Andrew in action

One of Andrew's friends is also attending the ISA conference in Atlanta and snapped this photo of Andrew presenting one of his papers (he's doing another one later today):

Grandma's here!

Miriam wrote this story about clocks at school on Tuesday and was so proud when her teacher read it aloud during math time (I guess they're learning about time right now):

Clocks help us tell time. Time is when something is going to happen. Like today my grandma is coming. In the morning it was only 8 hours until 4:30. That is when...

Bad dog

My list of things to do a couple of weeks ago was killing me. I had to...

• make a dog costume for the stake musical
• find other costume things for the stake musical
• make a fruit/vegetable costume for the 1st grade musical
• chaperone a field trip
• get my house ready for my mother-in-law to visit

But then we ended up with a nasty stomach virus and I gave up trying to get the house ready for my mother-in-law. Miriam's school musical was postponed until the end of April—after even the stake musical is over—so I have plenty of time to figure out a costume for that. The field trip came and went and I chaperoned it just fine. And I managed to finish that dog mask Rachel and I had been working on.

These are the guidelines we were given:

We are asking parents to supply a dog costume for their child. They can be any variety/breed of dog. They can be homemade or store bought; an older and loved dress up or Halloween costume or brand new from the store or online. Please do have a puppy costume that you can be proud to have worn on stage and not a “thrown together at the last minute for Cow Appreciation day” style costume. If you want any clarifications about your costume ideas please email me. If you cannot supply your puppy costume due to financial reasons please also contact XXX personally, and she can supply you with something. 

First of all, the Chick-fil-A love is a little strong in these parts. That cow shows up everywhere—school breakfasts, grad parent Christmas parties, just everywhere—and I've never heard of so many people eating at that establishment.

The girls got gift certificates to Chick-fil-A for Christmas, though, so I guess we'll have to figure out where the place is. We've never eaten there (though we did have their ice cream at that one grad parent event).

Anyway, Chick-fil-A hosts a cow appreciation day every once in a while and I guess the deal is that if you dress up as a cow and go to the restaurant you get something free. People dress up in white and tape black paper splotches to their clothes in order to get...whatever is free...I guess. They're rarely very good costumes, usually thrown together at the last minute when you remember it's cow appreciation day.

I, uh, don't celebrate cow appreciation day.

But I did make an adorable dog mask that I figured was nice enough to not to be categorized on a cow appreciation level. Here it is on not-the-right child (since Rachel's a puppy, not Miriam):

A three-hour tour, a three-hour tour!

Rachel's class had an outdoor field trip scheduled for September 21st. They got rained out and the trip was rescheduled for October 28th, but then had to be postponed because of Boosterthon something-or-other (a pep rally, it seems). Finally, it was (once again) rescheduled for today, but on Saturday the teachers went to check out the trail and found that the big storm we had a couple of weeks ago downed so many trees on the path that it made for rather treacherous hiking.

We got an email saying the trip was cancelled again, but a few minutes later got another saying they'd found a way past the bulk of the damage and the trip would proceed as planned.

The kids were so excited!

Rachel really wanted me to be a chaperone, so I said that I would because I missed her zoo trip last year. She really wanted me to go on that but I was far too pregnant to consider herding a bunch of seven-year-olds through a zoo on a hot day.

Helping herd fifty eight-year-olds on a six-mile hike with a nine-month-old baby strapped to my chest somehow seemed like a fine idea, though. Of course, when I signed up for the job I didn't realize it was going to be a six-mile hike. Not that there's anything wrong with taking a six-mile hike, even with a baby strapped to your chest. I simply wish there had been a post-script of sorts revealing this little truth to me. Something like, "Beeteedubs, when we say 'walk with the kids from the school to the park' we really mean 'a six-mile hike, roundtrip.'" Because then I could have brought, like, the hiking backpack/baby carrier rather than the mei-tai/diaper bag combo I had going on today.

No sane person hikes six miles hauling a diaper bag!

But we all survived.

Award assemblies

Both Rachel and Miriam were presented with certificates during their award assemblies this Friday, which meant we got to go to the K–2 assembly and then the 3–5 assembly. It was a bit long for Benjamin to have to sit through two whole assemblies ("I don't want another assemble! I want to go to recess with Mimi's class!") but it was lovely to see our girls walk across the stage.

Miriam got the "Effort Award" for showing good effort during the past quarter. It's quite an honour since only one student in each class gets chosen each quarter, even though lots of students are putting forth all the effort they can muster.

A better day

No one threw up on me in the middle of the night.

Both girls went to school and each had a happy day.

I ignored the laundry and dishes and took Benjamin and Zoë on an outing just for fun.

Andrew finished one of his papers and submitted it, which means I found time to finish editing it.

He came home and made dinner, which was not peanut butter and jelly.

Benjamin didn't drive me quite so crazy.

Zoë still didn't nap well...and it's 1:30 and she's still awake.

But I'm feeling a lot better about life today than I was yesterday.

Andrew and I even joked about that one time we flew from Utah to Egypt and Rachel fell asleep as we were coming in to land...in Cairo. It was not a direct flight and took well over 24 hours. Oh, and there was that one time we flew from Egypt to Spain and she didn't fall asleep until we'd made it to the train station in Madrid. And also the time she stayed awake from Cairo to Athens. I don't remember when she fell asleep, but I think it was as I was carrying her through the airport (some kind man let me cut ahead of him in the passport line; Andrew wasn't with me and I was pregnant with Miriam and the man probably watched me wrestle with Rachel the entire overnight flight and felt sorry for me).

We've done monster-baby before, but somehow it's more tiring now that we're old and grey.

In which I complain

I cleared the table from Monday's dishes last night after I finally ate dinner...at 1:00 am.

Zoë threw up on me at 3:30 am, about a half hour after Andrew came to bed. So we made a repeat of the night before and he slept on the couch.

Miriam barely made it to school on time.

Rachel stayed home from school sick.

Benjamin was nothing but a bother all day. He is going absolutely stir crazy.

Zoë napped for a grand total of fifteen minutes at lunch and another half hour at dinner (which was PB&J for the second night in a row for Benjamin and Miriam (Rachel and I had leftover chicken soup, which I made on Monday)).

I got zero naps. I pulled an all-dayer.

Most of my day was spent with Zoë literally tied to my back while doing a ridiculous amount of laundry once again because we're still puking over here.

I had a two-hour rehearsal again this evening and we dragged the whole family to the stake center (don't worry—the sickies were quarantined away from the general populace) because it's not in my driving bubble and I wasn't able to get a ride with anyone else.

When I went to get her out of her car seat I put my hand into a lovely poop-splosion.

Zoë is still awake with no signs of slowing down any time soon.

Andrew is still working on his papers. I'm supposed to edit them.

So here we are, it's midnight-thirty and bedtime is no where in sight.

And I just wanted to whine a bit. But, really, it's okay.

My friend Marian has some stomach thing at her house as well. She took her littlest guy into the ER for stitches on Sunday night and her biggest guy into the ER for dehydration (technically, I suppose, for rehydration) today.

As tired as I am of this week...I'm glad I had my week and not hers!

Dancing (until you see stars)

I don't audition well.

I know this because my ballroom coach once told me so. She still put me on the team because she'd been my teacher the year before and knew I'd polish up well. And because, she once pulled me aside to say after I'd suffered a disappointment, she also doesn't audition well.

And that's fine, because, frankly, I'm okay with not ever being the star of the show. And I'm fine with not being a professional ballroom dancer today (though maybe that looked like fun to me once). Sometimes, though, it would be nice to show what I can actually do at an audition rather than looking like an idiot.

I lectured the girls about this before we tried out for the musical. I told them that they were to give it their all. They were to sing with gusto, and if the casting director told them to jump, they'd say, "how high?"

And then we all three went up on stage and looked like idiots.

Seriously.

Because apparently looking like an idiot is genetic.

The casting director was like, "Can you bark for me?"

Miriam said, "No," and was not cast as a puppy.

Rachel said, "Arf?" and surprisingly was cast as a puppy (because she seriously just said, "Arf?" it didn't sound like a dog at all; she just forced those phonemes out in a row and smacked a question mark on the end. "Arf?" I suppose they thought they could work with that).

I was put in the easiest dance sequence, which was a little depressing because I can dance.

Costume happenings

I'm not finished with Rachel's dog mask yet—and won't for a while now because I don't want her to try it on until after she's better—but I'm quite happy with how it's coming together. We saw the idea on Etsy, didn't want to spend $15 (+S/H) for a few pieces of felt and decided to attempt it ourselves. We worked out the pattern on paper and then transferred it to felt (scraps that I got from a friend) and, so far, it seems to be coming together just fine.

And another one gone, and another one gone...Another one bites the dust

Poor Andrew stayed up until around three o'clock this morning working on a couple of papers that he has to submit tomorrow. I went to bed with Zoë around one o'clock (after admittedly staying up too late working on a dog costume). At 5:30 in the morning I was shocked awake when Zoë turned into a fire hydrant of vomit (one of the dangers of co-sleeping, I suppose).

"Andrew," I hissed, "Zoë's got The Sickness!"

I don't know why I was whispering, precisely. The darkness or the hour or the fact that we'd all been blissfully asleep seconds before seemed to call for it.

"I have to take a shower," I whispered. "Can you fix the bed?"

What I wanted was fresh sheets. What I got was a towel over the vomit and Andrew's side of the bed (he left to sleep on the couch...again (he slept out in the living room with Benjamin and with Miriam while they were sick and last night was his first night two hours back in his own bed)). As it turned out fresh sheets would have been a real waste since Zoë would go on to throw up about ten times.

I grabbed a stack of towels from the cabinet and put one underneath her. When she'd throw up, I'd switch it out for a new one. She and I stayed in bed until around noon, sleeping, and vomiting, and just lying there miserable while a pile of dirty towels mounted behind us. Benjamin did a great job fending for himself after I put a show on for him.