Excuse Me, I Need to Go Drop Off Some U.N. Peacekeepers

We've been redoing some things in our master bathroom and we suspected our toilet of leaking. Once we took a good look at it, we realized it was probably fine. But the best it could be was fine, not great. Even in perfect working order the toilet would never be great. The distrust had planted a seed.  It got us thinking about how we didn't really like our original toilet. We had already pulled it out.  Maybe we should go ahead and replace it?

When we first started thinking we might need a new toilet, I mentioned it to my sister. She immediately told me that she had bought and loved the one my dad had recommended. The American Standard Champion. The one that flushes a bucketful of golf balls:

Now when people in my family recommend a toilet, I sit up and take notice. I come from a line of people who are infamous for clogging toilets.

You know what? We're already talking about clogging toilets. If you're still reading this, then I'm going to assume you're not too squeamish. And we all know I have no shame, so I'm going to tell you a little story to demonstrate why a toilet that doesn't clog is important to me.

Look, my body doesn't like "doing business" away from home. Without any conscious effort by me, it tries to wait until I get home. So any time I travel, it takes a couple days before my bowels accept defeat.

Once upon a time, I was newly engaged to M and flew to visit his family for a long weekend. The first full day I was there, M and I spent the whole day walking around doing touristy things in the summer heat. And I didn't really drink enough. The next day M had to go into work.  I was at his parents' house alone with my future mother-in-law. And my body decided that it was finally ready to "let go." And I could tell I had definitely gotten dehydrated the day before.

There is nothing that quite rivals asking your future mother-in-law that you barely know yet if she has a toilet plunger you can use because you've plugged their toilet. Their ONLY toilet.

So yah, some toilets and I just don't get along very well. Our old one had left something to be desired. I really wanted one I could count on.

Well, we had our eye on that Champion, but we still weren't sure.  Then a couple days later, I mentioned in passing to someone else that we were thinking about replacing our toilet, and they immediately told me they liked the one that "flushes the golf balls."

It was a sign. I mean, it's not often that people go out of their way to recommend ANY product, but when I get the same product recommended two separate times? And when that product is a toilet? It must be good.

So we took the plunge (pun intended) and bought the Champion. And we love it! We have affectionately dubbed it the U.N.

Why you ask? When M and I talk about toilets we often reference Dave Barry and the importance of a toilet's ability to handle "acts of Congress."  Well, we quickly decided that this toilet could not only handle "acts of Congress," it can handle "U.N. resolutions."

The next step was to get rid of our old toilet. We posted it for free on Craigslist and a couple of days later, I got this response:

Hi, I would like to pick this up for an underwater park for Scuba divers on Lake Travis. (No, I am NOT making this up). My friend owns Windy Point Park and sets up underwater "finds" for scuba divers. The toilet he installed underwater is high and dry, and some kids destroyed it with rocks. The divers take underwater pictures sitting on the throne in their wetsuits.

I don't know if I've ever been happier to give something away for free. This entertaining fate for our old toilet was the icing on the cake. Everything turned out so well and now I take every opportunity to announce to M that I need to "send a delegation to the U.N."

Deal With It, Neighbors!

I can't do it.

I can't mow the part of our lawn that has these Mexican primroses growing in it.  So if you drive by my house and see a weird patch of lawn that's still overgrown, now you know why.  It's cuz I'm cherishing the spring wildflowers growing in the middle of my weed infested lawn.

What Would You Call It?

I miss having my sister and her family here.  Really I do.  But I'm not going to lie.  We were pretty excited to get our 4th bedroom back!

We have always struggled with what to call this room.  It normally houses all my sewing and crafting supplies, but to call it the craft room seems too greedy of me.  It's where guests usually sleep when they come to visit, but it's so much more than a guest room.  Sometimes M will go in there with his work laptop for some peace and quiet when he's working from home, but we already have another room that's officially the office (though we use it as a playroom).  I suppose a logical title might be the spare room, but that felt so stuffy somehow.

When we moved into our house, this 4th bedroom was painted a dark, DARK hunter green:

I didn't like it, but there was no rush to paint this extra room that was hardly ever seen.  We ended up calling it the "green room."  But then a few months later, we painted a green accent wall in Claire's room.  So to further clarify, this room became the "dark green room."  Cumbersome, I know, but it stuck.

However, when my sister and her family moved out of the room, it needed a little work.  And I wasn't about to re-paint it hunter green.  So it was finally time to paint that room.  We chose a nice light gray.  I LOVE it!  But the big problem was that calling it the "dark green room" just wasn't going to fly anymore.

M and I wracked our brains for what to call this room.  What was it?  It was the room that... became whatever we needed it to be.

That was it!  In celebration of our regained and freshly painted extra space I splurged and ordered some custom vinyl for the door so we could officially christen it for all to see:

 

I can't wait until our kids read the Harry Potter books and finally get our joke!

 

My Bleeding Ugly Front Door

This was my front door last fall.


There are two noteworthy things about this picture:

First of all is the pretty wreath of fall leaves. I got it on clearance after Thanksgiving the year before. I was so excited when fall came around and I got to bust it out. It looked nice. I liked that it wasn't made of fake silk leaves, but instead out of the real dried leaves.

That proved it's downfall. You see, those nice dried leaves are dyed to help them be the pretty colors they are. As the weather cooled off, we had a streak of foggy wet days. The fog would condense onto the leaves, and then they would bleed. Drips of red and orange trickled down my beige front door and dripped onto my front stoop and onto the rug inside when the door was opened. (I still have a red spot on the rug inside.)

I might have found a way to deal with that, but then the leaves started molding. I tried spraying Lysol on them to stop it, but do you know what's worse than drips of red dye all over your front door? Drips of red Lysol. In the end, the wreath had to go. I'm still in mourning, and it's already summer.

The second noteworthy thing about that photo is the utterly boring color of the door. Blah. I've wanted to change it since we bought the house three years ago. (Has it really been that long? Have we really accomplished so little in that much time???) But I agonized FOREVER about what color to paint it. I wanted it black at first, but then I thought that might look weird with my Texas limestone colored house.

In the end, I followed my instinctive love and this spring I painted it a nice fugly green:


And it even covered all the stains from the wreath incident! What do you think?

Projects

I don't ACTUALLY have any spare time, but I need something to look forward to. Otherwise this time of year the days just blur together... or maybe it's just my itching gunky allergy stricken eyes that make everything foggy. Either way, by carefully neglecting other tasks, here's what I have been doing.


Making hair bows:

(And I have the hot glue gun burns to prove it.)

By golly, Kate will wear ribbons in her hair or so help me! (Claire would rather die than let ribbon come anywhere NEAR her hair. Now Kate is paying for it.)


Valentine's Garland:

I started this project when I saw several people on the web doing it because I thought, "Hey! That's pretty simple. Maybe Claire and I could work on that together." Yah, so I forgot that, genius as she is, motor skills are not really Claire's forte. Watching her decimate huge chunks of felt buy cutting right smack dab in the middle of the fabric was hard. And the result was a whole bunch of itty-bitty worthless irregular polygons. If you squinted really hard, some of them ALMOST looked like hearts. The few that were big enough to use basically had to be re-cut completely. I'm an impatient jerk and a failure as a mother, but oh well. No more trying to craft with Claire for at least another year or two. It's not worth my brain exploding.


New Lights in the Kitchen:

These lights are troublemakers. You know how you always start a project and think, "Oh, this will be easy. I'll just do this real quick"? And then it never is easy and it always takes WAY longer than you planned for? Well, I know that's at least how it usually works at our house. Everything always takes way longer and you start to think that you will mend your unrealistic expectating ways and get real. You will stop dreaming quite so big. You will lower your expectations.

And then something like these lights comes along.

You start shopping for a totally different light for a totally different spot in your kitchen. And while you're at it, you and your spouse casually toy with the idea of looking for something to replace this light too. Then at one point you're at IKEA looking for something else entirely, and you decide to stop into the lighting department, just to peek. And, miracle of all miracles, you and your spouse agree with almost no prior discussion on a lighting fixture. AND it's only $25. So you buy it. Then in about an hour and a half, you install the light. No problems. Smooth as can be. And now you have all this glorious light over your kitchen sink. And you're thinking, "We should replace ALL our lights!" And so it begins...

This stupid light just got my hopes back up that maybe every home improvement we want to do will be this easy. And now let the biting off more than we can chew commence...

--------BEWARE! G'S MIND IS ABOUT TO OFFICIALLY ACT LIKE A 10 YEAR OLD--------

And speaking of replacing ugly lights, what is it with lighting fixtures shaped like unfortunate pieces of anatomy??? The light pictured above replaced one that reminded me of a piece of anatomy that well, let's just say I don't have. I'm glad that one is gone because it's really nice to look at the light above the sink without sniggering.

We are in the market to replace a couple fixtures that remind me of something that might make Kate hungry.

"Hey boob light. You're next!"

Sweat Shop... and Not JUST Because It's Summer in Texas

When my mom was here visiting, she helped make some curtains for Claire's bedroom. In case you need a refresher course, here is what Claire's bedroom looks like (but you might want to put on your sunglasses first). I absolutely LOVE the curtains she designed and made. Check it out:


Shortly after the new curtains were installed, Claire was asking me why they are two pieces with a split down the middle. I told her that's how curtains usually are so that if you want to you can pull them open and look out the window or let more light in. She liked this idea but was struggling to get the curtains to stay open. Later that day, I came up to her room and she proudly showed me how she had gotten them to stay open:


Let's zoom in on that technique:


Claire pointed out that she doesn't have any yellow clothes so we never use those hair clips. True, true... but still not my favorite long term solution.

Eyeball Searing Green

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, a very green post:

For Claire's fourth birthday, we finally painted and decorated her room. Her favorite color is green (That's my girl!) and we've been promising her ever since we moved into the house that we could paint her room green. My mom did the bedding, my sister got her the lights, and I did the small white pillow. Oh yah, and all the painting. Now, when you look at her window from outside at night, it glows an eerie green and makes you think of alien abductions. It's just an accent wall, but it's more than enough. Maybe someday we'll have more furniture in there than just her bed. But until then, bright as it is, I LOVE IT!

The Supervan and Loosely Related Topics

M found an excuse to use the circular saw he got for Christmas by building a bookshelf for the kids. Not only was it an excuse for power tools, but it was also an excellent excuse to demonstrate one of our minivan's superpowers:

M was so excited to finally put a 4x8 sheet of plywood in the back the way he'd always dreamed of doing that he snapped a photo.

Fine with me as long as I get this out of the deal:

SIDE NOTE: While I've got you looking, check out my old lunch boxes. These days they hold toys, but I actually used these in high school and college because I never got to do the lunch box thing in elementary school (another post for another day). Never mind the toolbox shaped one. It's a new one Scott got a little while ago. The pink and blue is a metal one with a Candyland motif. Very old style but actually given to me new about 10 years ago. The red one rocks because it's Animaniacs. My Pinky and the Brain one is better, but it's an insulated soft-sided one, so it doesn't make a good playroom item. Ah, how I loved that show... But the crowning glory is the yellow one. Vintage Cabbage Patch Kids. Mine from back in the heyday.
Now back to the bookshelf discussion.

Marshall did a great job, but I have to take credit for painting it. It was part of my white high-gloss paintfest, along with the kid table Santa brought:

The paint really makes the inevitable hot chocolate spills
from microscopic tea cups easier to clean. These days our "tea parties" have been upgraded with doilies, peppermint stirring sticks, sugar cubes, and cookies thanks to Aunt Jessica.

So now the kids' playroom actually looks sort of like a room and not just a place that we dumped all the boxes full of toys when we moved in. (Never mind that the latter is probably more accurate!)

Next step? A coat of polyurethane for the two new little chairs because sometimes the hot chocolate strays from the tabletop!

Thanksgiving Dinner - No Oven Required

Our last Thanksgiving guest left today. We had guests here for just a few hours short of a full week. So although I'm relieved in a way that it's over, I must say it was a FABULOUS week.

I know part of it was that we didn't have to go anywhere; we got to be at our own house. (Emphasis on the word house.) I know part of it is that my in-laws and my husband's best friend from college are such wonderful, fun people. I know part of it was that I had my sister-in-law who actually enjoys little kids around to help me teach preschool and wear paper pilgrim hats with me on Tuesday. I know part of it was doing fun things like going to downtown Austin, taking family photos, and making a pilgrimage to Fry's. But if I'm really honest with myself, it was mostly because the food was so good.

I mean, we got to choose the menu, not just for Thanksgiving itself, but for the whole Thanksgiving weekend. More importantly, for once we had enough people coming to warrant LOTS of food, and something more than a starving student income (or lack thereof) to fund it. There was much excellent gorging. Let me elaborate.

DINNER BEFORE THANKSGIVING:
- Rudy's BBQ!!!

THANKSGIVING BREAKFAST:
-Ralphie's fabulous buttermilk pancakes, some with chocolate chips, served with regular and blueberry pomegranate syrup
- scrambled eggs with cheese

THANKSGIVING DINNER:
- grilled steak
Who am I kidding? This bullet point deserves it's own paragraph:
We got these awesome New York Strips from Costco that must have been over 2 inches thick. M and his brother grilled these suckers on our gas grill in the backyard (Remember the only nice thing in our back yard?) Herein lies the genius of it all. No dried out turkey from the oven. No gravy (that I'm still intimidated at the thought of making - it's so American). No thawing bird in the fridge for an indeterminate amount of time. No dead carcass I have to fondle and manipulate into a roasting pan. NO GIBLETS! Just delicious boneless, thick, juicy, delicious, red meat. You know it's good when you even don't mind eating the fat. As M's dad put it, I love being an omnivore.
-sourdough garlic bread (warmed on the grill)
-mashed sweet potatoes (These were made in a pot and were the only thing I actually had to start more than about half an hour before we wanted to eat. Once started they could keep cooking longer, so they weren't an exact science.)
- green peas (microwaved from frozen!)
- stuffing (I don't really like stuffing that much, but M does. But he likes Stovetop. Cliche, but easy and ovenless. I actually got my mother-in-law to do this.)
- homemade cranberry relish (I made this the night before. It has pineapple, oranges, and lemons and it actually tastes better if you give them all time to "mesh.")

BEVERAGE OF CHOICE:
- schorle (This is something my family picked up in Germany. Sparkling water combined with fruit juice.)

SNACKS:
- chips with salsa and guacamole
- petite quiche
- brie and sourdough bread (It's just not a holiday for my family without brie.)

DESSERTS:
On Thanksgiving
- 1 Sugar free pumpkin pie for M and his dad and 1 regular pumpkin pie, plus Reddi-Whip (I'm way too lazy and we go through way too little whipped cream to do it any other way)
- 2 apple pies from my mom's famous recipe
(NOTE: The pies were also made the day before. Also, extra pie was important so that we could have my family's traditional "pie and eggs" breakfast the next morning)
Other Desserts
- ice cream (sugar free for M and his dad and both Cookies and Cream and Intensely Chocolate for the rest of us) with dark chocolate syrup
- dark chocolate shortbread (sugar free for M and his dad - I even sprung for better cocoa, so it was extra tasty)
- the most sinfully wonderful chocolate truffles ever (You know, the soft kind rolled in cocoa that feel like a little bite of obesity? We bought a double pack at Costco, so we only got a fourth of the way through them. Look out Christmas guests...)
Are we noticing a theme here? Yes, I love chocolate.

I think I've made reference before to the fact that I probably have an unhealthy perspective on food. This doting discussion of our menu may confirm it in your eyes. All I know is that if an unhealthy perspective on food can make a week this great, bring it on!

Oh yah, and as a crowning glory to it all, I managed to send my in-laws home with their Christmas presents (beautifully wrapped with homemade tags and everything, if I do say so myself). I won't have to ship them!

Could I be on any more of a "homemaker power trip"?

Behold My New Pot Rack

Getting Settled (A Photo Essay)

Here you can see how Scott has been enjoying the fact that my shoes are strewn about haphazardly throughout the house because we haven't hung my shoe rack yet.
I'm impressed that he can walk in these, I barely can. But then again, his foot's not really big enough to actually reach the heel part.


Look! We have a front doormat now. This simple addition has taken our house from "uninhabited wasteland" to "welcome to our home" in $15 (Yay Costco!).
The only thing that seemed tackier than no front mat was the small jungle of weeds we had growing out of the cracks in our driveway until last Saturday. Fortunately we removed them before the EPA declared them a protected wetland or anything.


I was so inspired by my friend Ralphie's post about the photos her daughter takes, that I thought I should give Claire a chance behind the lens. She wanted so desperately to look through the viewfinder instead of just using the LCD screen on the digital camera, that she had no hope of actually lining up a shot. Here you can see the results.
Perhaps she knew what she was doing more than I give her credit for. She has judiciously chosen to cut out my head since we went swimming earlier so I have no makeup on and my hair is a disaster. You still have to suffer through the sight of my grubby working-on-the-house clothes. (On the up side, you do get to see this t-shirt which showcases when and where I graduated college, as if you cared...)

I Mowed the Lawn!!!

This post has nothing to do with my kids for once. They're usually the reason I listen for a laugh track, but not this time. Today I was thinking about how absurd I sound proudly announcing that I mowed the lawn. I got a huge blister doing it (could I be any more of a pansy?), but I did it. This everyday task that is mundane for others is a milestone for me. I've never mowed a lawn before. Never even used a lawn mower before. I know what you're thinking. I must have grown up with a bunch of brothers that always did it. Nope. One younger sister, that's it. The real reason? My parents didn't HAVE a lawn until I went away to college. Now before you go thinking that my parents were lazy, trashy, or [fill in your favorite derogatory term here], let me tell you a little background.

I'm from Silicon Valley. My parents had to buy the mother of all fixer uppers to be able to afford a house. The front yard had been SO bad with the previous owners that when my parents ripped everything out and kept it as plain dirt for several years, all the neighbors actually thanked them. No really. People passing by would stop and comment on what a great job they were doing. I suppose it was a big improvement not to have a compost heap in the front yard anymore... My parents bought the house when I was in junior high and were kept plenty busy until I went away to college making the inside habitable. Filling in the "root cellar" the previous owners had dug (which was compromising the foundation) with concrete. Scraping linoleum off the hard wood floors. Replacing tubs and sinks that had been painted. Everyone has their priorities and the front yard was pretty low on the list. Though this tidbit doesn't really affect my lack of mowing know-how because I was pretty much out of the house, the saga of my parents' front yard came to an amusing conclusion. My dad didn't want any grass and my mom did. In the end, they worked out a compromise where my dad is okay with grass because my mom mows it. So I guess lawn mowing is destined to be a subject with strange associations for me.

Ah, but now I have experienced the rite of passage. I have mowed a lawn. I think that might even qualify me as a fairly normal human being. I suppose that's still open to debate...

Bite Marks on the Blinds

I'll never forget the shock and horror. It was about 6 months ago. I went into Claire's room to get her after she was done with nap time (READ: after we spent a half hour or so with her wreaking havoc in her room and poking her head out the door every 23.4 seconds to ask if nap time was over). I looked at how much she had bent the slats of the aluminum blinds (don't you just love cheap apartment blinds?). I got a little annoyed and started to try to bend them back straight. Then I saw them. Bite marks on the blinds. "CLAIRE!!! WHY did you BITE the blinds?" What was wrong with my child? What would posses her to bite long thin strips of aluminum? I can straighten plain old creases fairly well, but bite marks linger...

Fast forward to the present. When we moved into our house, I noticed that the blinds in Claire's room are a little mangled in one corner. As look more closely, I realize they appear to have been bitten. The effect is different (they're vinyl) but just as unsightly. HOORAY! The previous owners had a 4 year old. Maybe my child is not the only freak who will bite blinds. Sure the blinds I have taken ownership of are ugly, but I take such comfort in the idea that someone else's kid appears to have a similar window covering mutilation fetish. But then I remember: The previous owners also had a dog. Ah, well, that just brings us back to my previous post...

Simultaneous Pottying

Well, we're finally in the house now. I don't know that I'd go so far as to say that we're "moved in," but all our furniture is here and we sleep here now. I only brought the computer over from the apartment today - FINALLY. We're loving living in a house though. When we first started spending time at the house, Claire discovered that there was a bathroom downstairs and one in Mom and Dad's room. Two bathrooms! I had to show her that in fact there are THREE!!! I walked her around and showed them all to her. She counted them with me and was ecstatic. So then one time when M was using the master bathroom and I was using the downstairs bathroom, Claire announced that she needed to go too. She ran off to the hall bathroom upstairs exclaiming, "We can all go potty AT THE SAME TIME!!!" So there you have it, we have achieved the American dream: the ability for 3 members of our household to pee at the same time!

Frazzled...

I see Scott with a crayon.

I begin calling out to M in a panicked voice: "Take that...Cl...Sc...hu-yah.... GET THAT OUT OF HIS HAND!"

I think I'm frazzled because I've begun speaking with inarticulate exclamations. Why didn't I just get up and take the crayon from Scott instead of just grunting away like some paranoid neanderthal? We're moving to the house in less than 60 hours (but who's counting?). I'm really starting to worry that we won't be ready. This nagging worry is a big blow to my deep set belief that with enough preparation and planning, any event can go smoothly. I mean, why should I be stressed about being "ready"? We have our apartment for a little over 2 weeks after we move our furniture over to the house. That should be ample time to take trips in our van to get anything that isn't ready on moving day.

Clearly there is a rule that supersedes my planning theory: Moving always sucks.

Dogs vs. Small Children

We spent most of yesterday cleaning our new house to get ready to move in. The door from the kitchen to the garage has a little dog door in it from the previous occupants. The kids quickly discovered this. Claire thought it was a very convenient way to keep talking to M while he worked in the garage! Scott saw it less as a means of communication, and more as an escape route. He never actually made it out, but he tried! Seeing my children's faces peeking out of a dog door reminded me of my firm stance that we won't have a dog until we're done having small children. Why have a dog when you already have a toddler!

Observe the parallels:

-They slobber all over the place.
-They chew on everything, especially important or expensive things.
-They beg for your food when you eat.
-You're not supposed to feed them whatever you're eating.
-They don't come house-broken.
-They'll play with their own poop.
-They wake you up in the middle of the night.
-They howl.
-They can't communicate, unless you count puppy dog eyes.
-They freak out during thunder storms.
-You have to give them obedience training.
-You have to teach them not to bite.
-You have to get them shots.
-They come in from outside with grass in their fur and get mud all over your floor.
-You have to bathe and groom them.
-They like to play fetch.
-Their toys are all over your floor.
-They sleep in what basically amounts to a cage.
-You can't leave them alone for too long.
-They get really excited when you come home.
-You have to spell out the few words they understand to keep them from getting too excited.
-They're always underfoot and making you trip.
-They follow you around the house.
-They want to play ALL THE TIME!

But when it's all said and done, at least children grow up and eventually learn to say, "I love you."

Claire "Going Home"

The big event for today is that we now officially own our first house. But I'm not ready to write about that. Maybe I'm in denial, or maybe it's buyer's remorse, or maybe I'm still processing it all. Or maybe I just figure the longer I ramble, the longer I can delay dealing with the train-wreck that is our house following the last couple days...

So instead let me say: If you don't know where to find Claire, just check under Scott's crib!

Let me give a little history: M is still frustrated that Scott gave away his fabulous hiding spot during our family game of hide-and-go-seek last night. I was "seeking" and M was hiding under Scott's crib. I would have never thought he'd fit under there so I would never have looked there if Scott didn't keep looking behind the dust ruffle down there. I asked Scott what was under there, thinking perhaps I would find a rogue sippy cup of milk or something.

INTERRUPTION!!! Scott was crying in his crib when I thought he was already asleep. Unlike Claire who will summon every imaginable excuse to delay going to sleep, he NEVER cries unless something is actually wrong. Turns out he had his foot wedged in between the crib slats.

So back to my story. Like I said, I looked under Scott's crib and there was M!

Well, maybe even a little more history is relevant: We're getting ready to move in about a week and a half. We used to keep a whole bunch of water bottles under the kids' beds, but now we moved them out to the garage to get ready for the move. Why is there water under their beds you ask? Well, we clean out old juice bottles from Costco and fill them with water in case of an emergency. Maybe we're a little weird, but it works for us. Lo and behold, this quirky habit turned out to have a secondary benefit. Claire stopped being as afraid of monsters at bedtime when we told her they wouldn't fit under her bed - there's too much water under there! NO ROOM FOR MONSTERS! It all works together very nicely. As far as she's concerned, water must have some sort of Monster-repelling powers (nod to Signs) because not only are there normally about 20 some-odd bottles of water under her bed, but Mom and Dad also use the "monster spray" gimmick on her. Some water in a spray bottle is the best monster-repellent money can buy. Way to go H2O!!! (Okay, now I'm just being cheesy...)

Anyway, now that the water's gone from under the kids' beds, M could fit in a place he normally couldn't. Claire thought that was hilarious!!! Monkey see, monkey do! So now, when I make "unreasonable demands" like "Don't hit your brother!" or "Let's eat dinner!" Claire will run into her room and "go home" which I've found out adds up to hiding under Scott's crib...