Ballet

Two weeks ago the girls started ballet. They've been begging for lessons for a while and we've been hunting around for a studio but everything seemed so out of our league. Then Rachel came home from school saying that her kindergarten teacher was also a ballet teacher and she said that she'd give Rachel lessons and her first class would be on Saturday.

I didn't hear anything from her teacher, though, and so I passed it off as the ramblings of a five-year-old.

The next day I was surprised to find a flyer for a dance studio (with a 15% off coupon for the first month!) stuck in Rachel's homework folder. Her kindergarten teacher was indeed a ballet teacher and she'd just invited us to check out her studio.

We toured it over Christmas break and it was just lovely. We met the owner, who is so kind and wonderful. She took time out to meet us and struck me as a very genuine person—she reminded me of my old gymnastics coach Darlene (that will give at least my mom an idea of what she's like) and, frankly, we could use a Darlene in our life. The studio is rather small and the beginner classes in particular are struggling.

Both Miriam and Rachel have Rachel's kindergarten teacher for their ballet instructor but they meet in separate classes. Miriam meets with her first and is the only one in her class. They both do 45 minutes of ballet and then 15 minutes of tap.

Catch up!

I think if I can just catch up to the present I'll be able to get back into blogging like I used to. We'll try it.  Ready to hear about the past two weeks? Here it goes...

A package came in the mail, all the way from California. Inside were some dolls made by a girl from Grandma and Grandpa's BYU ward. They were made to look like the girls and Grandma made matching skirts for the girls (which they opened on Christmas). It just so happened that Miriam was wearing her skirt when her doll arrived. She was thrilled when she noticed how well they matched.

On not blogging

Rachel was the third one awake this morning, which was good news for Benjamin. She's patiently holding him on the couch right now, happy to have him all to herself. She's always begging to hold him. He's usually fairly content to let her but there are often complicating factors (Miriam yanking on his limbs being the most common).

Miriam's still asleep. She's coughing dreadfully, but she's asleep.

Just kidding. She just wandered out of her bedroom. So much for a few minutes alone—now my lap is full and I'm being coughed on.

It doesn't matter. These germs have already been well-shared in our house.

My throat hurts so bad I can hardly stand it and my head is pounding.

Benjamin woke up shortly before 2 AM and spent the next 4.5 hours cough, writhing, and fussing in bed beside me. He wants to nurse every time he coughs. I'm not sure how much sleep either of us got last night or the night before or even the night before. I suppose sleep is optional.

"Mom! You have to look at what Benjamin did!" Rachel called proudly from the couch.

She has a cough, too, but seems to be on the mend. Maybe.

I looked over.

"He took his diaper off!" she announced.

Fabulous.

Stupid velcro tabs.

I suppose I should have put a onesie over it.

Peek-a-Boo Benjamin

Here's a little video of Benjamin and me playing a little peek-a-boo during a diaper change this afternoon (technically before a diaper change—so, yes, that's a clean, albeit stained, diaper). At the very end I ask him if he can say "Hi!" and instead he says, "Laa!"

The girls were very proud of him for telling me 'no' in Arabic—because it's true: he can't say 'hi.'

Ringing in the New Year

My dad has wanted me to keep an eye out for Spanish Moss. Technically we should have some in North Carolina but there doesn't seem to be any in this area. I suppose we'd have to go farther east to see it but instead we went south and were able to find some there.

Hello, old friend

The Carolinas are both so beautiful. I'm happy to call the north one home but the south one was might be a little more favourite right now. That might have to do with the fact that we were only there on vacation. It could also be that I grew up on the coast for a while—only the northwest coast, not the southeast coast—and I simply love the beach.

Patriot's Point

Patriot's Point was the best kind of museum—full scale and hands on. The USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier, was the most impressive ship on the horizon and kind of stole the show (but it's difficult  to be unimpressive when you have a runway on board).

I'm just a floating airport; don't mind me.

Fort Sumter

After the aquarium we headed next door to the Fort Sumter Visitor Education Center to wander around the museum while we waited for our turn on the ferry. Rachel joined the Junior Ranger program and went around the museum collecting information so that she could answer the questions on her form in order to earn her badge.

One of the most shocking things I learned was this: "Based on 1860 Census data, 26% of southern white families owned slaves. Percentages ranged from 49% in Mississippi to 3% in Delaware. Some free blacks also owned slaves."

First, it's just hard for me to think of Delaware as being a southern state. Second, free blacks owned slaves?! I'm not sure I knew that. At first I was shocked at the idea, but this article seems to quell those feelings rather well, declaring that most of the slaves held by black owners were likely "benevolently enslaved" (ie. purchased by well-meaning, free relatives who had the money to buy but not the power to free). It does, however, say that there were regular, ordinary black slave-owning as well, who thought of owning slaves as some "divine right," as J.S. Preston called it. He said, "Slavery is our King — Slavery is our Truth — Slavery is our Divine Right," when he addressed South Carolina's 1860 Democratic Convention (p. 16).


There were many quotes like that that simply made me shudder. That idea is so foreign to me.

This quote, however, just cracks me up:


 “South Carolina is too small for a republic, but too large for an insane asylum.”
—Federal Judge James L. Petigru of Charleston, December 1860 (p. 20)

Anyway, Fort Sumter is where the first shot of the Civil War was fired. I learned more about the Civil War than I probably ever knew—at least, I had more sink in than ever had before. There's something about being places and seeing things that makes history (or any subject) tangible and memorable. My geography is much better in places I've been than places I haven't, for example. And this was no different.

For Sumter was built on a man-made island and wasn't entirely constructed in 1860, but it was finished enough that the Union felt it could set up base there (abandoning other forts in the area, which the Confederacy took over). James Buchanan was president, but was lame-ducking through it so he did little to calm the rising revolt of the South. It was a bigger problem for Lincoln when he took the presidency than it would have been if there had been better negotiations with Buchanan, I'm sure.

So, by the time Lincoln got in office the North was in the fort (to show their control of federal property) and the South was like, "Hey, get out of our fort!" The North said no so the South pulled out the big guns (literally) and fired the shot that began the Civil War on April 12, 1861.

I still don't know as much about the Civil War as I should could will. There's quite a bit of Civil War history around these parts (go figure) so I'm sure I'll be picking up and putting together bits and pieces of history while we're here.

Out of the Education Center and onto the ferry...

We had to wait in line for a while. Miriam played around with Grandma and Grandpa:

South Carolina Aquarium

Our first item of business last Thursday was...

Durham–Fayetteville–Charleston

We decided to take a little trip down south and stopped in Fayetteville at the Airborne and Special Operations Museum to get some of our wiggles out. It was a good museum (but not as good as the Marine's Museum in Quantico).