Like Mother's Day in January

"How do you spell heart?" Miriam called from the kitchen table. "H...what? H-O?"

"Not H-O. It's H-E-A..." I tell her.

"But heart. Listen: huh-ah-ah. So, H-O..."

"Sweetie, it's H-E-A, I promise."

"H-O. What's next? Huh-ah-rrrr. R! T! I figured it out!"

She raced over to present this card to me:

I love you because I have a heart.

Talks in Church (and other things)

Yesterday Rachel attended a birthday party for one of her school friends...at the movies?! Is it crazy that I was a little nervous to let her go? I was. I must not be too crazy, though, because the mom of the other little girl who was invited emailed to ask if Rachel was going before she RSVP'd. We decided that if our little girls went together they'd be fine (they're rather good friends with each other...and another little girl who was invited but wasn't able to go). That trio of girls were the only girls invited. The rest of the invitees were a bunch of boys. I knew who all the little boys were. And I know a few of their parents. It was a good little group. But I did feel better knowing there would be another little girl for Rachel to glom onto, even though she's friends with all the little boys, too. 

Anyway, Rachel went to that birthday party; Miriam, Benjamin, and I attended a baptism at our ward building; and Andrew played chauffeur. (He's a good man.)

The baptism was wonderful. I haven't been to a baptism in ages (I think the last baptism I went to was my nephew Malachi's back in 2011). This baptism was beautiful. It was for a lovely grandmother as well as a little girl from our primary (whose mother was baptized last year), and because it was so beautiful we might start attending more baptisms as they come up. We've been missing out.

Sleep Training

It's time to do some gentle sleep training at our house. I came to this decision a couple of days ago when I was still rocking Benjamin to sleep at around 11 PM after he'd been up since around 8 AM and had been up a couple of times in the night, as per his usual.

He's nearly two years old. Children who are nearly two years old shouldn't need to be rocked to sleep (for three hours) anymore, right? I think so. And we really can't have him in bed with us.

Some kids are easy to sleep with. Miriam was one of those kids. She falls asleep and wakes up in the same place. She's fallen off the bed maybe five times in her life. She doesn't kick or toss and turn. She hardly even has to brush her hair in the morning because when she wakes up it's as if she hasn't even lain down.

Rachel hates this because when Rachel wakes up her hair is a complete rat's nest. She thrashes, kicks, tosses, and turns. She used to end up on the floor nightly (it was a brave, brave move to put her on the top bunk but it has a railing so she hasn't ever fallen off (yet)). She knocks things off the dresser and onto the floor. Perhaps worst of all, she talks in her sleep. When she was little we called her "ping-pong baby" because whenever we checked on her she'd be in a different position—a different corner of her crib. She'd always get her limbs tangled in the bars of her crib. She'd bump her head as she shifted positions. She was the saddest little sleeper...but we couldn't sleep with her because sleeping with Mom and Dad didn't seem to settle her down at all.

She was kicked out of our bed quite early in her life. Miriam, on the other hand, slept in our bed nearly 100% of the time until we moved to Utah (when she was eight months old). She'd fall asleep in the crook of my arm (or—get this!—she'd just fall asleep on her own) and wouldn't move the entire night (except to nurse, but only once, and always at 4 AM—her circadian rhythm is clockwork).

Benjamin falls between these two extremes, I think. He certainly isn't a sleep-lover like Miriam, but he's not as bad as I remember Rachel being. I'm not sure if that's because I've changed as a mother (I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to sleep deprivation) or if it's because he really isn't as spastic of a sleeper as Rachel was/is.

At any rate, he's spent most of his nights sleeping in our bed lately and although I enjoy cuddling with him I'm tired (in more than one way) of being punched in the face or kicked in the stomach as he flops around. By the end of the night he's taking up the majority of the bed, leaving Andrew and me clinging to the edge of the bed for dear life. It's time to reclaim our bed. I need to sleep for just a couple of hours in a row (that's all I ask).

Yesterday I took the front rail off of Bejamin's rarely-used crib and turned it into a toddler bed. Part of me was wondering if I was crazy for doing it because this meant there'd be no place to contain him but then I realized that we never used the crib for containment purposes anyway. Benjamin tweaked his screams and squawks until they're the exact pitch and timbre that drives me instantly insane enough that I will do anything to get him to stop. Usually picking him up will do it so I never let him just cry anywhere (because insanity).

Needless to say, the cry-it-out method isn't going to work for us—I can't stand the screeching—so we'll be going with a gentler method.

Both Miriam and Benjamin were excited to play in Benjamin's "new" bed and once the crib front came down and the toddler railing went up I let them play to their hearts' delight, hoping that such happy playtime would help improve Benjamin's relationship with his bed.

More snow stuff

True to their word, the girls got up early and got dressed to play in the snow. They did it so quietly that they didn't even wake up Daddy, who was sleeping on the couch because Benjamin is a major bed hog (seriously—he's a kicker), so when I got up at 8:30 Andrew was still sleeping away (even though he was supposed to be long gone).

I'll admit that it was kind of nice to see him in the morning and to have family prayer all together. This semester isn't too bad as far as his schedule goes (I say right at the beginning of the semester (we'll probably revisit that statement later)) but Tuesdays and Wednesdays are a little rough since he misses bedtime every other Tuesday (and on the days that he doesn't miss bedtime I have primary presidency meetings) and every Wednesday, so we basically don't see each other for 48 hours.

Still, he was feeling rushed. He grabbed a packet of instant oatmeal to take to school for breakfast while I made apple oatmeal for the rest of us (it's tradition, apparently).

The kids were thrilled that the snow had stuck around overnight (that isn't always the case down here).

Snow Business

When I was eight or nine years old our family sat around the Christmas tree opening presents (as families are wont to do on Christmas mornings). My dad tossed me a present from my Auntie Arlene, who was mysterious—she lived all the way in California!—and beautiful and always sent the coolest presents. Everyone watched while I opened the package (since that was part of our tradition) to reveal...a nightgown that was far too big for me with the words There's No Business Like Snow Business trailing across the front. I think there was a dancing snowman and moose on it.

I tried to be so grateful for that nightgown. I remember holding it up with an awkward smile on my face and announcing, "I don't get it..." because I had never seen Annie Get Your Gun (and, actually, I still haven't seen that but I've at least heard enough of it to be familiar with it—twenty years earlier I was completely in the dark about it).

It took us a minute to get everything sorted out. My mom explained to me why the nightgown was funny but we didn't figure out until later that the nightgown was actually for her not me. I had gotten something completely different—I can't even remember what. The gifts had been mislabeled or something.

Twenty years ago, though, I still found snow exciting. We lived on the west coast where snow was rare and fleeting. It meant fun and games, not bitter cold and drudgery. I learned to dislike snow during the five years I spent in Alberta and that dislike carried into the years that I lived in Utah (though winter wasn't quite as cold or long) and continues to this very day.

That's why I'm so glad we live where we do because winters are so mild here that the lack of snow is beginning to rekindle some fondness for the stuff. Instead of seeing the first snow of the season and retreating into a pile of blankets with a book...



...I'm able to face the 'cold' and celebrate the snow with my kids. Or at least with most of my kids. Benjamin wasn't celebrating. In fact, he was quite traumatized by the whole situation. I mean, frozen fluff falling out of the night sky? It's unnatural. And terrifying.

"Why me?!"

The Quarry

It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day (and Rosie's birthday—Happy Birthday, Rosie!) so both Rachel and Andrew had the day off. We had a rather relaxed morning: the girls played in their room, Benjamin followed me around the house while I attacked the mountains of laundry waiting to be washed, and Andrew did some reading for his classes.

At lunch we had a discussion about what today means and what we can do to keep making the world we live in a better place for everyone. We've made some pretty good strides in civil liberty but we're still not perfect.

We filled our afternoon with a hike along The Quarry. We'd heard people talking about this place but had never been. It's a trail to an old rock quarry that was abandoned fifty years ago and has since filled up with water to create a four-acre waterhole. There's no wading into this waterhole—it's sides are sheer rock, jutting down nearly sixty feet deep—but it's become a rather popular place to do some cliff-jumping into the murky waters below.

With our little ones in tow, we weren't interested in cliff jumping (besides—it's January) and our girls were terrified of the prospect. We talked a lot about water safety while we were hiking (Andrew mentioned a time Uncle Matt was hiking in Zion National Park with a scout troop and they found a body of water and wanted to jump in and swim but they didn't know if it was safe or not so Uncle Matt volunteered to assess the situation...by jumping in. Turns out the water was only shin-deep and Uncle Matt broke both of his legs and had to be carried out of the canyon). People have died jumping into this quarry and I know of people who've had tragic accidents bridge-jumping in Alberta (our town had a train bridge that was a popular jumping spot, though it's being dismantled, thanks to damage sustained during the unprecedented flooding this past summer).

Anyway, it's January so the water's far from warm. Also, we're not about to toss our children off a cliff into sixty-foot deep water. We were just there for the hike, which was beautiful.

There were a lot of fallen trees along the way. The girls thought their roots were rather interesting.

Excellent

Rachel's has turned into a little chef lately. She made dinner a couple of times this week (Grandma Quesadillas (which are just regular quesadillas) and German Pancakes) with very little supervision. I helped flip some of the quesadillas and I helped get the pancakes into and out of the oven—but other than that she was on her own.

When we skyped with Grandma last Sunday Grandma was in the middle of making peanut butter cookies. Auntie Emily touched one (which meant she had to eat it). Rachel immediately wanted peanut butter cookies. She asked on Monday if she could make peanut butter cookies for a family night treat (we didn't have time). For her after school snack on Tuesday she spread peanut butter on nilla wafers. On Wednesday I had her skim through Kids Cooking: A Very Slightly Messy Cooking Manual. Thursday she divided her time alternately begging either Andrew or me to teach her how to make cookies. Friday night she wanted to make cookies...but we had a family movie night with popcorn instead.

Saturday morning was all hers. We found a recipe for The Best Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip (Oatmeal) Cookie and Rachel tried it out. She did a great job measuring and mixing. The dough was marvelous. The only thing she needed help with was getting that cookie sheet in and out of the oven. Ovens make her nervous (not that I can blame her).

Rachel was also nervous about burning the cookies. She set the timer on the microwave for ten minutes and then stewed about it the whole time, worried that it beeped without her hearing it. When it did finally beep she'd flip out.

"Mom! Mom! Mom! It beeped! They're done! Get them out of the oven now! Come on! They're going to burn! Quick!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming," I'd say.

"Mom! This is how cookies burn! Come on! Open the oven! Take them out! Quick! Quick!"

To her credit, none of the cookies burned.

I think it's going to be nice having another baker around here. I already signed her up to make cookies for our ward silent auction (the youth are earning money to make a trip to Palmyra). She was game for that but was worried about giving away all the cookies.

"Maybe I can double the recipe," she said. "Or thricel it!"

A thricel batch it is.

My son Ben

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son Ben
Fell asleep on the couch again.
One foot shoe-out, one foot shoe-in,
Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son Ben.

Settled

We just scored a free bookshelf from some friends who are getting ready to move. Considering we filled our existing bookshelves when we moved in and we've had three semesters to acquire books ("tools of the trade," as Andrew calls them, a phrase he stole from Patrick Q. Mason (to think we used to sit around playing Settlers of Catan with this man (now that he's all grown up and has his own wikipedia page, quoting him seems much more fancy))) it goes without saying that our bookshelves were becoming overburdened so we happily claimed the bookshelf when it went up for grabs. Soon it will be filled with books too (Andrew's still hunting down books for this semester).

What's weird about this bookshelf is that it's our second wave of the seasonal friends-moving-away freebies that we've accepted. We've never lived in a place long enough to be at the receiving end of this phenomenon two years in a row. Usually we collect stuff our first year and pitch it the next because in the past we were busy planning either a cross-country or trans-atlantic move every two years (usually also with a newish baby in tow and another degree tucked into our pocket).

We've been here for a year and a half now so I feel like it's time to be house hunting or job searching or filling out applications or pricing moving trucks or buying plane tickets, but I'm not doing any of that. This year we're staying put. It's kind of a funny feeling. I hardly know what to do with myself.

Lookin' sharp

For most of Sunday I was on my own with the kids. Andrew was still out of town but was on his way back. He almost—almost—chose to give up his seat in exchange for a 1st class ticket and a $500 voucher but he didn't because he thought that if he came home at 10 PM rather than 4 PM that I'd go crazy.

He might've been right. But also...free plane ticket!! Oh, well.

I am so happy to have him home. The kids are, too!

Here's Benjamin parading around on the couch wearing his Sunday attire: