All children, except one, grow up

Rachel and I were talking the other day and I mentioned how I wished a certain someone would find someone special to marry. On the scale of bad to awesome, married life is pretty awesome so I wish this for a lot of people, actually. For some people I wish for it extra hard, though, because I know they want to get married and settle down but haven't been able to. Anyway, Rachel got all melancholy with the mention of marriage.

She put her hands on her heart and sighed.

"I wish...I wish I could find someone who wanted to marry me...because Xandre just won't do it! He doesn't want to be my prince, Mom. He doesn't even want to be Batman!"

I'm so glad that she feels she can confide in me. I did my best to console her.

"You'll find someone soon, enough, Sweetie. I wouldn't worry about it too much at your age."

This little lady wants to grow up so badly. The other day she asked when she was going to be a grown up. It was right around bedtime so I wrongly assumed the motivation behind her desire to fast forward through the next twenty years was so that she could stay up late. I asked her why she wanted to be a grown up.

"I just want to have my own baby," she told me.

"Why do you want your own baby? Babies are a lot of work."

"Well, I want my baby brother to come and you aren't making him come here so I'll just do it, myself!"

Talk about pressure.

Maybe I'll tell her that if she can sleep in her own bed, convince her sister to give up night feedings, and guarantee a job for her dad after he graduates then she can have a baby brother.

Or at least a baby sister.

(Gender not guaranteed).

It's just like promising a puppy, right?

Egyptian meal

Today is February 25th which means it's been exactly one month since January 25th. Obviously.

The reason it's significant, though, is that January 25th was the start of the Egyptian Revolution. I'll admit that that might not be significant for you, but it is significant for our family. So we decided to celebrate.

We got out every pot we own and made koshari. I know it doesn't technically need to involve every pot you own and when I learned how to make this from a very cute, elderly Egyptian woman she only used one pot. But we were already hungry when we started cooking and wanted the koshari to cook three times faster so instead of cooking the lentils and then cooking the rice and then cooking the noodles we went all in and cooked the lentils, rice, and noodles at the same time. In different pots.

We also made sauce and caramelized onions and hummus.

So we'll probably finish doing the dishes by sometime early next year. Thanks for asking.

On the sidewalk, on the ground

On the way to school this morning Rachel tripped and landed on her forehead. I'm not even kidding. How she manages to do these things I will never know. She was trying to beat me to school, see, so she was running and then she hit a crack in the sidewalk and went flying. There was an audible *konk* when she landed on her face and she came off the sidewalk with a nice red circle in the middle of her forehead.

She started crying about the pain, and about how now she'd never be able to beat me to school, and the pain, and how she'd never be able to beat me to school, and the pain. And somewhere amidst all that howling we decided it would be funny if we made up a song. And because I lack originality we just took the song Rain is Falling All Around and changed the words a bit, to make the song "more appropriate" for this "specific occasion."

This is our song:

Rachel's falling all around
On the sidewalk, on the ground.
Rachel falls out of her bed
And she lands upon her head.

Rachel thought our song was so silly that she soon forgot about her noggin and ended up beating me to school, anyway. I asked her teacher to watch her for signs of loopiness in case she hit her head hard enough to cause a concussion or something. I don't think it was that bad of a bonk but you never know.

So far her teacher hasn't called but you have to admit that it's got to be difficult to recognize signs of loopiness in a three-year-old, especially three-year-olds who are habitually loopy. 

Children are so entertaining

We were getting ready to go to Pack Meeting this evening—the "Blue and Gold Banquet," I know, fancy stuff—and Andrew asked Miriam to "find some shoes."

She wandered off to do his bidding because she hasn't entered that defiant stage yet and is blissfully obedient in every department. She came back into the room carrying my running shoes.

"Very well done," he told her, "Those are shoes. But those are Mommy's shoes. You are going to need your shoes. Find Miriam's shoes."

She looked up at him with a look that said, "That makes so much sense!" and then scurried off to find shoes for herself.

The fancy Blue and Gold Banquet was an indoor picnic, a dangerous idea. Everything was going fine (for us) until Miriam started running around the room with the other babies. Then she started tripping on picnic blankets left and right. Her greatest spill happened on our blanket.

She stepped on the blanket and it slipped out from underneath her (because the flooring is wood) and she face-planted on Rachel's plate. Luckily she landed on the brownie. Unluckily the brownies had toothpicks with the scout logo in them. Luckily Rachel had already removed that and in so doing prevented Miriam from impaling her forehead with a toothpick. Equally luckily, I was able to gymnastic myself over to her quickly enough to grab her before she rolled into the puddle of ketchup beside the brownie. We ended up with a squashed brownie and a toppled water bottle, which really isn't bad considering what could have happened.

Rachel didn't think it was good at all.

"She fell on my food!" she wailed.

We were kind of embarrassed about the whole thing until I noticed my friend Reenie's husband folding up their blanket. It had a huge wet spot on it telling me that we weren't the only ones to have a picnic mishap. Thanks, Reenie, for having children as messy and entertaining as mine!

Presidents Day

This weekend was a four-day weekend for Andrew. Monday was a holiday since it was almost George Washington's birthday—his birthday is technically today but presidents day never falls on his birthday anymore, which I guess is fair because we've had a number of good, great, and not-so-great presidents who, I'm sure, would also like to be honoured. 

Andrew didn't have classes today and was, instead, supposed to spend the day looking for internships. That's right, folks, a whole day dedicated to looking for internships. I won't even start complaining about how unfair it is that the MBA students get a whole stinking week to do the same thing. Instead I will be graciously thankful for the one single day that the MPA students get off. 

Last night I spent my time editing several application essays down to 250 words. If you knew how easily my husband's papers turn prolix then you would understand what a chore that was.

He spent the morning doing homework, but in honour a day well-spent applying for several internships we took the afternoon off to spend some time together as a family. We have passes to Trafalga so we thought we'd go mini-golfing at the ever-patriotic fun center in Lehi, it being George Washington's birthday and all.

You know what I *do* like?

During choir practice, Rachel was getting friendly with Sister LeBaron. First she just sat beside her and then she moved onto her lap and the next thing I know, Sister LeBaron is digging through her purse looking for something to give to Rachel. She found a cough drop and gave it to her.

Rachel ran over to me to see if that was alright.

I told her it was because we're all coughing up a storm here still anyway.

So she ran back over to Sister LeBaron, popped the cough drop in her mouth and settled in for a good snuggle. After a while Sister LeBaron asked Rachel if she liked the cough drop.

"Not really," Rachel said honestly.

"But it's cherry! That's yummy!"

"Yeah, but my daddy has some other ones that are better."

"Oh."

"You know what I do like, though?"

"Hmmm?"

Rachel turned so that her back squarely faced Sister LeBaron.

"I really like it when people, like, tickle my back or scratch my back."

Oh, children can be so embarrassing!

Tired Ballerina

One of my ballerinas usually has plenty of energy:

Russia mini-union

Last week, I had Emily and Esther over. We went to Russia together in 2004 to teach English; in June of this year we will have been home for seven years! It's funny to think that seven years ago we had all just met and were still getting to know each other. We were all young women, lost in a foreign country. We had our share of adventure, to be sure, and several misadventures as well. 

Seven years later and we've all gotten married, though some of those marriages have, sadly, ended. Between us all we have eight children—we had half of them over at our house on Friday!

Spring-morning, winter-afternoon

Late yesterday morning it was 56 degrees! We went to play outside and although it didn't last for even an hour (we're all still sick here) I think it did us a world of good. 

Rachel really wanted to blow bubbles, so we did. 

I am not a pessimist

As I stood looking out the window,
Spring melted away the winter blues
With fresh green leaves emerging
From buds conceived in a womb of frost.
The sound of melting snow trickled
Down the roof and through the gutter, while birds,
Hopping, singing, building, flying
Through the sun-kissed, pink-and-purple sky,
Flirted with me. I noted the grass bravely
Shook off its white robes of mourning,
While the wind, gently stirring the
Busily-emerging verdure, breathed life
Into each of its outstretched fingers.

The trees are getting their leaves!
I remarked to my husband.

They will all die later this week, he said.
It is supposed to snow on Thursday.

And he calls me
A pessimist.