Benjamin has his first swim meet today (on his year-round team). Andrew's taking him because it's all the way in Newnan and will be a whole day affair.
Andrew grabbed his shoes out of the shoe closet and then went to sit on the stairs so he could put them on. While he was sitting down, tiny little Phoebe sneaked around him and started walking up the stairs.
Luckily Andrew was gently settling himself on the stairs because he didn't see Phoebe sneak past him and...sat on her.
"Okay, wow," she said in disgust. "I'm, like, trying to go up the stairs."
Like, how incredibly rude of him!
*****
On Monday Alexander planned a family night lesson on talents. One of his activities was for us to take a few minutes to make a list of some of our talents, which he then asked us to share aloud. My brain tends to spiral over activities like this because what counts as a talent? I don't really know. I can do a lot of things...but do those things take talent? And while I can do a lot of things...I tend to do those things mediocrely not exceptionally. Are you only "talented" when you're exceptional at something, or is it a talent when you can do it at all?
Like, I'm a pretty good swimmer, but I will never make it to the Olympics. That ship hasn't even sailed for me...because I never had a ship to sail. I'm just not that good of a swimmer.
But on the other hand, my mom can't swim at all. So compared to that I'm a super swimmer. But really it feels pretty normal to me, not like a skill. And...
Anyway, that's about where my brain goes when I'm asked to do things like this.
My list was rather short.
Phoebe was asked to share. Her brain does not go where my brain goes. This may be on account of...she's three. But it may also be on account of...she's a different person.
Anyway, Alexander goes, "Phoebe, can you share some of your talents with us?"
"Sure!" Phoebe said. "Well, first of all..."
She paused while she flipped around on the couch and bent over backwards, arching upsidedown, her head dangling toward the floor. She calls it her "bat pose."
"I can do this!" she said proudly. "And that's pretty neat."
So I added that to my list of talents because I also can do that. I might be more talented than I think!
Also on my list: obsessing over stuff
*****
Literally just now Alexander came up to me and said, "Mom, I did my Saturday job...can I do some math now? Yay!"
*****
Last night, Andrew asked Miriam to say family prayer...in German.
She's taking German 101 right now and the other night she prayed with notes to help her along. She did not have her notebook with her last night.
"Okay..." she said. "But I don't have my notebook, so if I default back to English, I..."
"Freestyle prayer!" Alexander called out.
And we all started laughing because at dinner we had just been discussing ways to get disqualified in each swim stroke during a competition. Freestyle is the hardest stroke to get disqualified in. You can even change what stroke you're swimming in the middle, if you want! (And that's where Alexander made the connection to freestyle prayers—you can switch languages if you want/need to).
I actually raced Benjamin at the pool the other day, at his behest. I can still beat him, though I imagine that by next summer I won't be able to. While I was finishing up my 50 free, I did actually take a couple strokes of breaststroke so I could gauge how close I was to the end of the pool (I was swimming "blind"—without goggles or glasses—and didn't want to misjudge the end of the pool by mistake).
Here's a series of pictures of Benjamin jumping into the pool on Friday afternoon:
Anyway, Miriam was having trouble recovering from the "freestyle" joke, and since Alexander didn't seem to realize why what he said was humorous (and thus wasn't laughing), he was asked to say the prayer.
*****
Phoebe has been doing a lot of drawing lately. And painting. And whatever else.
If it involves colours—and lots of em!—she's in. In fact, her goal recently seems to simply be to cover the whole page with colour.
"Oooh! What are you making?" I asked her, stumbling upon her covering a paper in black paint (Do I love that she got the paint out by herself? Not really, but she's the youngest child and she's self-sufficient...and sneaky).
"I'm just inlining right now," she said. "When I'm finished I'm going to do the outline in a different colour."
"Okay," I said. "Sounds good. Keep...inlining."
Later she brought a picture up to my room, along with several pieces of tape that she had prepared.
"Can we put this up on your wall?" she asked.
When Phoebe was born, Zoë went through a phase where she covered our wall with drawings (without even asking) and...they're still up.
"How about we put this one right there?" Phoebe asked. "Right above Zoë's pictures. That should be good."
I thought it might be because she thought her picture deserved a place of honour, but really it was because she figured it would be dangerous to put a piece of art like the one she had created too low down. She knows Oaklyn is coming for a visit in a couple of weeks.
"And Oaklyn is just two so she still eats random stuff," Phoebe explained. "I don't want her to eat my picture."
So we put it above Zoë's picture on my bathroom door.
(With sticky tack rather than tape).
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