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):

Laughing is painful and Rachel has been making Miriam laugh a lot...by making quips about her face. For example, yesterday she asked Miriam to open her mouth so she could look inside. So Miriam did, and Rachel said, "Oh, boy!"

She's been using Grandpa's famous a lot: "Does your face hurt? Because it's killing me."

Today when Rachel and I got home from campus, Rachel took one look at Miriam and said, "Wow! Is your face even more swollen than yesterday?"

"WOW!" Miriam said, running into the kitchen to hold her face and laugh in private...because it is—somehow—more swollen than yesterday.

Miriam doesn't even look like herself unless her hands are covering her cheeks!

Andrew asked who was the most compassionate out of the three of us: him, me, and Rachel.

"You!" she told him (I've been laughing right along with Rachel's jokes). 

"But!" I said. "Laughter is the best medicine! And who has made you laugh the most, who could then be considered to be the most invested in your healing process?"

"Rachel," she conceded. "Although laughing also hurts, so..."

"Who then—given what we've established about laughter as medicine—is truly the most compassionate of the three of us?" I asked.

"I guess that would be...you!" Miriam said.

I won't argue with that.

*****

On Monday we also got this little excavator costume. Phoebe is thrilled. She very rarely will dress up in princess costumes or anything (though she does love a good tutu). Rachel was all about the Wizard of Oz at this age, Miriam was into ballerinas, Zoë wore a lot of princess dresses...and I guess Phoebe is into construction vehicles.

Here she is pictured giving Bernie (her St. Bernard) and her pumpkin (a real one—from Halloween—that she still insists on sleeping with every night...we check its squishiness levels before tucking her in at night and, guys, it's starting to be at the end of its life and I don't know what we're going to do)!

But speaking of Bernie, remind me to do do a post about all her stuffed animals one day. Because some stuffed animals (like Bernie) really won the lottery when it came to the name game. Others (like "Bean Bag Puppy" and "Weird Kitty") really did not do well for themselves. I don't know how she decided which beloved toy should get a sensible names and which got...you know...more descriptive names. But somehow the decision was made!

Here's Phoebe working on her Ps:

The one in the bottom righthand corner of the paper is one that I helped her do, but the rest are ones she attempted on her own.

Phoebe is a particularly spirited (read: stubborn) child who hasn't been very interested in learning how to write, but honestly all of my children were able to spell their names by the time they left nursery...except for Phoebe...who never went to nursery (see spirited, above). I've been trying to trick her into thinking about letters a few times every day and it seems like my efforts may finally be paying off. 

I sent a picture to my family on our group chat with Phoebe's question—"Do you like my Ps?"—attached and Uncle Patrick wrote back that, "as a fellow P connoisseur," he did like her Ps!

She liked his answer so much that she drew him a picture. I'm not sure she realized before that she and Patrick shared a P. That could be my fault for giving her a name that is phonetically an /F/ and orthographically a /P/...but that's okay. It made the discovery all the more interesting for her!