Lovely things

Phoebe is four months old, an age infamously known for a good ol' fashioned sleep regression. This coupled with taking Phoebe to a conference and upending her entire world and schedule, coupled with getting vaccinations on Monday and subsequently running a fever for a few days has led to a pretty miserable time in the Heiss household. 

Two nights this week that baby has stayed awake until—cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye if I lie—6:30 in the morning. I mean, technically, she went to bed, but then she got up around midnight or so and then she was up. It's been brutal. 

This morning, around 5:00, I left a message on the board for my children in bold, capital letters, hoping they'd read it and do as it said. Hoping, against hope, that they'd get some work accomplished before I got up for the day because I could tell—at 5:00 in the morning, with a wide-awake baby on my hip—that I would not be waking up when my kids got up. I would be sleeping in as long as possible.

Phoebe and I finally crawled into bed at 6:38 AM. 

We got up at 10:00 and I went to find my kids, who were all...playing.

"Did you practice the piano?" I asked them, hopefully.

No, they had not. 

"Did you see my note?"

"The one that said, 'PRACTICE THE PIANO! OR ELSE!!!!'? Yeah. We saw it."

"And you decided to just...not practice this piano?"

"Well," Zoë explained, "You did say 'or else,' so we're doing something else."

Silly things

Today I feel in way over my head with all sorts of things. Mostly I think it's because I'm back to working on this particular back-burner project that I wish had not stopped bubbling over. I worked on it all summer (the project that gave me a lovely eye-twitch, which stopped almost the minute I turned the darn thing in) but now it's back in my hands and I just wish it would go away. It's a long story, but it's mostly been making me feel very incapable of accomplishing anything and is absolutely not something I wanted to be working on four months postpartum. 

There are other things that have been weighing on me and I know that most of my concerns are just silly anxieties concocted by lack of sleep and whatnot. But, I've just been feeling sad. 

So I this evening I interrupted my assigned readings to play badminton with Benjamin, who enjoys declaring, "Badminton is my middle name!" Mostly because Benjamin Badminton Heiss is fun to say. And because he's enjoying the discovery of "underrated sports" (his words, not mine), such as badminton. 

Also, I wrote this silly poem (because our whole world is turning a ghastly green right now):

An Ode to High Pollen Count

I need—Achoo!—a tissue;
I’ve a tickle in my nose.
Achoo! I can’t stop sneezing.
I’m allergic, I suppose,
to—Achoo!—all this pollen,
Which seems t-achoo! accrue
Upon every—Achoo!—surface
So—Achoo!—I wish that you
Would pass the—Achoo!—tissue box
And let me pull one out!
My—Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!—nose
Is running like a spout.
I know that only weeks ago—
Achoo!—I wished for spring.

Unfortunately, I forgot
We’d be coated—Achoo!—green!

And, honestly, I feel a bit better.

Phoebe's 4 month check up

As is fairly common with my babies, Phoebe has put on a delicious—seemingly unprecedented—amount of weight in a few short weeks. 

She is now fifteen pounds. Fifteen!

Well, 6798.21 grams, so not quite fifteen pounds. But almost!

I feel shocked, perhaps because Alexander remained tiny so long, probably on account of his severe-severe, throat-damaging reflux. Phoebe, like all my children, also has reflux but not so badly that it's keeping her from putting on weight. Clearly.

Home-church talks

We're still home-churching our younger crew, which is getting a little tiresome after two years. But the pandemic is *checks notes* still a thing, and our metric for "returning" remains having our entire family vaccinated. A high bar to set, I realize, since there isn't even a vaccine for five and under. And yet, it's the bar. Although I know many people think I'm overreacting, I think that statistic shows that I'm...kind of not.

Without much fanfare, we've reached one million (1,000,000) deaths in the USA. 

And I know that kids "don't" get seriously ill from COVID and yet...somehow...it's in the top 15 causes of death for children 0–4, 5–9, and 10–14 (as per the CDC), so *shrugs* we're still at home. 

This week there was no zoom sacrament meeting (which we've been fortunate to have still) because the person in charge of setting up the Zoom meeting was out of town this week and one weird, unintended consequence of this pandemic has been that absolutely no one knows how to use Zoom. 

Just kidding. Everybody knows how to use Zoom now, I think. I mean, I felt a little top-of-the-line using Zoom for the little writing class I took a few years ago, before COVID, before moving to Georgia, right after Karen passed away. Now I feel run-of-the-mill using Zoom. 

But, we didn't have a Zoom sacrament meeting today so I was all on my own for both sacrament meeting and primary. Which is fine. Staying home is my choice. 

Blowing out eggs

Easter is late this year so I figured we'd have time to experiment with pysanky eggs before then. Josie sent us a kit—golly!—last April (?!) and it's been sitting on my bookshelf, taunting me, ever since. I honestly didn't think it had been a year since she sent it but the date on the package is 4/19/2021. 

But I had only just found out I was expecting Phoebe around that time last year, so the idea of engaging the children in such an involved project simply...wasn't going to happen then. This year I have no such excuse. Besides, you know, the living, breathing Phoebe that we have. 

Rachel rocked her to sleep while Miriam and I experimented how, precisely, to empty eggs, which is the first step (or last step) of pysanky (depending on how you want to make them). 

Cow shoes, jumping ants, and empty nests

The other day at lunch Rachel mentioned wanting to make baklava, so our lunchtime conversations centered around baklava, balaclavas, and various nuts. Walnuts are a popular nut in baklava, but I prefer pistachio. Rachel's a little bit allergic to walnuts (nothing too bad; they make her mouth tingle), so she was okay not doing walnuts. She suggested that almonds might be a good alternative as well. Someone mentioned cashew. But I'm a little bit allergic to cashews (nothing too bad; they just create havoc in my digestive track).

Miriam mentioned how odd it is that pistachios are so clean, given that they grow in the dirt. 

This clued me into the fact that my children don't actually know where nuts come from. So we discussed peanuts (which do grow in the ground and are called groundnuts in other places in the world) versus tree nuts (which are...most other nuts).

We went for a walk later in the afternoon. Zoë and Phoebe wore matching outfits, coordinated by Zoë, of course:

Duels over Duolingo

Today Zoë had me look at her "phone" so I could help her fix something in her settings. While I was in there I happened upon a texting thread she had going on with Benjamin, wherein he has sent her several automated messages from Duolingo, telling her about his streaks and inviting her to "join" him (so that he can earn more "gems" in the platform).

She more or less blows off his first message...

Benjamin: I'm on a 7 day streak learning Greek on Duolingo! Join me?

Zoë: Maybe

And that's it between the two of them for a full week. No further exchanges. But then she really blows off his second message, which he sent on March 17, and which she didn't respond to until today. 

Benjamin: I'm on a 14 day streak learning greek on Duolingo! Join me?

Zoë: Cool? Like, I have a 53 [day] learning [streak]. But, if you want me to, sure. What is your invite link?

The first day of spring

As part of my post-conference wind-down, we went to the park for several hours this afternoon. I'm not sure how long we were there, but it was definitely long enough to get a little sunkissed.

I made the kids run 1.5 miles today. They did well with that, for the most part. And then I unleashed them on the playground while Phoebe napped in her stroller and I did some readings for my classes. 

Rachel also did some reading: 

St. Patrick's Day

This first picture is not from St. Patrick's Day. It's just Phoebe taking a little rest during a surprisingly happy tummy time. She flips onto her stomach all the time now, and while she can flip onto her back from there, she often gets so frustrated with life on her tummy that instead of flipping over she just screams into the carpet. Because that makes sense. 

But here you can see she's just being pleasant.

 

Conferencing it up

We did it! We made it through the conference!

I don't know how I would have been able to do it without Andrew, who was my cheerleader over the past year and helped me through more than one emotional breakdown. It's not every day you commit to working a new job and taking more than a full load of graduate-level courses in addition to homeschooling your already-handful of kids and then find out you're pregnant. But it was one day. 

At least, it was for me. We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of that day. 

That day wasn't pretty. Not exactly. 

But we made it through it! 

And now, here's Phoebe being a beautiful (tired) baby at a beautifully coordinated conference: