Almost out of braces

Unlike Miriam, who still has another year or so to go in braces (and Zoë, who isn't in braces yet but will be as soon as she gets a few more adult head in her teeth because she has an impressive cross bite), I am almost out of braces.

My top teeth are technically finished...apparently...though I'm still wearing my old tray as a retainer of sorts. My bottom teeth still have a few months to go. I have one tooth that is particularly stubborn so I had to get some imaging redone today to get a new set of trays that will get that tooth on track. 

There's this one dental assistant that always (always) struggles to understand that I (still) can't put my teeth together...which is one of the big reasons I got braces in the first place. "They" say things like biting and chewing are important. 

Anyway, although even I (an untrained eye, if you will) can see huge improvements in my bite...this dental assistant is forever upset that...I can't put my teeth together. 

There's a meme right now that uses a song by a guy that turns "terrible tinder conversations into songs" and I thought my conversation today would go so well with the "I have one daughter" song. I'm not super "into" making video memes, so you'll just have to imagine my text over the original (like this or this or this; there are so many examples). 

Original Meme	My conversation
You have any kids?	Can you bite down for me?
Yes, I have one daughter, how about you?	Yes, but I can't close my teeth because I have an open bite. That's why I'm in braces.
How many baby daddies do you have if you don't mind me asking?	Okay, your teeth aren't touching. I just need you to bite down now.
Ellipsis	Ellipsis.
I have one daughter.	I have an open bite.
I understand and is she by the same father?	I understand but for imaging I need you to bite with your teeth together.
I have one daughter.	I have an open bite.
I understand and is she by the same father?	I understand but for imaging I need you to bite with your teeth together.
I don't understand.	I don't understand.

Anyway, she eventually agreed to take the picture without my teeth closing...on account of...I can't.

Before a trip...

At our house, asking a child to do a chore somehow stimulates their bladder.

"I...have to go potty first!" they'll say.

And then I'll say something like, "Well, good thing I ask you to help out around the house, otherwise you'd never remember to go potty!"

*****

This is like that but it's like "good thing we send these kids on trips, otherwise we'd never take care of them."

I jest, of course...but this morning as we took Benjamin off to the doctor to finally fish a splinter out of his finger (that he got at YM camp the first week of June, wouldn't let me pull out, and assured me it would work its way out on its own...only to come to me the other day with a swollen, pussy finger...as if I'm the one who should have been keeping track of it all summer) so that it could be healing instead of festering while he's on his trip, I couldn't help laugh. 

We've taken Miriam to the urgent care twice before a big trip—once for a broken arm and once for an illness. 

It's not precisely that we plan these things, but it might seem like we only take them to urgent care immediately before sending them on a trip.

Here's Benjamin getting ready for exploratory...digging about:

Tip Toe Injury

I'm not saying that I'm better than everyone because I didn't get antibiotics, but I am going to say that whatever illness we had this summer was a doozy. And I didn't get antibiotics.

I was violently coughing for a month. But I didn't use antibiotics to help me get better.

I think antibiotics are useful—a miracle, even! 

When we put Alexander...and then Phoebe...on antibiotics for their double ear infections this summer they immediately (within 24 hours) started to feel better. And their ears cleared up. And they went back to being bright and happy children who could hear and everything. 

A miracle of modern medicine. 

Miriam got sick the same time I did, like...really sick. Everyone got sick in early June. But Miriam and I got really sick. And then everyone got better...except for Miriam and me. And we took Miriam to the doctor to see if she could get some help kicking this bug because she had her trip to the UK she wanted to be healthy for. They decided it sounded like a viral infection that had perhaps turned bacterial (I understand that a virus can't turn into a bacteria, but a bacterial infection is not uncommon to encounter after a viral infection), they put her on antibiotics...and she started feeling better. 

And then Phoebe and Alexander got really sick while the girls were in Europe, I believe. 

And then Rachel and Andrew got sick after they got back from Europe. Or Rachel did. And then Zoë and Benjamin got sick...right before their county meet. And then Andrew got sick. 

I don't remember when everyone got sick. I was a mess taking everyone (except Benjamin) to the doctor...one by one...as they fell like flies. 

"And when did their symptoms begin?"

"Right...so...let's see...it must have been...uhhhh..."

Look—I didn't know there'd be a quiz! 

(I have calendaring issues!)

All I knew is that we had been sick for forever. And that we waited so long to take Alexander and Phoebe in that the doctor gave me stink eye about them both having double ear infections (which aren't even contagious, but I think this virus just caused a lot of blockage in the sinus region that their little ears couldn't even handle—plus I don't even know why she was so miffed about it because we brought Phoebe and Alexander in together initially...and Alexander had visible infection in both ears and Phoebe had fluid—not infected—which turned into an ear infection over the weekend...so we ended up having to bring her in twice...which meant double the co-pay...). When Zoë started complaining about her ears I took her in right away—no infection. Whatever. 

