Alexander adventures

Alexander has been experiencing a recurrent fever the past little while. He's usually fine during the day, but by the time we put him to bed he'll be running a temperature. Not always. Just often. 

We put him to bed with a fever last night. He woke up still feeling feverish this morning. Evidently he knew that something was amiss because he texted me to ask me to bring him some breakfast upstairs. Now food is usually verboten upstairs...unless you happen to be quarantining in your room. There has been a lot of eating in unusual places over the course of the summer as various people have been isolating for various reasons. 

Anyway, I didn't respond to his text messages right away because I was still in bed with Phoebe, but when I did grab my phone to look at it the first few messages were from Benjamin's phone and I immediately became concerned.

I took a screen shot and sent it to Andrew (who was long-since up and working downstairs; he's got that 7 am thing going on) and asked him to verify whether Benjamin was, like, even in the house?! He has been known to sleep walk and I was just a little concerned at the nonsensical nature of this text. Why was he talking about lunch? Back out to his house? What is he even talking about?

Garage doors, libraries, and high fives

Andrew had to be on campus super early this morning, which was weird for several reasons. First of all, the semester hasn't even started, but Andrew is participating in a data science education workshop, so away he goes. Second, Andrew is not a morning person, but he's teaching a data science seminar-thing at 7:00 am for the next several weeks. It's online, but because he had to be on campus at 8:00 am for the workshop, he had to be on campus by 7:00 am to teach his seminar class beforehand (because he couldn't very well teach while he was commuting). Traffic in Atlanta can be gnarly, so Andrew calculated that to be safe he should leave the house by 5:15 am. 

So he did. 

And at 5:23 am I was (re-)awakened by a frenzied flurry of knockings on my bedroom door. 

I peeled myself away from Phoebe and tip-toe ran across the room to open it, where the ever-polite Alexander stood waiting to be rescued.

"What's wrong?" I asked. 

"I'm so, so scared!" he blubbered.

"How come?"

"I thought I heard...I thought I heard..." he hiccuped. "I thought I heard the garage going up and down! But it can't be!!!"

"Oh, you heard correctly, little buddy. The garage door was going up and down. Daddy has to go into campus today, remember? So..."

"IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?!?!"

Someday and New Faces

After hearing about Alexander's desire to walk across the bridge on Sunday/someday, Andrew decided that we should take a little family adventure this Sunday (or, as Benjamin Freudianly portmanteaued, "An exploriance!" (exploration + experience)).

Alexander was super excited about it (much more excited than he was about posing for this picture):

UGA and Fort Yargo

Grandpa suggested that he take the kids to UGA for a little tour to supplement their Georgia studies. UGA boasts being the first chartered public university in the United States (1785), a fact that confused me at first because UNC also claims to be the first public university in the United States (having held its first class in 1795). But UGA didn't hold classes until 1801, while UNC wasn't chartered until 1789. So obviously the idea of a public university was simply in the air.

UNC beat out UGA by ten solid years when it came to desegregating campus, however (1951 vs. 1961). There's a lovely display in the UGA library about a few Black pioneers like Charlene Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes (the first Black students to register) and Mary Frances Early (who was the first African American graduate from UGA, and is the namesake for the College of Education). We eventually made our way to the library, but it was a long hot (and bit of a meandering) walk for us. 

Phoebe can't wear a mask yet, so I brought along a little air purifier for her to use, which she loved. She insisted on holding the purifier right by her little face so she could drink up all the clean air coming out. She was rather enthusiastic about it. 

Here she is in the library:

Vaccines and other stories

On Tuesday the big girls made it to the pool with us. They don't have their class on Tuesday evenings, so even though they were working away most of the day, they didn't feel like they had a hard and fast deadline so they could take some time out to play a little. Which is probably good.

It was so nice to have Rachel watch Phoebe in the pool while I worked with Alexander on his swimming skills. I was hoping to have him out of his Puddle Jumper this summer...but then we ended up being home sick all summer instead of spending every day by the pool...so...that didn't really happen. But he was doing really well yesterday. He swam two lengths of the pool "chasing" me (so I was walking backwards in front of him and he was swimming towards me). He does really well swimming in the shallow end and can remember all the working parts that come together to mean "swimming." His flutter kick is fantastic, his arms make big, wide arcs in the sky, he will lift up his head to breathe and then just keep swimming...

But when we're in what he feels is "deep" water, all he can think about is how deep the water is. So he stops kicking his legs, starts doggy paddling with his arms, and essentially starts drowning. 

Once he gains a little confidence I think he'll be good to go, but he's kind of an anxious kid. Always has been! He was never one to wander away from Mommy and get into mischief. He always had to know right where I was. At all times. Even now he likes his lists, and makes up checklists for thunderstorms and zombie apocalypses and so forth. He's got to know what to do!! And he likes things to be just so!!

The other kids also had fun at the pool (they usually do). Here's a few pictures of Miriam and Phoebe making eyes at each other while I was getting Phoebe changed to go home (I remembered diapers this time):

Rachel, Rachel, Rachel

A couple of weeks before Phoebe was born, my friend Rachel finally gave birth to her baby boy—well past her due date! She had been nervous about his size because at an earlier ultrasound the doctor warned her the baby was measuring large, about eight pounds...and there was still time to grow. Friends tried to assuage her anxiety by telling her that estimates from these scans can sometimes be off—even by a pound or two! 

And so it was...but in the wrong direction!

The baby was delivered weighing 10.935 pounds and measuring 21.64 inches. 

That's a whole lot of baby!

*****

Another friend of mine, also named Rachel, was surprised to go into labour a couple of days ago—five weeks early. This is her sixth baby and she had never gone into labour naturally, has always been induced, so it was quite a surprise for her to find herself in labour, five weeks early. 

The baby was delivered weighing 10.9 pounds and measuring 22.25 in long.

Five weeks early! 

I'm sure he is simply incredible to behold in the NICU. I joked to my friend Rachel (who is a nurse, and who knows about my preemie, so she "gets" it and wasn't offended) that he's a macro preemie! What a whopper!

*****

I told my kids about this sweet, gargantuan preemie on the way to the pool today, referring to my friend as Sister So-And-So, since we used to be in the same ward years and years ago. Not that the children remember her. But just in case.

So after I told this story, my Rachel asked, "How big was your friend Rachel's baby?"

I glanced at her and said, "I just told you...oh. Okay, so it just so happens that this friend is also named Rachel. But, yes, my other friend Rachel had a big baby right before Phoebe was born. I think he was about this size, but he wasn't premature. So having a premature baby weigh nearly 11 lbs. is truly impressive."

"They were both named Rachel?" Rachel gasped. "Are Rachels just doomed to have ginormous babies?! I hope not!"

"I also hope not," I told her. "For you, I wish all 7 lbs. babies. Nice and average."

It's okay to make mistakes

I took the four youngest kids to the pool this afternoon while Rachel and Miriam were stuck at home working on the tutorials for their data science course. The description says it should be about 10 hours of work per week, but I'm sure the girls put in at least 40 hours last week. They are working on that class all day, everyday, it seems. But they're learning a ton! Andrew's been quite impressed with how much they're covering (since he teaches the same sort of stuff in his data visualization course) and how well the girls are doing. Anyway, we left them home to finish their assignments and headed to the pool which was, predictably, empty. 

Public schools are back in session this week and we couldn't be happier to have public spaces to ourselves again!

We had the pool to ourselves and had a...decent...time. I gotta tell you, though. Going to the pool with the four youngest kids is a lot of work! Going to the pool with all six is, honestly, quite a lot easier...because Rachel and Miriam are such good helpers and can hold the baby without me worrying for her safety. Benjamin and Zoë try to be good helpers, but...you know...they're just littler. 

So it was kind of an exhausting trip to the pool for me. Benjamin and Zoë insisted on pushing each other's buttons and were constantly bickering (which was rather irksome to me) and Phoebe and Alexander just...take a lot of supervision. (And it had already been a bit of an exhausting day already).

But they sure are cute little pool buddies!

Parallel play

Phoebe (and—let's face it—many of her siblings) were playing with the Jenga blocks during sacrament meeting. It's not terrible that they were all building block towers instead of while listening because Phoebe's favourite part about playing with blocks is knocking towers over (sucking on the blocks is probably a close second, but she only does that when there are no towers to knock over). 

So I posted a few pictures of Phoebe enjoying Jenga...

Accomplishments and anxieties

Today I feel like it might just be possible to re-enter the typical school-year world.

I lugged our little jungle gym upstairs (it used to be in the LEGO room, which is obviously full of choking hazards and not a good place for a baby) and set it in the middle of my bedroom so that Phoebe can pull herself up and learn how to be a little monkey beside me while I work. 

She's still a little small for it but has been enjoying pulling up to stand beside it while watching Alexander and Zoë climb all over (bringing it upstairs, of course, elicited a renewed love for this play thing). It worked out well. It was noisy, but it worked out well. I edited a paper for my mom, wrote a cover letter for a submission of my own, and whittled another paper down from 9706 words to 7993!

I also repaired the handlebar brakes on Miriam's old bike, which I was going to post to my buy-nothing group to get rid of now that Miriam is riding Rachel's old bike...but then I realized Zoë might fit it...so instead of giving it away I finally fixed the brakes! 

I'd tried half-heartedly to fix them before but was too afraid to actually try, you know, so I didn't try very hard. Besides, they also had back-pedal brakes and those worked just fine so it wasn't as if the bike was unsafe. But Grandpa lives here now and he knows about 5000 times more about bikes than I do, so I figured that if I screwed something up doing a very basic fix like this that he could at least help me fix my fixing. But, I successfully fixed the brakes (the tutorial called it an "adjustment," as if they weren't really even "broken," but I'll keep saying "fixed" because it makes me feel like I did something slightly more important than a simple "adjustment"). 

Now Zoë's zooming around on the bigger bike and we have no need of her smaller bike, because I picked up an even smaller bike for Alexander on the same buy-nothing group. And I don't even mind giving up her bike because I have seen so many bikes change hands since joining the buy-nothing group that I'm confident that when we need a bike that size we'll be able to find one.

Even if we can't, we don't have unlimited space in our garage to store bikes, so...something's gotta go.

Here she is getting all panicky because what you can't see in this picture is that a car is coming down the hill towards her and she just knows it's headed straight for our driveway—because it's Daddy's car—and she needs to get to safety before the car hits her!

First Tooth Stats

I didn't always make a grand pronouncement when my babies cut their first teeth, so finding the exact date of "the first tooth" for each of my babies was tricky. Of course, some babies are more vocal about these things than others. They cry, they fuss, they drool, they bite. Others just had their teeth pop right through. So I suppose making a big announcement (or not) depended a bit on that. Or perhaps it had more to do with nothing at all.

I feel like my kids have been "early" teethers, though now that I've looked up the dates of their first tooth cutting, I don't necessarily think that's the case. 

I think the reason I feel like that is because when Zoë was a baby and had two little baby cousins her very same age, she got teeth at five months, while her cousins were showing no sign of teething (and I thought it was a teensy bit unfair because I was breastfeeding while her cousins were bottle-fed (and nothing is wrong with that, except that it seemed cruel to me that their little mouths were soft and gummy for their bottle nipples, while Zoë's little mouth seemed to be full of razor wire)). 

But, on the whole, I don't think my kids were particularly early teethers.

Here's the breakdown:

Rachel: January 2008, ~6 months
Miriam: May 2010, ~7 months
Benjamin: January 2013, ~8 months
Zoë: October 2015, ~5 months
Alexander: May 2018, ~6.5 months
Phoebe: TBD

So Phoebe is definitely my latest teether because her mouth is still gummy, gummy, gummy and she's 8.5 months old. I'll have to come back here to update her information when she does get her teeth. Not that I'm in a hurry for that (but I have been wondering when my other kids got their teeth).

It's funny to me that Phoebe—who is most enthusiastic about the idea of eating—is a relatively late teether, while Zoë—who hated all foods—got her teeth so stinking early! 

(I, for the record, cut my first tooth on my mom's birthday—December 12, 1985—when I was just 5.5 months old. You're welcome, Mom!)