tropical forest.' The grating, incessant squeaking  of the birds is the exact opposite of relaxing. I picture executives sitting around a prototype in a conference room at Conair going, "Oops. There are only 9 soothing sounds in the world and 10 buttons here... well, let's throw some really irritating tropical birds on an infinite loop and call it a day."

I'm thinking about buying an extra machine to put by the time-out chair and disabling every button except for 'tropical forest.'


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