Falconry and things

I am typically a one-outing a day kind of a person, but today we had three outings that had us out and about the whole entire day. 

We spent the morning chatting with Rachel while getting ready to head out. She was up late, having been out late with friends. She remarked that since she's been living with my parents over the summer she hasn't had many late nights (which kind of made her miss her roommates and all the fun they'd have together), instead going to bed by 10 PM most nights and then getting up and going to work...and, honestly, while I'm glad she had a fun time out with her friends, she's going to be adhering to a missionary schedule pretty soon so it's not terrible that she's already in the habit of going to bed by 10 PM and getting up early to get the day started. 

It was wonderful to get to speak with Rachel for a bit, even if it was during our own morning rush. I can't believe she'll be starting her mission so soon (just a couple of days now)! But I'm definitely looking forward to only being 4 hours different from her instead of 9. Surely that will make arranging phone calls a little easier. 

Anyway, our first outing this morning was to brunch at the apartment of some people in our ward. They live in the same area that we'll be moving to and they have three little girls all right around Phoebe's age (3, 4, 6). It was fun to get to know them, even if the kids got a little rambunctious—many little bodies running around squealing and laughing in a small apartment with marble floors can be a bit of a recipe for disaster. I was glad when our hosts asked if they should pull out some LEGO (that seemed to calm the kids down significantly).

From brunch, we made our way to Katara for another visit to the S'hail Falcon Exhibition, this time with some friends. Here are Andrew, Phoebe, and Zoë walking towards an art installation by Lorenzo Quinn called "Building Bridges":

Falling down and standing up

Last weekend when the other kids were all off at various activities, Andrew, Phoebe and I went to the mall to look for a few specific things...but we also stopped by Max and Phoebe and I saw some cute dresses on the sales rack that we liked, so we got them—my dress was only 40 QAR and Phoebe's was 20 QAR. We were the fanciest gals on the block!

Late this night when we should have been getting to bed...

So, uh, the building across the street from us is on fire...which is (one of) my (many) worst nightmare(s). 

I think about it every time I get in the elevator and see the sign that says, "In case of fire use stairs. Do not use elevator" because we...live on the 40th floor. 

And I just can't help but think of what a nightmare it would be to navigating all those stairs in order to evacuate. I mean, we'd do it...but it would be with screaming, howling children...so not very fun.

I assume the screaming and howling because, well, today when we arrived at the metro station a train was already at our stop and getting ready to head off. We kind of hesitated about whether or not we could make it on, but ultimately decided we couldn't—not with our party of seven!—so we collectively decided to wait for the next trains (they literally come every six minutes so it's typically not a big deal to wait).

Oh, except that Benjamin missed the memo about waiting for the next train and hopped on board! 

The doors closed, and off he went.

Phoebe immediately started wailing. 

"We will never see Benny again!" she cried. "He's gone forever!"

Katara International Hunting & Falcons Exhibition

It was Alexander who saw the advertisement for the Katara Falcon Exhibition on the metro. He tried to tell me about it on the train but sometimes the train is just too loud to hear him speak (not because others are talking but simply because the metro is moving fast and that creates a lot of noise). So when we got out of the metro he gushed out all the information with syncopated, breathless excitement: "Falcon festival! September 8 through 12! At Katara! Free admission! Can we go?"

A better day (in which no one gets impaled)

This morning was much smoother (thanks in no small part to the slight temper tantrum I had at dinner after Andrew came home, in which I ranted about everything that had happened during the day). 

The little kids got up and worked together to put away the clean dishes, practiced the piano, played a dominoes counting/adding game with Phoebe that I made yesterday but she refused to play, and started on their math work. Phoebe played nicely while I got a good bit of writing (for my coursework) accomplished with minimal interruption. 

It was (compared to yesterday) so marvelous. 

Here's a list that Phoebe made for a hypothetical sleepover that she'd like to go to some day:

The parable of dumping all the silverware into the bottom drawer

This morning was rough. 

It didn't really stop at the morning because the whole day was a little bit rough, if we're being honest. 

But the morning? It was rough.

I won't tell on everybody, but I will tell on the four year old. 

I interrupted Phoebe's play to ask her to help me unload the dishwasher, which—granted—was rude of me. Like, why should she have to do chores? Pretty rude. 

But she eventually decided that the dishwasher could be on the plane, so unloading it could be part of her game. But, like, if any turbulence happened she'd have to go back to her seat...which sounded fair enough.

Though...also...things did get turbulent.

First, though, here's a picture of her earlier in the morning setting the stage for today's pretend play:

Tour de famille (and a stop in Banff and BC)

Rachel will be set apart as a missionary in about a week. She and Auntie Josie took a road trip up to Canada to see some family and some places before Rachel settles down to business. 

