Caps for Good

I was reading my amazing friend Tamsin’s blog this afternoon when I was instantly motivated to crochet a hat. She participates in a service project—sometimes spearheading one of her own and sometimes jumping on the bandwagon of an existing one—each month. This month she chose to participate in Caps for Good and invited her readers to join in, too. So I made a hat this afternoon, between playing the part of school teacher, lunch monitor, Fa Zhou, the Emperor of China, disciplinarian, and mother.

Teach me something!

Even though the leaves are steadily changing colour and dropping from the trees we’ve been having a beautiful stretch of weather. It’s so warm during the day that we’ve even stopped putting on sweaters. At night it gets so cold, though, that the girls wear footed jammies. I love fall, but, oh, how I’m dreading the winter.

MPA Luau

On Friday evening we went to the MPA opening social, a luau this year, hosted by the Polynesians in the program. It’s kind of weird being thrown into the Mormon mix again. In Andrew’s program at AUC only two students were married: Andrew and another guy. The only person in the program with children was Andrew. Everyone thought we were weird.

At this BYU party, though, there were dozens of children running around. While there are several single people in the program, there are probably just as many married people and of those married people most have a child (or two or three) or were well on their way to having a child. One girl, Kaja, in Andrew’s program is due with her first baby on October 25 (that’s Miriam’s birthday so we thought it was cool).

Hair

Sometimes it takes a whole lot of distraction to keep Miriam on the potty in the morning. Usually she’ll hop right on and go but sometimes she takes forever but I know she has to go because everybody has to go when they get up in the morning.

Miriam likes to play head, shoulders, knees and toes; read stories; play with toys; and sometimes she even likes to brush hair to keep her mind off crawling away from the potty. She doesn’t crawl away from the potty because she doesn’t like using it—she crawls away because she’s squirmy and easily bores of any activity. To put in a plug for elimination communication: in my last load of approximately 30 diapers, only 1 diaper was poopy; in the load I’m washing now 3 of them are. That’s pretty good for a 10-month old. It also means I’m not changing poopy diapers.

Anyway, Miriam knows exactly what to do with the hairbrush and sometimes when Rachel’s in a willing mood, she’ll let Miriam brush her hair, too.

Stale bread and hand-me-downs

This morning we went to a clothing exchange at BYU. I was hoping to score some winter gear for the girls but had no such luck. It was a huge event—when we arrived at the church parking lot it was packed and there was a line of people waiting to get inside. It was seriously like Black Friday or something.* To reward the girls for being so good while we dragged them around the cultural hall and dug through pile after pile of clothes we took them to the botany pond.

We brought some old bread with us and the ducks were very excited about this. Every time we’d throw a piece of bread out there would be a mad rush for the crumb—some ducks would jump up and snatch it right out of the air, others would peck at each other and quack loudly. Oddly enough it reminded me of the clothing exchange we had just attended—adults, mostly women, crowding around tables heaped with clothes, wildly digging through, searching for a pair of badly-needed pyjamas and exclaiming triumphantly when they were found.

Rachel, Rachel, quite contrary…

The other day I told Rachel something completely ordinary, mundane, trite, and unexciting as could be. I don’t remember what I said to her, it was that boring. She made me laugh, though, when she responded, “That is the happiest thing I have ever heard in my whole life, Mom!”

BYU Banquet Blunder

Andrew and I went to a dinner honouring this year’s graduate students at BYU. We got there and spent a few minutes looking around, trying to find someone, anyone, that we knew. If I had thought about it beforehand I could have arranged to meet some friends there…not that it would have been horrible to sit anywhere randomly and strike up a conversation but neither Andrew or I are all that outgoing so it would have certainly been painful.

Finally Andrew saw someone he knew—a girl from his “team” in the MPA program. They waved at each other and we walked over to where she was standing.

“Hey!” she said, “Is this your wife?”

“It is,” Andrew said, “Nancy, this is Rachel. Rachel, this is Nancy.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

Then we got an impromptu introduction to another couple at the banquet that happened to be standing by Rachel.

“Hello, I’m Sharon Samuelson,” said Sharon Samuelson.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, shaking her hand.

Then I took a closer look at the man accompanying her. He looked oddly familiar but I simply couldn’t place him anywhere.

Moments

A few weeks ago Rachel went out shopping with Grandpa. On the way home Grandpa popped in a Disney CD—Rachel was in heaven…until they pulled into the garage and Grandpa suggested mid-song that she come into the house. She wasn’t too pleased about this because she was having her very first driveway moment—you know, where you can’t get out of the car yet because whatever is on the radio is so captivating that you must finish listening to it first.

Rachel must just be like her Daddy. He has driveway moments several times a week. It was more awkward in Egypt when we didn’t have a driveway so instead of risking interruption by coming in the house he’d just stand in the hallway with his ear buds in, listening. Sitting in your car in the driveway is much less obvious.

Anyway, we had to put the CD on for her inside the house so that she could finish listening. She was that upset about it. She can be so particular at times.

First day of preschool

If you were to ask me a week ago whether or not I was planning on having Rachel attend preschool I would have told you no because, truthfully, we weren’t planning on it. But sometimes things just fall into place—one little phone call did this for us and now Rachel’s enrolled in a preschool.

She’s going part-time, two days a week. Today was her first day and she was so excited that she accidentally woke up at 6:30. I had her go back to bed in our bed and when I tried to wake her up at 7:45 she moaned and begged, “Please let me sleep! I just need a little more sleep.”

Labour Day hike to Stewart Falls

“Wake up, wake up! We’re going hiking today!” Rachel shrieked and excitedly bounded onto our bed wearing pyjamas…and shoes.

“We’re not going hiking yet! No one’s ready to go—everyone’s in bed still. What time is it?”

“But you said we would go hiking today!” said Rachel, her voice rising shrilly with every word.

“Shhhhh! We will, we will. Be quiet, or you’ll wake the…never mind.”

Miriam had already heard the ruckus her sister was causing and started chirping from her crib to let us know she was ready to get up, too,“Dadadadada!” So much for sleeping in on this long weekend.

It was a long morning but we all lived through it and were very ready to go hiking when the early afternoon rolled around (especially Rachel).