One Little Monkey Jumping on the Bed

We have this thing in our house called "Monkey Mondays", for some reason monkey-ish things seem to happen on Mondays. Climbing, running, screeching, crawling, jumping. Today when Karis woke up I asked her, "Are you ready to be a monkey?!". She loved that and continued to repeat the phrase all day.

And now Monkey Monday is coming to a close and I'm enjoying listening to Karis talk herself to sleep - wouldn't it be funny if we all lay in our beds and just chattered to ourselves as we fell off to slumber? These days my head hits the pillow and I'm sawing logs within minutes. We are quite a sleeping family, it works well for everyone.

There's one memory from the weekend that will be a freeze-frame in my mind forever: we were at our church's annual meeting/potluck, and Karis shocked me by actually wanting to go to the childcare. About a half hour later, our good friend (and babysitter) Rachel brought Karis back to us . . . she had bitten her tongue, poor girl. She was okay and nothing a little hug couldn't fix, but the precious part is what she was wearing - a sparkly sequence butterfly costume (WHY didn't I take a picture?!). She stayed with us for the rest of the meeting and mostly sat on my lap until the last few minutes when she busted out jumping up and down, talking about her "butterfly outfit". Sunday morning we offered the nursery option to her again, she went for a few minutes and when Trev picked her up she told him she had bit her tongue again. Funny honey.

Random Karis-isms from the week that I want to remember:
- Singing "All Things Bright and Beautiful" before bed, stomping around her room doing some quite elaborate and amazingly consistent interpretive dance. Someday I'll learn how to upload videos here
- Helping Trevor shovel
- Barreling up and down the sidewalk on her tractor or bike. The girl can FLY
- Calling the bookshelf at the end of the hallway "mommy's house. daddy's house". Needing to stand in it right before she goes to bed, then giving Trevor a huge hug and then going back to her room for bedtime. Kind of ready for bed, she then proceeds to run back and forth between me (sitting on the rocker) and her closet while I read a few books. Exuberant energy until the very last minute of wakefulness. We started telling her she can talk all she wants while she falls asleep, and then she can go ahead and sleep through the night . . . so she's taken to beating me to it as I put her to sleep: "talk all I want. sleep all through night."
- Jumping on our bed
- Saying "all done mommy, all done daddy" to basically whatever we are doing when she decides we shouldn't be: singing, talking, playing the piano, reading, eating a banana (yes, just the other day Karis told me "all done mommy eat banana"!?)
- "I want some decaf!"
- Brand recognition: Chipotle, Target, Trader Joes, and most recently, Starbucks.
- The way she goes into her room to take care of "kitty bear": bedtime routine, diaper, wipes. She closes the door just enough so I can't peek in . . . one time I went in and I saw why - she got hold of the diaper cream and was slathering it on her little stuffed animal.