Here they are at Elizabeth's house on the first night of their journey. She lives in Rexburg, so they didn't get too far their first day, but there's just something about driving 10 hours versus driving 13 hours that feels so much more doable, so I'm glad they stopped. Plus they got to visit with Elizabeth and her family!

Ingrown hairs

The first thing you need to know is that I pulled out an epic ingrown hair the other day. 

It wasn't the kind of ingrown hair that knows its confused and grows into a tight little spiral, having obviously been doing its best to find its way out—the kind that sort of sproings out of your skin triumphantly, being just as pleased as you are to have finally corrected its course. 

No, it wasn't that kind of ingrown hair. It wasn't sensible.

This particular ingrown hair was an ingrown hair that was suffering severely from the Dunning-Kruger effect, a "cognitive bias that describes the systematic tendency of people [or hairs] with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of their ability." 

Yes, this ingrown hair put undue confidence in its non-existent navigational skills. It was forging its own path, certain it was doing A+ work when really it was failing abysmally at the one job it has. 

This hair had grown about an inch long in a relatively straight line just under my skin...which rather explained the constant itching of my ankle that I hadn't been able to satisfy in recent history. 

So I took a pin and punctured my skin, looped the hair up, and tugged it out with tweezers. 

As one does. 

It was very satisfying. 

So I had to tell Andrew all about it when he came home and naturally had a rather nosy audience of bystanders (read: children) listen in as I related this tale. 

This raised some questions about what, precisely, an ingrown hair is. Before we could even explain it, though, Alexander said as if he had solved a great mystery, "Ah-ha! So that explains why I sometimes get hairs in my mouth."

We quickly disavowed him of that notion (that any hairs he found in his mouth were simply ingrown hairs from the top of his head that decided to sprout in his mouth instead of into the sunshine) and explained what ingrown hairs actually are. But...that's a pretty funny thought!

Daily studies and other stories...

Alexander picked this position to do his writing work this morning:

The Villaggio Mall

Phoebe spent the day as an only child, a position she took to quite well. 

She is rather emotional and tends to be rather strongly affected by nostalgia—which is odd because she's only four. How nostalgic can she really be, right?

Remember how just hearing the song 'There's Always Tomorrow' from Rudolph would set her off crying all the time? Like, we could just start singing it and she would start crying? 

It was hilarious, but very indicative of her personality. 

The song just made her so sad that she couldn't even handle it. 

Similarly, she had to laugh boisterously through the entire (loud) call to prayer because it was so loud that once she was startled she was going to either laugh or cry and she settled on laughing and...that was that. Like, those giggle weren't going anywhere until the emotions had fully run their course.

Well, last night we were getting ready to play Nerts together, which Phoebe had uninvited herself from because it's too fast-paced for her. Instead she sat down with a phone and asked it to play some memories for her. She loves the little video montages Apple puts together. So she was just sitting down and watching one of those movies when she started sobbing. 

"Oh, Phoebe! What's wrong?" we asked. 

"Do you...do you miss me?" she blubbered. "Being this little?"

"Oh, of course I miss that sweet little Phoebe! She was so cute and cuddly and funny! But we also love this Phoebe," I said, giving her a hug. 

"But I was sooooo cuuuuuuute!" she wailed. "And I was so little! Just look at me!"

"You were so cute and little! You were my favourite little Phoebe in the whole entire world! And it is so hard to watch you grow up because I always miss little Phoebe. But it is so fun to watch you grow up because you become more incredible every single day!"

We watched a few movies of her being little and cute and fun and we laughed and hugged and blew our noses (or at least her nose)...and...she's not quite over wishing she could reclaim her babyhood, so today (Saturday) was a good day for her to be an "only child" for the day.

Benjamin slept over at G's house last night. 

Miriam left for the library to hang out with her knitting group friends early this morning.

And then Andrew took Zoë and Alexander over to G's house to hang out with G's younger siblings. 

So it was just Phoebe and me and Daddy for most of the day, which was perfect for Phoebe.

We did some window shopping at the mall at some home goods stores, just to see what's available furniture-wise (since we have none), and she quite enjoyed walking around, trying out furniture, and imagining putting a room together. 

Oh, and convincing Andrew and me to carry her. 

I don't know what sweet nothings she was whispering in his ear when it was his turn to carry her, but I had an ongoing rendition of "Oh, how I love my beautiful mommy! She is so nice and sweet! And her cheek is soft and she's wearing black pants! Oh, how I love my beautiful mommy!" going the whole time I was carrying her. It involved lots of nuzzling into my neck and hair. She was very clingy. 

But here she is down for a moment in the rug section (she claimed this area as her fort):