Phoebe got into one of her favourite things last night—Zoë's purple lip gloss. She figured that if that purple sheen was that dazzling on her lips, surely it would be dazzling everywhere!
Friday, January 31, 2025
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Do *YOU* have a billdew?
I thought I did, I thought I did...
Today there was a copy of The Little Engine That Could in a "Little Free Library" we passed while out on a walk, so we took it home with us. On a very technical level, I believe that we have a copy of this book in our house somewhere, but I don't know where it is off the top of my head and I haven't read it to the kids in years so it's possible it didn't move with us...or...at any rate, we haven't read it for a long time.
But we read it today and then the kids wanted to get out one of our felt board games (that are typically reserved only for sacrament meeting, to keep them novel and entertaining on Sundays). The kids know the back side of this felt board because it's The Three Little Kittens and I sometimes sing that to them for a bedtime song, but I guess they've kind of been in the dark about the significance of the train part.
Not that they haven't ever played with the trains—they definitely had—they just didn't realize they could have been retelling the specific story of The Little Engine That Could. My bad.
I thought I had read them this story. I thought I did. I thought I did. I thought I did...
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
A-B-C-D
Phoebe made me a bookmark during reading time this morning. It's a picture of Luna (the neighbour's dog), obviously. You can tell because of the legs.
We're reading Codename Kingfisher by Liz Kessler, but my thoughts are only tangentially on the topic of the book (which is a holocaust story). Or perhaps they are precisely on target, but also tangential.
Because everything looks the same, everything feels normal. Until it's not.
Monday, January 27, 2025
All homemade (except the stuff that isn't)
Last night Rachel was cleaning her room when she came across a UFO (an UnFinished Object), which she decided to take a few minutes to finish. It was a hat she had started during General Conference...in October...of 2021.
She's standing over my shoulder as I type this and would like to say that in her defense she started it then, put it down, and left it down for 3+ years before picking it up again.
I suppose that's an excuse.
At any rate (and the rate in this case was incredibly slow because it took her 3+ years to do so) Rachel has finally finished the hat!
This morning Zoë helped Phoebe try on all our most recent handmade items (hat and sweater by Rachel, scarf by Zoë):
Free money
Saturday, January 25, 2025
This evening at dinner
Come on, get in my boat, fish!
Yesterday Andrew made challah specifically so he could make French toast for dinner. He made some delicious fried apples to go on top (which our kids like to call "simmered fruit" because of Zelda). The whole meal was divine.
When we were taking our little "Victory Lap" around the table, Andrew answered that "making this meal" was...something...either his F-POD or his F-Party...I can't remember which. We'll pretend that it was his F-Party.
"I celebrate making this food!" Andrew said.
"Me, too!" Phoebe agreed. "Thank you for this yummy dinner, Daddy! It is so delicious!"
She is very quick to thank people for things. And she is very quick to praise people for things.
"Thank you for wiping my bum."
"Thank you for handing me that crayon."
"You are very good at walking up the stairs."
"Wow! I love that picture. It is amazing!"
She is overflowing with gratitude and awe. And we love that about her.
It's dynamite!
Li'l Adrenaline Junky
A Victory Lap
- made it to campus and to class
- walked across campus to the IAAS (Institute of African American Studies)
- Phoebe slept in her own bed
- finished reading two chapters of Derrida
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Snow Day 3
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
Extreme Cold Warning
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Books and jokes and jokebooks
Saturday, January 18, 2025
Someone is the antagonist
I remembered the other story I was going to tell along with the [this door / the store] confusion story earlier:
Rachel is taking an introductory theater class where they analyze plays and things. She has to attend two live events so we looked at UGA's schedule and one of their plays will fit the timeline for when her first analysis is due.
"What was the name of that play again?" Rachel asked me as we were driving to campus (just because we were, not for the play).
"Oh...it was...ummmm..."
The name of the play was just on the tip of my tongue but it was not going to come out.
"Someone is the Protag...no! Someone is the Antagonist!"
"John Proctor is the Villain!" Rachel exclaimed. "Mom! That wasn't even close!"
I disagree! I think I came very close to remembering the title perfectly: someone (whose name begins with pro) is the antagonist. John Proctor is the villain. That is the same thing!
Friday, January 17, 2025
Bad luck with back tires
Biking to the park was...oppressive...somehow.
Like, I barely made it there. I had trouble keeping up with Zoë and Alexander and their bikes don't even have gears. I needed to be on such a low gear to even go straight. I powered through things and we made it but, boy, was it ever the hardest bike ride of my life.
I couldn't quite figure it out. Sure, it had been a while since I'd taken the kids on a bike ride, but I've been running...
Could it have been that my backpack was too heavy? I had my laptop, water for everyone, a bunch of glass bottles (that we stopped to deposit at the collection bin):
Frogging and cabbage and goats...just the worst
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
Bugs, Flowers, and Braids
Pumpkins and Sweaters in January
In October, Jessica (who teaches in the primary, although she wasn't Phoebe's teacher) gave her class and Phoebe a pumpkin. Jessica always brings an extra [whatever] for Phoebe (she's very sweet like that, even if she judges my attachment to my cheap tupperware).
Phoebe has insisted on being tucked into bed with that pumpkin ever since and every night we'd give the pumpkin a little squeeze to see if it was...starting to...you know...turn. Finally the day arrived that its once-rigid exterior developed a bit of give to it, if you will. We knew something had to be done sooner rather than later.
So we made a big deal about picking out the perfect orange on Sunday morning so that Mommy could make her a stuffed pumpkin to replace her real pumpkin (which we invited her to toss into the garden to see if any baby pumpkins will come of it).
Here she is picking out her orange:
Six Conversations from Facebook
A funny thing happened on the way [from] the office
When Rachel and I were driving home from campus today, I noticed a plume of smoke rising around the corner.
"Something's happening up there," I said. "You need to move over."
Fortunately, we were fairly alone on the road at that moment (changing lanes can be tricky). We rounded the corner and immediately saw the cause of the smoke. A large vehicle—what seemed to be a moving van—was engulfed in flames.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025
Home church
Saturday, January 11, 2025
Sledding videos
I feel like I'm running out of time to devote to blogging at the moment. I still have a ton of reading to do for my classes next week. So...here are some videos of everyone sledding...I still have more pictures to get off of people's phones (of, like, me, for example). We'll see if that happens. Oh! One more good story is that...Andrew lost his phone!
It fell out of his pocket while he was sledding and we hunted around for a few moments before we realized that we could just do "find my phone" for him. But when I tried to do that with my phone it wouldn't let me ping him for some reason. So instead I just called him and hoped for the best. Miriam located it, sunk deep into a pile of leaves at the bottom of the hill (thank goodness).
When we got back up to the top of the hill we met a little neighbour boy hunting around for his lost glasses. Those are much harder to find than a phone because (a) you can't just call it and have it ring and (b) you're half blind while looking for it. But we managed to find those as well (thank goodness).
Sledding can be dangerous!
But it's so fun! I told the kids about ice blocking and suggested they do it for a church activity (I did it a couple of times when I was a kid). They could even put down a slip and slide or something so they don't ruin the grass... Our youth group used to do sledding activities when I was growing up, too...but those are harder to plan for and carry out down in the south. Ice blocking is a more...dependable...activity.
Anyway...we're here for sledding videos! Here they are:
Snow day (part one)
There were a couple of times last night when the power turned off with such finality that I would think—in the dark—"This is it. We've got to..."
And then the power would come back on before I even had a chance to think through precisely what we needed to do to make it through the night without power. Laugh all you want—it's not that cold and this wasn't that much snow, but our houses simply aren't built or insulated the same way they are in the north. Our pipes are more likely to freeze and burst. Our upstairs can be incredibly drafty. And that's just how it is.
But, we were some of the lucky ones. Our power stayed on (for the most part, though it definitely shut off at least a dozen times over the course of the evening).
Anyway, I'm ready for Part One of our Snow Day adventure. The kids are tucked away watching Frozen (Phoebe's first time, in her memory) after coming in from a disappointing second day of snow...it's all melted and refrozen...and just not the same as the fresh snow. So, here are some memories from yesterday...
Phoebe was obsessed with eating the snow. She did not understand how to work her hands in her mittens—although she can recite "Thumb in the thumb place, fingers altogether," and does so while we're putting on her mittens, she tends to stick her thumb in with the rest of her fingers and then her hands are useless in her mittens. So instead she just throws herself into the snow face-first to take in all the snowy goodness.
Snow day (part 2)
I suppose I should really start with the morning when I woke up at 8:00 to the sounds of someone clomping down the driveway. I glanced out the window and noticed that Mother Nature had not let us down—it had, in fact, snowed! And someone was probably coming to see if the kids could play.
So I hopped out of bed, threw on my housecoat, and rushed to wake the kids.
But, as it turns out, they woke up at the crack of dawn to head outside and it was them clomping up to their own house to get something.
As Zoë put it, "My alarm went off at 7:35. We were outside by 7:40."
The rest of us were outside by 8:30, probably. And we enjoyed a lovely morning sledding with the neighbours, and building snowmen, chatting and chattering.
The kids went back out for round two in the afternoon, but I stayed inside to nap study (and, boy, was it a good study nap session). By this time it was sleeting more than snowing so most of the neighbours chose to stay inside, but one little neighbour and his mom came outside to play with the kids and I'm so glad they did because the mom had been too shy to try sledding when all the neighbours were out...but when it was just my kids out...she decided to give it a go (or three or four go's).
The kids wanted to head back out for a walk after dinner. By this time we were mostly getting plain ol' frozen rain. See how all those drips are changing to icicles? Everything is covered in ice out there.
Thursday, January 09, 2025
Chapstick tales
Grocery bags as snow pants
Just a friendly reminder to my southern friends that if you don't have snow gear, you can make your own with plastic bags! It's easier done with little kids (see here, here, here, and here). But I'll probably be fashioning myself a nice pair of plastic pants tomorrow so I can go out with the kids.
Here's skeptical Benjamin rocking a pair of snow pants in 2014:
Swelling, Schooling, and...sledding?
Here is Miriam on Monday when I woke her up from her post-extraction nap so she could take some pain medication and drink some water and things like that:
And here she is this morning:
She is straight up not having a good time and is so swollen. But she did go to her organ/piano lesson, as well as to mutual, and she plans on attending seminary tomorrow morning. And she's eating more and I really think her recovery is going...okay...so far.
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
Extractions and Excavators
Miriam had five teeth removed on Monday, so she's been pretty miserable. She's sore and swollen and pretty miserable.
Here she is trying her hardest not to laugh (probably about something that Rachel said):
Monday, January 06, 2025
Phoebe is a Sunbeam!
Saturday, January 04, 2025
Where's My Pants? (Again)
Friday, January 03, 2025
Buttercup
Last year, our friend Edson (who is on a mission now) was messing around with the young Korean boys in our ward, teaching them to say, "Listen up, buttercup!"
And now this is "A Thing" for all the young kids in the ward, no matter what language they speak. Even Phoebe has picked up on it.
In fact, whenever there is a phrasal verb that includes the preposition "up," you can pretty much assume that "buttercup" is coming after it.
She'll often say, "Pick me up, buttercup!" rather than "Hold me!"
*****
We still don't think she has a stomach bug. My kids just happen to have very sensitive gag reflexes. Half of them were formally diagnosed with GERD. The other half, well, based on how much they spit up as infants I'm pretty sure most of them could have been diagnosed with GERD if I had pursued such a thing. But usually the GERD diagnosis came with other things—like Benjamin was diagnosed with GERD in the NICU and Alexander was diagnosed with GERD when he was diagnosed with laryngomalacia. And Zoë was diagnosed with GERD when she spent the first year of her life screaming her head off (she's the only one we specifically asked for reflux medication for, I think).
All that is to say that my kids have always thrown up. A lot.
Believe me, I know.
Why are children?
On the last day of co-op last year, Alexander's class was released early and they came outside with what was a rather messy art project at the time. You can see it on the whiteboard just behind Rachel's head in this picture.
It's a Santa that he painted on a piece of paper that he made in his class...that he then glued to a piece of black construction paper with liberal amounts of glue. It's fine now...but at the time it was exceedingly messy.
He came to me with this drippy mess in the middle of my ukulele lesson and just...handed it to me. And I was like, "What am I going to do with this?!" not because it wasn't lovely but because it was so soggy.
I tried to put it down in a safe place—out of foot traffic, away from toddlers, and where it wasn't liable to blow away in the wind—but soon Phoebe came up to me with her hands covered in paint.
"Excuse me while we take a quick break to wipe our hands off in the grass," I said to my class. "Phoebe is covered in paint."
"Paint?!" one of my helper-moms echoed sympathetically (she apparently hadn't seen the artwork hand-off). "We are outside! How did she even find paint?! Ugh. Why are toddlers? I'm so glad I'm out of that stage..."
I mean, I certainly feel that sentiment. Not so much the "being out of that stage" part, but the wondering about why toddlers are the way they are.
But lately I've been wondering if children are any better.
Wednesday, January 01, 2025
The Dreidel Game...and gingerbread
After an entire month of advent calendars counting down until Christmas, the kids (Alexander, in particular) were excited to start counting the days of Hanukkah. As it happened, the first day of Hanukkah was on Christmas Day this year...but somehow we didn't get around to playing the dreidel game until today. We didn't get any gelt this year (although technically the kids got chocolate coins at both the live nativity we went to and in a Christmas gift from Jessica (their primary teacher), but they ate all of that) so we played with M&Ms instead.
They were left over from our gingerbread houses...which I never did post about, did I?
Guys! We made gingerbread houses! On December 19!
And, honestly, Phoebe ate so much candy it was concerning. She ate so much candy that her tummy hurt. When I suggested she could...stop eating candy...she simply batted her eyelashes at me and said, "No, fanks!"
New Year's Day
As it turns out, Phoebe does not have a stomach bug. This is lucky on two counts (1) because stomach bugs are awful and (2) because she basically slept on top of me last night.
Happy New Year!
The last shall be first and the first... (Or: Oh, Phoebe!, part II)
Phoebe woke up just before midnight and she was not happy about it, but we invited her downstairs to ring in the New Year with us anyway (even though we'd already done that with her earlier in the evening).