And then Rachel eventually went in because she had had a bad sinus infection at the beginning of the year and the doctor was like, "Why did you wait so long to come in?"

And antibiotics helped her...but I think Andrew went in before Rachel so...

I'm not really clear on things. Benjamin got super sick and even threw up...but then got better really fast. 

And just when we thought everyone had been through it...Miriam got super sick again. 

That had me really worried that I was going to get sick again as well and I was was almost crying thinking about it because I had only just stopped coughing when she got sick a second time. But so far, so good. 

My whole theory is just that because I was so sick for so long, my body was creating a ton of antibodies so I had longer immunity to whatever this thing was...and Miriam (who had used outside help fighting this illness) caught it again when she was exposed to it because she didn't have to make as many antibodies herself. 

But I am not an immunologist, so I could have this all wrong.

Whatever the case, we're all mostly healthy. Andrew is still coughing a bit. 

And...I mentioned an adventure with the fire alarm the night before Zoë's county swim meet...well, let me briefly tell you that story: the fire alarm in our bedroom went off in the middle of the night.

These fire alarms are touchy. 

Zoë at the County Meet

After a somewhat terrible night (with Phoebe and rogue fire alarms and other adventures), we got up bright and early to head to Georgia Tech for Zoë's session of the county swim meet. Their facility is phenomenal—it probably helps that it was built specifically for the Olympics in 1996. So it was just fun to be there, even though our kids didn't quite end up making it in any individual events. Zoë was 56th in breaststroke (24.96, but 50th place—the cutoff for county—was only 24.49 and these kids didn't drop to 23.84 seconds until 44th place, so Zoë was really quite close making it!). As the fastest breaststroker on our team, though, she was pulled into the medley relay. She also swam on the freestyle relay.

Double trouble: An update on Phoebe

When Andrew took Alexander into the doctor (after Alexander complained of not being able to hear), he also took Phoebe because she had been sick for a while, too. Alexander was quickly diagnosed with a double ear infection and some respiratory thing that the antibiotics would probably also clear up pretty quickly. Phoebe was diagnosed with...wait and see. 

She also had fluid in her ears, but it appeared to be clear. The doctor assumed it was related to her general head-cold, but it wasn't infected yet. Thus the wait and see approach.

Well, we watched and we saw!

She was still feverish today, so we decided to take her back in, just to be on the safe side, and lo...

Double ear infection. 

A pretty severe one, too. Bright yellow pus, bulging ear drum. 

"And she hasn't complained about her ears hurting?" the doctor asked.

Not. A. Single. Word. 

About the ears. 

There's been plenty of complaining otherwise. 

Miriam's Music Theory Exam (and other morning chaos)

"Why is sugar water so good?!"

Those are the words I was greeted with when I came down the stairs this morning. Zoë, Alexander, and Phoebe were having a tea party for breakfast, with oatmeal and a little charcuterie board of animal crackers, craisins, and pistachios. They had peppermint tea with sugar. Or, in Phoebe's case, plain ol' sugar water. 

"I just don't understand how it can be this good!" she said. 

"Because it's just...sugar..." I told her. "People tend to like sugar."

We skipped swim practice this morning so we could all just sleep and sleep and sleep. Alexander is feeling better. Phoebe seems to be on the mend. They got up with Zoë early in the morning. Zoë and Rachel have what seem to be lingering head colds. And Benjamin crashed hard last night. 

He was perfectly fine all day. He even said the closing prayer in sacrament meeting. 

And then he just...crashed. He slept in until around 11:30 this morning, as did multiple other people in the house. We are a tired household these days.

We had just been lining up all the awake kids (Rachel, Zoë, Alex, and Phoebe) to take their temperatures (mostly normal today—just Phoebe with a fever still!) when Benjamin came skidding down the hallway, crashing through our little group, to fling himself over the toilet in the bathroom. We all grimaced at each other while he puked. 

"How are you feeling, Benjamin?" I asked when his regurgitation noises had subsided. 

In response he hurled some more.

"Not up for conversation, eh?" I asked. 

More retching.

*****

Now, Phoebe has thrown up a few times with this sickness, but those instances have clearly been linked to uncontrollable coughing fits. Benjamin's stomach issues seem like a whole new set of symptoms. 

While he was in the midst of vomiting, Miriam came running up the stairs screaming.

The basement stairs spit traffic into the hallway right at the bathroom door, but somehow she missed the fact that Benjamin was in there puking and rounded the corner to find our preassembled crew. 

"Uh-oh. What's wrong?" we asked, like...what else could possibly be happening?

"I GOT A 5!!!!" she squealed, jumping up and down.

