Rachel's Kindergarten Graduation

Rachel "graduated" from kindergarten today. I'm not sure how I feel about making a huge deal over finishing kindergarten, but since there was a huge deal over finishing kindergarten we went to support Rachel. It would have been devastating if we hadn't. After the ceremony we were invited to check our children out and spend the afternoon with them. Rachel's entire class got checked out except for one boy. And...he was devastated. I almost suggested to Rachel that she stay at school just to hang out with him. I felt so bad. And he's the sweetest kid.

Anyway, it was fun to watch her walk across the stage to receive her certificate of advancement but, boy, was that audience ever raucous!

Lately

This morning we were surprised to find a rather large package blocking our doorway. It's not that we were surprised to find a package on our doorstep—because we were, in fact, expecting a package—it's just that we weren't expecting to receive such a large package.

We knew that it was from Grandma and that it was for Benjamin. We just didn't know what it was.

I have to admit that I was a little frightened when I saw the box. Where was I ever going to find a place to fit anything that large?!

I opened it up and saw...nothing but paper.

Kids are so fun

Last night we got some fabulous news: a new baby cousin is on their way! Emily is expecting a baby in January and just had an ultrasound done yesterday to firm up her due date. We're thrilled! After momentarily thinking Emily was announcing that I had another baby in my tummy (those ultrasound pictures all look the same) but then realizing that it would have been ludicrous for Emily and Morgan to be making that kind of announcement, Rachel quickly pieced things together and started jumping up and down, screaming with joy (she wants the new cousin to be a boy and hopes that he'll enjoy Star Wars) so loudly that she scared Benjamin, who started to cry.

Miriam would have joined in the fray except that she was on her deathbed: fever close to 104F, rolled up in a ball, complaining of an aching tummy, an aching head, an aching body.

After speaking with Auntie Em (who, incidentally, is feeling quite similar to Miriam, only on a daily basis for several weeks now) we called Grandma to let her know that the cat was out of the bag. We figured she knew long before us (and she had). We got all our excitement about Auntie Em's baby out of the way and then settled down to tell Grandma what was new...since Sunday, which is when we last spoke with her.

Not a lot happens in two days, so we shared a lot of mundane information.

"I ate the first pea!" Rachel exclaimed loudly.

"No," Miriam objected from the couch.

One Year Stats

Benjamin's 1 year statistics are in:

He's just barely 18 lbs. and is 26.5 inches.

I was thrilled with his numbers but his nutritionist was...not so thrilled.

"He's a good weight for his height," she said. "But when I put him on the chart for his age he's short and underweight. When I adjust for his prematurity his numbers get a little better but he's still short and underweight."

I can't find a calculator right now that will tell me exactly where he stands on the growth chart—it just says that he's "less than the third" percentile. But you know what? He started out at 4 lbs. 13 oz. and 16.5 inches so he's gained over 13 lbs. and 10 inches this past year. That's not too shabby.

Miriam went from 7 lbs. to 19 lbs. and from 18.9 inches to 28 inches. She only gained 12 lbs...and, granted, grew a whole foot. Quite frankly, though, Benjamin doesn't have that much on her. She wasn't a huge one-year-old either.

Rachel was 7 lbs. 7 oz. and 19.5 inches at birth and at one year she was 19 lbs. 12 oz. and 30.5 inches. She was definitely my biggest baby. No contest. She gained just over 12 lbs and grew only eleven inches.

Anyway, the nutritionist pointed out that it's odd that he's super short because I'm pretty tall. I told her that we have short people in our family. I don't know how tall I was at age one but I'm sure I wasn't very tall because Miriam's also short—she's 38 inches right now—and I was only 39 inches at 4 years old (Miriam will probably be about that tall, too). My sister Josie, on the other hand, was super tall as a toddler and preschooler but now that she's full grown she's...short. You just never know how these things are going to pan out.

I was 18 lbs and 12 oz. when I was a year old, so I weighed more than Benjamin but less than the girls.

Seriously, though, I don't know why we're always plopping people on charts as if there's a perfect body out there to achieve. Some people don't fit on the charts.

"You're very, very, very, very, very underweight for your height," the nutritionist pointed out to me.

"I know," I told her. "It's very, very, very, very, very genetic."

I can only take so many comments about my size before I begin to talk back. Besides, we weren't there to talk about my weight but about Benjamin's. I've never registered "properly" on a BMI chart, unless, of course, I happened to be around 36 weeks pregnant. Is it any wonder my children don't register on their curves either? Probably not.

"You do eat though?" the nutritionist asked me. "I mean..."

"Yes. I eat. I eat a lot. I just don't gain weight. Ever. It's not just me. My little brother is well over six feet tall and he only weighs like fifteen pounds more than me. Honestly, we can't gain weight if we try. I know because we do try...and we can't."

Seriously. My mom said that some of her cousins started keeping on baby weight after baby number four. So I've got a couple of kids to go before I stop dipping below my pre-pregnancy weight post-pregnancy.

Rachel, in case you were wondering, is currently 42 lbs and 46 inches. She's always been my middle-of-the-chart child (instead of the very bottom (or below the very bottom) child). She's at the 35th percentile for weight and the 67th for height.

Perhaps one day I'll be able to say something similar about Benjamin—instead of saying "He's a little short for his age," I'll be able to say, "He's doing just fine!"

He is doing just fine...but he's also a little short.

Benjamin's first birthday

We didn't wrap a single present for Benjamin this year and I don't feel guilty a bit. I'm happy to not have a bunch of new baby stuff floating around the house. By the time Rachel was one year old we had filled half a milk crate with toys. Over the past five years those toys have multiplied and we now have toys coming out our ears (almost). Benjamin's perfectly happy with those toys.

