Weekend blogger

I seem to have become a weekend blogger lately and I suppose that's because there's not much to tell. We've been passing around a sickness and have been stuck at home doing not much at all. I'm bored out of my mind but until we stop coughing I don't think we'll be going much of anywhere.

Benjamin and Zoë are keeping me plenty busy at home both day and night. It seems like I go to bed frazzled from the day and wake up in the morning frazzled from the night.

Benjamin's been enjoying Sunbeams. He had a timeout in his classroom during sacrament meeting on Sunday (he was misbehaving, apparently) and he wrote his name on the chalkboard in big letters (once he was out of timeout) for Andrew. BEW.

He's never quite sure when to stop writing up-and-down lines for the N. Sometimes his name turns out BEN. Sometimes BEW. And sometimes BEWWWWWWWW.

Twinners

Last night my friend Laura emailed to ask if Miriam would wear her dress that matches Carolina's. Carolina had been growing and her days of wearing that particular dress were numbered. I responded saying that I would suggest it to Miriam—and that she'd probably take me up on the suggestion since she's wanted to coordinate dress-wearing with Carolina since she first picked up the dress at Trading Tables (about two years ago) and then saw Carolina wear the same dress a few weeks later.

Every time Carolina wore her dress (and Miriam hadn't) Miriam would whisper to me about how cool it would be if she had worn her dress, too. Evidently the same whisperings were going on in Carolina's pew.

So this morning Miriam put on her dress and, lo! Her days of wearing this particular dress are also numbered. It's a good thing we got them coordinated today because I'm not sure either of them will be found in these dresses ever again!

Miriam (6) and Carolina (9)

Miriam's dress doesn't look too short here, but let's just say it was a very good thing she was wearing thick tights! It was fun for the girls to feel special and be all matchy-matchy at least once!

(Also, apparently Carolina's little sister had pink eye last week, so that's apparently making the rounds which might explain Zoë's eyes this morning).

No church for Zoë

Zoë and I are staying home from church this morning, because reasons.

Swinging, swinging, swinging...

We have a swing set in our backyard but the kids still like to walk to the neighbourhood playground to use the swings and slides there. We've had some lovely weather this week so the little ones and I were able to make it to the park a couple of times this week. Here they are swinging, swinging, swinging...

I'm so pumped up

Now that Zoë is mobile—and therefore getting into everything all the time—I've been cutting back on pumping, working my way down to once a day, then once every few days, and now only when I need to. Andrew took in my last donation to the milk bank this week. By my calculations I've donated 4855 ounces to various milk banks (one in Colorado, one here (and a little bit straight to my friend Annie's little boy)).

4855 ounces is equal to approximately...

• 38 gallons
• 143.5 litres
• 135912 grams
• 300 pounds
• and eight months of pumping every morning and night.

In health class (back in high school) my teacher once defined passion as being the first thing you think of doing when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you think of before you fall asleep at night. If that's the case then I've certainly been passionate about pumping the past several months. 

I've pumped at home, in the car, at my mom's house, at my in-law's, at church, at a hotel, and while camping. For the longest time I wasn't able to do anything until I'd pumped in the morning and I wasn't able to fall asleep until I pumped at night—like literally could not—so I'm not sure pumping really falls into the category of passion unless eating and breathing are also included. It was more of a necessity than a passion.

Just yesterday morning I decided I couldn't live one more second without pumping again, so I did. Fifteen ounces later I could put my arms down comfortably. And that was after Zoë had had her fill.

Clearly I'm not free of the pump yet but it's nice to not be so tied down. I don't know what I'm going to do with all my free time now. Oh, wait. Yes, I do. I'll follow this cutie around cleaning up all her little exploration messes...

I've felt at once guilty and liberated by the decision to stop donating milk but, as it says in an article I read about giraffes yesterday, "since milk is costly to produce...a mother is expected to save it for her own offspring." It's time to put my extra milk energy to use elsewhere.

******

Edited to add that I just got my certificate of appreciation from the WakeMed Milk Bank and they say I've donated 4,379 ounces to them, which means I missed something in my records. My total is probably more like 5560 ounces altogether, which is more like 43 gallons (only 5 gallons off...no biggie, right?). 

Worry wart

I've been rehearsing for the stake musical recently and it's been refreshing to do something that's not mothering for a little while. I just finished reading Anne of Ingleside (finally! (after losing my copy multiple times and reading several books in between!)) and I daresay I've been feeling a bit like that Anne lately: tired, washed out, "sick-and-tired of never-ending, monotonous duties . . . "

Last night I left the children (all save Zoë, who still comes with me everywhere because all food is disgusting and bottles are evil and she'll never learn to eat and I'll still be nursing her to sleep when she's in college) at home with Andrew and drove to my friend Marian's house, where she and Laura and I had met to carpool to the stake centre, all three of us leaving our husbands at home with our bunches of children.

We stopped at a traffic light and a man started approaching our car so we quickly locked our doors.

"I just want to ask a question," he called to us.

But the light turned green and off we went. It sounds callous but you can never be too careful.

"You'll have to ask someone else," Marian said. "Perhaps a car not filled with women."

I suppose there are strength in numbers and we could have protected each other, should it have come to that, but still. It was dark and we felt vulnerable.

"So, I kept having these thoughts today," said Laura, a self-proclaimed non-worrier. "Like, imagine if Marian drove us off the road and we all died. Three mothers of young children. All in one ward. How tragic would that be? What would our husbands do? How would the ward even cope with that?"

"And I'm the compassionate service coordinator!" I tacked on.

We had a good laugh about that—who would coordinate the needed service?!

To be fair, I'm co-coordinator, so my co-coordinator would take care of things. Still, it lightened the rather dour mood that had settled on our car after Laura shared her thoughts.

Andrew laughed when I told him about this because I'm always dreaming up worst-case scenarios when he goes out of town (or even sometimes when he's late coming home from school). I'm always like, "Let's take a picture of you with the kids for no reason at all right before you leave." And he's always like, "It's in case I die, isn't it?" And I'm always like, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Okay. Yes. That's the exact reason."

But I'm a self-proclaimed worrier so I expect myself to have thoughts like that. Somehow it's reassuring that a self-proclaimed non-worrier sometimes has the very same thoughts.

Spicy

Andrew's on a quest to perfect basic Mexican recipes—like refried beans and such—because, as he professed the other day, "We're too poor to go out to eat at authentic Mexican restaurants and Mexican food is my favourite!"

"It is?" I asked.

"Well, I forgot about Italian food," he said.

"And pancakes?" I asked.

"Oh, and pancakes."

But Mexican food is a close third. His quest has opened our pantry to many exotic ingredients, which would surely be spurned if I were to bring them home (but apparently if he chooses to bring them home himself they're okay), such as epazote and, most recently, tomatillos. We've probably eaten these things before (tomatillos are the main ingredient in salsa verde, for example, and all my Mexican friends raved on Facebook that you can't cook without epazote). We simply haven't cooked with them. Until now.

On Saturday Andrew used the tomatillos in a dish called chicken tinga.

Yes, he made chicken.

He also made beans, as a backup, in case he, uh, chickened out. And in full disclosure he didn't eat much of the chicken, but I thought it was really good although it was really spicy.

"Taste this," he said. "It's spicy!"

"That is spicy," I gasped.

"Yeah, I can't figure out why," he said, "Except that it said to to put in two to three chipotle peppers and I just dumped the whole can in. It looked like only a couple of peppers were in the can when I opened it, but I think there were about a dozen or so. They just kept plopping out. Do you think that would make that big of a difference?"

Maybe a little bit.

Benjamin and I were the only ones who ate any significant amount of chicken, so there are a lot of leftovers (and I'm the only one eating those, which I don't mind). I wonder if it would have won over a broader audience with a little less spice...

To usher in February on a positive note...

We finally made it to the library this weekend! We dropped books off the first weekend of January before we went up to the mountains and then, for a number of reasons, we hadn't found the time to go back until this Saturday. It's been fine because we have a healthy collection of books in our house so it's not like story time stopped. We've been re-reading books.

Miriam really got into Harry Potter. Rachel read Dune. And between all of us we read dozens and dozens of picture books to Benjamin and Zoë.

Still, it's nice to have something new to read.

One of the books we picked out was Fine As We Are by Algy Craig Hall, a darling story about welcoming new little ones into your family. As a hint, it's based on the feelings the author had when his stint as an only child was forever interrupted by the arrival of quadruplet siblings. But it features frogs. And it's seriously adorable.

It's amazing how welcoming a new baby (or babies) into your life is at once easy and so very difficult. Time passes slowly yet all too fast. They enter the world a perfect stranger but you find yourself loving them more passionately than you ever could have dreamed, and although you justifiably worried about the upheaval this new person would ultimately wreak on your delicately balanced family dynamics, it doesn't take long to feel like they've always belonged right there with you.

And no matter how hard you might wish things didn't have to change or how much you wish things could go back to the way they were before (Benjamin, I'm looking at you), it's soon impossible to imagine life without them and things once again seem...fine the way they are.

This book was so sweet. I highly recommend reading it. Especially, if, let's say, your three-year-old has an open vendetta against your eight-month-old. 

Stories to finish off January

This morning Benjamin was snuggling with me in bed (while Andrew was showering with Zoë) and he sighed sweetly, nestled his head into my neck, and said, "I wish Baby Zo would die."

"What?! Why?!" I asked.

"Because I want to sleep in the middle of you two again," he said.

"That's not a good reason to wish your sister would die!"

"It is if you're a bad guy," he said.

"But you're not a bad guy. You're my sweet little Benjamin."

"Well, I'm going to be Darth Vader when I grow up..." he said.

*****

I was saying our couple prayer last night. We've taken to doing our pillow talk in the bathroom while we brush our teeth (so I suppose now it's toothbrush talk) because Zoë sleeps in our room and is easily disturbed. So we talk about what we learned over the course of the day and in our scripture study, we discuss our calendar and concerns, and we pray together before sneaking into bed. 

So, I was praying—reverently: with my eyes closed—and Andrew—also with his eyes closed—decided that he would test to see if my eyes were really closed by pulling funny faces at me. 

I did not react (because my eyes were closed) so he pulled a different funny face. Still I didn't react, so he pulled a different funny face. With still no response from me, Andrew tried another face, and then he burst out laughing and then couldn't stop.

I began to reflect on what I had been saying (it was late at night and sometimes sentences come out wonky when I'm tired) but couldn't think of anything silly that I'd accidentally said. I quickly finished the prayer and then said, "What was that? You totally ruined the whole spirit of my prayer!"

Through many tears and much laughter, Andrew confessed his sin of irreverence. He said at some point he realized how ridiculous he was being and started laughing at himself. In an effort to catch me in irreverence he wound up catching himself (which is kind of the lesson I got out of priesthood/Relief Society this afternoon (we had a joint lesson on Sabbath day observance)).

*****

It's no secret that we enjoy a little Doctor Who at our house. Unfortunately, BBC isn't renewing their contract with Netflix so we don't know how we'll be able to continue to watch. We have talked about this multiple times in recent history but the subject came up once again over dinner this evening and Miriam's memory was a blank slate. 

"Can I watch Doctor Who next weekend?" she asked. 

"Probably not," I said. 

"Why not?" she wanted to know. "I have enough points!"

We have a point system for earning screen time now. We've been on it for about a month and it's been fairly effective. The girls have been practicing piano and ukulele, helping out around the house, reading to Benjamin, and so forth, in an effort to earn enough points to watch an episode of their favourite TV show on the weekend. 

"I'm not even going to answer that question," I said.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because I have already answered it several times and I'd like you to think back to see if you can remember the answer on your own."

Miriam thought for a minute before growing exasperated.

"I just don't know!" she said.

"Because BBC forgot to make a treaty with Netflix!" Rachel blurted out.

*****

I had Benjamin help me take out the "whole house garbage" earlier this week (we take out the kitchen garbage regularly but the other bins only get emptied once a week so he was helping me empty all the trash bins in the house). When we had them all collected he chose the lightest bag to carry, saying that it would "be so easy" for him to do. But then he saw a bag bulging with soiled diapers (Zoë wears disposables to bed because she is the heaviest wetter on the planet and soaks through a cloth diaper in just a couple of hours and there's no way I'm changing her diaper every couple of hours all night long). He picked it up and said, "No! I'm going to take this bag! It's my I-think-I-can bag. It's very heavy but I think I can carry it."

Obviously we recently read The Little Engine That Could. I was happy to see him seeking out a challenge (and should probably do that more often myself).

*****

I'm sure there are other stories that I could tell, but it's late and I should be getting to bed. I'm happy to bid January adieu. It's not my favourite month. When I said as much this evening Andrew said, "Ugh, but now we have to have February. February's the worst!"

Well, with that attitude...

Ride a little pony

Old Man Weather has done a complete 180° and plopped us down in the middle of a lovely spring-like day. We had a bit of a kerfuffle before church because Miriam wanted to find a specific sweater to wear but couldn't find it. We told her that she didn't need a sweater today because it was so lovely out (70°F, folks!) but she insisted that she did and eventually settled on wearing her winter coat. Then we had a bit of a kerfuffle in the parking lot while we tried to convince her to leave her coat in the car and she tried to convince us that she needed to wear it inside.

Anyway, we made it through church and came home for lunch before heading up to our neighbour's house.

Earlier this week our neighbour had dropped by to invite us to ride horses at the top of the cul-de-sac. Benjamin immediately started looking forward to this, though we managed to keep it secret from the girls. I quibbled with it a bit, wondering if it really fell in line with keeping the sabbath day holy, which has been a point of focus in our services lately.

However, when church was cancelled last week, this was the email we got from the stake presidency:

Due to treacherous road conditions, that are unlikely to improve until later tomorrow, church services on Sunday across the stake are cancelled. 

We would encourage you to be thoughtful about ways to keep the Sabbath day holy tomorrow. This may include scripture study, prayer, and wholesome family activities. 

Stay warm and be safe.

That "wholesome family activities" bit practically encouraged families to go sledding (and many families did (we saw evidence)).  I figured that this fell into the same "wholesome family activity" category, since when we were invited our neighbours said, "We have all of our grandchildren coming over on Sunday afternoon to ride horses in the cul-de-sac and would love for your family to join us if you can." Turns out it was our neighbour's birthday and what she wanted to do was watch children ride horses. Can't really say no to that!

Around three o'clock we saw the horse trailer head up the street (the horses belong to a friend of our neighbour).

Benjamin was so brave. He marched right up the street and without hesitation started trying to mount the littlest horse—Little Bit. He ended up needing some help and had a long ride, which he enjoyed immensely.