Signs of growing up

Alexander just came upstairs to tell me that in addition to the songs I assigned him for piano, he's also been working on the C major 5-finger scale with both hands. 

"You just play them at the same time and it sounds amazing. Like, I have both my thumbs on middle C, like this, and then I play with my second fingers—which would be D on the right hand and B on the left hand—and it just, like, together it sounds so beautiful!"

*****

Yesterday we had our last official day of co-op classes, though we still have a field day next week. Rachel wasn't here (obviously, since she was in Vienna visiting Uncle Patrick, though technically I think they were in Bratislava on Thursday) so I had to teach her preschool class for her, which went well. 

3/4 April haiku

I'm up against what feels like a pretty big deadline right now (I have a paper due on April 30, not for a class, but to submit to a journal) and it's kind of crushing me right now. But this evening I got to stay at home with the little kids while Andrew took the middle kids to the church for their activities because our big kids are in Europe (and because Benjamin remembered at the very last minute that it was career day and he was supposed to ask his dad to come talk to the kids about what it's like being a professor). 

So instead of writing, I went on a long, dawdling walk around the block this evening, braided a crown of clover flowers, and drew with sidewalk chalk. 

And I don't really regret it because it was time well spent. 

Rachel and Miriam take Vienna (and other places)

It's been weird and wonderful having Rachel and Miriam being off on their little adventure. People have asked me whether I worry about them and—honestly?—I don't think I really have been. They're good, capable teenagers, and they are accompanied by a number of good and capable adults—Auntie Josie, who is very well-travelled, Uncle Patrick, who lives in Austria, and Hadis, Uncle Patrick's girlfriend, who I hear has made some delicious food for everyone and who offered up her apartment building's practice room for Miriam's use. They've been well taken care of. 

I've been asked whether we're feeling the pinch of having our babysitters and extra driver snatched away and...I'll admit there have been times when it would have been useful to have a babysitter or extra driver around, but we've managed. 

Mostly I've been consoling myself with the fact that by the time these two are actually ready to leave the house, Phoebe will be just that much older (that is, less of a baby and more of a kid, and that should be helpful). 

Today Darla asked whether it was quiet without the girls and you might be surprised to hear that...yes...it is quieter without the girls around. They're not very noisy people, but the house is definitely quieter without them. The table feels emptier and no one has to sit next to anyone else in the van and so, yes, it's quieter. 

From the few text messages I've gotten from the girls (and Uncle Patrick and Aunt Josie), they seem to be having a wonderful time, but we'll sure be glad to have them back home!

Their Instagram accounts are filled with pictures of...places...but here are a few pictures Auntie Josie has sent me of them...

Here they are carrying baguettes home from the bakery on their way back to Uncle Patrick's apartment on their very first day in Europe:

Poison Ivy and Marbles

We keep a bar of special soap in our cabinet specifically for poison ivy emergencies. Sometimes it's Fels-Naptha. This time it was Marie Originals Poison Ivy/Oak Soap. 

Honestly, given how long we've lived in the south—where poison ivy seems to grow about as prolifically as dandelion weeds do on the Alberta prairies—we have a pretty good track record of not getting into poison ivy. It's true that I spend a considerable amount of time looking for poison ivy (and watching for snakes) and teaching my children to look for poison ivy (and watch for snakes). 

Growing up I didn't often worry about those things—snakes and poison ivy—because all the poisonous snakes came with alarm systems and running into poison ivy was a true rarity. It's possible that's why I'm so scared of them out here. Unfamiliar things are often a little scary. And we've been so vigilant...so have thus far avoided having any serious run-in with the vines. 

Zoë has had to take a few baths after some flirting with disaster too close to the side of the trail (or sidewalk—because poison ivy is all over the city as well as in the woods, which just blows my never-seen-poison-ivy-before-moving-out-here mind), but we haven't had, like, a serious run-in. 

And then today I noticed some poison ivy growing on our little hill. 

Cue Phoebe's high pitched voice: "On my little hill?!"

Phoebe tales

This morning I took the kids on a walk to go find the aftermath of a fire that was in our neighbourhood. We didn't know what had happened. All we knew was that Andrew went out to run a quick errand last night while I was reading to the kids before bed...and he couldn't come home the same way he'd left because there was a fire engine blocking the road, actively spraying water at a flaming something.

We still don't know what happened, but we found the location of the fire. It wasn't a house or anything, just someone's side yard that had been thoroughly torched for some reason or other. 

*****

Phoebe walked the whole way and filled her stroller up with a pile of pinecones "to show Daddy."

*****

When we got home the kids ran in through the garage door and slammed it behind them, which is borderline responsible. I mean—they remembered to close the door! But Phoebe was right behind them and was a little upset about having the door slam in her face (but at least it was only that and not on her fingers, right?).

She can do a lot of things—more and more things every day! She can reach the lights at the top of the stairs to the basement and will stand there and flick them on and off and on and off. And she can reach the light switch by the couch. But she can't reach any other light switches in the house. 

She can open the garage door from inside the house, but she can't open it from outside of the house.

It's frustrating for her to sometimes be able to do things and not be able to do them at other times. So she was pretty frustrated by her inability to open the door. 

"Momma—open door for this little..." she pouted, and the paused.

"This little what?" I asked.

"For this little...bo-bot! Beep-boop-beep-boop-beep!"

Auntie Josie's visit

Auntie Josie arrived on Friday night, just before midnight. We talked too late in the night and then slept in the next morning. I had originally wanted to go hiking or something, but the logistics proved too much for me to manage (which vehicles do we take, who drives, what do we do about Miriam's arm, etc). So instead we went grocery shopping, which is pretty lame, I guess.

But Josie is one of those people I just enjoy being around, so it was fun to get to walk around the store with her...even if shopping isn't the most thrilling activity.

Then Rachel left for the dance and we finally got around to passing out the presents Naanii had sent with Auntie Josie. Zoë and Benjamin got slap bracelets (and some colouring kits, that I told them was to share). Phoebe got  a stuffed pig in a BYU shirt, and Alexander got a stuffed bunny in a BYU shirt. Miriam and Rachel and I got a set of pens. And there was also a little game for the family. 

For meeeeee?

Phoebe has started to say a few cute things recently.

For one, she has started calling me "Mama" or "Momma" (I am never sure how to spell that) and it's adorable, but also off-putting because it's just...something I thought I'd heard the last of. I haven't been called "momma" in years. 

When Phoebe started talking she skipped right over that and went straight to "Mom."

She said it at the pediatrician's office once and the doctor was like, "Excuse me, did she just call you Mom?"

"Yeah," I said. 

"Tell me you have five older siblings without telling me you have five older siblings," the doctor (more or less) said. "Typically babies don't say mom right away. Mama is much more common."

It's true. That duplicated syllable ma (ma+ma = mama) is easier to accomplish than tacking a final -m sound onto mo- to make mo+m (mom). But, that's the way Phoebe did it...

Until recently when she's suddenly started calling me "Momma."

2/4 April haiku

My last post took us from April 1 to April 8, which is 8 days (in case anyone is counting). I already wrote a haiku today, so this post will take us from April 9 to April 16, which is also 8 days. I am well aware that a week is only 7 days long. However, April has 30 days...so I had to have a few collections with 8 days in them (or have four 7-day collections and one 2-day collection and that hardly makes any sense). 

April 9

a dreary morning

against all odds

she asks for milk

Bonus

soggy catkins

curling on the asphalt

a dead snake

Blue cast, Spring Formal, and many visitors

Could more things have happened over the weekend? Possibly. But it felt pretty packed as things were.

I woke up bright and early Friday morning and began calling pediatric orthopedic offices to see if anyone could squeeze Miriam in that same day. The first office I called (which was the one recommended to us by the urgent care facility) was super grumpy about how "entitled" I was to think my child could be treated within such a small window. You have to plan for these things, apparently.

The soonest possible appointment would be at least ten days out. She didn't care what we had coming up...

And I'm like, "Who plans to break their arm mere days before taking an international flight?!"

So clearly that wasn't the place for us, the weirdos. 

But I found a place that could see her that same day. Because her break was minor and her swelling wasn't too bad, they went ahead and put a cast on her to immobilize and protect her arm during her travels so that her minor injury didn't turn into a bigger problem by being jostled, etc. 

Hosting

My sister Josie arrived this evening! 

I set up an air mattress for her in the basement. And also set up a couch cushion bed for her in case the whole air mattress thing didn't work out. And told her that a third option was a futon in the girls' room, which I didn't set up because Rachel had already gone to bed. 

Miriam was going to take the futon and let Josie have her bed, but then she broke her arm and didn't want to give up her comfy bed because sleeping has been hard enough as it is. 

But the futon is a third option. And if none of those options really sound good then we can kick Alexander out of his bed and steal his mattress to put on the floor downstairs.

So many comfy options!

"I'll be fine," she insisted. "My years in Young Ambassadors really taught me that I can sleep anywhere."

She loved her touring days, but they were grueling and the accommodations could sometimes be...less than accommodating. 

Left arm...broken!

A few months ago I scored a push tricycle on the Buy Nothing Group. Phoebe had been putting up a fuss about riding in the stroller and I thought that perhaps a tricycle stroller would help make her fits less frequent. And I was correct! She is much happier about getting to bike around the block than she had been being pushed around the block. Eventually she'll walk around the block just fine—and she has walked around the block before—but sometimes we want to go faster than she travels on her two little legs.

So the push tricycle has been a fine solution.

I wouldn't say it's been a perfect solution, but it was free, right? And free is nice.

A few of this issues we've had with the push tricycle are:

1/4 April Haiku

It's National Poetry Month! 

I've trying to write a haiku for every day this month. 

Haiku has become such an interesting form to me (since reading Jane Hirshfield's Ten Windows, which contains such wonderful discussion on Basho). What children are taught in elementary schools about stringent syllabic patterns—and, perhaps, that the poem should have something to do with nature—is woefully inadequate, not to mention slightly misleading. While the three-line rule seems to be sticking rather firmly, the 5-7-5 rule is too...convoluted...to work well in English. Syllables don't matter as much as ideas because in Japanese the poems don't contain 17 syllables but seventeen on. A good haiku makes an observation about the world by means of a surprising juxtaposition...in very few syllables.

(Read more about haiku here, here, or here, or wherever).

So, no—my haiku don't always have 17 syllables. That said, they don't always contain a surprising twist either.

I didn't promise every day's haiku would be a good haiku, did I? 

My purpose, I suppose, is to tell little stories about each day, to remember the month by. So far it's been a gloriously good month for haiku—so much has been happening with nature!

April 1

earth warms—creatures wake,
slink and worm their way inside
the boy's pants—"A skink!"

Watching the April 8, 2024 Eclipse

We had a lovely time watching the eclipse this afternoon. While we weren't in the path of totality (we were about 85%), we did notice a significant gloaming effect (another vocabulary word from today) as well as an accompanied decrease in overall temperature. 

Painted Book of Mormon Activity

Today for FHE we talked about syzygial relationships...or how thinking celestially can help us align with God. Really I just thought it would be fun to talk about alignment today, after watching the eclipse. And I was in luck because this month's Liahona had a couple of articles about just that—aligning our hearts and wills with God. I gave the kids a head's up about today's topic at dinner and told them all to come prepared to share something and everyone (except Alexander and Phoebe) was ready to share. 

We talked about some of the General Conference talks we listened to this past weekend and shared thoughts we had about scriptures we'd been reading recently. So it worked out well!

Last week we finally got around to painting the covers of our copies of The Book of Mormon. We'd seen many people do this and decided we wanted to do it as a family and told the kids they could choose whatever language they'd like for their copy of The Book of Mormon. Rachel is just finishing up her second semester of Spanish, so she chose Spanish. Miriam has been studying German for quite some time, so she chose German, as did Alexander (who studies languages by whim...the other day he told me about the "galactic" lesson he'd recently completed...but he mean Gaelic). Zoë has been learning French at co-op, so she chose French. Benjamin simply wanted English. That's what we did for Phoebe as well. I chose Russian. Andrew chose Italian. 

So we ordered all these books months ago and some of them came in right away, but the Spanish and French books were on backorder for some reason. But eventually—at long last—we received another package...with only a Spanish book in it. And then waited and waited and waited some more and finally— finally!—Zoë's French book arrived. 

We painted our books last Monday. It was pure chaos, but everyone had a good time.

We covered a portion of our table in paper to keep the little ones from accidentally (or purposefully) scribbling on the table with the paint markers.

Pre-eclipse

For school today we went through the Jr. Ranger eclipse booklet, which led to some exploration of other moons in our solar system and the potential for other planets to experience eclipses. 

Then Benjamin asked for a haircut and I jumped at the opportunity before he could change his mind because...uh...he needed a haircut.

Then Benjamin and I went on a quick run, leaving Zoë to do some work on her country report. She printed out some pictures for Alexander and Phoebe to colour while she worked, which kept them very busy. Technically Rachel and Miriam were in charge, but they were diligently working on their own school work since this is Rachel's week of finals at BYU-I...and because we told Miriam that she had to finish at least one of her ASU classes before leaving for Europe. So they were home, but not interested in entertaining babies. Zoë had things covered, though!

All things bright and beautiful

I took the kids to the park the other day, on the first day of the year that was due to be rather warm (around 80°F/26°C). I don't know if I should be slathering my kids with sunscreen before spending hours outside in January (especially considering the fact that we rarely get snow here), but I do know that I should be slathering my kids with sunscreen when the warmth of the sun feels like a punishment rather than a caress. 

Especially because my children all inherited a ridiculously fair complexion and tend to burn. I'm always forgetting that about them because, well, I simply don't burn as easily as any of them. But on this particular day, I remembered (gold star in mothering for me!) and broke out the sunscreen. 

As I was rubbing this "lotion" on Phoebe she started sniffing excitedly. 

"Mmmm...mmmmm...mmmm!" she moaned with Pavlovian desire. "This lotion! Mmmmmm! This lotion mates me wanna doe pool! Tan we doe pool today?"

It's jarring to think that in spite of not being able to really speak last summer, Phoebe has lasting memories of going to the pool (triggered by a strong olfactory association with sunscreen, apparently).

This post is actually about poetry—Happy Poetry Month!

I am notoriously bad at managing my notifications. It drives Andrew a little bit crazy. 

Right now, according to my computer, I have a manageable 31 unread text messages...but on my phone that number is 187. My phone tells me I have 18,801 unread emails on my personal account...but my computer tells me it's only 7388. I'm not sure what is up with those discrepancies, so who even knows how many unread messages I truly have?

My school email address has 2529 unread messages.

Somehow Andrew's usually able to keep on top of his notifications, but for whatever reason...I just can't. 

We had dentist appointments this week and—I kid you not—we escaped without a single cavity between all six kids and me (Andrew will be going next week). But I did not escape without racking up 43 text messages and 38 email messages all from the dentist's office. 

"Just a reminder..."

"To confirm your appointment..."

"Your appointment has been confirmed..."

"Click to fill out the required paperwork prior to your appointment..."

"Your paperwork is complete..."

"Your appointment is coming up today at..."

"Thank you for scheduling your next appointment with..."

"Did you enjoy your visit? Take some time to leave feedback at..."

Times. Seven. People.

Easter Egg Smackdown 2024

 Like many families in the world this week, we dyed Easter eggs. Below you'll see (from left to right, in columns) Phoebe's, Miriam's, Zoë's, Alexander's, and Benjamin's eggs, respectively:

Just to be clear

Yesterday when we were getting ready for church, the following exchange occurred (with me yelling up the stairs and the kids yelling down the stairs):

Me: Phoebe, come here! I want to do your hair!
Phoebe: Not yet!
Me: But we’re trying to get ready to go!
Phoebe: Not yet!
Me: What are you doing?
Alexander: She’s building a house!
Phoebe: Just out of LEGO! Not a real one!

It's a good thing she clarified because otherwise I would have thought she was building a real house!

*****

Spring is here, as I've noted. We've got violets and steaming compost heaps and—apparently—lizards in the basement. The sun is flouting its bedtime and so too are the children. Thus, it was relatively late when they came inside from playing outside with the neighbours (and boy did they smell like outside kid).

We had scriptures and prayer before sending them off to shower and the following exchange occurred:

Me: Oh, you've got a ring on!
Zoë: Yeah. Alexander married Evelyn.
Alexander: But not for real. Just for pretend.
Zoë: But they really have crushes on each other.
Alexander: That's true.
Zoë: So we had a ceremony!
Alexander: A pretend ceremony.
Zoë: And they got married!
Alexander: For pretend.
Zoë: And Evelyn really gave him that ring.
Alexander: That's true.

It's a good thing he clarified that for me because otherwise I would have thought I'd have to worry about in-laws next door! 

Sneaky Skink

As promised, we are taking some time off from schoolwork this week. Well, the little kids are, at least. The bigger girls are bound by their semester schedules (and will get a lovely vacation in a couple of weeks) and I am hoping to use this time to get some good writing done (though...I'm excellent at postponing things). 

So, this morning the kids—still all in their pyjamas—were downstairs playing in the basement, when suddenly Alexander let out a blood-curdling scream.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"What's going on?" I called down the stairs. 

Alexander ran up the stairs and, melodramatically gasping for breath, explained, "There...was....a...lizard....in....my...pants! 

"There was a...lizard...in your..." I began repeating, but Alexander cut me off, still panting.

"Pants! Yes! I felt something cold and wet on my legs and thought maybe I was peeing my pants or something…and then a lizard plopped out!"

"...of your pants?"

"Yes! Come and see!" he said, and then ran to the Tupperware drawer. "I need to find a container!"

"This isn't some sort of prank, is it?" I asked.

It is, after all, April Fool's Day.

"No!" he insisted. "A lizard was really in my pants. It's just a skink, we think. Why can't I find a lunch meat container? I can only find good Tupperware! Oh! Here's one!"

Easter Sunday

Miriam and Rachel stayed for all three sacrament meetings at our building today. First they attended the Spanish ward, where Miriam is the organist. Then they stayed for the next ward because their friends from seminary were singing. And then they attended our meetings where...

Easter Saturday

Knowing that Sundays have been anything but restful recently, we decided to go ahead and do Easter baskets on Saturday this year. The Easter Bunny hid eggs all over the main floor and the basement, so we'll probably be hunting Easter eggs for a good year or more. Phoebe has been finding eggs all day!

 

Grandpa & Darla's Wedding (March 29)

Big day over here today—Alexander lost his second tooth!

Just kidding!

I mean, he did lose a second tooth this afternoon, but our Big Day News is that today was Grandpa and Darla's long-awaited (and also not-so-long-awaited) wedding day. They were only engaged for a couple of months, but I had a few little flower girls at my house who have been so excited for this wedding that even that felt like a long amount of time. 

I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head about this wedding.

First of all, I'd like to apologize to my parents and to Andrew's parents for our own whirlwind engagement. Andrew got home from his mission on October 12 (2005). We got engaged on October 26 (also 2005) and were married on December 16 (also 2005). Somehow I thought that was plenty of time to put a wedding together. 

Turns out even the simplest of wedding plans still require...quite a lot of coordination and behind-the-scenes work. I'm sure our parents were losing their minds trying to pull everything together, while we blithely waltzed through the entire affair. That said, it's not like they were entirely surprised by our quick decision to get married and, in fact, were perhaps even less surprised than we were. 

To be fair, we had known each other—as friends—for several years. Continuing that friendship just made sense, even if our formal courtship was brief (and it was brief). 

There is something to be said about getting to know someone before you marry them, but I wonder truly how much time anyone needs to spend to get to know anyone else because...people are surprising. 

I mean, you can spend 18 years of your life thinking your spouse won't eat tomatoes and then one day they go to Montreal without you, are served a sandwich with tomatoes, throw caution to the wind, eat those tomatoes and find that tomatoes actually lend the sandwich a certain—as the French say—je ne sais quoi. And then next time you have sandwiches as a family you run out of tomatoes because that certain someone has taken the last slice that you had been assuming would be yours... 

See? Mind blowing stuff happens all the time!

A Walk Through Jerusalem

Our stake put on a "Walk through Jerusalem" on Saturday. They set up a village in the gym, elaborately partitioned off with sheets and cardboard to create a number of private spaces where the children could travel through in small groups to learn about the Saviour's life. 