Miriam put it upon herself to present Benjamin with wrapped presents. All throughout the day she was wrapping toys in blankets and bringing them to Benjamin so that he could unwrap them. It kept them both happy.

The only "new" thing Benjamin got was a little baby walker. We got it secondhand from our friends, the Alders. Benjamin's the fourth baby to "own" it. And he loves it.

We brought it home from church with us yesterday and I was meaning to put it away, wash it off, and present it to him on his actual birthday (today). Instead what happened was that we walked in the door, Benjamin was immediately propped up against the walker, and he went to town.

Ticked off

This morning Rachel woke up at 6:00 again to do her morning constitutional—throwing up (which is apparently now her morning constitutional). I'll be so happy when this cough goes away.

She crawled into bed with me when she was finished and started begging me to allow her to stay home from school.

"Please, please, please let me stay home from school. I'm still sick. I need to rest. I won't bother you or anything. I won't fight with Miriam. I won't ask to do anything. I'll just rest all day in my bed."

Considering it wasn't even time to get ready for school yet and she was already pestering me, she was off to a bad start to keeping her end of the bargin.

"You're fine," I assured her. "You don't have a fever or runny nose or anything. You've been sick for nearly two weeks. Your cough is only bad in the mornings and as soon as it goes away you want to be up and doing things. You're going to school."

She stayed home on Wednesday and let's just say that things weren't entirely calm at home.

I heard Benjamin stirring, so I went out to get him from his bed so that he could nurse. Instead of bringing him back into my bed I sat on the couch to nurse him (since my spot on the bed was taken up by Rachel). He started greedily gulping down his milk and lazily closed his eyes to drift back to sleep when we were interrupted by Rachel.

She came and plopped down on the couch beside me.

"Please, please, please! I won't bother you, I promise!"

"But you are bothering me. It's not even seven o'clock yet and here you are, pestering me and waking up your brother. If you were really sick then you would go back to bed."

"I'm not that sick!"

"Then you're going to school."

Backyardigans

 Yesterday Rachel didn't go to school because she threw up in the morning, due to coughing. I tried to convince her to go to school, told her she wasn't really sick, but she held her ground. You're not supposed to go to school on the day you throw up, she informed me. She needed to stay home and rest.

So I let her.

She is sick, but just with a cold. Her awesome esophagus is the only reason she throws up all the time; it has little to do with her stomach at all.

This morning we overslept a bit but would have had her ready for school on time, had she not thrown up twice due to coughing. She had been so bored yesterday, though, that she insisted that she wanted to go to school in spite of having vomited twice. Her cough is always the worst in the morning, anyway, so I figured she'd already had the worst of it for the day.

We gave her cough medicine and then I drove her to school, leaving Andrew at home with a just-awake Miriam and a still-sleeping Benjamin. I stayed and volunteered in Rachel's classroom for the morning and she did fine so I let her stay for the afternoon.

Technically, I could have gone to the "Volunteer Tea" that afternoon, but I had to get home to my babies. And I had no desire to go since I know no one else who volunteers at the school so it would have been a real stretch for my introverted spirit to put itself out there and meet new people. I might have made myself go had we been staying at Rachel's school next year but since she's switching schools anyway I had no desire to put myself out there and meet new people.

So I came home and gardened and Andrew cut the extension cord in half when he was trimming the hedges (but he's fine (and it seems to be something that happens a lot)) and he fixed that. He was so proud of himself when he finished. I was pretty impressed, myself.

"I just did my first electric work!" he said proudly once he'd finished putting the cord together.

We used a velcro strap to hold the cord out of the way of the blades while he finished trimming the hedges and it worked out a lot better.

 When Rachel came home from school the girls practiced riding their bikes.

Benjamin in the bath

Last night Benjamin had a bit of a reflux problem shortly after dinner and right before my ride to the primary presidency meeting was due to pick me up. Since he'd just eaten an entire bowl of oatmeal and applesauce he needed a little something more than the regular wipe-down so I threw him in the bathtub.

He had such a fun time exploring that I got to wondering when the last time was that I'd actually given him a bath and...I couldn't remember. Usually he just showers with either Andrew or me. He had so much fun in the bathtub, though, that I might start giving him baths more often.

One man's trash

My friend Kim is moving in just a couple of weeks. We've been borrowing her baby bouncer (for bigger babies) for several months and she's been borrowing our baby bouncer (for littler babies). We're going to have to trade back sometime next week (technically I just have to get hers to her; she's keeping mine until the day they fly out). I'm kind of sad about this because it's been so, so useful!

Today Benjamin joined me outside to do some work in the garden. He wasn't supposed to. He was supposed to be napping but he got woken up (by Miriam who decided to play drums using a metal mixing bowl and butter knives) so I hung some towels up to dry to make a little shade tent for him and he bounced in his bouncer while I worked.

That Benja-boy

T minus one week until my sweet baby boy will celebrate his first birthday.

He has a cold right now (again) so his face is a constantly dripping waterfall of snot/drool and we're getting our best block of sleep after we should be awake for the day. It's been a rough couple of days.

But Andrew's almost over his cold and I think Rachel might be getting over it as well (Miriam and I have so far artfully avoided being contaminated with germs (knock on wood)) so chances are Benjamin will be on the mend soon. And then maybe we'll sleep again.

Oddly enough, Benjamin's odd sleep-cycle hasn't put a damper on his ability to make mischief as it has on my ability to curb it. While I'm walking around like a zombie (in spite of the extra help Andrew's been (working from home so that Benjamin and I can sleep until noon after staying awake until sunrise)) Benjamin's toddling around getting into stuff.

Getting into stuff is Benjamin's new favourite pastime. That's how I know his first birthday is coming up.

While I was busy making dinner, Benjamin decided he was ready for a snack: