Monday is over. Whoopee.

Today was one of those days that made me question whether I'll survive this parenting gig. My kids have me completely outnumbered. Let me give you a rundown of my day:

2 AM: Feed the baby
3 AM: Feed the baby
4 AM: Feed the baby
5 AM: Feed the baby
6 AM: Hear a clunk and retrieve the baby from the floor where he fell after you fell asleep...feeding him. He's teething and is so miserable.
7 AM: Nurse the baby to sleep
8 AM: Get up and have a shower with the baby
9 AM: Clean up poop from the floor (his first time pooping on the floor)
10 AM: Finally sit down for breakfast with the kids
11 AM: Finish up the family newsletter
12 PM: Start getting lunch ready for the kids
1 PM: Nap time! Turn on a show for the girls, fall asleep within second of head hitting pillow
2 PM: Start some laundry
4 PM: Try to motivate girls to do some chores
5 PM: Settle on boxed macaroni and cheese for dinner
6 PM: Andrew comes home and makes dinner
7 PM: Family Home Evening
8 PM: Put girls to bed
9 PM: Put Benjamin to bed

It doesn't look too bad written out like that, but I left out the number of fights I mediated (because it wasn't possible to count the number of fights the girls had today) and how many hours Benjamin spent alternately screaming and nursing (he was terrible today). When he wasn't screaming or nursing he was getting into stuff. At one point in the day he decided to see what kind of sounds different bowls made when he dropped them on the floor (or something). Metal mixing bowls are a particular favourite of his to drop on the floor, as are the little melamine dishes Karen gave us when we moved.

I can't tell you how many times I have tried to convince Benjamin that dropping bowls on the floor is not a good activity. He's persistent. And a little...stubborn.

Today when I told him to "stop! throwing! those! dishes!" he looked at me with fire in his eyes, lifted a bowl above his head, and then sent it crashing to the floor.

Conference weekend

2 hours of Saturday morning session
2 hours of Saturday afternoon session
2 hours of Priesthood session
2 hours of Sunday morning session
2 hours of Sunday afternoon session

That's 10 hours of church in one spirit-packed weekend but I wouldn't change it for the world! Conference was wonderful!

I didn't prepare any activities for my kids to do (though I did print off bingo sheets for them on Saturday afternoon) and they were good, anyway. Rachel took notes in her journal, Miriam quietly built towers on the kitchen table or brushed (and brushed and brushed and brushed) my hair. Once Benjamin figured out that we weren't skyping with all the General Authorities, and that they weren'g going to wave back to him even if he waved until his arm fell of, he wandered around the house like a feral child. All in all, they were pretty well behaved. I can't remember whose talk it was, but someone mentioned something about not underestimating the ability of our children to grasp these spiritual concepts. As I looked at my children behaving possibly better than they typically behave at church, I had to nod my head in agreement.

That's not to say things were perfect all the time—by Sunday afternoon our ability to sit still and listen had deteriorated quite dramatically—but the kids were really quite well behaved.

Here we are, twirling some stacking cups on our fingers. Benjamin passed them out to everyone and prompted us to do so. He's got quite a commanding personality. People can't help but obey him. It's his smile, I think.

Dating

On Friday night we left our children in the care of our friends while we went to the temple. We never leave our kids with babysitters so they were really excited about this, though they didn't quite know how to call it. Miriam said she was excited for the Farneses to come "watch over" her. 

I was so worried that Benjamin would scream the entire time we were gone, but he apparently behaved marvelously (which is more than I can say about his behaviour today). 

We had a bit of trouble pinning down a weekend and kept changing dates on the Farneses, but they were so accommodating and even told us to go out afterwards (we went to Cici's Pizza—classy, I know), which was lovely. Andrew and I haven't been out together, alone, since.... Wow. I frankly can't remember. I know we went to the temple in April when Karen came to watch the girls while I was in Utah (obviously we went before I'd left) and we've done plenty of things together as a family. I really think our last "date" was the time we went to Kneaders for breakfast either right before or right after visiting Benjamin in the NICU. The last date we went on before that was when Auntie Emily babysat for us when we went to Arabian Nights at BYU, just a day or two before Benjamin was born. 

So, that about sums up our out-of-the-house dating for the past two years. Fortunately, we have plenty of board games and movies and neither of us minds staying in most of the time. Still, it was nice to go out for a change. 

Our temple trip was lovely, even if we didn't make it there in time for our session (we got stuck in traffic). Instead we did sealings, which was just as nice. 

The kids had a blast with the Farneses and now that I know Benjamin can handle being separated from me (and I know that I can handle being separated from him) for that long we'll have to try going out more often. To that end, I recently entered a babysitting swap with a friend (who has two girls and a boy who are just about the same ages as our two girls and boy). We'll see how it goes!

Museum Day

Last Friday Andrew took his scooter in for a tune-up because it was having some motor issues that we didn't know how to deal with. Motors are much more intimidating than the "add-ons" that we've fixed ourselves when our van has had issues. Because he had no scooter he took the van to school, which meant that the kids and I were stuck at home, which was fine—we just went to the park, rode our bikes, cleaned the house, that sort of thing—but by Wednesday (when we finally got the van back) the kids were anxious to "do something fun!"

We went to the Museum of Life and Science and...had fun.

They had a big room full of cardboard boxes and little fasteners and the kids were allowed to just create. My girls were a little nervous about creating but they did eventually dig in and each made a sign to put in the room with their name on it.

Progression

Last year, Rachel wrote this in her journal:

Bikes and Snow Cones

One of our family goals this year was to "make the shed awesome." We did that on Saturday (and it was quite the project) and now we can walk into the shed and get our bikes out and everything (because before everything was just shoved on top of everything else in a big jumble). So today I pulled out my bike and the bike trailer (and pumped up all the tires) and we all rode to the park together. Rachel still doesn't have the pedals on her bike but she's learned how to balance on her bike quite well.

I was terribly sweaty by the time we got there. I kind of wished the pool was open, but because it's October now it wasn't. Just look at how sweaty Benjamin and Miriam are—and they weren't even pedaling!

What's in a name?

My grandma never really liked her given name. In fact, she disliked it so passionately that she went by her middle name, Pearl, for her entire life. I'm not sure when that decision was made but it must have been made early on because her report cards from grade school are made out to Pearl.

Her mother and father both went by their middle names (Ed and May, as opposed to Charles and Celia, respectively), though their children seem to mostly have gone by their given names or their given and middle names in succession (Loren, Alma, Royal, Edna, Earl, Lillis, Zilpha, Leo, Mary Beth, Celia, and Ila June) except for my grandma—Zetta Pearl. Like her parents, she went by her middle name.

Grandma found her first name to be ghastly, which is interesting because I share her middle name and always found it to be...ghastly.

I'm sorry, but it's like Earl with a P in front. Clearly since my great-grandparents had both an Earl and a Pearl they did not share my sentiment about that name and I will admit that the name has grown on me since then (Pearl, not Earl—I still feel the same way about Earl). Part of the reason I like the name Pearl now is because I love my grandma so much. A lot of it also probably has to do with the fact that I'm stuck with the name so I might as well enjoy it.

Pictures from this week

Benjamin started wearing underwear on Sunday. That's the big news around here. Unfortunately I can only find one pair of the tiny kind—the others are in a box in the attic, I'm sure. The question is...which box?

Procrastination is hereditary

I'm in charge of the family newsletter for my great-grandparents' progeny (which is nearly innumerable by this time). One of their twelve children had nine children and betwixt those nine children were born approximately one hundred children. One of the nine grandchildren contributed thirteen of those great-grandchildren and she now boasts 52 grandchildren of her own (with four more on the way—and not even all her children are married (or even graduated from high school) yet).

That's just the offspring of one of the nine grandchildren from one of the twelve children of my great-grandparents. So you see, it really is a large undertaking.

Unfortunately we seem to all have inherited the trait of waiting until the last minute to submit things and so I find myself nervously checking my email several times a day and, when nothing exciting is in my inbox, sending out nagging reminder emails. I worry that the newsletter will be short and disappointing. But then, at about this time in the month—you know, three or four days before the "deadline"—I start getting flooded with submissions. I have received six submissions already and I'll write one, of course, but hopefully I'll get a few more because seven out of how ever many hundred relatives isn't a very good "turn out," if you ask me. So...all aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, parents, etc. who read this blog: consider this your formal shout out.

I actually had one relative send me a three word message: nothing to report.

Nothing to report?! It's been six months since the last newsletter. How could there be nothing to report?

In the past six months, Benjamin has learned to walk, Miriam's been plowing through her reading lessons in a valiant effort to catch up with Rachel, who has been devouring literature with an insatiable appetite. Rachel also learned to swim, learned to pump a swing, and started grade one. Andrew started his last year of classes. We've been to the beach multiple times, took a trip to Florida with Andrew's, and went camping. That's just a nutshell of the past six months. I could go on (and probably will go on, in more detail, for the newsletter).

With that said, I should probably start getting the newsletter ready because I'm expecting a huge influx of news to come in soon...

Service, Love, Faith, and Miracles

For family home evening yesterday we played the game we sort of played in primary on Sunday. We only sort of played the game because we were running short on time and wanted to be sure we got to the more important part of the lesson. The game helped the children think about ways they could serve others and Sister B. kind of rushed us through it so that when we finished we could do an act of service.

Sister A., our sweet primary president, had a baby at the beginning of the month. He was born overdue and at 8 lbs. 10 oz. was the picture of health. They came home for about a week and basked in that new-baby glow. But then things went downhill.

The baby stopped eating. The baby stopped waking up.

At first they thought he was just a sleepy baby and considered it a blessing—after all, they had two other children to worry about and newborns can be quite exhausting—but soon it became quite worrisome so in the early morning hours on Thursday, they left the older children in Grandma's care and headed to the hospital where, to their surprise, they were immediately admitted.

Soon the baby was diagnosed with HSV. His liver was threatening to shut down. He was dying.