FHE

Today for FHE we did our first quarter check-in on our goals for the year and discussed our recent "plateau" in homeschooling (where the kids do their darndest to not accomplish any actual work the entire day until I, exhausted, give in and tell them to go outside and play). 

On the one hand, we had a good discussion about procrastination (stemming from Alma 34:33):

I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.

Though Rachel accidentally read verse 35 instead, which was really a little harsh for our purposes:

For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.

So we also talked about how grace—and the atonement—can really cover a lot of stuff, so I'm not saying the children are headed to "heck" in a hand basket simply because they procrastinate from time to time (though procrastinating repentance while banking on being saved is...a whole nother ball of wax). 

Anyway, we talked about other scripture stories this made us thinking of and the kids came up with:

• The parable of the ten virgins (five of whom were unprepared)
• The prodigal son (who wanted to play without responsibility)
• The parable of the talents (and the servant who buried it in the dirt, thinking that would be enough)
• Noah (and all the people who wouldn't listen to him)

All excellent stories to bring home the point Andrew and I were trying to make about buckling down to do your work before goofing off. Because it just makes everyone happier. For one thing, in theory the kids would get to play sooner if they simply...did their work...right? For another thing, Mom would be much happier, which would make everyone happier, right?

We talked about how doing things—using our bodies, using our minds, creating things (art! stories! gardens! needlework! clean spaces!)—helps us feel happy. Avoiding doing things (like, for example, how I'm avoiding working on the paper I should be working on right now) can make us feel happy for a time, I guess, but at the end of the day...when we think about what we've accomplished...it's...a bit depressing.

Baklava and the Case of the Missing Socks

Yesterday evening we went outside to play after dinner. Phoebe wanted to play with the big kids in the cul-de-sac, but I told her she needed to stay in the yard with me because she's still little.

"I think I'm a big kid now!" she insisted.

And I did eventually relent and let her go play with the kids (I had a meeting to go to), but not before we played a few games together to let the big kids play without having to worry about her. 

Disturbing the peas (and other tales)

I'm working on putting a little fence around our garden, with the goal of keeping various critters out of it—deer mostly...perhaps the occasional rabbit...oh, and Phoebe!

Here's Phoebe disturbing the peas:

Once freshly planted in straight, tidy rows, our peas are now destined to be a "chaos crop," and will truly have follow the adage of blooming where they were planted (wherever that may have ended up being).

Particularly Pungent Pineapple

Andrew made chicken tikka masala for dinner. It was delicious but was a little spicier than he intended, the little kids suffered through a few bites of the sauce, but mostly ate plain rice and naan. Spicy bites were alternated with bites of fresh pineapple, to quell some of the heat. 

Everything was fine and dandy until I looked over at Phoebe and noticed her lips were bleeding. 

"Phoebe!" I said. "Why are your lips bleeding?!"

I dabbed them off with a napkin, trying to remember if she'd tried to get down at some point and bumped her face on the table or something. Because why would she be bleeding?

And then Benjamin said something, so I turned to look at him and his lips were bleeding.

"Benjamin!" I said. "Your mouth is bleeding, too!"

"Wait, what?" he asked, wiping his mouth with his napkin. 

"He's bleeding, too?!!" Andrew asked.

We started frantically scanning faces: "Alexander's mouth is bleeding, too!" Andrew announced.

"Is mine?" cried Zoë, who hadn't really touched much of her dinner.

Zoë was fine. 

"My mouth burns a little, but I think it's fine," Rachel said. 

Same answer for me and Miriam, both.

Andrew volunteered to be the constant for our study. "I didn't have any pineapple," he said, which launched a long discussion of which fruit he'd prefer in any given pair of fruits because he doesn't often choose to eat pineapple, apparently. 

And with good reason!!

Now, we already knew about bromelaine in pineapples, and have often joked that it's a fruit that you have to digest before it digests you, but we have never had one quite as pungent as this one!

There were a few panicky moments where we weren't sure why everyone was suddenly bleeding, but it only took us a few minutes to clue in to what was wrong. Still—so weird!

Four-leaf clover

This morning, Miriam made her goal of running a 10-minute mile. We'll see if she ever runs again (I'm sure she will, though she claims she won't), but at least she can finish her psychology class now since she achieved her goal. The purpose of the assignment wasn't necessarily to achieve the goal...but to go through the process of setting a goal and working on a goal long enough to see some progress.

Benjamin and I ran 5 miles, with our second mile at a 9:41 (and a pace of 10:30 overall). We deviated from our usual running route, which took us by a lovely tree in full bloom not too far from our house.

We are lucky that "stinky pear" season is so short-lived down here. It's pungent for a few weeks in late February and early March, but by now the Bradford pear blossoms have mostly been torn from the branches by the breeze, and they're leafing out in blissful, scentless green.

So the beautiful tree Benjamin and I ran past was not a stinky, ol' pear tree. It was some sort of ornamental cherry tree.

Later in the afternoon Rachel wanted to go for a walk (along with Phoebe (who was super grumpy because she had just given herself a nosebleed (from dig, dig, digging for gold) and Miriam). I told the girls I wanted to walk past this tree so I could enjoy it a little more, instead of just...running past it. So that's what we did.

It hangs over the sidewalk and is just lovely. 

St. Patrick's Day and Primary and Organ and Stuff

 

Today was St. Patrick's Day...and Sunday. Alexander was very excited about this combination of events (he had trouble keeping both feet on the ground).

Green Day

Alexander is terribly concerned about his lack of green church attire and the fact that St. Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday this year. He absolutely did not want to get pinched but just wasn't sure what he was going to wear! It was a real conundrum. 

So I joked that Miriam could make him a tie really quick since she's our resident seamstress.

To my surprise/delight she said that she would! So we looked up a few patterns and she was less than impressed to find out that a necktie involves very little machine sewing and a whole lot of hand stitching. I told her that I would do the hand stitching if she would do everything else—all the cutting and ironing and machine work. And we had ourselves a deal (though to be fair I ended up doing a whole lot of the ironing)!

This little project soon became two green ties (one for Benjamin and one for Alexander, since neither of them have green church attire, while the girls have plenty of options when it comes to skirts and dresses and things). When Miriam saw how much green fabric she had left after making the ties, however, the project ballooned into two green skirts (one for Zoë and one for Phoebe) and two green ties (one for Benjamin and one for Alexander).

It took us longer than we thought, but we managed to finish it all in one day (and it cost us nothing because it was all fabric I picked up from our Buy Nothing Group). We also learned a lot!

Early morning egg hunt; late afternoon nap

This morning I took the kids to the primary Easter egg hunt at the church. Phoebe, our homebody, wasn't sure she wanted to go until Alexander and Zoë told her that the eggs we'd be looking for had candy inside. As it turns out, the eggs didn't have candy inside, but Phoebe had a lot of fun, anyway. 

She probably had the most fun out of everyone, actually.

Turtles and worms

Zoë finished her grade 3 math curriculum last week (she's been doing challenge problems from this year and previewing next year's lessons this week). Despite being in kindergarten, Alexander is on track to finish his grade 1 math curriculum next week. And miraculously, Benjamin is only a week or two behind his goal to finish his math curriculum by the end of April, which means he's in good shape to finish by the end of May. 

The girls are working hard on their courses through BYU-Idaho and ASU. 

And we finished reading The Tragedy of King Lear today. 

Zoë learned about Georges Seurat's painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and pointillism in her French class at co-op on Thursday. They used q-tips to make a pointilism-style painting in class and then Zoë came home and got all set up to continue painting. She painted all afternoon, making a large and beautiful painting of the Eiffel Tower...

...which she gifted to Grandpa before I could take a picture of it.

He came over for pie after playing pickle ball with Darla. Yesterday was Pie Day or Pi Day or whatever (March 14, 3.14) and we've been celebrating all week! 

Benjamin just happens to be learning all about pi right now, so he was particularly excited for Pi Day. 

On Thursday we had quiche for dinner (made by Miriam) and a peach-cherry-berry pie (made by Rachel) for dessert. 

Running and nursing and things

This morning Miriam texted me to say that if we wanted to go for a run we should probably go earlier in the day, since it was supposed to "start thunderstorming around 10ish." But because I like to live on the wild side, we didn't end up leaving for our run until 10ish. 

We only did a short run, with the storm nipping at our heels and, honestly, I made pretty good time, coming in at 8:59 for one mile (remember that I'm slow, so this is a decent time for me right now). And I didn't really feel like I pushed it or anything (like earlier in the week when I ran an 8:30 mile...and then went on to run a couple more miles, which felt brutal after running my first mile so fast (like a genius)). 

*****

Violets

 

It is spring and the violets are here.

My children offer them
like currency—every petal
says "I love you."

There is no "not," only yes, do.

They are rich and set
flowers in their hair, fumbling
among golden wisps and curls.

In which I eat a thousand cakes and Benjamin poops rainbows

When Phoebe gets up in the morning she likes to sing nursery rhyme games: 

• Round and Round the Garden
• This Little Piggy
• Pat-a-Cake, Pat-a-Cake
• Itsy-Bitsy Spider
• Five Little Monkeys
• Little Bunny Foo Foo

You know, things of that nature. This has replaced her nursing time because...she hasn't nursed at all in a couple of weeks now (so I think we're done with that stage of life)...but she still needs some extra special cuddle time before she's ready to face the day. 

Yesterday when we woke up, she wanted to play Pat-a-Cake (this morning she wanted me to sing "How Much is That Doggy in the Window" so she could do a lot of barking and panting because she also likes to be a puppy in the mornings). She must have felt badly about slamming her head into my nose or something because she kept stuffing me with confectionery!

The following is a transcript that I wrote down on Facebook (is it cheating to just plop it in here? I don't know...my time is limited and I don't want to reconstruct this conversation in prose form at the minute):

Dangers of co-sleeping: Parental version

There are known dangers to co-sleeping, though there are also ways to ensure co-sleeping is safer than it would otherwise be if you took no precautions. But who has studied the dangers of co-sleeping to parents?

Nobody. 

It's all about the babies. Blah, blah, blah. Babies this, babies that. 

Nobody ever mentions harms that can befall the parents!

(Note that this is very tongue-in-cheek. I love babies (obviously, I hope) and I think their safety is important. While I admittedly have done a lot of co-sleeping, I have always taken precautions to avoid SIDS. But for real though...what about me?!)

Last night Phoebe climbed into bed with us at...some point in the night. I don't know when. But I know that I helped haul her onto the bed and settle her into her spot—right in the middle. 

She fell asleep fairly quickly.

Or perhaps I was the one who fell asleep quickly and was simply unaware of any shenanigans she was pulling (sometimes rather than simply going back to sleep she's a little bed bug, quite the bother). 

But I'm pretty sure she settled down right away and committed to going to sleep. 

So there I was, serenely sleeping on my back, with my cherubic toddler beside me, and dozing daddy on the other side of her. All was well with the world and then...

*POW*

In which Phoebe gets to snuggle a "little" puppy

Darla invited our family over for dinner this afternoon. We got to meet her mother-in-law, who was just wonderful, and try pork ribs, which was a little bit intimidating for us. We've never had ribs before, but I think we did an okay job with them—Zoë ate her ribs and then ate Alexander's ribs and then finished off Miriam's ribs, so she at least earned an A+ at rib eating. Phoebe really like the pineapple. Grandpa, quizzically, enjoyed the sweet potatoes. 

Darla had served up a dish of sliced...root vegetables (let's say). There were definitely potatoes in there and then some orange somethings that many of us assumed were carrots. But they were not carrots. They were sweet potatoes. And Darla really didn't try to hide this fact. On the contrary, she was quite open about it (much like the pumpkin soup incident at our house last month).

When Grandpa dished some potatoes and "carrots" (which were really sweet potatoes) onto his plate, Darla said, "I can't believe you're putting that on your plate!"

He just chuckled about it...because where else would he put it?!

Later when it came out that they weren't carrots, he felt a little hard done by. But, he survived them and somewhat liked them, so I think this really means that he...likes sweet potatoes. He doesn't want to admit it, but they're not half bad!

I think Phoebe's favourite part of the visit, however, was Titus, the dog.

She spent the first several minutes of our arrival nose-to-nose with Titus, telling him, "You're a good dog! You're a good dog! You're a good dog! You're a good dog!"

We weren't sure whether she was just enamored with him or whether she was trying to convince herself—and the dog—that they could be friends.

Running

My big kids aren't home right now. Rachel took herself, Miriam, Benjamin, and Zoë to a games night at the church. Andrew and I stayed home with the little kids. 

This isn't Rachel's first time driving by herself. She's been driving to pick Grandpa up every morning since Wednesday, and driving back home from his house alone. On Wednesday after driving Miriam to organ (with Grandpa sitting as navigator), Rachel decided to take her car on a drive to the church, just to rip the bandaid off. 

She also drove herself to co-op on Thursday so that she could leave after teaching the nursery class. 

And then this evening she took her siblings to games night. 

So basically, Rachel can drive to church independently. And that's a great start!

*****

Benjamin, Miriam, and I have been running quite a bit since the fall. At first only Benjamin and I were going, but then Miriam made running a goal of hers for her psychology class?? So she had to start running with us. 

But the thing is that she hates running (or so she says). 

Any time I push her, she pushes back harder breaks down sobbing.

"Let's only run one mile today," she'll say.

"Let's go for two," I'll say.

Next thing I know she'll be hyperventilating and bawling her eyes out while running...up the driveway. 

It was driving me nuts because it's not even like I run very fast. I don't. And I know this because today I took the kids on a 5k run and my time was 32:29 (they actually rolled in after me), which felt like a decent run.

But, back in 2010 my time was 24:42 for the same distance. That's pretty fleet!

Granted, that was a race pace and the runs I've been doing recently are just little training runs...and a few things have changed since 2010: I'm, ya know, older. I've birthed four more children. And I've put on a number of pounds since then (believe it or not).

But also, I more or less ran that 5k race cold. Like, I went running a few times after we moved back from Cairo and then I was like, "A 5k—why not?!"

I've been running for months now...with a rather significant break in December/January when it was cold and we had company and another significant break in February when we had COVID. So we're just starting up again after that.

Anyway, all this is to say that a 30+ minute 5k still sounds slow to me...and yet it feels hard (though part of what might be so hard is dragging the kids across the finish line).

Phoebe doing this, Phoebe doing that...

The older kids are really pretty good about entertaining Phoebe. They're all sweet with her and tolerate a lot of (frankly obnoxious) two-year-old behaviour from her. Just today Zoë spent a couple of hours playing with Phoebe outside because none of her friends could play. It was, in a word, amazing. 

I got so much work accomplished!

I didn't remember until 5:30 that I was in charge of dinner this evening...oops...but I got so much writing done!

Dinner was saved by some recipe that found me through some algorithm or other. I like when such algorithms are actually useful, like, "You look like a person who frequently cooks dinner. Here's an easy but delicious dinner idea!" and aren't useless like, "You look like a person who bought a toilet seat once. Here's a collection of outlandish toilet seats for your viewing pleasure."

Anyway, I made Baked Feta Pasta (with some help from Miriam, who apparently had become hungry and began to stalk the kitchen vulture-like). A tub of cherry tomatoes (purchased last week), washed and poured into an oven-safe dish...along with the rest of a container of feta crumbles that was on its way out (but still good) and some mozzarella (because I didn't have enough feta). Bake it while cleaning the kitchen. Boil some noodles. Have the kids cut up lettuce and cucumbers. Boom. Dinner in under an hour.

And the kids all seemed to like it. We ate the whole thing. Benjamin had seven helpings (and may be approaching teenage-hood (bless this house and our food supply because that kid can eat)).

So while I appreciate getting a couple hours of (relatively) uninterrupted time to work this afternoon, my camera role tells me that I spend a lot of time...keeping Phoebe out of her siblings' hair. 

I don't mind doing this because (a) Phoebe is a fun little person and I love her to pieces and (b) she's my responsibility, not her siblings'. 

This is just to say that...I have a lot of pictures of Phoebe on my camera...which I took...while the other kids were doing who-knows-what.

Here's Phoebe jumping in some puddles left over from a rainstorm:

Picture or it didn't happen: Rachel's driving test and Benjamin's first temple trip

This afternoon, Andrew took Rachel out to get do her driving test. Scheduling driving tests out here can be a little tricky (specifically for those not from around here, I suppose). First of all, when you go to select a location they have every location drop down in one menu, so you'd better pretty good at Georgia geography and know what locations are nearby. In Utah, for contrast, you choose first your region and then you choose precisely which location you'd like. It really narrows down how many addresses you need to look up to see where in the world state the place is. 

Also, things tend to fill up quickly. 

When I went through the process on Utah's website, I could still snag an appointment for tomorrow morning...if I wanted to...which I don't.

Rachel tested at Lawrenceville and I just checked and the next available appointment is April 10 (and there is only one slot available that day). That's more than a month away! 

And that's why Rachel had her learner's permit for 13 months before testing instead of the minimum 12 (and 1 day). 

I imagine testing is quite a bit different than it was back in the day (I don't know because the number of driving tests I've taken is zero). I believe the test administrator used to get in the vehicle with you. 

They don't do that here (at least not anymore; I hear it changed with COVID and it looks like it's a change that is sticking around).

Cooking up some colloids

This morning we made a couple of gallons of chocolate milk for the youth to consume after their temple trip this evening. Evidently buying milk at Costco (because it's much cheaper there than other places) and some Nesquik powder is more cost effective than buying ready-made gallons of chocolate milk. It just requires a little bit of preparation. 

So Andrew had Miriam dump a gallon of milk into a big mixing bowl and add 262 grams of powder (equivalent to 1 cup or so) and give it a few rounds with the immersion blender before pouring it back into the milk jug. This last step required Andrew's assistance because a gallon of chocolate milk sloshing around in a bowl was a little heavy and precarious for Miriam or I to handle.

(I, like, tweaked my back the other day. I could hardly move at all yesterday—was on the brink of tears for most of the day because it was so painful—but woke up feeling a bit better this morning...but not able to handle a sloshing gallon of chocolate milk).

Andrew poured the milk while I held the funnel. 

"I dunno," I said as I observed how full the jug was getting and how much milk was still left to pour in it. "Does the volume of milk increase when you add the powder?"

"Nah," Andrew said. "It just dissolves."

"Sure," I said. "But...does it though? Like, it just doesn't seem like this jug is going to hold all of this..."

"But if it dissolves then it doesn't add to the volume, right?"

"Are you sure about that? I just still don't think it's going fit..."

"Oh, it'll fit," he said confidently, dumping the rest of the milk into the funnel. 

Church stories

Weirdly, I have spent the last couple of weeks giving Benjamin tutorials on how to tie a...tie. 

I learned how to tie a tie when David was struggling to learn how to tie a tie (so probably when I was nine or ten). I also learned how to tie my shoes when he was struggling to learn to tie his shoes. 

I say struggle simply because learning is very often a struggle—it's something that requires curiosity and tenacity and humility. David was certainly all those things. Indeed, he was a clever and talented young man. And I was his little sister. 

So, suffering from what we'll call "Little Sister Complex," I worked extra hard to learn how to tie things properly extra early so that I could...brag about it to him. 

Sometimes I was a brat, believe it or not. 

I didn't have any particular reason to learn how to tie a tie, but I practiced and practiced just so I could do it quicker and better than David could (at least when he was a boy of 12). I don't know if he even noticed that I was competing with him, but I was. For whatever reason. Because, as I mentioned, I had no actual need to know how to tie a tie. 

Andrew has worn ties for years, though in high school he often wore one particular zipper tie. He didn't really start wearing "proper" ties until his mission. And he learned how to tie them, in his words, "wrong," because when he unties them, they don't nicely slip undone and instead wind up in a knot that he has to unpick before he can hang it up. 

He's happy—functional—with his abilities, but suggested that perhaps Benjamin should ask me for help learning how to tie ties so that he could learn the proper way. Could Andrew learn my way? Probably. There are many, many ways to tie a tie (I think I do the Windsor) and I don't think any of them are fundamentally wrong. But Andrew's happy with his way. 

He just thinks that Benjamin will take better care of his tie if he doesn't have to unknot it before hanging it up. And he's probably right about that. 

Just put me back to bed

Really quick before I got to bed...

Right around midnight, Phoebe got up, made her way out of her room, walked down the hall and into my bedroom, grabbed my arm and said, "Just put me back to bed."

So I put her back to bed, the silly goose.

"We could really cut out the middle man," I explained to her as we walked back to her bedroom. "And when you wake up you can just say to yourself, 'Phoebe, it's still nighttime! Go back to sleep!'"

But I don't think she quite managed to pick up what I was putting down because...

At around 12:45 she got up again (yes, this is how our nights go...and it makes it really hard to get anything accomplished, including getting off to bed ourselves), and this time she didn't even make it all the way into my room before she noticed that she'd caught my attention. So she just turned and ran back to her room and got into bed. 

I followed her—like the well-trained parent that I am (she has us wrapped around her little finger, this one)—and she just said, "Sit there."

So I sat there for a few minutes and she fell back to sleep. 

This has been an easy night so far. Other nights there is screaming. And hours-long interludes between bursts of sleep. But tonight she's been hilariously easy to put back to bed. 

"Just put me back to bed," indeed!

Life is Like a Box of Chocolates, or My Momma Always Said

To be fair, many universities allow students to withdraw from classes approximately two-thirds of the way through the course. I'm sure there are valid reasons for making such a decision. 

Rachel was marveling at the dwindling numbers in her math course.

She had to sign up for a group and decided to put her name down under the very first group, thinking to herself that this group of people would be sure to be on the ball about things (she's experienced some tricky group dynamics but, I think that's par for the course (no pun intended)). They started with six or seven people in their group and she has had a better experience in the group, but they are down to three people (the deadline to withdraw is not until March 4—the same day my library books are due (just a little note to myself)—so we'll see if her group stays that size). 

The absolutely wild thing, though, is that the last day of classes is, like, April 5 (I don't know; I'm not really sure how to read their schedule...so it might be April 8)!

That's like a month away! All you have after that is finals (April 9—10) and then you're home free! 

You powered through January and February (eight weeks of classes), but you can't do March?! Like, you have five weeks of classes and one week of finals left! Stick with it and you get credit for the course. Drop out and...you don't...and if you want to repeat the class you have to start over again in square one!

There are times when I think it's wise to put down burdens, but I also think it's wise to consider when the most convenient time to put the burden down is! Sometimes it's better to just carry things across the finish line. For real. Even if it's hard. (Though I understand that sometimes you simply have to put something down).

Anyway, while we were talking about this (Rachel's disbelief that someone would decide to drop a class at the moment when she's planning her Hermione-esque slide to the finish), I was reminded of a few things that my mom used to always say (and probably still says, though she hasn't said them to me recently). One thing was:

"You can do anything for a semester."

She's so glad when Daddy comes home...

Phoebe has done a lot of colouring in her life, a lot of scribbling. Only recently has she started trying to make sense of her scribbles—naming things in her pictures and so forth. Until today, however, only she has been able to discern what she's been drawing. 

Today she woke up obsessed with the idea of Daddy coming home. Probably because he was not at home. 

She loves the Daniel Tiger episode "Grownups Come Back," so of course she wanted to draw a picture of herself with Daddy. The little preschoolers do that in the episode—draw a picture of themselves with their grownup to help them feel happy. She wanted me to participate in this project.

I was tasked with drawing Phoebe while she turned her attention to drawing Daddy. Here's our finished work:

Like her babbles, which those who don't know her well might not be able to understand at first listen, this drawing might not make very much sense to anyone who hasn't been trying to interpret her squiggles the past long while. But when I sent this picture to Andrew he immediately texted back, "EYES!"

Yes, she was very deliberate about giving Daddy his eyes. 

I'm not sure how flattering he found the rest of the picture when I told him that that...was him...but, yeah. That's him alright. Spitting image. 

Wake up—puppy!

Zoë helped Phoebe get dressed on Sunday morning. 

It's a beautiful day

I took the kids to the playground this afternoon—for the first time in what feels like ages. I also brought a laptop so I could get some writing done because I have a number of writing projects that I'm absolutely choking on at the moment (that I really need to get going on). 

This evening Rachel walked in on me while I was transferring things from the laptop to my desktop computer (there's no internet at the playground, so I drafted offline and then just...brought the computer to my desk) and she said, "Huh. Do you have enough screens there? Could I bring you an iPad or something?"

She's a funny, funny kid.

Sink baths, first sleepovers, and Harry Potter

A couple of kids from seminary were in their high school production of Mamma Mia!. Since Grandpa is a seminary teacher this year and since Rachel and Miriam are peers with the young performers, Grandpa took Rachel and Miriam (and Benjamin and Zoë and Darla) to watch it yesterday evening. 

I stayed home with Alexander and Phoebe. 

Andrew was at work. 

We were pretty boring. Alexander wanted to play Switch Sports. Phoebe wanted to read stories. So we did those things. And then we started getting ready for bed. 

Once we had our pyjamas on I told the kids we were going to spend a few minutes tidying their bedrooms. 

Once the bedrooms were tidier, Alexander declared that it was the perfect space for a fort! 

That's why you clean, right? So you can make another even better mess!

I told him that he could make a fort. He wanted to make a fort to sleep in. And he wanted to use the big blue foam tiles from downstairs. And he wanted me to help because he tried it once and wasn't very successful (and I'd done such a good job helping Benjamin with his bushcraft that I'd probably find domestic fort building much simpler). 

I told him that I could help him make a fort. 

This activity involved several trips to the basement to bring up the blue foam tiles. 

Trekking up and down to the basement meant that Phoebe was, at times, left unsupervised. 

And she's a quick one! She just so easily finds trouble...

Evidently she took herself potty (yay!) while we were downstairs and she knows that after going potty she's supposed to wash her hands. She's still so small, though, that she's never managed this on her own. She can't reach the faucet handles from the stool, so she needs help turning the water on. 

So, Alexander and I came up from downstairs and Phoebe was no where to be seen. 

"Where are you, Phoebe?" I called out. 

"I'm dus washin' mine haaaaans!" she called back to me. 

Just washing her hands?! I can see into the bathroom from the stairs but didn't see her in there. There was no child standing on the stool trying to wash their hands!

That's because...

Zoë vs. the rusty ol' nail

Before you ask, yes, Zoë is current on her vaccines. Her last DTP, DTap, DT, Td shot (I'm not sure why they have them all listed there, but I know they all include tetanus) was on 10/16/2020, so she should be good on that front.

*****

Co-op has simply not been good to this child recently. Last time we went to co-op, we walked away with COVID (today they did another activity blowing through straws; Zoë politely declined to participate). Today, Zoë stepped on a rusty nail!

