Very Saturday

6:30 is too early to wake up on a Saturday morning, but wake up we so we could go clean the church. Our kids weren't too happy about waking up early on a Saturday but they were quite excited to clean the church. In fact, "cleaning the bathrooms at the church" was what Miriam and Benjamin both declared was their very favourite part of the day.

We cleaned the church from 8:00 until 9:40 and then we started setting up for Trading Tables. We didn't quite have the tables and signs up when people started showing up, but everyone who showed up pitched in to help and we got things done.

I felt like this was a pretty busy Trading Tables for us:

A bit about the littles

I got down the next bigger box of Zoë's clothes down from the attic this weekend and found a bunch of gems we almost weren't able to use (I forgot that the 3M label doesn't always mean "wear me at three months," because sometimes it means "wear me until three months").

Luckily, she was able to try on this cute outfit Grandma got for Miriam:

What are you eating up dog?

Sorry so truncated. I just thought I'd throw this down before scriptures and prayer. We were all dying with laughter during dinner. Also, sometimes we have meaningful conversations, too. Just not tonight.

Andrew: Does it smell like 'up-dog' in here?
Rachel: Ummmm...under where?
Andrew: No. I said, 'Does it smell like 'up-dog' in here?'
Rachel: Ummmm...no.
Me: Here, do it to me.
Andrew: Does it smell like 'up-dog' in here?
Me: What's 'up-dog?' See how that's the logical question. Under where. Pffft.
Andrew: Okay. Does it smell like 'up-dog' in here?
Rachel: What's up dog?
Andrew: Hahaha. Got you.
Me: No! You're supposed to say, "Nothing. What's up with you?" Come on, Dwight!
Andrew: Oh, no! Hahaha! I can't believe I did that, but you know what? The first time I heard the underwear joke was in the Barenaked Ladies song.
Rachel (scandalized): The WHAT?!
Me: The Barenaked Ladies. They're a great group.
Rachel: Bare. Naked. Ladies?
Me: They're Canadian.
Rachel: Well, of course they are.
Me (singing): We could hide out under there.
Andrew (giggling): Under where?
Me (singing): I just made you say underwear.
Rachel: You really haven't heard that before? It's been going around the school for ages.
Andrew: Yeah, I've heard it before...just not before that song.
Me: How did you get through childhood without ever hearing that? That was my life.
Andrew: I'm the oldest child.
Me: How did you not pick up on it so you could tease your siblings?
Andrew: Because I'm nice?
Me: My brothers and sisters would tease me with that joke all the time! Hey, Miriam...
Miriam: *looks up*
Me: What are you eating under there?
Miriam (confused): Under where.
Andrew (laughing (until crying)): Bahahahaa! That's even better! Eating your underwear!
Miriam: Hey, Dad! What's up dog?
Everyone: *laughs*
Miriam: No! I mean... Dad—what are you eating over there.
A: Over where?
Miriam: No! I mean... Hey, Mom! What are you eating?
Me: A quesadilla.
Miriam: No! I mean... Why can't I say it?!

But seriously how had he never heard the "eating your underwear" joke until this evening at dinner. HOW?!

And later during scriptures...

Me: Benjamin, what are you eating under there?
Benjamin: I'm eating mine unda-wears!

Why I pump

I got a letter from the milk bank inviting me to share my story so I spent the morning writing up a short story, just over 500 words, which I thought would be fine because the form had a 2000 word count limit. Most stories seemed to be on the short side, though, so I tried to keep mine short as well, and then I noticed that it actually said 2000 character limit! 

I took a hacksaw to my story and cut it way down but when I tried pasting into the form a window popped up telling me that it was actually a 1000 character limit so I had to cut my story in half once again. How do you tell a complete story with only 1000 characters (that includes spaces!)?

My submission ended up being 182 words:

Our little girl was born healthy and right on time—such a relief after the difficult pregnancy I’d had. We were discharged together, which was elating; but I couldn't help reflecting on the birth of her brother. He came 2 months early & spent 5 weeks in the NICU. 

I thought of the families we'd met in the NICU, of the tears shed in the pump room by mothers struggling to produce enough milk (an experience I'm grateful to have avoided), and of the sweet preemies, helpless and fragile, but so full of fight. 

I wanted—and needed—to help those babies! I was excited to find a non-profit milk bank (I donated 15 gallons from our premie to a for-profit milk bank). My littlest one is now 4 months old and I've donated 14 gallons of milk, and plan to continue donating as long as I can. 

I've always wanted a large family but my recent pregnancies have me convinced that will never be, so I love knowing that I'm helping other children and families. I'm a mother to few, but a milk-mother to many.

Andrew said that I should post the long version, too, so here's that:

Bleeding heart

Trading Tables is next week and I've already got five garbage bags full of stuff to get rid of. Five!

That's what living in a house for three full years will do for you. I'm going through cupboards and closets and drawers and saying to myself, "Self, we haven't used this ever in this house. It's been sitting here for three years taking up space." And into the giveaway bag it goes.

I saw a post on Facebook last night about a charity accepting baby slings and carriers to send to Greece to help outfit Syrian refugees. I'd put two baby carriers in the giveaway bag. I love wearing my babies, but after eight years of baby wearing I've certainly developed "favourite" carriers so I decided to ditch the ones I never use anymore. They're in the Trading Tables bag but I thought I'd dig them out to send to Greece (actually to Colorado where another person would send them to Greece (international shipping is quite expensive)).

But then a friend—who I met in Egypt but who now lives in Jordan—hopped on and said, "Just send them to me and I'll take them directly to the Syrian refugee camps here!"

So that's what I'm going to do (since I can ship to her without paying international shipping prices).

And, frankly, Jordan's dear to my heart and they've taken in so many refugees (1 in 13 people in Jordan is a Syrian refugee (when we were living there I feel like there were more Iraqi refugees)); they could use the help.

We won't speak about how Israel is building a fence to keep refugees out, but I will say that I just finished reading Rose Under Fire and, wow. It was no Hogan's Heroes, I'll tell you that much. Of course, Hogan's Heroes was about life in a POW camp (and was a comedy) and Rose Under Fire is about life in a concentration camp (and was anything but a comedy).

Finishing that book and then reading Netanyahu's little blurb about being unable to take in refugees made me smirk and think, "Nice."

Israel's gross domestic product is $36,051 per capita, nearly seven times the GDP of Jordan ($5,214), and yet Jordan can help with refugees and Israel can't?!

Ahem.

Anyway.

Miriam was so sweet today when I was talking about this—the war in Syria, etc—with the kids.

She immediately started ticking off extra sleeping spaces on her fingers.

"We have the single air mattress," she said. "And the double air mattress. That's three. Then I guess someone could sleep on the couch. So we could take three, maybe four, refugees!"

Labour Day Hike

I was going to take the kids hiking on my own today, at least that was the plan but Miriam had this list of fourteen "Monday Chores" she wanted to get done and who can argue with that. We started out the morning making beds, unloading the dishwasher, and picking up sticks in the yard.

Zoë decided she was starving so I skipped most of the stick picking up so that I could feed her, but I told the kids to leave the poison ivy alone while I was feeding the baby, and that I would take care of it when I came back out. Most of our poison ivy is in the back-back yard—behind the fence and in the woods—but we'll occasionally get sprigs of it popping up in the front yard (thanks a lot berry-eating birds for pooping poison ivy seeds in our yard) and I recently noticed a young ivy plant by our front walkway.

I came outside from feeding Zoë, armed with plastic grocery bags, ready to dispose of the plant myself, and was horrified when I looked down to see poison ivy leaves scattered across the front walk.

"Who did this?!" I asked.

"I did," Rachel said.

"What were you thinking?!" I asked. "There's poison ivy everywhere! This is going to be fifty times harder to clean up than if I could've just yanked one poison ivy plant out of the ground!"

"I was trying to take care of it," she said.

"How?" I asked. "Did you touch it? You didn't touch it, did you? Did anybody touch it?"

Rachel shook her head. "I just whacked it with a stick," she said.

"Gah!" I said. "Rachel! I said not to touch it—that meant at all! The oils in the plant leak out when it is disturbed. Now there are oils on the stick and who knows where else!"

She was pretty sullen about it. I got more plastic bags to use for gloves to pick up the leaves and pull the plant out of the ground. I hope I got everything. And I hope no oil got on anyone. So far, so good. I guess we'll see how everyone's looking in the morning.

We still weren't very far into our stick-picking-up project when Alexa came over to play with the kids, so I let them play. It's their holiday, after all, and goodness knows it's easier for me when Alexa's entertaining them all. Alexa is eleven (and is probably one of my favourite people in the world because she comes over to play with my kids). They played "chalk house" for a few hours before coming in for lunch ("chalk house" is where they draw a bird's-eye view of a house (like a blueprint, I guess) all over the street and then designate rooms for this and that—the library, the family room, the kitchen, bedrooms, and so forth—and then decorate each space with furniture and then play house...in the middle of the street...because that's safe (good thing we live on a cul-de-sac)).

After a while I called them in for lunch. And then Zoë was having such a good nap that I decided to have a nap, too, so the kids turned on Robin Hood and watched that, and drew pictures of the characters, and played sword fighting all at the same time. It wasn't exactly a quiet nap time but I think I fell asleep for about twenty minutes in spite of it all.

Here's one of Miriam's pictures:

Robin Hood and Maid Marian in front, Little John in the back

Ackland (not New Zealand) and Gimghoul Castle (not haunted)

Our original Labour Day weekend plan was to go hiking but by the time we were ready to go a big thunderstorm was looming overhead so we scratched that plan and went to UNC's Ackland Art Museum and had a great time there.

This little piece is an indoor version of "The Unsung Founders," both by Do-ho Suh. Both represent the work of enslaved people in building up the Carolinas. For the indoor exhibit he designed little plastic figurines that he had a toy company manufacture. They're all working together to hold up the plexiglass floor the kids are standing on. It was amazing to see (and shameful to think about what inspired it).

Benjamin bit me! (And that really hurt...and it's still hurting)

Today wasn't all terrible but it was an incredibly frustrating day and I was ready to throw the towel in by dinner time. It was so bad that I eventually shut Benjamin in his bedroom and told him he had to sit there until Daddy got home. And then I messaged Andrew to tell him so. So he decided to come home, which was fair enough since I messaged him at 4:57 PM.

I'll let Miriam fill you in on a few details:

How Miriam got to grade one

I started worrying about Miriam starting kindergarten years ago. She's got a fall birthday, which meant she missed the kindergarten cutoff last year. And I knew in advance that she would miss it so I started worrying about it before then. Because worrying is one of my talents.

We considered getting her tested for "early entrance" to kindergarten but that testing would have had to come out of our own pocket and it wasn't cheap, so instead we kept her home, doing her own thing, and going to Miss Annie's preschool one morning a week for fun. She hated knowing that all her little friends were off to kindergarten and she was stuck at home, though I think we enjoyed each other's company for that "extra" year.

When she started kindergarten this year she was just so excited to go to school but I could see within a few days that her passion was being stifled. She'd say things like, "Kindergarteners don't write," or, "I don't have to read chapter books because kindergarteners can't," and things like that, which drove me a little crazy because of course they can! If you're in kindergarten and you can do those things then kindergarteners can. There aren't any rules about stuff like that.

I don't think it was coming from the teacher, really, but from the students.

Anyway, the girls were in soccer last spring and so was one of Rachel's friends from grade one, who I knew had been moved up from kindergarten. I spoke with his mom about how that worked for them, but she openly discouraged me from trying when she found out Miriam wasn't at an all-day, prestigious preschool (because apparently prestigious preschools exist). I had a few other people try to dissuade me (a friend who's a kindergarten teacher and thinks that foundation is invaluable) but almost everyone who knows Miriam at all was super supportive.

Rachel's grade one teacher came to her baptism, which happened to be on the second day of school, so I spoke with him about it and he said to go for it, with one condition—that Miriam come to his class. That, really, was certainly one of our biggest wishes because Rachel had had such a positive year in his classroom, and Miriam had spent so much time there as well that she knew the environment and everything, but I really had no control over what classroom she'd be assigned to.

So, that week I sent an email to Miriam's teacher asking if we could have Miriam accelerated to grade one. She forwarded it to the principal who forwarded it to the AIG (Academic and Intellectually Gifted...or something) coordinator, who each wrote back to me to explain that their AIG programs would be integrated in the classrooms this year (they used to pull students to do enrichment activities and now they're doing a "differentiated model," so the teachers will have students of different levels working on different projects but no one will really know if they're AIG or not (which I like better to tell the truth)) and that perhaps that would put my mind at rest.

I insisted I still wanted her to be tested, so they said they would.

Baptism talk preview

The children's sacrament meeting presentation is coming up and Rachel was asked to write a talk about baptism. This evening she came up with a draft. We'll be bulking some parts up (it needs to be about twice as long) and softening some other parts (because sometimes you need to just leave it at the polite way of saying things):

Hi, I'm Rachel Heiss and I was asked to give a talk on why I was baptized. I got baptized because I knew it is a commandment from Heavenly Father and, Jesus was baptized, so if it's that important I thought I should get baptized too. A scripture says "if men ye are not born of water and of the spirit, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." That is just, in a polite way, saying: If you are not baptized then you cannot go to heaven. I DO want to go to heaven so I did.

I bear my testimonie that getting baptized was a good choice and that you should do it too!

In the name...etc.

There's so much about this talk this is just great.

Andrew started smiling when he noticed she erased "men" and replaced it with "ye." She's our little feminist.

I couldn't help but smile at "just, in a polite way, saying..."

On the whole a fabulous first draft, I'll say.