Interesting...very interesting...

Currently our read-aloud book is Radiant by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. This morning we read the part where the two sisters are pooling their money to buy a Beatles album but are still coming up short, so they appeal to their brother to loan them fifty cents. He agrees to this—with interest. 

"Oooh! What's the interest?" Alexander asked.

"Do you mean how much interest? Or what is interest?" I asked.

"Ummmm..."

"Okay, so you mean what is interest..." 

"Sure."

Visible Mending: Death to the Death Star Pants

During the April 2025 General Conference, I did some "visible mending" on a pair of Alexander's pants. I actually turned a hopelessly ruined pair of pants into a pair of shorts and used some of the cut-off part to make patches for a less-ruined pair of pants. 

You can see how awful the ruined pants were at his seventh birthday celebration (2024):

I wasn't sure Alexander would like my handiwork, but he did! He dubbed them his Death Star Pants and wore them a lot, though it took me a while to locate any pictures of him wearing them...first I found many pictures of him wearing his cutoffs.

Here he is wearing the cutoffs at Rachel's graduation:

Puddling and Panopticon

We did, in fact, make it outside to play in the rain. 

Alexander and Zoë got up at 6:30 this morning and finished all their (individual) school work by 10:00 this morning, so they were free to go outside and play. Benjamin slept in a bit so he had to do math hour.

Sometimes we have issues with...accountability...at our house. 

But I was talking to my friend Bekah in class on Tuesday and she mentioned that the teacher she's observing has this, like, surveillance screen on their computer where they can see the screen of every child in the classroom at once to know whether they are on the appropriate screen or not. And I was like, "Ummm...what program is this, precisely??" 

She told me, but it is not priced for private use. It's more of a thing a school district buys. 

But I was telling Andrew about this and so he, of course, came up with a solution—screen-casting through Discord! Apparently a lot of people do this for study groups and things, just for an accountability measure. And it seems to work for a lot of people. So Andrew made a channel where the children can stream their screens and I can see them all at the same time. That way I can easily see whether they're working on their math lesson (or whatever) or whether they're watching a YouTube video (or whatever).

And because the kids don't know whether or not I'm watching...they act as if I'm always watching.

The potential of being watched is motivation enough. 

Andrew initially called the channel "Panopticon" and we explained to the children a bit about what that was (some of them had listened to a 99% Invisible segment on Panopticon so they already knew about it), but he was like, "We can rename the channel to be less threatening...like "study hall" or something instead of the foucauldian panopticon. School-time to match gaming-time..."

So he changed the name to boring ol' "school-time" and there was quite an uproar about that.

It's back to Panopticon. 

Here's a shot of Benjamin looking at his own screen through his own screen through his own screen through his own screen through his own screen...

Screen-ception

Wet and rainy

It's a wet day today. Our gardening co-op is cancelled because it's simply too wet to be out in the garden. Phoebe would like to go outside to play. 

"Please can we go out and play in the rain?" she begs. "We won't get struck by lightning! We promise!"

We've only just come in from walking the neighbour's dog. 

It was drizzly and we came home wet—but the way the rain is coming down now offers us a real opportunity to get soaked. Why would we want to miss that?

Math whiz?

We were talking about how to calculate one's h-index the other day in my post qual class—ironic because the very idea of measuring and tracking one's productivity in that manner seems rather against everything poststructuralism stands for. But, nonetheless, that's what we were talking about. 

The h-index was imagined into existence by Jorge Hirsch in 2005 and it claims to be a measure—or somehow representative—of productivity. Calculating one's h-index is pretty simple, at least in my opinion. You simply find the highest number of papers that have been cited that same number of times. And that's your h-index. 

So, for example, I have two published articles, one of which has been cited twice. My h-index is, therefore, 1 because one article has been cited at least one time. 

Andrew has an h-index of 16, which means sixteen of his articles have been cited at least sixteen times. 

Michel Foucault has an h-index of 309. That mean 309 of his articles have been cited at least 309 times. 

My classmates seemed baffled by this idea, however, so I explained it quickly to them and they got it and then someone asked, "Are you some kind of math whiz?"

Which...if you know me...is a very funny question because a math whiz I am not. 

I have never once claimed math as a strong suit. Not once.

In elementary school, I completed one timed multiplication quiz...ever... So I learned early that I was not a whiz when it came to math. I was a math...opposite of whiz...

A math slug? 

I will brag that I scored in the 95th percentile on the GRE...on the verbal reasoning section.

On the quantitative section?

On chilly mornings

In the winter when it's especially chilly, you can often find the cat sitting under the IKEA workbench on one of the only two heater vents situated on the floor in our house. Here she is earlier in the month when we were experiencing all our little ice storms:

Giardia...hangover...

It finally snowed in Utah. They have been having such a dry year!

Here we made sure to send Rachel with boots and gloves and...it's been such a warm/dry winter that she hasn't really needed them! But it did finally snow last week.

Rachel and her roommate Hailey made "snow cream" to celebrate the occasion. 

It's somewhat of a southern tradition, I believe, where mix, like, sweetened condensed milk into a big ol' bowlful of fresh snow. Fresh being the key word there. 

Rachel and Hailey waited until the day after it snowed to collect their snow for snow cream.

Gross. 

They offered some to their other roommates, who all refused. One is a wildlife sciences major and she was like, "Umm...no thanks. I know what's in snow...so..."

Rachel and Hailey were pretty grossed out themselves when they left it on the counter to melt and saw all the...fun stuff...the snow was harbouring. 

The whole time Rachel was telling us this story we were interjecting with, "Rachel!!" and "Rachel—noooo!" just about every sentence.

Finally she goes, "Hey! We could be drinking, okay? But we're not!"

"Giardia...hangover...giardia...hangover..." Andrew said, as if weighing options. 

Gotta experiment with something, I guess... 

Arabic ramblings

We frequently bring up and laugh about the fact that one of the first words introduced in the Arabic curriculum Al-Kitaab is United Nations (الأمم المتحدة). Granted, the curriculum was developed somewhat specifically to train foreign service officers of varying capacity—to read the news, to act in diplomatic capacity, and so forth. So it makes sense. It really does. 

But it's also hilarious. 

You learn things like "hello" and "my name is" and "how are you?" and..."United Nations"...in like the first week! It's...hilarious. 

We aren't into Al-Kitaab at our house yet. We're still slowly chipping our way through the alphabet in Alif-Baa. But we're encountering some of these seeming incongruences. 

Today we worked on "faa" and "qaf." 

The kids were saying words that they knew, like elephant (فيل), that begin with "faa." Butterfly also begins with "faa" (فراشة) and we actually know all the letters for that word! But the book suggested with just write the name Farid. 

Here's a little "faa"-shaped elephant (فيل) that Zoë made (the dot is the sun above its head):

Chaos Theory

This afternoon while I was getting lunch ready for Phoebe I opened the drawer to our kitchen work bench to grab something and she...grabbed the drawer and swung on it like a little monkey. 

She does enjoy swinging from things—and we have an entire jungle gym for her just out the back door!—but I'm constantly having to remind her not to swing on things like door handles and towel racks and drawers (apparently) because they're not meant to hold the weight of a human child. 

Phoebe has lived a rather privileged life as a rather tiny human child her whole entire life, and thus far nothing tragic has happened...which has only fueled her desire to swing from...everything. 

"What do you mean it can't hold the weight of a human child? Here it is...holding the weight of a human child—see?"

Unfortunately, Phoebe is such a tiny human child that she is still in the phase of life where she is getting larger every single moment of every single day (it seems). So she may have swung seemingly without consequence from any number of things any number of times...ultimately I was correct the entire time. 

And today is the day she broke our kitchen work bench thingy. 

Lucky me. 

Andrew was out doing the grocery shopping and running Zoë to and from a birthday party, so Benjamin and I figured out how to fix it (good thing IKEA instruction manuals are so easy to find). Here it is disassembled (it looks worse than it is):

Busy evenings

I attended the Children's Literature Assembly conference on Friday. I also presented my research (and chaired a session). Grandpa is practicing being retired, so he's no longer working on Fridays. While he's plenty busy getting ready for his and Darla's mission, he came over to take the kids to the park in the afternoon. The house was nice and quiet while I was in my session—and the kids got ice cream as well as park time so they came home very happy. 

Darla came over for dinner and then they both stayed to keep the kids company while Andrew and I went to the temple. When we came home they had the youngest three in their pyjamas and everything!

Here they are playing Swoop:

Hope you ham a lovely day

My sister Josie has been dabbling in linocut printmaking recently (an adventure I may or may not have advised her to embark on). She did some amazing work in the last few weeks—she made five different cuts and made prints for our whole family, her colleagues at work, some of my mom's friends...probably some other people... 

She even got pink ink to delight and astonish Phoebe!

If April be dripping...

I grew up saying "April showers bring May flowers."

I don't know who decided on that timeline because it hasn't always felt very relevant to my location.

One early reference to the poem is found in Tusser's (1580/1557) Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie and after diving in a bit, I don't see why this isn't required reading for everyone...good gardening tips set in lovely little couplets (with, at the very end, a cliffsnotes sonnet for the whole year, and an acrostic of Thomas Tusser's name). I see nothing to complain about here:

Swéete April showers,

Doo spring Maie flowers.

....

If April be dripping, then doo I not hate,

(for him that hath little) his fallowing late,

Else otherwise fallowing timelie is best,

for sauing of cattel, of plough and the rest.

April doo be dripping...usually...so that means I can be a little late on my fallowing without being the target of Tusser's horticultural ire. I love any excuse for some wiggle room when it comes to deadlines!

Mystery mark

Reading is a funny thing because just when you think you've figured everything out...you encounter a new font...or learn about upper/lower case...or the existence of cursive script...or... 

Phoebe was reading a book to herself the other day.

Hallelujah! We've reached the glorious part of childhood where they've finally learned the value of personal reading time! 

I mean, did I read her, like, ten books this morning? Absolutely. 

Does she fall asleep listening to me read a chapter book in the hallway? Yes siree.

Are we still chipping away at reading lessons together? Also yes.

So she's still being read to plenty. But she also has started grabbing books off the shelf to read by herself and that is a beautiful thing. 

Anyway, she had pulled a book off the shelf and was reading it when she encountered a question mark that didn't look the way she was used to question marks looking—new font for her, probably. 

So she brought the book to me, pointed at the question mark, and said, "Mom, is this a mystery mark?"

And I don't know where she got that phrasing, but I'm here for it.

My funny valentine

Zoë made pancakes for dinner on Friday evening—picking one of Daddy's favourite foods to celebrate his homecoming. But she made them special by drawing little hearts on them for Valentine's Day.

Grown ups come back

After a long week of Daddy being away, we sure are happy to have him home again! Here are the kids eating some wafer cookies from Thailand that Andrew brought back to share with the kids:

Although Andrew has never been to Thailand, he has partied with people who have. 

Thus the cookies.

Theory of Mind

A few weeks ago Andrew gave an FHE lesson that involved us learning about theory of mind and watching a demonstration of the Sally-Anne test. In this test a girl named Sally places a marble into her basket and then leaves the room. While she's out, Anne takes the marble from Sally's basket and puts it into her own box. 

He paused the video mid-demonstration and asked everyone where they thought Sally would look for her marble first—noting that we should please hold our answers until...

"In the box!" Phoebe (and Benjamin!) blurted out.

"No! In the basket!" all the other kids said. 

"Hey!" I reminded them as they all squabbled, "Dad said to wait to give your answers."

"No, it's okay," he chuckled. "I mostly wanted to see what Phoebe would say...but the fact that Benjamin gave the same answer is, uh, revelatory." 

Sunday, Sunday...

Andrew's been out of town this week, which has been...a lot. But that's okay! He's almost home and then life can get back to normal for a little while. 

On Saturday evening, our neighbour texted to ask if their son could come hang out "tomorrow" from around 1:00 until around 4:00 because the mom of the family had a work thing and the dad of the family had to leave for a trip and they just...needed a safe place for a few hours. And I said that was fine. We love having this little boy over—he's just the sweetest thing!

But for some reason I put it down on my calendar for Monday since Monday was on my mind as the day that our daddy was leaving on a trip...or something. 

So I was a little surprised when I got a text at 12:55 asking if we were ready for little J to come over. 

I was like, "Oh, no! Was that today?! I thought it was Monday!"

Luckily, we were only about five minutes from home, so we made it in time for our neighbour to leave and J had a wonderful time at our house...along with just about every other child on the planet. 

The reason we were so late coming home from church is because we were organizing all kinds of kid swaps. Zoë headed home with Kate, while we had a passel of teenagers planning to crash our house for an afternoon of D&D. I knew about two of the teenagers, but was surprised when another one stopped by with her little sister. 

They knocked, opened the door, and let themselves in.

"Oh, hi!" I said. "Ummm...so Zoë isn't here this afternoon."

"She's not?!" said the younger sister of the pair.

"Unfortunately not. She went over to Kate's. But you're welcome to stay and play anyway," I said. 

"I guess I will," she said, "Because my dad already drove away..."

She seemed to have a good time, even though the teenagers told her she wasn't allowed to hang out with them. She hung out with the little kids and kept them all happy, so it kind of worked out great!

So we had nine kids over. 

By the time parents were coming to pick up their kids, we had moved outside to play, which drew all the neighbourhood kids out of their houses as well. I think we ended up with 13 kids playing in the cul-de-sac.

We played kick-the-can and kick ball and four square, ran races, rode scooters, had pogo stick contests and all sorts of good fun. 

Here's a picture of some of the kids...from Monday, actually...playing on the leftover chalk lines from Sunday afternoon's play:

Bedtime unicorns

We are trying to be consistent about putting Phoebe to bed, but we are also exhausted pretty much most of the time. So sometimes when Phoebe sneaks into our bed I simply...pretend to stay asleep. That way I'm not giving her permission to be there, but I also don't have to get up and deal with all the tears and trauma involved in tucking her back in. 

Last night she had a bit of a rough night. She wet the bed for the first time in forever and it was the strangest thing. I walked into her room to put away a sweater and she sat bolt upright in bed.

"Mom, you know what's kind of strange? My pants feel a little bit wet," she said without so much as a minute of hesitation. 

This in itself was odd because the other night (Thursday, perhaps?) she woke up just as I was heading downstairs for a close-to-midnight run (I have the workout schedule of a champion) and she called out, "Mom...Mom...could you...uhhh...did you...uhhhh...do the...uhhh...the...uhhh...the...uhhhh...the...uhhh..."

"I think you should go back to sleep," I encouraged. 

"Okay. But...uhhhhh...did...uhhhhh...did...uhhh...did...uhhh...did you do the....uh...uhhh...reading thing? Uhhh...did you read to the kids?"

"I did. I finished reading hours ago. Everyone is in bed. It's the middle of the night."

"Okay...uhhhh..."

She just could not spit out a sentence! But last night she just sat up and started talking like she'd never been asleep.

"My pants feel a little bit wet."

Gardening Club

We had our first day of Gardening Club today! A bunch of families rented out a garden space together in our pool's community garden and the lady in charge said she'd give gardening lessons to the kids every week or so, to talk to the kids about how to tend their plants and use what they grow. She's been running the garden for about 15 years now so she knows what she's talking about!

That's nice because...I don't!

They also put a nice deer fence up this winter. It's about 12 feet tall and has a lovely gate, so our produce has half a chance at surviving until we're ready to eat it. Our deer population is so plentiful right now that the city is talking about doing a cull of sorts. 

Anyway, today the kids weeded our plot. Here they are after the job was done:

Groundhog Day (and other nonsense)

Phoebe was so excited that today was hedgehog day (I mean groundhog day) and I meant to do some fun activities with her...but it ended up being a much busier day than I had bargained for. But she had a lot of fun creating her own mythology around what groundhog day means. 

According to Punxsutawney Phil, we're getting six more weeks of winter, but these kinds of prognostications mean very little when you're this far south. 

Our county had a digital learning day while we continued to recover from the weekend's snowstorm. 

And our friends in Durham have had kids home from school since January 23rd! 

I think everyone's aching for life to go back to normal. I hear they're even protesting against ice in Minnesota. So that just goes to show how much people would like the winter weather to pack up and go home. And maybe it should.

Phoebe was actually terribly upset when she looked out the (sunny) front window and saw no snow because she had eaten a big salad with her dinner last night (of her own making). Andrew had made some delicious pizza and we had salad fixings on the side, but Phoebe created a huge salad for herself, which she mentioned looked like a bowl of ice cream, with sprinkles on top (all kinds of peppers that she cut into small pieces). 

There's some inside joke about getting a large bowl of ice cream...if one has had a large bowl of salad...between Andrew and his dad. So they joked about that and then Phoebe was like, "Ice cream...sounds like a good idea."

We don't typically have ice cream in our freezer, though, so I told her she could lick the snow if she wanted to.

She did not want to...because it was dark. 

I told her she could lick the snow in the morning, but then there was no snow left in the front yard!

So we checked the (shady) back deck and there was still snow out there so she licked it before breakfast...to celebrate both her large bowl of salad and groundhog day (or hedgehog day or whatever funny animal day we were calling it...quizzically something to do with both snow and shadow...what is this nonsense? She had no idea but was more than willing to play along).

*****

Guest Lecture and Home Church

This morning Andrew braved the "treacherous" road conditions to drive me to Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. I'm sure the roads were icy somewhere, but I think we saw two little patches of ice the whole way, so we made it to our destination just fine. 

I was so nervous about delivering this lecture, but Andrew reminded me that my audience was there not to tear apart my arguments but to take something away from what I said. They were there to listen and learn, not judge.