Veiled Threats

The kids were outside playing in the afternoon drizzle—we'd even embraced our Scandinavian roots and left the baby sitting on the front porch in her stroller to enjoy the fresh air while watching her siblings play—when the mail truck pulled up. I'm sure that we'll eventually get used to mail being delivered on Sunday (though I really don't think it's necessary) but for now it's just confusing. Why is the mail truck here? Isn't it Sunday? Oh, a package! Right. They do that now.

The mailman handed the package to the children, who ran it into the house.

"It's a package! It's a package!" they chanted excitedly. "Who's it for?"

"The Heisses," Andrew read, when he managed to get the mystery package out of their clutching grasp. "But who is it from?"

"Maybe from Josie. She was sending something, but I think she was ordering from Amazon. That's not an Amazon package, so maybe it's something else."

"It doesn't say," Andrew said, tearing open the envelope.

He turned the envelope over and let the contents fall into his other hand.

"It's a book," he said, staring at the cover in alarm.

"What?" I asked.

He showed me the cover.

"Oh!" I gasped.

The cover read I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You.

Conference Mashup

Not going to lie: Saturday was a bit of a blur. 

The "morning" session for us falls over lunchtime. I fed the kids deceivingly nutritious snacks while we waited for the cinnamon buns Andrew made to finish cooking. I suppose the snacks truly were nutritious (cucumber slices, grape tomatoes, grapes, apple slices, and a peanut-butter/yogurt dip); the deception was that they were the appetizers for the cinnamon buns (which were fabulous, for the record).

Benjamin was completely obnoxious. Andrew and I took turns holding him down to keep him from tormenting his sisters. When we weren't trying reign in all his energy then we were holding Zoë who chose to scream the whole entire day. 

Was it cruel of us to try to force Benjamin to behave? Perhaps. But not really because he had a choice. He could have gone into his room to play and we would not have complained (believe me). He wanted to be where the action was, however, which meant that he couldn't just yell and throw things and punch babies and things like that. 

We're completely unreasonable as parents. I get that.

Zoë screamed the entire two-hour break between conference sessions. I was like, "Will you please do something?! Eat. Sleep. Poop. Just do something to explain the screaming!"

I snapped during Elder Holland's talk, which was beautiful in its own right, but I had just gotten Zoë settled and then Benjamin started acting like a clown again (he pinched her or yelled in her face or something) and she started screaming again and I snapped.

"Yeah, behold your mother!" I said, storming out of the living room.  "Behold your mother walk out of the room!"

Zoë and I took a little time out in the quiet (Benjamin-free) zone behind the locked bedroom door. After a few more minutes of screaming I managed to quiet Zoë down and get her to eat and then to sleep. But I was so upset that I was crying softly to myself while I coaxed her to sleep (keep in mind that Zoë had been screaming for hours by this point). It was comforting to hear Elder Holland's voice drifting through the doorway, "You're doing better than you think you are..."

Tunak, Tunak, Tun!

As we sit, Hurricane Joaquin is knocking on our door. After waiting for it the whole day long, we're finally hearing the first splatters of rain. Our neighbours across the street said we're welcome over there, up on their hill, if the creek gets too feisty in our backyard. I'm sure everything will be fine, though we already sustained some water damage this week.

I was watching a two-year-old boy for a friend this week—Baby Jay—and he opened our new kitchen cabinet (the one that Andrew bought when Zoë was one week old, the day Uncle David arrived to help out (and swore he could put together in the half hour before he had to leave for the airport to pick David up, but he was way wrong and everything was in shambles when David arrived)) and started pulling things out.

He'd spent the whole morning pulling things out, actually. And not just from the kitchen cabinets.

It made me (momentarily) grateful that Benjamin's three and is (mostly) beyond pulling things off shelves for no good reason. Don't get me wrong. He still pulls things down, but usually he'll at least do stuff with what he pulls down. For example, he'll pull books off the shelf to "read." And then he won't put them back, of course, but at least he's reading them and not just tossing them over his shoulder because pulling things off the shelf is such great fun!

Anyway, I was nursing Zoë while Jay was getting into the particular cabinet he was getting into so I sent Rachel over to stop him (hallelujah for having older kids around). She led him away from the cabinet and then started putting stuff—mostly food storage—back in.

"I don't really know what to do with this jug of water," she said.

"Well, it goes back in the cabinet with the other jugs of water," I said.

"Yeah, but, like, it's leaking..." she said.

"Oh, no!" I groaned. "Well, put it in the sink and find a towel. I'll look at it in a minute."

When Zoë was finished I went to see what damage had been done and was sad to learn that the jug had sprung a slow leak awhile ago. The gallon jug was half empty (or half full?) but there really wasn't very much water to mop up. The particleboard shelf—of our beautiful brand new cabinet!—had been thirstily soaking it up and it was now warped...and slightly mouldy.

I was at once frustrated and grateful.

If you carrot all

We won't speak of my attempt at gardening this year. There wasn't much of an attempt to speak of. I couldn't bother with flowers or vegetables; I was busy growing far better things...

Story time

Andrew snapped a few pictures of Zoë's story time last night. We've had a graduated routine of sorts ever since we've had more than one child to cater to. We start with what's interesting to the littlest one first and then work our way up. This means that we start with a board book or two, and then read a few full-length picture books, and then a chapter from a novel...if we have time. Finally, the kids are put to bed for their individual reading time.

Sometimes the biggest kids skip story time altogether in favour of longer individual reading time. *sniff, sniff*

Anyway, here's what our story time looked like yesterday. Zoë and I both get full marks for lifting our torsos during tummy time (go us!) and, I might add, Miriam gets full marks for doing my hair for me (she figured out how to braid a few days ago and has been dying to try out her new skill on a human head so I let her have a go and she did great)!

Hideaway Woods

It's been rainy here lately. Rain for days. And now we have this hurricane approaching, which means more rain. We've been feeling a little cooped up, especially with school out for intercession. We're in each other's hair all the time.

Yesterday—on day two of their break—I printed out a list of activities and told them that if they approached me saying they were bored I would pick an activity for them to do...and they probably wouldn't like it...so they should probably just think of something to do on their own. The list had enjoyable things on it, like "play a board game" or "colour a picture" or "build with LEGO." It also had less enjoyable things on it like "make your bed" or "mop the floor" or "clean the toilet."

This was a very effective tool. We'll see how long it lasts.

Today, though, we had a break from our autumnal deluge. The sky wasn't exactly blue, but it also wasn't dripping, so when we got out of the doctor's office we headed straight for the Museum of Life and Science.

Unfortunately, when I turned down Murray Avenue the street was blocked with police cars. They were just finishing up though, it seemed, so they let me (and a school bus) past. I turned into the extra parking lot and was stopped by an employee who informed me that there was an "emergency situation" and that the museum had been on lockdown but that they were just resolving the situation so I was welcome to park and they'd be reopening the museum in about five minutes.

I parked the car, got out and walked around to Zoë's side of the van and rummaged around for the front carrier. I had just tied it around my waist when the attendant bustled over.

"I've just been informed that the situation is actually not over. You'll need to wait in your car until we get the all clear."

We got back in our van and waited for about ten more minutes and then the attendant came over to tell us that it was officially over and we were free to visit the museum.

I don't know what was going on, but the K-9 unit was there, multiple other police cars, an ambulance. It was kind of crazy. People were pouring out of the museum when we got there—they'd all been on lockdown inside and were sick of being there, I guess. It was relatively unoccupied when we went in, which was surprising since it's only the second day Hideaway Woods was open.

Hideaway Woods was fantastic. We spent the rest of our afternoon there—we didn't visit a single other exhibit. The kids were in heaven. We spent a little while exploring together and then ran into some friends and spent the rest of the afternoon playing (the kids) and visiting (the moms).

These pictures are courtesy of Rachel:

Zoë at four months

I took Zoë in for her well-baby visit today and I took Rachel in for her well-child visit today and I dragged Benjamin and Miriam along with me. The girls were great; Benjamin was a handful. That's just how things are lately.

Zoë seems so big to me but I think that's because my expectations are skewed, having not had a regular-sized baby in my arms for years upon years. Miriam was my baby six years ago. Benjamin was my baby three years ago. It's him I remember when I heft my regular-sized baby and think to myself, "My goodness! She's ginormous!"

While it's true that she's growing beautifully, it's not true that she's ginormous. She's actually not even my biggest baby at four months (that title still belongs to Miriam). She weighed in at 14 lbs. 8.5 oz this afternoon, which is the 53rd percentile. She's a middle-of-the-road kind of girl for height, too, just squeaking past the two-foot mark at 24.8 inches long (58th percentile).

She's doing fine and is just the right size. She simply seems huge because she's following right after Mr. Zeroth Percentile.

Rachel's also the picture of health, though she's probably getting close to the age where she doesn't want me speaking openly about her weight—she's turning into a beautiful young woman. Let's just say that I'm about double her weight but am not, thankfully, double her height. She's 4' 3" tall.

Zoë cooed at the nurse while she prepped the vaccinations that were due today. She made eye contact, smiled, and said, "Ooooh! Oooh! Oooh!"

"I can't do this!" the nurse said.

But she did.

Goodbye Co-sleeper

When Benjamin was five months old we moved him from the little co-sleeper to the bassinet part of the pack'n'play. Zoë's only four months old (which really is the equivalent to his five months because he was premature) and she's in the process of transitioning to the pack'n'play as well. Rolling just isn't compatible to a little sleeper like this.

We took a few pictures today so that we can put it away (sniff, sniff). Here's sweet little Zoë-girl, showing how big she is in her bassinet. Sure, she could still sleep in there easily (and she did during dinner) but she also gets annoyed by it when she's flailing her arms and they keep hitting the side and when she's trying to roll over and can't and so forth, so it's got to go.

General Conference FHE

General Conference is coming up this weekend and I'm pretty excited. I've been listening to conference talks in the morning while I pump and usually I can fill both bottles by the end of one talk. I'm used to this routine and Benjamin is used to this routine, which is nice because I feel like my life gets turned upside-down when a baby is born and it takes me awhile to get back into the swing of things like consistent scripture study.

Before Zoë was born I'd been reading/listening to the scriptures while I did my blood sugar biking. But then she was born and I wasn't about to hop on a bike. Plus there was the new baby to take care of. And then we went on vacation and our schedule got hammered further. So while I'd been reading things here and there, I didn't have a dedicated time to study anything. But now I do.

Sometimes I laugh at myself for listening to conference talks because it's something my Aunt Judy always did and I always thought, "Why does she submit herself to such torture?! Isn't it bad enough to have to sit through conference twice a year?"

And that just shows how immature I was when I was a teenager. But that's okay. I'll give myself license to be an immature teenager because who wasn't? I'm sure I'll look back in fifteen more years and think about how immature I was as a thirty year old. That's just the way life goes.

Anyway, conference is coming up and so I planned a little FHE lesson to review the apostles and we had so much fun with it. I made a little cards and hid them around the house as a scavenger hunt. We started with President Russell M. Nelson, which worked out great because I couldn't think of a clue for his name. He was the card we started with. After we talked about how he's the new president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I shared a few facts from the "Special Witness" cards that were in the September 2014 issue of The Friend and then read the clue for the next apostle on the back of the card.

"This apostle's name grows..." I read.

Everyone stared at me. Crickets chirped. I fretted my game was a bust.

"What grows?" I prompted.

"Ah," Andrew said (at least he got it).

"PLANTS!" Benjamin screamed.

The Olden Days

Andrew suggested we have a family movie night tonight, which meant we needed a living-room-friendly meal. It couldn't be pizza because we had that on Wednesday night with the Elders. It couldn't be chicken nuggets because apparently we're out (that's what Andrew suggested when he got home and I was in the middle of baking cookies instead of making dinner (priorities, people)), so I suggested sandwiches, which was a good idea.

We watched Doctor Who, which was a less good idea.

The girls loved it.

Benjamin stood behind Andrew the whole time, peeking out every now and then to see what was going on. He didn't touch his dinner. And when it was over he said, "I didn't like that."

Anyway, we had sandwiches for dinner. Andrew was leading on the sandwich front while I was either feeding Zoë or working on those cookies (they're for an activity tomorrow and our Saturdays have been so crazy lately and tomorrow's no exception so I knew I wouldn't have time to bake then).

"Everybody needs to make a sandwich!" he called out. "Because we always finish each other's sandwiches."

"That's what I was going to say!" Miriam sang and then everyone sang, "I never met someone who thinks so much like me. Jinx! Jinx again!"

Miriam, still belting out the lyrics at the top of her lungs suddenly forgot all the words. "Our muh-luh-luh-luh-luh-luh," she fudged.

"Our mental synchronization can have but one explanation," I sang for her.