Short Stories

We are in full Christmas mode over here & fully anticipating the arrival of Santa, 

but in the meantime I wanted to share a couple of recent memorable events with the blog.

1. Cockroach Victory

My fascination of cockroaches is probably equivalent to my fear of them. These pesky insects were never an issue in Idaho, but now I face them on a very regular basis. Well, after nearly three years of complaining about it, we finally scheduled an expert to come spray the habitat these creatures call home. However, it seems all this has done is create more madness, causing roaches to emerge from all cracks & crevices of our home. They warned us this may happen, but these freaks are seriously coming out from the depths of the earth since the spray-of-genocide happened. Luckily we are mostly finding them on their backs in a lifeless state, so at least that means the kill juice is working. It's not like we have an infestation or anything like that, just a random beast every once in awhile  --- typically in the bathroom. Hmm actually I'm probably in denial. We have likely, unknowingly, been coexisting with hundreds of roach families since they are literally coming out from everywhere now! No no no. Yuck. Ignorance is bliss. Anyway, the point of this story has nothing to do with me, actually. I think cockroaches are super creepy. Moving on.

It was after bedtime and the kids were already tucked in bed when Lyla started yelling for her Dad. I had left the house for a couple solo errands, but Kirk figured the sounds of Lyla were the typical nonsense that occurs on a nightly basis. To his surprise, Kirk entered her room and learned she was actually screaming about the presence of a cockroach on the wall. According to Kirk, the roach was so large it required a double take. He claims it was the biggest roach he has ever encountered --- and that says a lot, considering he is a Texas native. As he battled the cockroach to his death, Lyla watched wide-eyed. Kirk was victorious. He settled Lyla back in and as he left the room said, "Nobody messes with my Lyla girl." Lyla fell to sleep. Life was good again.

I returned home & Kirk filled me in on the details of the post-bedtime massacre. I was slightly disappointed he failed to take a photo of the godzilla-roach, considering he is well aware of my obsession. I think I became fixated on their anatomy after we captured nearly ten critters in a mason jar once, over the course of several days, before I decided it was setting a weird example to keep cockroaches in a jar as trophies of some sort. I accused Kirk of exaggerating the size, embellishing the facts, stuff like that. He finally drew a picture for a visual comparison and its body extended to about four inches long. However, I was still questioning the legitimacy of his story. Regardless, assuming Kirk was giving an accurate version of events, it seemed this sucker could have been the big daddy of the colony and clearly had a strong resistance to the kill juice from earlier in the week.

Now onto the point & cute part of this ridiculous story. Lyla woke up the following morning and I interrogated her about the cockroach story. I attempted to grill her for facts the night before, but sadly for me she was sound asleep, probably dreaming of cockroaches. She confirmed there was a rather large cockroach crawling on the wall in her room, she called for Dad, blah blah blah --- then she told me the sweetest thing. She said, "Dad got the cockroach out of my room and said nobody messes with his Lyla girl." She had the biggest smile on her face, glorifying in the fact that in that moment Kirk's one and only purpose was to protect her. It was adorable. She mentioned it at least two more times throughout the day. She is pretty happy about having such a heroic daddy.

I still can't get her little voice out of my head... "Dad says nobody messes with his girl." 

I love that girl. I hope she uses that line on boys when she's older.

Well. That story ended up being long enough to justify for its own post. The above could be summarized by stating, Kirk killed a cockroach for Lyla and afterwards he said, "nobody messes with my Lyla girl." She was quite pleased with this statement. Lol. Oh well. The next one is short and sweet.

2. "Bo" vs. "No"

If you are around Max often, then you know that when he says "bo" it means "no". For the longest time he refused to say "no" even though we all knew he was quite capable. He recently learned we adult creatures think it's pretty cute when he says "bo" and have even adopted the lingo for ourselves. He tends to work against the things adults find enjoyable and has worked very hard to correct his pronunciation. He is definitely in the stage of doing the exact opposite of what is expected of him, so reversing his vocal habits was a real treat for him. He now takes his time to articulate the sound each letter makes in the word "no." It even makes his nose scrunch when he does this, but I'm not going to tell him that's an equal trade for the adoration I had for "bo."

Max, we will miss you saying "bo" but hearing you say "nnnnnnoooo" is surprisingly just as great. Unless of course it's 5pm and you've said it [to me] 100 times in the span of one day. I have a hard time finding it cute at that point. Hehee. I still love you though!