Those are the words I was greeted with when I came down the stairs this morning. Zoë, Alexander, and Phoebe were having a tea party for breakfast, with oatmeal and a little charcuterie board of animal crackers, craisins, and pistachios. They had peppermint tea with sugar. Or, in Phoebe's case, plain ol' sugar water.
"I just don't understand how it can be this good!" she said.
"Because it's just...sugar..." I told her. "People tend to like sugar."
We skipped swim practice this morning so we could all just sleep and sleep and sleep. Alexander is feeling better. Phoebe seems to be on the mend. They got up with Zoë early in the morning. Zoë and Rachel have what seem to be lingering head colds. And Benjamin crashed hard last night.
He was perfectly fine all day. He even said the closing prayer in sacrament meeting.
And then he just...crashed. He slept in until around 11:30 this morning, as did multiple other people in the house. We are a tired household these days.
We had just been lining up all the awake kids (Rachel, Zoë, Alex, and Phoebe) to take their temperatures (mostly normal today—just Phoebe with a fever still!) when Benjamin came skidding down the hallway, crashing through our little group, to fling himself over the toilet in the bathroom. We all grimaced at each other while he puked.
"How are you feeling, Benjamin?" I asked when his regurgitation noises had subsided.
In response he hurled some more.
"Not up for conversation, eh?" I asked.
More retching.
*****
Now, Phoebe has thrown up a few times with this sickness, but those instances have clearly been linked to uncontrollable coughing fits. Benjamin's stomach issues seem like a whole new set of symptoms.
While he was in the midst of vomiting, Miriam came running up the stairs screaming.
The basement stairs spit traffic into the hallway right at the bathroom door, but somehow she missed the fact that Benjamin was in there puking and rounded the corner to find our preassembled crew.
"Uh-oh. What's wrong?" we asked, like...what else could possibly be happening?
"I GOT A 5!!!!" she squealed, jumping up and down.
We're all very proud of her!
And while I was researching the music program at UGA (just for kicks) I found out that Anna Lapwood is coming to perform at UGA in April. Miriam is completely over the moon about that! We need to figure out how to get tickets.
Rachel drove Miriam to the church so she can hide from all of the sick people in the house (and Miriam can practice the organ).
*****
Last night when Miriam was fretting about her scores, that were rumoured to be released today, she said she had an 18% chance of getting a 5, an 18% chance of getting a 4, a 25% chance of getting a 2 or a 3...
"You're describing a bell curve," Andrew said.
"Yeah! But there's a 15% chance of getting a 1! That's like the same chance as getting an 5!"
"...if you didn't study..." Andrew reassured her. "But you did study. You worked really hard, so your chance of getting a 1 is pretty much 0%. It's not like this is a normal distribution with students randomly assigned a score based on those percentages..."
This morning, Patrick (who is also quite ill right now—the left side of his body is all swollen, to the point where he can't even really use his hand) knew she was worried about some exam result or other and was messaging me about it—before she found out about her score. So I was telling everyone how worried she was about it.
He said, "At this point in her young life, she could probably be the professor in music theory. At a small community college or something...but still..."
He said, "At this point in her young life, she could probably be the professor in music theory. At a small community college or something...but still..."
When I said that she was moaning about having the same "chance" of getting a 5 as getting a 1, he said, "No. I have as much chance as a 1 and 5. Realistically strong 1 for me. She lives and breathes music, and complained about the trains here [Vienna] cause they do some notes things but the scale is wrong? And then talked for like 20 minutes on how they could fix it. It was cute cause we were at a train station and that sound happened a lot. I like that it isn’t just the playing, she is genuinely interested in the theory as well."
When I updated my family on her score, Patrick said, "She only got a 5. Equal chances."
And Uncle David said, "Congrats. I'm glad she overcame the odds and didn't get that 1."
They're all very proud of her, too!
My mom said that she got the news over dinner (she's at a conference in Salzburg, Austria, right now...and will visit sick Patrick when she's finished) and her friend Janice sent a high five vicariously through Naanii/the phone to Miriam. My mom is a music librarian, so all of her friends are music people at this conference, Janice included, so they understand what a big deal this is for Miriam.
Oh, I should also mention that Andrew made some remark about, "Haha! Take that, homeschooling!"
By which he meant—sometimes as homeschoolers we face a bit of...detraction...from people who feel the children are being limited academically or socially. But here is a bit of evidence that Miriam is in fact excelling academically (at least—but not only—in her particular sphere).
The fact that we hardly saw her the entire month of June (while she was off globetrotting or at YW camp or FSY or youth conference) is evidence that her social life isn't languishing, either.
The fact that we hardly saw her the entire month of June (while she was off globetrotting or at YW camp or FSY or youth conference) is evidence that her social life isn't languishing, either.
But it's nice to have a victory every now and again...just to...prove to ourselves (and, sure, others) that we're doing just fine. The kids, as they say, are alright.
(Who says that? you ask. Precisely. The Who.)
Congratulations to Miriam!
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