Reverence is more than just quietly sitting

Last week the bishop got up at the end of sacrament meeting and talked about reverence. Upon hearing the words "we have a greater need for reverence in our meetings," Benjamin, who had been perfectly fine (ie. hadn't been terrible) up until that point, had a complete kicking-and-screaming meltdown over something and had to be carried out of the chapel still kicking and screaming. Naturally.

I had been the one to carry Benjamin out, which meant that I missed a lot of what was said about reverence, which is probably fine. Andrew, meanwhile was feeling embarrassed because he was sure the bishop was going to mention something about how fathers should be the ones to take kicking and screaming children out into the halls, allowing the mothers to sit and enjoy the rest of the meeting (or wrangle the children left behind, one or the other) because that was something the bishop of our previous ward liked to say.

Our current bishop said something about how when he and his wife were a young married couple they noticed that one family in particular had a passel of very well behaved children so they invited them over for dinner to ask them for the tricks of their trade. Apparently this family didn't allow children's feet to touch the carpet of the chapel until they were able to conduct themselves reverently, so basically the advice was just that the children had to sit there. And those kids were fine doing that, so good for that family.

I noticed that the bishop's son was nearly sleeping with his head in his mother's lap at this point, so I didn't feel too bad for taking the reverence advice with a grain of salt.

Terrific Six

I was relating to a friend today how Rachel is such a joy to have around...now...but how for the first few years of her life I wasn't sure if we would ever get along. Her infancy and toddler and preschool years were brutal but she's really mellowed out the past couple of years and is actually quite enjoyable to be with. Sometimes I'm still shocked when she comes home from school happy instead of throwing a three hour fit even though it's been about a year since that happened last.

Reading, I think, is her great escape. She often turns to books when she's upset or bored (so is never really bored anymore and never really gets upset). When she was younger she'd build towers or colour to deal with her boiling emotions, but even that wasn't foolproof because you can mess up a tower or drawing. You can't really mess up reading (at least not when you're reading to yourself in your head (reading aloud is a horse of different colour)).

Whatever the cause of her newfound control over her emotions, I'm so grateful for it. And I'm a little bit nervous for the teenage years.

Last night after we finished family scripture study, Rachel piped up and said, "I have a question. When I'm older, like fifteen...or thirteen...or seven...can I read The Book of Mormon by myself?"

"You don't have to wait until you're older!" I said. "You can start reading today if you'd like to!"

This was after she'd read an entire chapter aloud to us, at a very fluent pace and stumbling over very few words. She actually stopped after reading verse fifteen and said, "Okay, Dad, now you take a turn. My mouth is tired!"

School Carnival

Last week was Rachel's school carnival. Her class was in charge of the duck pond and since I'm one of the grade parents for her class that meant that I was in charge of the duck pond, a responsibility that was rather easy, truthfully. I had to coordinate volunteers to help set up and take down as well as solicit donations of prizes from other parents in the class. I used SignUp Genius and within 24 hours every slot had been filled. I was amazed.

Other than that we had to make a poster, and Miriam decorated a shoe box to collect tickets.

"That Family"

After dinner last night we went to the park to get some wiggles out before bedtime. On the way there, the girls were showing me how they could walk backwards, an innocent enough game even if there are no sidewalks in our neighbourhood. Our girls know they're supposed to stay in the gutter.

"Can you run backwards?" Rachel asked, increasing her speed.

"I can," I said, jutting out into the street to avoid a truck that was parked along the curb before breaking into a backward run.

Rachel started laughing and picked up her pace. So there we were, jogging backwards alongside each other when *BANG!* Rachel crashed into the truck. It wasn't like she just bumped into it, either. She rammed into it at top speed. It was a pretty tall truck, too, so she hit her head on its hood. Fortunately, she didn't leave a dent, so she just walked away rubbing the back of her head.

We were all laughing so hard—Rachel almost threw up. I don't know why we didn't see this coming! I had moved out of the way of the truck before I started running, yet I didn't tell Rachel to move. Andrew was watching us run while he pushed Benjamin in the stroller, yet he didn't warn Rachel either. Clearly we need to review the laws of physics.

Monday, Monday...so good to me?

Last night our family home evening lesson was a little chaotic. I woke up with good intentions for the day...kind of. Benjamin had been up screaming for most of the night. He's gotten very vocal lately so when he's upset he screams and when he's not upset he yells (this evening, for example, he happily yelled "Ah-la-la-la-la-la!" at the top of his lungs over and over until he suddenly fell fast asleep).

We've been battling diaper rash so at one point in the night I switched him from cloth to disposable so that I could slather his bum in cream. It helped a little, but he still spent most of the night tossing and turning in terrible discomfort. Still, I figured I could get up, take the kids for a walk in the cool morning air, do some laundry, make a plan for dinner, and so on.

Instead, I woke up, took Benjamin to the bathroom and panicked because it appeared he was peeing blood. I spent over an hour on hold, waiting to speak to a nurse, receptionist, anybody! When I finally did make an appointment it was only fifteen minutes from the time it was currently. I frantically threw a diaper bag together and dashed out of the house with the kids.

Miriam may or may not have been wearing a pink dress with blue flowers, a red skirt with white polka dots, and a pink belly dancing scarf. Whatever.

Science-y Stuff

Last night Andrew and I were cleaning the kitchen when he remembered that he had to teach the Elder's Quorum lesson this Sunday. He excused himself, saying he was going to go read through the lesson. The kitchen was almost clean (enough) so I didn't mind him leaving and was rather surprised when he ran back into the kitchen moments later.

"We're going to want to go outside in a few minutes," he said.

I was also rather surprised to hear him say this because we had just been joking about being too chicken to brave the spiders/bats/creatures in the dark to take the garbage out. Now all of a sudden he's pulling on a sweater (to ward off mosquitoes, not cold) and urging me to find my shoes.

"They're launching a rocket from Virginia to the moon right now and we are within the view zone!" he excitedly explained.

With his iPod (acting as a compass) and his iPad (acting as a television), we went out on the back deck, positioned ourselves to the NE and counted down with NASA. Once the Minataur V had liftoff we had 120 seconds before we'd be able to see it, so we waited for a while, scanning the sky, before decided that either our chimney or trees would be in the way and that we'd probably have better luck out in the street.

With 40 seconds on the countdown, we ran through the house and braved the walk under the trees where orb spiders are prone to string their gigantic webs (I made Andrew go first).

We stood in the street together, blocking the streetlight with our hands, staring up at the sky.

We weren't really sure of what we'd see, or if we'd even see anything, and were just about ready to give up when we heard a zoom and saw the rocket streak across the sky. We only saw it for a split second, but it was rather amazing, even phenomenal.

Andrew used the word phenomenon at the dinner table the other night and the girls had no idea what it meant.

"What's a phenomenon?" Rachel asked.

Clever kids

Scary-bug season is still going strong here so we haven't been spending as much time outside as I'd like, but soon Rachel will be on fall break and I'm sure we'll venture outside much more often since she's determined to ride her bike.

Miriam loves staying indoors since she dislikes bugs so much. Today she went on a nighttime ride with Benjamin in his bedroom; she closed the blinds and turned off the light so it would be "dark" in his room. We're reading The Horse and His Boy right now so she's been spending a lot of time sneaking into Benjamin's room to ride through Calormen on his rocking horse. She's very nice about giving it back to him when he wants it since she has her own teeter-totter (though she finds its lack of  equine anatomy slightly disappointing).

Keeping busy

It seems like all of Miriam's little friends are in preschool, but Miriam's not in preschool and I'm not sure she'll ever go. I'm entirely okay with that because she's quite pleasant company at home, seems to play well with others, listens to her teachers at church, etc. I don't think starting kindergarten will be a huge leap for her when she gets there...in two years.

She does, however, insist on "homeschooling," though I have no set curriculum or schedule or routine or anything. We're pretty relaxed about the whole thing, doing "lessons" whenever we both agree it's a good time. Today she wanted to do some math, so we pulled out the dominoes and she counted up all the dots and sorted them from 1 to 12. We practiced saying equations like 5 + 1 = 6.

Long Distance Relationships

One of the earliest interactive games you can play with a baby is making faces. Babies love to mimic adults, so you stick your tongue out and the baby sticks their tongue out, then you stick your tongue out and the baby sticks its tongue out, repeat ad infinitum. I love that game and babies usually start it pretty early—sometimes by a month old.

Benjamin, however, was tongue-tied as an infant. I stuck my tongue out at that boy until I was blue in the face but he never once returned the favour. It was obvious why he wouldn't when my mom pointed out he was completely tongue-tied. We had his frenulum clipped shortly before we moved out here (the day we loaded up the moving van, actually), but up until this week I had never seen him stick out his tongue, so tongue-sticking-out is a new, exciting, and rather hilarious game at our house right now!

It's not unusual to hear Benjamin humming, "Mmmmmm!" while he's slapping my legs. When I look down, he'll be looking up at me with his little tongue poking out and he'll keep on mmmmm-ing at me until I stick my tongue out, too.

Last night we were playing this game before bed.

Ukuleles and Trading Tables

Last night our home teacher stopped by, laden with ukuleles. He brought one "for each of the girls;" he was just passing them out like candy! He helped us tune them up and then showed us a little ukulele magic. He wants to have a ukulele choir of sorts in the ward so has given ukuleles to our family as well as a couple others in the ward that he home teaches (he would have brought one for Andrew, but assumed he'd be busy; and Benjamin he figured was a little young (though he mentioned something about an appropriate instrument for him at some time down the road)).

Our home teacher is the nicest man.

I've been looking at ukulele everything since I'm about as novice as they come. I've been here, here, here, here, here, and several other places online—are there any other good sites my ukulele-playing contacts know of? (Josie?) Eventually he'd like us to get together to play hymns and things but for now, this is about right up my alley.

With all the musical excitement in our house last night it was somewhat difficult to get to bed, as you can imagine. Then Benjamin was up fussing for who knows how long in the middle of the night. Rachel got up at some point and turned the hall light on but she went right back to bed so I didn't check on her.

She was the first one out of bed in the morning and she turned a show on for herself. I was busy with Benjamin when we heard her jump off the couch, pause her show, and run to the bathroom. Andrew jumped out of bed when he heard the gagging, heaving, and eventual splatter of vomit (most of which ended up in the toilet—hooray for older children). He helped her get cleaned up and then she climbed back into bed.

Miriam, meanwhile, had been woken up by the morning's commotion. She and I met in the living room where she noticed that a television show had been paused. Quite generously, Miriam asked, "Can I keep watching this show for Rachel? Like, I will watch it for her."

Sadly, the answer was no. We had places to go and things to do and had to start getting ready for the day.