Just another (manic) Palm Sunday!

Palm Sunday was a doozy of a day! 

• Miriam played a special musical number in the Johns Creek ward
• Miriam played prelude, postlude, and congregational hymns in our ward
• Miriam, Benjamin, Zoë, Alexander, and I sang two choir songs in our ward
• Miriam played a special musical number in the Magnolia ward...as well as the prelude, postlude, and congregational hymns, and also filled in for a sick pianist (getting a 12-page score the afternoon before and practicing until she felt confident enough to accompany a soloist)
• Miriam played a special musical number in Grandpa and Darla's ward
• Grandpa and Darla gave their "farewell" talks before leaving on their mission and they served a lovely little lunch at their house after, which was good because we were all hungry
• Miriam played an organ piano duet for the stake Palm Sunday event, as well as the prelude, postlude, and congregational hymns
• Miriam and Benjamin participated in the youth choir for the Palm Sunday event
• Zoë, Alexander, and Phoebe participated in the children's choir for the Palm Sunday event

It was...a lot...but it was mostly wonderful! I especially loved getting to sing congregational hymns with big congregations (our own little ward is so tiny).

Easter Egg Hunt

This morning I took the kids to the ward Easter egg hunt, which they didn't want to miss...so they skipped out on the second practice for the big stake Easter fireside tomorrow night. It's cool that the stake puts this on, but it does limit when we can do an Easter activity as a primary (though one might wonder whether that's necessary—I don't remember attending many church-sponsored Easter egg hunts growing up and I survived just fine). So, anyway, the little kids skipped the rehearsal, the big kids attended the rehearsal, and Daddy went grocery shopping.

Who's to say had more fun, really?

Here's Phoebe collecting some eggs from the bushes:

Growing up—it's something you can measure!

Without another baby to replace the last baby...how do they grow up? 

I'm not sure. It feels inevitable that we're babying Phoebe a little more than our other kids were babied at her age—since they'd each been replaced with an actual baby they could no longer be the baby. We're not sure how to make a child grow up otherwise, I guess. 

We do our best to teach her things and encourage her to evolve as a person, but Phoebe is happy being the baby. And I'm happy to imagine that she's still a sweet, tiny newborn. 

But the truth is that she's not. 

She much closer to being a full-blown kid than she is to being a baby. 

Recently she's taken to playing outside with the neighbourhood kids for hours at a time. Hours! 

After nearly 19 years of having a small person within arm's reach 24/7, it seems surreal to go hours without having any little people underfoot. It feels even more surreal that...that is all the future holds for us. 

It's lovely. And it's lonely. 

Okay, so "all" might be a little hyperbolic. I realize there is more to life than taking care of babies. But after two decades of taking care of babies it feels strange to realize that there's...no more taking care of babies in my future (not in this sense). 

But I'm mostly okay with it. 

Phoebe is working on being okay with it as well.

Spring and time

Have you ever looked at your syllabus to see what your weekly readings were only to realize that—being the brilliant being you are—you read ahead in the syllabus over spring break? 

You probably did this mostly because those readings seemed useful for the big project you have due on Friday and since you're supposed to reference readings from the course in your project it made sense to read these particular articles a little early. But that doesn't really matter because you don't have any readings immanently due so you could breathe a little easier this afternoon.

Thank you, past self. 

Gymnastics

Zoë's second week on the homeschool team was eventful! 

I missed the whole thing because I didn't watch her and instead went off to a quiet corner in the hallway to work. The parents of the younger class tend to sit on the sidelines and watch but the parents of the team...tend to not to. So I figured I'd follow suit.

Besides, I know from my own days of gymnastics and coaching that sometimes it's distracting for the parents to be present during sessions. The kids want the parents to look at them or the parents want the kids to look at them. We had a rule that parents were not to remain in the gym during lessons, though there was an exhibition evening when our parents could attend. 

Sometimes...sometimes...I miss living in a small town! 

My siblings and I did gymnastics through the Alberta Schools Gymnastics Association (ASGA), a non-profit organization founded by our dear coach and friend, Darlene. She wanted to bring gymnastics to more...rural...areas. So she contracted with various schools to use their facilities, all of which were equipped with a Canadian Fold-Away Climber, a set of ladders that could be pushed flat against the wall or pulled out to make an indoor jungle gym of sorts. 

This picture is from Canada.gov's instagram:

More toilet paper stories

I recently finished off a roll of toilet paper and—as a responsible toilet paper user—I went to replace the roll. Alas, there was no more toilet paper under the sink, so I went to the kids' bathroom and took a roll from under their sink and made a mental note to grab a pack of toilet paper from the basement and bring it up to our bathroom the next time I went downstairs. 

I managed to make the trip a little later in the day. I distinctly remember going downstairs and grabbing a pack of toilet paper (making another mental note about how much toilet paper was left in the basement). I took the toilet paper with me on a few errands on my way upstairs and then...

Who really knows?

It's anyone's guess, really. 

You know when your brain is simply...overloaded...with concerns...and there's absolutely zero room for a stray thought in there? That's about the point where I am currently (so I should probably stop making mental notes—I'm not positive they're being stored anywhere at the moment). My mind is simply maxed out. And that's okay. 

But the toilet paper didn't ever end up under the bathroom sink, which is unfortunate because when it was time to replace the toilet paper roll again...there was still no toilet paper under the sink. 

Now, Cottenelle would have us believe that "an average family of four can finish a regular roll (of 150 sheets) in about a day. They’ll go through an estimated 7 rolls per week, or 28 rolls a month," but that sounds a little high to me so perhaps we're conservative toilet paper users. Still, it didn't feel like it had been that long since I'd last changed the toilet paper roll and I was somehow shocked to find that there was still no toilet paper under the sink.

Because I'd gone downstairs to get some, see?

I distinctly remembered doing this...and then carrying it around the house for a while...but if it wasn't under my bathroom sink and it wasn't under the kids' bathroom sink and it wasn't under the hallway bathroom sink...where, precisely, did I put it?! 

Obviously not in any logical spot. 

Huh. 

Leprechauns, pancakes, and toilet paper

Tuesdays are my long day on campus. I have two classes that day, for about five hours of total in-class instruction. And then I work between classes (either doing work-work or schoolwork) and squeeze in every in-person meeting possible. It's a tiring day often made more tiring since I seem unable to get a good night's rest any Monday night. 

For example, this Monday, Phoebe was very nervous about St. Patrick's Day. 

She couldn't find any pyjamas that had green on them and she was convinced that someone was going to wake her up with a big St. Patrick's Day pinch (even though we assured her that in our house there is a rule against pyjama pinches). So she had trouble sleeping. 

When she got up in the night crying about this I tried to convince her to just put on some green clothes.

But green clothes aren't pyjamas so she wouldn't be able to sleep in those (duh). 

She ended up getting up permanently around 4:00 in the morning and I...got about 3 hours of sleep total. 

Doorknobs

One thing (among many) that has surprised me (and which continues to surprise me) is the number of times I've had to say, "Don't hang on the doorknob!"

My kids probably aren't alone in doing such things—swinging from the doorknob, literally climbing the walls, and other such nonsense. I mean, I remember doing such things myself (I was particularly fond of climbing the walls—where you brace yourself against either wall in the hallway and just crab walk up to the ceiling). 

But, man alive—my poor doorknobs! 

I am constantly begging the little people in my house to get off of them. They aren't meant to support the weight of a person! The number of times we've had to tighten these knobs...

Anyway, the other day Phoebe was hanging out in the hallway (no pun intended) while Andrew and I were talking, when she started swinging from the doorknob on the door to the stairs. 

"Phoebe," I said in a warning tone. "Quit swinging on that doorknob!"

She put her feet on the ground, but she did not let go of the doorknob. 

Her little face was staring right at the latch and we saw an idea spring up in her mind. No sooner did her little eyes light up than her tongue popped out of her mouth and she gave the door latch a mighty lick. 

"WHAT?!" Andrew and I both exclaimed. 

Because, seriously...what in the world?! Why would she do that?

"I just wanted to know what it tasted like," she shrugged. 

Story of her life—she's been an oral explorer for as long as she's been alive. I thought we were getting a handle on things (after all, she was rather suspicious of Miriam trying to poison her), but I guess some things in this world are still just too tempting...

Pi Day

Andrew went all out for Pi Day this year. It helps that it was on a Saturday rather than a weekday and it helps that some of the chaos of this semester is starting to ebb a little bit. For dinner he made two kinds of quiche—bacon and cheese and green onion and za'atar. Both were delicious. 

Scheherazade

Miriam just finished a major project for her history of fashion design course. From the list of available time periods she chose the Edwardian Era, which she has loved for ages. She dressed up as Mary Poppins for Halloween when she was four (her choice). And she cherished the Edwardian fashion sticker book Naanii sent her years ago, carefully placing each sticker in its correct spot and referring back to it frequently (though admittedly it has spent more time on the bookshelf than in her hands in more recent years). 

She was thrilled to get to sign up for that era...she was less thrilled with the group she had to work with, but group projects are an evil we all must endure, it seems.

Anyway, one of the odder fashion trends from the time, in my opinion, was the hobble skirt (though to be fair and completely honest, I did wear a long pencil skirt to church today and realized that the hobble skirt never entirely went away).

Miriam asked for help pronouncing Paul Poiret's name, a French designer often credited for the invention (she had to give an oral presentation so wanted to be sure she was pronouncing things correctly). We practiced and practiced saying Poiret together until she felt comfortable with it. 

Later we were on a walk and I asked how Poiret even conceived of such an idea in the first place. What an absurd thing to do—tie women's legs together so they could hardly get a good stride in (this was before I willingly put on that aforementioned pencil skirt, revealing my hypocrisy). 

Women used to even have hobble skirt races! 

Anyway...she said it was inspired by Orientalism and ballet. 

Reading skillz

Last night we read a book called This Book is Not a Picture Book! by Sergio Ruzzier. The story itself was fine and the illustrations...let's just say I would like to go back and analyze those a bit more because now that I think about it I'm hoping that they get more and more illustrated as the story is told. The story is about how, from the product description on Amazon they "struggle at first to decipher their book" but "they stick with it, and before long they discover that not only can they read it, but it deserves a place on the shelf with all their favorite picture books" so it would make sense for the illustrations to become more elaborate (and cover more of the page) as the story goes along. I can't remember if that's the case and...that's not the point of this post.

The endpapers (or pastedowns) were phenomenal. 

That, in my opinion, is where the story was—quite literally, but also figuratively. The opening pastedowns drew in the entire family as we tried to decipher what precisely they were saying bcuseae ehty eerw onsennes! 

Nearly every word was scrambled so it took quite a bit of mental power to work out what the story was saying. But the words on the opening pastedowns mirrored the storyline of the book (and were revealed in plain English on the closing pastedowns). 

It was very interesting! 

And, following in the footsteps of my mother (and many other librarians and literacy scholars), I had to annoy my children by pausing between stories to say, "Just wait! I have to check the publication information!"

(I totally understand why my mom always did this...now).

"I just want to see what year this book was published—oh! 2016, so..."

مريم غبية

I've been teaching the kids (Benjamin, Zoë, Alexander, and...Phoebe) the Arabic alphabet this year. We liked to make fun of Miriam—and Miriam makes fun of herself—because she can consistently recognize alif...and that's about it. It's just a straight line. And it's the first letter of the alphabet, corresponding to the letter A in English. 

But last night at dinner Miriam proudly announced that she knew how to introduce herself in Arabic. 

"اسمي مريم," she said (ismi Miryam).

"Or..." Phoebe said impishly before breaking into maniacal laughter. "Are you غبي?" (ghabi)

"Wha...what does that mean?" Miriam asked. "Wait...I know this... Are you...are you calling me stupid?"

"Hahaha! YES!!" Phoebe shrieked with glee.

"Rude!" Miriam said (with mock offense—she tends not to take Phoebe's insults very seriously).

"Okay, okay," I said, trying to redirect the conversation and get Phoebe to settle down. "Miriam—what do you celebrate today?"

"I celebraaaaaate..." Miriam said, pausing to think.

"Doing stupid stuff?!" Phoebe said, without missing a beat (and once again dissolving into uncontrollable giggles).

I don't know what to do with this child, honestly. 

Phoebe's a reader! She reads things!

Here's Phoebe and the kitty enjoying the sunny window together: 

Wow. Such enthuse. Very yay.

Zoë is in Washington, DC, at the moment, so she missed her gymnastics class on Wednesday—the first day of a new session. 

This afternoon we got a text message from the mom of Zoë's friend M:

"I think you guys are in DC, in which case, hope you are enjoying your time. Today at gymnastics coach Emma said she wants to invite M. and Zoe to the homeschool team class [at a time] on [a day]. Would this be something Zoe would be interested in? M. is a yes but she still wants to do gymnastics with Zoe."

Now, we're not in DC. Only Benjamin and Zoë are (with Grandpa and Darla), see?

A poem draft from today

The day to come out

of hibernation is today,

so say the twenty-seven 

Dandelions and hen-chicken

Today we went on a bit of a foraging walk for Gary's lunch. Gary is a bearded dragon, just to clarify. A bearded dragon who only sometimes likes to eat dandelions. Phoebe wishes he would eat dandelions a lot more often than he does. He can be a pretty picky eater. 

We try to convince Phoebe to leave some dandelions for the bunnies—she wants to pick them all!

At least she does her part to replant...I guess...

Here she is blowing on her wish...

Viewer discretion advised

Before we had FHE, we were invited to watch a little production that Phoebe and Alexander planned. 

I may go find a few more little tidbits in the future (see below), but for now I share this clip with you—a warning about their use of flashing lights that they felt they needed to include (and...honestly? It was probably necessary): 

Mostly we got to enjoy a chronology of Baby Doll Princess's day/life. 

Act one was her birthday, so Phoebe had to go to the LEGO/prop room to find some birthday cake. Then she put her baby to bed. Then it was time for "brekky" so she had to go find some breakfast for Baby Doll Princess.

"What should I get for her brekky?" Phoebe asked.

"Eggs?" Alexander suggested.

"She doesn't like eggs!" Phoebe moaned.

I don't remember what she grabbed for Baby Doll's breakfast. For lunch, though, she did grab eggs and Alexander (the light man) was like, "I thought you said she didn't like eggs..."

"She likes eggs sometimes," Phoebe said. 

Andrew's Talk: God will bless me for my faith and righteous desires, even if it doesn't seem like things will work out

When I was in primary and in young men's, the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price was my favorite book in the scriptures. I didn't like it necessarily because of any of the specific scriptures or teachings in it—though there are some good ones in there! We learn about foreordination, the premortal life, the council in heaven, and lots of other fundamental doctrines.

I liked it because it has neat pictures.

I've long been interested in Egypt—while some kids love dinosaurs, or trains, or Greek mythology, I was an Ancient Egypt kid. There are three facsimiles from Egyptian papyri included in the Book of Abraham, and I would pore over the symbols and little interpretations during boring talks and lessons. I would try to replicate the little pictures and include different hieroglyphics in doodles. I just thought they were cool. They made the Pearl of Great Price feel ancient and special.

As an undergraduate student at BYU, I majored in Arabic, which meant that we lived in Jordan for a summer to study Arabic in the Middle East. During our time there, we got to visit Egypt for a week, and I loved it. We got to see the pyramids in Cairo, of course, as well as a bunch of ancient temples and other religious and royal complexes in Luxor. There's a modern Egyptian saying that once you've metaphorically "drunk from the Nile," or been to the country, you're hooked and have to get back to Egypt. After graduating from BYU, we did just that—we moved to Egypt for two years for graduate school.

During our time in Cairo, we traveled all over the country and visited as many ancient sites as possible. I particularly loved going to the different ancient temples and looking for temple symbolism in the architecture and art. During one trip, we rode on a rickety little minibus for an hour up the Nile to visit Dandarah, one of the best-preserved ancient temples in Egypt. The art still has bright colors and most of the buildings are intact. Surprisingly for me, one of the Dandarah temples has a large mural that—with some differences—is essentially Facsimile 1 from the Book of Abraham, which Joseph Smith interprets as the story of Abraham almost getting sacrificed to heathen gods in Babylon. I was so excited to see it!

Nancy's Talk: Of Wells and Arks

Here is the talk that I gave in sacrament meeting:

Of Wells and Arks: Doing the Next and Necessary Thing

Since I’m speaking first, I’ll take a few minutes to introduce our family. We moved here in July of 2019, so we’re coming up on seven full years here, which is the longest that I have ever lived anywhere in my entire life—and by extension it’s also the longest my children have lived anywhere. Although I’m sure many of our children—particularly our youngest few—feel as if we’ve been here a lifetime, I don’t actually feel like we’ve been here very long at all. I’ve just never felt very settled here. Perhaps I don’t know how to settle. I don’t know…

But, here we are! We’re the Heisses. We have six kids. Our oldest Rachel is a freshman at BYU. Then there’s Miriam, who you hear at the organ each Sunday. Next is Benjamin, who made a goal this year to bake bread whenever he’s assigned to bring bread for the sacrament. Zoë is enjoying her last year of primary; she’s very excited to enter the Young Women program next year. Alexander was baptized this past November. And Phoebe is four and…we just…celebrate…that we’ve been able to get her to attend her own class. She’s very clingy. 

She describes herself as “snuggly,” but she’s clingy. 

Church, the work of Sunday

I was trying to schedule a time to video call with Uncle Patrick (in Austria, GMT+1) and Auntie Josie (in Utah, GMT-6) while being here (in Georgia, GMT-4). It can be tricky to find a time that works for everyone, but Patrick, being mindful of my church schedule, suggested 2:00 pm my time (noon Josie's time, 7:00 pm his time).

He and I were texting before Josie was even up. 

"We should jump on a call and talk about train tickets..." he suggested (Josie and I are going to visit him in May).

"Rushing to get ready for church atm" I said (atm = at the moment). 

We've been going early for morning choir practice, which already feels like a bit of a sacrifice. With daylight savings added on top...and with some late night excitement at our house (prom, among other things)...it felt like a real sacrifice this morning. We managed to get the choir people up and out the door in time to be just barely on time for choir, if not a minute or two late, which I felt was really pretty good, all things considered. 

But the joke was on me the whole time because I was accidentally left off the group text informing everyone that choir practice would be moving from 9:30 to 9:00 to allow us a full hour in the Relief Society room before the other ward kicked us out. 

So we walked in at 9:30, quite proud of our timeliness, only to be half an hour late. Not that I'm very sad about having missed out on that text message...because I didn't have to feel guilty about not being ready in time for 9:00 since I didn't know about needing to be ready by 9:00.

Prom: Under the Sea

Miriam's at prom tonight with a bunch of friends, who all decided against dates (which I'm not opposed to—pairing off can make things awkward at this age, especially with so few youth in our area). So, these three girls spent the afternoon together and are meeting up with other friends at the dance.

One of their YW leaders did their hair, and then they had dinner and took pictures at the park:

Birfday grill

While the rest of us played a ruthless game of Nertz (one of the things Andrew wanted to do after dinner), Phoebe decided she wanted to write a birthday letter to her cousin Oaklyn (whose birthday is tomorrow). She didn't really tell any of us this, so we all just thought she was happily drawing...until she said, "Can someone please tell me how to make an F? I'm trying to write Happy Birfday, Oaklyn..."

She had gone through several drafts by this point and was rather frustrated by her many false starts (you can see one paper in particular in the stack below with many attempts crossed out):

Dinner songs and yucky elbows

"A, E, I, O, U!" I sang at the start of dinner.

"I love you!" sang Miriam, Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander in response. 

"You can take me hot to go!" Phoebe sang loudly.

The first call and response was in reference to Muzzy, which I had thought that I had written about...but evidently have not. 

My Auntie Colleen once told me a story about when she and Uncle LeRon heard a song on a show that was so catchy. They would sing it to each other but they weren't sure what it meant. 

"Ah-ay-ee-oh-oo! Te quiero!" 

They decided they should probably look it up so they could know what they were singing. So they did and then felt silly because they were just singing the vowel names. 

We got really into Muzzy a couple of years ago so all the kids knew this song, but not Phoebe, who pulled from Chappell Roan instead—the line that comes after H-O-T-T-O-G-O. 

*****

We lived happily

Today the words of Ilya Kaminsky are running through my mind. I was fortunate to get to her both him and his wife speak at a poetry event a couple of years ago. His collection Deaf Republic is chilling.

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

 

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

 

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

 

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

 

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

 

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

 

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

 

lived happily during the war.

It is a beautiful spring. And the world should be celebrating it together.

Stick it

One more story before I go to bed! 

I forgot that while we were at the playground today Phoebe asked to go on the swings. She wanted me to push her in the baby swing but I refused. She is four years old. It is time she figured out the big-girl swings. 

She reluctantly agreed to this and I set about pushing her...and coaching her on how to pump the swing herself (something she doesn't have a whole lot of motivation to do currently—she's so spoiled). 

I was pushing her from the front, encouraging her to stick her legs out straight so her feet could meet my hand...and then giving her a nudge to keep her momentum going...so she was going pretty high. 

Suddenly she says, "I want to play Stick It!"

"Ho-ho! I don't think so!" I started to say. 

*****

Stick It is a game the big kids play. I played it growing up as well, but didn't call it Stick It. I think we called it "Jumping Off the Swings Contest" or something like that. All the rules are described in those two names—you swing as high as you go, jump off as far as you can, and try to stick the landing.

Kids break bones playing this game...but...it's kind of a childhood rite of passage.

Winning at scripture study (some more)

We are only two months into the year and Phoebe has already memorized Moses 1:39, Moses 7:18, Psalm 119:105, and Proverbs 22:29. This last one has quickly become a family favourite because somehow or another we've taken to saying "business" in what can only be described as a Sam Eagle fashion.

"Seest thou a man diligent in his business?" we'll say, putting unusual and grunt-heavy emphasis on that last word. 

We all find that much funny enough all on its own, but then we had to have a discussion about what "mean men" meant for the second half, which says, "He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."

It just so happened that we introduced this scripture to the kids early in the year, soon after the, uh, "bog-standard cookie" incident—not a compliment, Andrew!—and so when we explained that "mean" here means, like, "average" and not "cruel," the kids really ran with it.

"You mean bog-standard men?!" Alexander howled with laughter. 

"Sure," Andrew said. "Bog-standard men."

That was all the permission the children needed. Now they all—including Phoebe—chant: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before bog-standard men."

We'll be lucky to make it through life without being tossed into a volcano.

Monday, Monday...

This week seemed like it was going to be incredibly stressful (and looking at the weekend's current events I think the week will continue to be at least a smidge stressful), but on Saturday one of my professors emailed and instructed the class to hold off on a major assignment due Tuesday because she wanted to talk to us about it more before we started it (I had finished all the readings for it but was still kind of like..."Uhhhhhh???"...and was going to cluelessly make something up...but now maybe I can create a more...informed...project) and then another professor emailed on Sunday evening to say that she was extending the deadline for our major project due at the end of this week for two more weeks. 

So that was all quite a relief, considering I was about to implode from stress.

I did have revisions of a paper due today (that is accepted for publication...with revisions) and I also had to review an article. And I, of course, have to be working on the aforementioned (and other upcoming) assignments. And I need to write a talk for Sunday and prepare another conference presentation for mid-March. And...so forth...

But I took the kids to the park this morning (since I didn't have a meeting this afternoon) and let them play for a while.

YMCA Championship Meet

First thing in the morning, I registered the kids for swim team. I had to be fast so I could be sure to secure a spot for Phoebe on the "futures" team, since space is limited in the "futures" program. Benjamin is applying to be a "futures" coach again. So we're gearing up for another busy summer full of swimming. 

We left for church an hour early so we could go to choir practice before church. We are just barely starting our Easter music...like today. It's rather late to be starting Easter music, but choir has been...to put it delicately...going through some hurdles...recently. So we're starting Easter music now. It'll be fine.

Grandpa joined us for our meetings this morning and then took Benjamin home from church ahead of us so that Benjamin could get changed and pack up some dinner for himself. They were just leaving for the pool when the rest of us arrived home from church. We met them at the Georgia Tech pool at 3:00 for Benjamin's championship meet.

Here's Benjamin diving into the water for his 50 yard freestyle (lane 9, closest to the audience there):