It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

On Saturday afternoon Rachel went into campus with Andrew (one of her favourite things to do) while I stayed home and put up Christmas lights (and trimmed the hedges and cleaned out the gutters). Miriam thought about going into campus as well (only the children well-behaved enough to sit quietly and read on their own without bugging him are allowed to go, which means Benjamin and Zoë have never been invited to chill in Daddy's office...ever) but the idea of stringing up Christmas lights with me was also pretty appealing. 

In the end she picked me!

Mostly she played with the neighbours, if we're being honest, but she did make it up the ladder a time or two and was a big help fetching things for me ("Garden gloves!" "Another clip here!" "Oh! Oh! Baby on the road!") while I was stuck up the ladder.

No panda at the manger's side.

Yesterday we were going through Christmas things and I found the little magnet nativity that my mom gave us a few years ago. Benjamin loves playing with magnets so I called him over so that he could be the one to put it on our magnet board.

He happily pulled out piece after piece and put together a lovely scene. When he was so near to completing his task and could tell he was running out of pieces he scoffed angrily and demanded, "Where's the panda?!"

Alas, there is no panda in any of our nativity scenes (though I'm sure there's one with a panda in it somewhere).

Speaking of pandas, one of the children's favourite jokes right now is this:

Q: What's black and white and black and white and black and white?
A: A panda rolling down a hill.

Haven't even put my bags down yet...

Last night in the car, Miriam had a little existential crisis.

"I just don't know what I want to be when I grow up!" she cried (literally; she was crying). "I kind of want to be a scientist, like an inventor or something, but I also might want to play music in a band."

"It's okay, Mimi!" Benjamin chirped happily, as if he just solved all the world's problems. "I know! You can just be a ghostwriter."

"Like, I really like music," she sobbed, ignoring Benjamin. "But I also want to invent things!"

"You can be a ghostwriter," Benjamin said again.

"I don't even know what I would invent or what instrument I would play," she sniffed. "But I think I would want to do that—be either an inventor or musician."

"Be. A. Ghostwriter."

"I guess I could invent a new instrument to play," she continued. "Or, I don't know. Maybe I'll just focus on inventing and forget about music. But I really like music. So maybe I'll just do that and not invent anything at all."

"Or you could be a ghostwriter," Benjamin suggested...again.

Tomatoes, Tricycles, and Bomber Jackets

When Andrew went up to Washington DC last week he accidentally left his coat at home. It's an easy enough mistake to make on a November afternoon in North Carolina. It was quite warm when he left. But by the time he reached DC it was nighttime and it was cold. He went into a store close to the bus stop and found a jacket that was 50% off and bought it. 

"Are you sure that's a men's jacket?" I asked when I saw it.

It just looked like a women's jacket to me, that's all. But he said he found it in the men's section and that when he went to pay for it the cashier asked him if he wanted it in a bag or—probably noticing his lack of other outerwear—if he wanted to wear it out of the store.

"I'll wear it out!" he told the cashier emphatically.

"And she didn't even say, 'Is this for your wife?' or anything," he told me, equally emphatically after recounting his purchasing experience.

"It just kind of looks like a women's jacket," I repeated.

Christmas is going to be legen—wait for it...

Excitement is mounting at our house already and we haven't even got a single decoration up, because of course we don't! It's not even Thanksgiving yet (and you know how strongly Andrew feels about the sanctity of Thanksgiving). That doesn't mean other households aren't experiencing Christmas creep. Our neighbours across the street are completely decked out.

Last night as we were driving to church Benjamin noticed a Christmas tree lot that had sprung up on the roadside. They had Christmas lights strung up all over and beautiful wreaths on the posts of the fence surrounding a forest of pre-chopped Christmas trees.

"What's that?" he wanted to know.

"A Christmas tree store," Andrew informed him.

"What do they sell?" he asked eagerly (though technically he said, "What's lat?" and then "What do ley sell?" because he recently switched out all his voiced /th/ sounds for /l/ for whatever reason).

"What do you think they sell?" Andrew asked.

"I dunno," Benjamin shrugged and then, after pausing to see if we'd just tell him, ventured a guess. "Christmas...stuff?"

"Yup," Andrew said. "Specifically Christmas trees."

"For what reason?!" Benjamin huffed, seemingly miffed by the whole idea.

"Uhhh...Christmas."

A few days ago Miriam came up to me and requested that I "Wikipedia" Santa Claus for her (because in our house "Wikipedia," much like "Google," is a verb).

"Miriam says he's not real," Rachel interjected. "But," she said meaningfully while pointing at Benjamin with her eyeballs, "He. IS."

"I'm just saying we should look it up on Wikipedia, that's all," Miriam said, throwing her hands up in the air innocently (because she would never try to stir the pot just for the sake of stirring the pot, not her).

"Fine," I said. I pulled up the entry and read, "Santa is a legendary figure of Western culture who is said to bring gifts to the homes of well-behaved children on Christmas Eve."

"Haha!" Miriam cackled triumphantly. "See?! I knew it! Legendary."

"Yes, legendary," I agreed. "But we don't have to tell everyone what legendary means, if you catch my drift..."

Rachel turned to Benjamin and, fulfilling her role of eldest sister beautifully, explained, "Legendary means awesome!"

"Well, it does!" she insists, every time we bring up this story now.

And speaking of Christmas, did you notice Miriam's new grin? She's nearly toothless!

All she wants for Christmas is her two front teeth

She came up to me one evening and asked me to wiggle her tooth, so I did.

"Yup, it's wiggly," I agreed. "It will probably fall out in the next few days or weeks."

I was the type of kid who left teeth in my mouth until they were dangerously dangling. Miriam, apparently is the polar opposite of that.

Now at least I know what to get her for Christmas!

Swan pose

Rachel went camping with her friend's church group on Friday night, so it was just me and the three younger kids at home. We had pigs in a blanket and s'mores squares (because we missed out on all the yummy camping food Rachel was bragging about) and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (because Miriam recently finished the book (it was the 2005 version, but when we were finished I showed the kids a few clips from the original and now they want to watch that one because it's a musical and the 2005 film really isn't)). 

In the morning we did some yoga in our pyjamas while Rachel was having a pancake breakfast. I didn't make pancakes for the kids. When Andrew was gone to Atlanta I fixed yummy, wholesome dinners for the kids: apple pancakes and skillet lasagna and things like that. But they whined and complained so much about my lasagna (I put zucchini in) that this week when we went grocery shopping I said, "Hot dogs, chicken nuggets, frozen burritos...what else don't I have to cook?"

So we had cereal for breakfast. And then we did yoga.

While we were doing cobra pose, Miriam lifted up her feet and leaned back her head and discovered that she can execute a beautiful swan pose:

Rock-a-bye baby

Zoë had a rough night last night. I can't isolate the factor that threw her off so it must have been a combination of things: I put her down asleep instead of awake, I forgot to put on her nightlight, when she woke up Daddy was home, she'd had a rough afternoon (face planted on the slide and gave herself a bloody nose). 

All she needs is a waffle

Whatever the reason, she just had an off night and decided she was going to party like it was...the time before she figured out that bedtime was a useful thing (so, like, last month).

Church, Scooter trouble, Ukulele performance

Our little ukulele choir was originally scheduled to play for a couple of nursing homes on November 6th, but on Thursday of that week we still hadn't gotten a rental vehicle figured out so told Laura I didn't think I'd be making it to rehearsal on Friday...and that getting anywhere over the weekend looked iffy. By the time we got our rental van (on Friday afternoon) I really had missed rehearsal and we'd already rescheduled our performance for today. 

Andrew's been out of town (yes, again) and last night the bishop picked him up at the bus station and brought him home after the children were in bed. Andrew was up and out of the house before anyone was awake this morning, which meant that the first time the children saw him was at church. 

I'll admit I was a little bummed that even though it was stake conference Andrew ended up being at church early for meetings and was supposed to stay late after for tithing settlement. Ordinarily stake conference is a bit of a "break" in the bishopric's schedule (right?) but due to a strange confluence of events (our stake conference was postponed because of Hurricane Matthew, so it wasn't originally supposed to bite into a tithing settlement Sunday, and our bishop recently returned from a two-month business trip overseas, which meant the bishopric is playing quite a bit of catch up in their meetings and...anyway...) we had meetings scheduled all over the place today. 

I was also stressed out about my schedule for the afternoon. I've been doing alright with being "back in the saddle" after the accident (though, admittedly, I've only driven to church, the school, and the museum) but this afternoon's itinerary had me sweating bullets. I was supposed to drive from (A) our house to (B) Laura's house to (C) the first nursing home to (D) the second nursing home to (E) the church for Parker's baptism and then (F) back home again. 

Driving from point A to point B is quite enough driving for me. Driving from point A, through points B, C, D and E, all the way to F seemed impossible. 

So I emailed Laura to suggest we rehearse at (A) my house instead, since it's much closer to (C) the first nursing home than her house is. She agreed—easier for everyone—so that cut out B. Then we (Andrew and I) looked at Andrew's schedule and mine and we decided that he could meet us at (C) the first nursing home in time to drive us to (D) the second nursing home, which is in an area of town I don't know very well, but if all else failed he could at least meet us at the second nursing home to help me get to the church from there because I really didn't want to drive that section of road. 

So that possibly cut out D, E, and F, which meant I was feeling a lot better about life. 

But when I woke up I had a text from Andrew.

"You will never guess what happened on my way here," he said. "Back scooter tire exploded. I had to push it to the Presbyterian church on the corner. Just got picked up. Rearranging meetings. I'll have to ride home with you."

So, Andrew ended up driving from A to C through F, which was just fine in my book, and the children were so happy to get to spend some time with him after church!

We're a little sad that we have to fix the scooter now (thanks, November) but of all the things that could have followed, "You'll never guess what happened on my way here," blowing a tire seems pretty mild. Or perhaps I just have an overactive imagination.

Not playgroup

I thought long and hard about going to playgroup on Friday morning. But...

A) playgroup usually starts at 9:00 and we weren't ready to go that early, so by the time we left the house we were already late. 

B) playgroup was at a playground a 15 minute—and slightly out of my bubble—drive from our house.

C) for whatever reason (spending half my life this month on the phone talking to insurance companies, perhaps?) I was craving solitude, not company.

So while I had (almost) every intention of going to playgroup, instead I found myself turning into the museum parking lot. We were right on time because there was no set time to be there, I didn't stress myself out on unfamiliar roads, and though the museum was quite crowded when we first got there, the crowd thinned by lunchtime—and I didn't run into a single person I knew, which meant I didn't have to talk to anyone but my children. 

It was lovely to spend the morning letting my children explore all on their own while I breathed in the warm smells of autumn. 

Wacky-Tacky Day

The girls both had Wacky Tacky day this week. Their school doesn't often do school-wide spirit days; rather they do classroom spirit days and sometimes grade-wide spirit days. Sometimes I understand this. Often I feel it makes life rather complicated.

Here's Miriam's Wacky Tacky outfit for Thursday: