FUNNY KID CATCH-UP
My kids crack me up. And gross me out. Sometimes, it's at the same time.
Jared likes to dip just about anything in Ranch. Zach is more of a ketchup fan, although both boys enjoy both condiments. Jared got it in his head one day to mix them. Eeew! He says he likes the color it makes, and that it tastes good. A few minutes after his first mixing, he dubbed his invention "Ranch-up."
I believe my niece coined that phrase, but I believe it was because she replaced ketchup with Ranch. Not mixed them together. And that niece lives far, far away, and although they are the closest cousins geographically (Las Vegas is much closer than Missouri or Korea), we still don't see them much. So Jared never heard it from her.

Zach will pretend to be different things, like a dog or a duck or a monster. He'll even tell me, "Mommy, see, I frog! Wibbit, wibbit, wibbit," as he hops around on his hands and knees. But if you ask him, "Are you a froggy?" he'll emphatically and somewhat annoyedly (hey, is that an actual word? Spell checker didn't underline it!) proclaim, "No, I big boy!"
Alternately, he says, "see Mommy, I small." As huge as he is, he's still just 3 feet tall in a much bigger world, and he feels it sometimes.
Today, he meshed his contradicting observations. He said, "Mommy, I alligator." "You're an alligator?" "No, I a growing up kid." And that, my friends, is an insightful 2 year old!

Both boys had fun with Play-Doh today. Jared feels limited by its structural capabilities, so he has been asking me for toothpicks. At first, it was to hold up the three spheres of a snowman. But then he kept asking for more and more and more. Finally, he just said, "Mom, I'm gonna need a lot of toothpicks, so you can just bring me the whole container." Check out what he built!
I did this activity, except with marshmallows and toothpicks, in the third grade gifted program. Jared figured it out all on his own! I took some more pictures of it here, along with his next funny Play-Doh invention.
Seriously, if you didn't watch THE KNACK video when I posted it last time, you've got to watch it! Here's the link again: THE KNACK.