Here she is soaking her foot when we got home, to help clean it out better than we were able to do on site:

We were outside for recess, and Zoë was heading inside to throw away some trash. The sidewalk leading to the building includes a little corner, but there's a desire path cutting diagonally from one sidewalk to the other. This path is not so desired that the grass has worn away to a dirt trail, but the grass does bear witness to other feet having trod through it from time to time. Zoë took this little shortcut and...found a nail with her foot.

It went right through her shoe and into her foot. 

"OUCH!" she screamed. "Something's poking me!"

Sure do!

Recently Phoebe has begun saying "sure do!" in place of "yes!"

Is always an adorable answer, but can also be humorous because she doesn't pay any attention to whether or not the answer of "sure do" is an appropriate grammatical follow-up to whatever she's been asked. Instead she uses it as a straight synonym.

For example, if I said, "Phoebe, do you want some breakfast?" and she answered, "Sure do!" that...makes sense...grammatically. 

But yesterday we had a package dropped off and the deliverer of said package rang the doorbell, which is always very exciting at our house. The kids run to the bell like a pack of puppies (or ignore it completely; there is no in between). Andrew was the one to retrieve the package and since it had my name on it, he handed it to Phoebe and said, "Hey, Phoebe, can you give this to Mommy?"

"Sure do!" she exclaimed. 

And, see, that response doesn't make grammatical sense in this case. "Sure can!" would have worked. "Sure do!" doesn't work. But it is still an adorable response.

*****

One week later...

I was thrilled to test negative Tuesday of last week because Thursday was my second-chance night to see Hamilton! Grandpa and Darla picked Miriam and I up for dinner (at Waffle House) before heading downtown.

It was fun to get to know Darla a little bit better! We've been meaning to spend more time with her after meeting her (on January 22, right?), but she didn't end up coming to the zoo with us (and Amanda) because her granddaughter was sick, and then that ended up being a little fortuitous because we all came down with COVID (though miraculously, Amanda and her family did not!). Miriam got to spend quite a bit of time with Darla while she was staying at Grandpa's house, but...the rest of us did not. All that is to say that it was nice to get to chat with Darla a bit more. 

On a scale of one to ten...

I will write about our evening out soon! In the meantime, while we have all tested "negative" from COVID-19 and have been improving, we have not been having a fun time at our house. For whatever reason, both Andrew and I developed a post-COVID cough, and it's a doozy. It's possible Zoë and Phoebe have the same cough, but theirs isn't as bad. This cough is seriously no fun. 

And it's not like I didn't have a cough when I was sick with COVID. Because I did! 

I coughed so hard—I kid you not!—I pulled a muscle in my back (or something...must be getting old). I could hardly bend or twist and coughing was so painful! But I got over that cough. And my nose stopped being stuffy. And my back started to feel better. And I tested negative for COVID...and then I developed another nasty—and very productive (medically speaking)—cough. 

I am so tired of coughing. 

But I didn't start writing to complain...at least...not about coughing. 

Phoebe's night in

Rachel babysat the youngest four this evening while Miriam and I went to Hamilton with Grandpa and Darla (and Dad was at work). I felt a little bad (but not too bad since she got to go to Hamilton last week) leaving her in charge of everything, but she's an incredibly capable human, and managed everything just fine. She fed her siblings, got them off to bed, and even carved out some time to attend a Zoom meeting for one of her classes. 

Phoebe went to bed relatively easily for her, which I was so glad to hear when I texted her during intermission. There were other parts of Phoebe that weren't exactly easy, however.

*****

Earlier in the day, while I was helping Benjamin with a tricky math problem, Phoebe took herself potty on one of her little potties. We really need to train her to use the big potty and were making headway in that direction...but that all fell apart over the last two weeks.

Anyway, she did a lovely poopie in her potty and stood up to tell me the good news. 

"I pooped! Yay!" she said, clapping her hands. "Look at it, Mommy!"

Like many children (at least...like many of my children; I'm not really sure if other children also do this), she likes to...check out her artwork...and give it a good name. Like ink blots—"what do you see?"—but with bowel movements. It's a dangerous game for her to engage in, however, because Phoebe's gag reflex is...delicate. 

Just last night I had to remove her plate from her after she dipped her garlic bread in spaghetti sauce too long and—to her horror—it turned into "poop" right in her hand. She hates poop—the look of it, the smell of it, anything that is squishy and brown...and yet! She insists on examining her poop after going potty. So I have to make sure I intervene in this little game at just the right time.

Intervene too early and I'm mean because she didn't get to bond with her poop. Tears are very likely in this instance. Heaven forbid I flush it away before she's had a chance to name it and say goodbye (the cruelty!). Intervene too late and...well, I intervened too late today because I was on the other side of the room helping Benjamin instead of being her emotional support potty person, so I can tell you what happens (I'm a mom: I've told you before, and I'm sure I'll tell you again).

Valentine's Day

"Mom, will tomorrow be special?" Benjamin asked me before bed last night. "Or will it be just an ordinary school day?"

"Well," I told him honestly, "Valentine's Day is always just an ordinary day. It's not, like, a federal holiday or anything like that where we get time off, so everyone will be going to work and school and..."

"No, I mean, like will we be exchanging valentines or getting candy or anything like that?"

"Did you make valentines to exchange?" I asked. 

"Well, no...but..."

"Then we'll see. For now, good night."

Now, I already knew that Andrew had picked up some candy from the store. And I had collected a few items from our Buy Nothing group to give to the little kids. I even splurged and got a set of books on bushcraft for Benjamin. I set all these things out before I went to bed, along with some poems I wrote for each person in the family, which is a sometimes-tradition for me. 

My friend Kathy introduced me to the idea of sometimes-traditions (Kathy was a linguistics major with me at BYU (at any rate we took multiple linguistics courses together) and she ended up marrying one of Andrew's friends (they'd served missions in Italy together); she's also an author). Anyway, she posted pictures of some gorgeous gingerbread she and her girls created this Christmas of Hogwarts Castle and the Hogwarts Express and...it was truly phenomenal. I think technically they did it in the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve. 

But she explained in her post that it's only a sometimes-tradition because it isn't possible to pull of a stunt like that every year. Making gingerbread from scratch, agonizing over templates, piecing everything together, spending the time to decorate it just so. It's a lot of work! 

So some years they do that. Other years they just throw some graham cracker houses together (that was us this year). Other years they forego gingerbread houses altogether. 

And I think that's just fine. Some traditions are rather complicated and if you need to take a step back for whatever reason in order to simplify your life, well, that's just fine. 

Bushcraft

 

Bushcraft feels like a new term for me. Benjamin started using it recently and, honestly, it is a term that is rather applicable to his general "vibe." He loves outdoorsy stuff (as much as a city kid can) and loves "collecting" survival skills. Bushcraft is somewhat different from wilderness survival since the former "is generally thought of as the enjoyment of living in a remote, wilderness location. No one is expecting impending doom, rather they are seeking to live life outdoors, appreciate nature and leave no (or minimal) trace of their activities."

It's roughing it for the pure enjoyment of roughing it.