Dandelions

We went for a walk yesterday afternoon; it seems the fifties are here to stay (at least for a while). Rachel found and picked a bright yellow dandelion.

"What is this?" she asked me.

"It's a dandelion," I told her.

Apparently she missed the yellow blossom stage this summer and only experienced the white fluffy stage because she got really excited and started trying to blow the dandelion apart. After letting her get winded and a little light-headed I informed her that the dandelion was not ready to blow on quite yet. She drooped a little bit and dejectedly held the flower out to me.

"This is for you," she sighed.

"Oh, thanks!" I said, "It's as yellow and beautiful as the sunshine!"

"Yeah!" she said, perking up, "It's as yellow as the fire hydrant, too!"

She is as romantic as her father.

Miriam has turned into little Miss Monkey-See-Monkey-Do lately and had been watching her sister with verifiable interest. She walked over to a pile of decaying leaves that had likely been sitting in the gutter since October and picked up a handful. She puffed up her cheeks with air and then blew into her hand, scattering leaves and splattering muck everywhere.

Now she thinks that picking things off the ground and blowing on them is the newest spring fashion.

Make Believe

This morning while Rachel was at school, Miriam baked a whole plateful of cookies and ate them all without sharing a single bite.

This afternoon when Rachel came home from school she got all dolled-up and attended a fancy ball.

The end.

Feature Pancakes

Not only is it March 1st. It's also IHOP's National Pancake Day, and since in the past IHOP held their National Pancake day on Shrove Tuesday we wrongly assumed that today was Shrove Tuesday. But it's not. IHOP decided to "host its free pancake event one week earlier...to build buzz and excitement prior to Shrove Tuesday." Well, they succeeded because we were certainly buzzing with excitement at our house (especially after ingesting all that syrup). 

Rachel is excited for St. Patrick's Day. She said she wants to paint her nails green (so we're on the lookout for green nail polish) and I don't even know why she knows so much about St. Patrick's Day since it's the first day of March and she really shouldn't remember anything from previous years. Anyway, I decided to make green pancakes in honour of St. Patrick but then I thought that Rachel, though excited for St. Patrick's Day, might not be thrilled with green pancakes so I reserved some of the batter and dyed it pink.

I made some pink pancakes and then I made some green pancakes. Then I poured some green batter on the griddle and let it sit for a minute before pouring pink batter on top. It worked beautifully and we came out with pancakes that were pink on one side and green on the other. Then I started drawing with the batter—I made a pink pancake with a green R on it for Rachel and a green pancake with a pink M on it for Miriam.

Runoff

March has already lulled me into a false sense of spring-security. I'm so ready for it to be spring and today was beautiful, but I'm well aware of the saying "in like a lion, out like a lamb" and I'm sure things will change before we get to the end of March. Last year it was still snowing in May, so I'm told. Still, today was beautiful and we're supposed to be in the fifties for the rest of the week. 

Today Andrew had to shoot some scenes for a training movie he's making for his human resources class. His group shot most of it on campus but there were a few shots that they couldn't film there so I was volunteered to help finish the filming. I'll have to post it when it's finished—Andrew wears a kleenex beard in the later scenes so it's kind of a must-see flick.

We went to the park to finish filming. I let the girls run off to the playground while we set up our equipment around a model pioneer home. The playground was quite a ways away from where we were but I could see the girls and hear the girls, though it didn't seem like they could hear me.

The beginning of the end

I started reading Peter Pan last night. It's a charming story; it makes me feel nostalgic for my own childhood because I really did jump around my bedroom as a youngster, convinced that at some point I would stick to the sky instead of plummeting to the ground. But then I learned about gravity and stopped trying.

Andrew seems to have solved the problem of our nightly visitor—Rachel—who wears out her welcome rather quickly with all her kicking, squirming, talking, and wiggling. We have a magnet board for her and when she does something good she gets to move a magnet up to the top of the board. When all the magnets are at the top then she gets to choose a prize. She can watch a movie, go to Macey's for an ice cream cone with Daddy, have Mommy do her nails, or earn a toy or book.

She's been rather motivated by this. Do the dishes? Sure. Put the dirty diaper in the pail? Sure. Clean up my toys? Sure. Ask for things politely at the dinner table? Yes, ma'am. Share with my sister? You bet.

Yesterday afternoon when I asked her to get a fresh diaper out for Miriam she said, "Sure! And when it's time to go to bed can I get a nighttime diaper ready for her, too?"

I realize she was only after another magnet but it's nice to have her offering to do things instead of me having to force her to do everything. And eventually the external motivation will turn into internal motivation, right?

Anyway, a couple of nights ago Andrew told her that staying in her own bed was a good thing to do and that she could earn a magnet by staying in her own bed. At 2:00 AM I woke up to Rachel scrambling over me and into the middle of the bed. Apparently she simply didn't think one magnet was worth the stress of ignoring all the monsters that come out at night because the next night Andrew upped the ante. He offered her three magnets for staying in bed.

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.