Whatchu feedin' me, Willis?

I pureed our little pie pumpkins today. Poor Harry Potter was quite shocked when, channelling my inner Voldemort, I told him he was next...

Rachel made the Harry Potter pumpkin for a school assignment

One small step for man

You might not believe it from the way things look tonight (Benjamin wet the bed and Zoë is sitting on my lap playing with her toes) but we've made some giant leaps around here lately. I know I've "called it" several times before but I think Benjamin's oh-so-close to being fully potty trained. Like, I just did laundry today (after not doing it all weekend) and there was no pile of stinky underwear in the bathroom, which is pretty miraculous.

And as for Zoë, well, she has started sleeping for hours at a time. Literally hours. She'll go between four and six hours before waking up now and it looks like we're finally leaving colic behind because she doesn't often stay up to just scream for the heck of it anymore. We might just survive her babyhood after all!

She's starting to enjoy her exersaucer:

Zoë at 5 months (November 5, 2015)

First foods

The other day Zoë was fussing in her exersaucer but I was busy (I occasionally try to do things like laundry and stuff) so I left her there for a few minutes. When I finished what I was doing I went to pick her up crooning, "What's wrong, baby? Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?"

"No! Don't feed her again!" Benjamin commanded.

"What do you mean 'again?'" I asked. "It's been a few hours since she last ate. She's probably hungry again."

"She's not!" he insisted. "I already fed her!"

"What?!" I asked. "What did you feed her?"

"Paper!" he beamed. "She loves it!"

So the list of random first (non-)foods continues: leaves, wild onion, paper...

Then last night I was eating dinner with Zoë on my lap when she hijacked my fork, quickly diverting it to her mouth rather than mine. She sucked that piece of cantaloupe dry and enjoyed every second of it; she was rather furious when I took it away.

She had a death grip on this fork and did not part with it willingly

BTW

My grandma is dying, my very last grandparent. She has cancer throughout her body and doctors have given her weeks (potentially months) to live. On the whole, I'm rather excited for her. She's been ready to die for a long time. She went downhill fast after my grandpa died. Her memory has gotten so bad and she doesn't seem to enjoy much of anything. Death will be a sweet release. For her, I mean. Not necessarily for us, but for her.

So, I gave this lecture about family history at Relief Society meeting on Thursday.

Look at me using the word "lecture." Really I put some slides up and blathered on and on and on about nothing in particular. Well, family history, specifically personal history, specifically on journalling. Anyway, I spoke briefly about an article in the New York Times about a study done on the relationship between knowing your family history and your overall psychological well-being called The Stories that Bind Us.

On my slide I used the final quote, "The bottom line: if you want a happier family, create, refine and retell the story of your family’s positive moments and your ability to bounce back from the difficult ones." I told about my Hancock side of the family—about how they are really good at creating, refining, and retelling their stories and how it's easy for me to identify as a Hancock even though I never carried that name and my mom never carried that name. It's my grandma's maiden name and hasn't been in the family for three generations now; my children never met my grandma, yet my children know her name. They know they are Hancocks. The Hancocks recorded their narrative so well that it's easy to tell and retell and retell again.

Now that my other grandma is dying, I'm realizing what a big hole there is in family history work. There are few memories posted on my dad's side of the family tree. My mom's side of the tree, on the other hand, has so many "memories" shared by various relatives that it's not even funny.

I suppose it's my job to strengthen that narrative.

Friendly Bloke

Benjamin'd been playing on the playground while I was working the water table and the girls were running, as I mentioned. There were other children playing there, siblings of other children running, and since the fun run lasted a full hour (times two, but some children were only there for one hour or another (though some; like us, were there for the full hour plus time before, between, and after each round of the fun run)) he felt like he got to know these new little friends quite well.

I was cleaning up at the end of the run—picking up discarded cups, taking pictures of classes for teachers, things like that—and he was still playing at the playground with another family that was still sticking around.

When that family started getting packed up to go, the mom was sitting down to put shoes back on her own little boy and Benjamin came up, put his head in her lap, and said, "My mom left. Can I come home with you?"

She pointed to me and told him, "Your mom's right there!"

I didn't see this exchange go down; the mom told me about it before she left. I thought it was hilarious because that's so Benjamin! He probably would have been perfectly happy to go home without me (for a while) but he was also perfectly happy to go home with me, though on the way to our car he fussed about not being allowed to play on the kindergarten playground. I was like, "You just played at the playground for three hours."

"But not that playground," he said.

I rolled my eyes, hefted him into his carseat, and drove home.

We had leftover waffles for lunch and I made the mistake of leaving him at the table with his food while I went to the bathroom. He helped himself to the syrup. All of it.

At least he didn't make too much of a mess.

Fun Run

The girls had their school fun(draiser) run today. I volunteered to work the water table since I knew the girls wanted me to be there to watch them run, anyway. Benjamin had a blast playing on the playground with the other little siblings for three glorious (and mostly unsupervised) hours. Zoë was more than happy to snuggle in the front carrier. And I literally poured water for three hours.

Running children consume a lot of water, or as our super pumped-up fun run hosts called it—H2...O yeah!

The atmosphere was electric with energy. Elementary schools typically are. But then, oh, but then there were the hyperactive hosts calling cheers into their microphones and music blasting over speakers and parents cheering and so forth.

Zoë typically gets sleepy when she's in the front carrier but this morning she was ridiculously sleepy. People kept commenting on what a good sleeper she is and I was thinking, "Dudes—she's totally stress sleeping." She was trying to tune the whole world out; poor dear was completely overstimulated, as was I. We all went home for an afternoon nap when we were finished—including Benjamin.

But anyway...the fun run was...fun.

Crickets come and crickets go

It wasn't raining and nobody was throwing up so we decided to go to the park this morning and on the way home Benjamin begged to "stop by the izzer bank." The river isn't exactly on our way home; in fact, it's a little out of the way. But there's a little stream on the way to the river and in Benjamin's mind this little stream totally counts as a river, lucky for me.

The rest of the trail was extremely muddy and I wasn't really wearing appropriate footwear for a muddy hike. Benjamin wasn't either, really, but I'm boring and old and care about things like that. Benjamin on the other hand, was happy to be wading through the "izzer" wearing his crocs...and socks...

In all honesty we could have skipped the park in favour of throwing rocks into the water all day long because it made this little boy so happy (and a little bit muddy, but mostly just happy).

Grade Three: Just fine

I was putting some finishing touches on my presentation for Relief Society Meeting on Thursday, which included taking some pictures of my old journals. It also included me reading entries to Andrew from my very first journals and laughing until I couldn't talk anymore. And hyperventilating because I'm supposed to talk for fifteen minutes and how am I supposed to do that?!

In my journal from grade two I was blathering on about something and mentioned that I was writing a whole lot and even went so far to accuse myself of being a chatterbox. "You're not," my teacher (Mrs. Matsumoto) had written back. Man, I spent half that year counting down how many pages I had left until I filled the book. It made reading consecutive entries rather humorous.

But then I found my journal from grade three and it's a little less funny. There was a lot of serious stuff that happened this year. I suppose there was some serious stuff that happened the previous years, but I was oblivious to a lot of it.

Mon. Sept. 27th

On Sunday my sister left for albrta. Yesterday she got to my grandma's and grandpa's house. And she gave me her room until she comes back, wich is in December. My brother David said that I got the biggest good-bye present. On Sunday morning she left at five o-clak, so my mom got me up at five o-clak to say good-bye. And now I have three choses to sleep. In my (both) brother's room because they have a bunk bed and they both sleep on the botom bunk. And my sister Abbi's room because she has a bunk bed and in my other sisters room because she gone unil Dec.

And then I talk about big life problems like conflicting birthday parties and football games (I guess we went to one of my cousin's football games?! I have no recollection of this) and how tragic it was that Halloween fell on a Sunday and we couldn't go trick-or-treating because my mom said "thier is getting to much vilins." But, phew, it was okay because we ended up having a ward party at the church where we had supper at 5:00 and stayed up until 8:00 playing games and watching movies.

Mon. Nov. 15th

On Thursday I got a wiggly tooth. And I backed cookies. My big sister had her baby but she gave it up. And the poeple who adopted the baby told my sister a story. She said, "When I found out I could not have a baby I cryed. I said a prayre and asked that sombody might come and vist me and your baby was that girl, only she was a grown up. The frist time I went to go adpet a baby it was not her. The secondt time it was your baby and it was her."

In response my teacher, Mrs. Robertson, wrote, "It must have been hard for your big sister."

I must say, Rachel has better handwriting and spelling than I did when I was her age. Seriously. I was a terrible speller. But I think my teacher let it slide because she thought my family was crazy because wait until you hear this next entry...

(click bait)

Throwing up

Around 5:59 AM, Miriam wandered into our room and whispered, "I just threw up all over my bed!"

She has this nasty habit of keeping a pile of books on the foot of her bed (a habit I scorned just last night as I was tucking her in), so I groaned and said, "On the books?" picturing the worst.

"No. Just on my bed."

Andrew's feeling a little sensitive about his mornings lately (I wonder why...) so he actually beat me out of bed (also I was snuggled up against a sad, sick baby, so I had to untangle myself from her grasp) and immediately started stripping Miriam's bed, which meant I got stuck with the much more favourable task of settling our newest invalid on the couch (and gathering up the last batch of stuff used to clean up Zoë's throw-up).

It seems this stomach bug is going to slowly creep through our household. It's already been a week and a day since Benjamin first got sick. Usually these things spread like wildfire and we're all sick on top of each other.

I'm really not sure which way is better...

 At the rate things are going we could be sick in this house for a month or longer.

That's okay; throw-up laundry is my favourite activity, second only to mopping up puddles of throw up from various household surfaces. 

Blowing out

So, the reason we got up so early this morning was that Zoë threw up all over me and herself and the bed. But did I mention the part where I gasped and swatted at Andrew until he was awake enough to turn on the bedside lamp for me? 

"What's wrong?" he slurred. "Did the baby spit up?"

"Yes," I sighed.

"Do you have a burp cloth?"

"No," I said. "I never have a burp cloth. She doesn't spit up, like ever."

"Huh," he grunted, turning over to go back to sleep. "You should get one then."

Although we have a long-standing pact that nothing he says before he showers counts (because he is a slow waker-upper (and approximately 9 years, 10 months, and 2 weeks ago he called me stupid one morning while I was waking him up (as in "Go away, stupid!"))) I'll admit to feeling a little angry about this response. My excuse will be that my cumulative "forced awakenings" the past few months/years have caused an overall "reduction in positive mood," as well as decreased "feelings of sympathy and friendliness."*

I left the baby screaming beside him and, grumbling a bit (and with baby vomit dripping down my front), made my way to Benjamin's room to grab a wad of burp cloths. I tried to mop up the mess on the bed but it was really messy and Zoë was screaming uncontrollably, so I went out to the living room, closing the bedroom door not-so-softly behind me. Because maturity.