Medicated Kindness

Phoebe was fine, fine, fine, fine fine yesterday.

Then she got a little runny nose.

Then she lost her ever-loving mind. 

We have never seen that girl so grumpy. She didn't quite know how to communicate that she just wasn't feeling well so while we were at Grandpa and Darla's she just...kept asking to go potty. She should have just found a quiet corner to curl up in because in reality she was just miserable. 

There was a lot of screaming and crying. 

When we loaded into the car to head home she requested that we put on "Everything is Awesome," which we did, and then she fell asleep before we even left the neighbourhood. 

She woke up shortly before we got home and cried because she thought we were going home...which we were. I guess she just had been hoping we'd be there already. 

She definitely had developed a fever by the time we got home. Andrew gave her medicine and put her to bed while I did a video call with my sister Kelli and her grandkids (she went up to Alberta to visit them for the 4th—Scarlett is a year older than Benjamin, Rowan and Arthur are both around Alexander's age). 

*****

It was a long night.

Ear infections and things

Swim team always seems to do Alexander in. 

Last year he wound up with pneumonia. 

He's been sick for the last little while as well. 

We've been battling swimmer's ear all summer. 

And then he caught a respiratory thing that has been lingering and lingering and lingering. 

Last night when he was saying goodnight he casually announced that he couldn't hear anything out of one ear (isn't that weird? But it's probably fine. I love you, goodnight!). 

Yeah. So, we decided we needed to take him to the doctor in the morning.

Up with Phoebe

Last night Andrew put me to bed at 9:00 pm. 

This sickness has wiped me out, but I finally think I've rounded the corner. I slept so well last night and woke up feeling much better. I took the little kids to the pool for a little while in the early afternoon and managed to finally get a draft written for a writing project. 

"Did Phoebe sleep well?" I asked Andrew when he came home from taking the kids to swimming in the morning...because not only did he put me to bed at 9:00 last night, he also got up to take the kids to their early morning practice.

Except for Benjamin, who is away at camp this week...missing out on his birthday...which was today. 

"Not at all!" he said. "You should know! You got up with her around midnight. And then I took over and sent you back to bed and she didn't really go back to sleep until around 4:00 in the morning."

"I got up with her?"

What's up, Doc?

One of Phoebe's favourite treats to get at the store are the bags of mini sweet peppers. She loves them, will help herself to them, and chomp on them with breakfast, lunch, and dinner (as well as in between meals). But she went shopping with Daddy on Saturday and came home with a new treat—fancy carrots—and has been eating those like they are the best thing in the world.

Half our house is sick right now, so I (sick) stayed home with the sick kids and Phoebe (who is mostly better since she was sick early in the week) while Andrew (not sick because he was also sick early in the week) took the healthy kids to stake conference (and simply didn't want to battle Phoebe).

We (the sick ones) watched a few Friend to Friend broadcasts instead. And Phoebe ate like half a bag of carrots or something, getting increasingly creative with how she was eating them as time wore on.

Calamities of various proportions

Nothing untoward happened on Monday...except that several of us got a little too much sun. But Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday have certainly had their moments of excitement!

On Saturday, Grandpa bent over to get something out of the fridge and when he stood up he bumped a shelf with his shoulder and sent a jug of orange juice crashing down to the floor. It split open and went all over the floor. It took two full bath-sized towels to mop it up (and then some). 

I was just glad it wasn't my kids who made the mess. 

On Sunday, Darla went to get a bowl out of the cupboard and the shelf—which was missing one of its pegs—tilted and an entire set of dishes came crashing down. Honestly, I'm a little vague on the details here because I was in the bathroom when I heard the crash. 

My first thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"*

*Technically my first thought was, "I hope no one is hurt!" But that thought quickly passed because there wasn't any associated screaming. So it was clear that something had broken and not someone. So my more permanent thought was, "I hope that wasn't my kids!"

Obsessing over abscesses

While online conferences sound good in theory, I'm not so sure they are good for me in practice. The last time I was supposed to present at an online conference (NAMLE 2024), it ended up being the same weekend that the girls had to take the ACT. So Andrew took them there and left me home with the kids...who were throw-up sick. 

Today was the Children's Literature Assembly (CLA 2025) conference and I was scheduled to present on religious literacy and...

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.

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):

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. 

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).

Looking forward to some calmness

So much happened last week...month? 

With the school shooting in Winder at the beginning of the month, and then the hurricane at the end of the month, we have felt like our phones have been just about blowing up with public safety alerts. We were very lucky to have so little damage in the storm. Our friends in Tallahassee didn't suffer too badly either. We can't say the same for our friends in Augusta and especially not for our friends in Asheville (though I did finally hear back from my friend Emily (who taught English in Voronezh with me) and she is, at least, safe. Asheville has been entirely cut off from the world—no roads, no internet. Western North Carolina was hit very hard. 

So we've been feeling like we're in a perpetual state of panic and/or mourning this month. 

*****

Naturally, the kids all skipped out to play outside once the hurricane blew over. The neighbourhood kids were all so happy to have had such a long weekend. The grown ups were all stressed out about trying to catch up on the work they'd put off (while attending to hours of household maintenance and childcare duties they weren't necessarily planning on (I mean, we always plan on having our kids at home while we work because that's our norm, but our neighbours typically send their kids to school when they work at home (perfectly valid); and none of us had really set time aside in our work calendars to prep for a hurricane, you know? That's outside of our normally scheduled week). What I'm trying to say is...that we sent Phoebe outside to play under the supervision of her older siblings. 

Naturally, they eventually abandoned her because—let's face it—babies can get kind of boring. So the kids were all playing together and then Phoebe was just...exploring the yard on her own. 

GYLT and spilled tea

Last week Andrew did a family night lesson on SAST (small and simple things, or sucking at something, whichever you prefer). This week he did a family night lesson on GYLT (getting your life together, which we decided was pronounced the same as "guilt"). 

GYLT is a principle Andrew saw from an academic who schedules time blocks in her day to GYLT (simply doing the things that need to be done—things like responding to that email you've been meaning to get to, cleaning off your desk, paying that medical bill...whatever). It's not a bad idea, though the way she blocks out every minute of her waking hours with something stresses me out. I'm sure she's very efficient, though. 

I find myself needing blocks of time where nothing is scheduled so I don't have to feel guilty when my day gets derailed. I don't think that means I don't get things accomplished...it just means that sometimes when your nine-year-old daughter is making breakfast for herself, she bumps up against the hot kettle while she's trying to make toast, which makes her jerk her arm away from the kettle, knocking over the hot cup of water she'd just poured into a mug to steep her tea, soaking herself with recently-boiled water, and burning her torso. 

Glory, glory hall-lelujah!

When Andrew and I met with our stake president (President Jack Christianson) before getting married, he drew out what I can only describe as football diagrams to counsel us on how to...be...when we were married. He was a quarterback at Weber State University, so he talked about football quite a bit. He told us that we were a team and should be together:

X X

And that sometimes, as children come along, he'd see that team kind of split apart on the pew at church:

X o X

And then:

X o o o X

Which he felt was a real shame. He preferred to see a couple sit together with their children beside them (rather than letting children "push" them apart):

X X o o o

His counsel was to always be a team. And, I mean, we tried that for a few years. It was fairly easy with Rachel. She'd sit on one lap or the other and Andrew and I could sit beside each other. Then Miriam came along and there was still a lap for either child and Andrew and I could sit beside each other. 

By now we've about given up on following this advice because while it may be nice to sit beside each other, it isn't logical, and isn't representative of our unity as a couple at all. Besides, Andrew is so often the organist and for a time I was the chorister, so that means he's up on the stand—or Miriam is up on the stand—or I'm up on the stand. And our current ward has hardly any deacons so Andrew often ends up passing the sacrament with Benjamin before sitting down. 

So we usually end up sitting somewhat like this:

z a N p r b A m

And then by the time Andrew comes to sit down with us, Phoebe is ready to sit on his lap instead of sitting by mine, so we end up like this:

z a N r b A p m

So instead of looking like a tidy football play we look like we're kind of struggling with the alphabet. But I think that's okay because although it's not bad advice (and may even have been good advice), it's not necessarily practical advice. President Christianson himself rarely got to sit beside his wife because he was always on the stand, right?

Plus, we started to hear other advice along the way. One of our bishops (or stake presidents? or was a general authority?), for example, mentioned that he liked to see fathers carrying out screaming babies instead of the mothers. Andrew wanted to help out with our babies more but they were all such momma's babies that they wouldn't sit with him unless they were far enough away from me. That meant Andrew had to be farther away from me so he could wrangle babies and I could enjoy the meeting.

What I'm getting at, I suppose, is that there are times and seasons to things. One day, perhaps, Andrew and I will sit side by side on the pew again. Maybe...if we're lucky...

Another one bites the dust

Technically she bit the dust over the weekend. And we thought she was getting better. But in the last couple of days she spiked a new fever and has been terribly, terribly sleepy. We took her SpO2 levels this morning and they were low enough (and her cough awful enough) that we decided to take her in as well.

They heard some wheezing in her breathing so decided to give her some albuterol. But even that didn't clear up all the noises in her lungs, so they gave her an antibiotic prescription as well. They considered giving her an x-ray to confirm, but since both her brothers were easily diagnosed with pneumonia the doctor decided her borderline case was likely also pneumonia.

So very fun times over here! Hopefully we will all get over this thing soon!