What I learned from Amelia Earhart (besides that she was an author)

I finished reading Amelia Earhart's The Fun of It the other day. It was interesting to read her thoughts on flying and feminism with my 2016 goggles on. She wrote the bulk of the book while she was (somewhat secretly) preparing for her solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932 (eighty-four years ago).

I only started marking passages in the second half of the book because Rachel had been carting it back and forth to school while reading it (she stole it from me, which I guess is alright because we got it for her school project, but still...).

At one point she asked a head honcho weather bureau man if there was any reason there couldn't be such a thing as a weather woman. He answered that there wasn't, "except that they would have to go out in bad weather sometimes and climb ladders to collect data." Truly there wasn't anything holding women back from being meteorologists except that women simply weren't meteorologists (p. 127).

A bit later she supposes that autogiros will take over the skies for short commutes through cities and things like that. "In fact," she says, "with the giro as with many new developments, so much is likely to happen that I am planning on returning to earth in a couple of hundred years to check up on its doings" (p. 139).

I had to look up what autogiros were! They're like a cross between a plane and a helicopter, kind of. They're still used but they're not incredibly common. Though I think if Earhart were to check in on things she'd be happy to see that there are, at least, several female meteorologists.

Field day for grade three

Field day with 8/9 year olds is a whole lot easier than field day with 6/7 year olds! From dividing them into teams to celebrating with freezies the whole day was easier. Kids do a lot of growing up in such a short amount of time. They followed directions and I wasn't worried about losing any of them. Benjamin was eager to join in the activities; he knew just what to do since he'd spent he whole day yesterday figuring out what to do.

Here he is at the balloon toss station:

Field Day for grade one

The little ones and I spent the afternoon with Miriam's class for field day. We were glad it wasn't a terribly hot day and although we were sad it was overcast yesterday (we missed Mercury's transit across the sun (though the kids still went out to look at the sun when it finally peeped out between the clouds around 5:00 anyway)) we were happy for the cloud cover today. We got plenty sweaty in the mid-eighties. We didn't need full sun!

Here are the kids enjoying a bit of a limbo (they didn't have to bend backwards):

Jerrymeandering into the future

With Andrew's line of study politics frequently come up for conversation at the dinner table. Tonight the kids were asking about Hilary Clinton, which led to a discussion of carpetbagging, since Clinton ran for (and won) one of New Yorks seats in the senate, shortly after moving to New York. She was frequently accused of being a carpetbagger during her campaign.

"So it's basically when someone moves to a state or city specifically to campaign for a political office there but without ever really living there so they might not really know the needs of the area they're supposed to be representing. I don't know why they call it carpetbagging..." Andrew trailed off.

"Really?" I asked. "You can just hear the word 'carpetbagging' and figure out the etymology? It's not like it's terribly obscure."

"Yeah, Dad," Rachel said. "Like Mary Poppins!"

"Mary Poppins...?" Andrew asked.

"Dad! Her magical carpetbag! A carpetbag is like a suitcase!"

"Oh!" exclaimed Andrew as he saw this (very logical) connection between Mary Poppins and political jargon.

Mother's Day Saturday

For Mother's Day I decided to give myself an eye exam. My glasses are several years old (five? six?) and they've been giving me subtle signals that they'd like to be replaced (for example, they fly off my face at random). Technically I suppose I should be having my eyes examined every 1–2 years, so I've been running a little behind schedule.

I scheduled an appointment quite a while ago when I was expecting Zoë but ended up cancelling the appointment because I was having a terrible couple of days and didn't feel like I could make it through an eye exam.

I rescheduled about six months ago but ended up cancelling that appointment as well. My grandma passed away and my eye exam was scheduled for the very same weekend of her funeral.

So the very fact that I made it to the appointment at all is a bit of a miracle.

The good news is my prescription hasn't changed! It's been the same for about fifteen years now—my vision is rather terrible, but holding steady.

The bad news is that I have dry eyes, apparently.

"You don't want a contact exam, do you?" the doctor asked.

"Just glasses," I said.

"Good," he said. "Your eyes are so dry; I don't think you'd be a good candidate for them."

Good, because I didn't ever like contacts when I did wear them...probably because I have dry eyes.

I should have new glasses in a few days. And will be looking into eye drops, though I'm hoping that once Zoë start sleeping for longer chunks of time—which will allow me to start sleeping for longer periods of time—that my symptoms will...diminish. Though I think my dad suffers from dry eye...so...maybe I'll just have dry eyes for ever and ever.

The kids had fun helping me pick out new frames.

We went out for lunch at Moe's because Miriam had earned a certificate for a free meal at school somehow, and then we stopped by Duke Gardens to take a little walk...

Food, glorious food!

I know Andrew cooked dinner on Sunday night. And I know I cooked dinner on Monday and last night. I think we had pizza on Saturday. The rest of the week we had...crazy amounts of leftovers and not very much time for dinner preparation. I don't know why. It's not like we're doing a musical or anything like that. Andrew's just been swamped with work and research and I guess the kids didn't like what we made because they didn't eat much the night it was made and didn't really help make much of a dent on Tuesday or Wednesday (which were both declared leftover nights).*

Last night I made tacos (because how could I not?) and there weren't any leftovers.

Tonight we ignored the last container of leftovers in the fridge and let the kids make their own dinners. We had oriental noodles and corn dogs and peanut butter and jam sandwiches and nachos and peaches and Mandarin oranges and cucumbers and orange peppers and that sort of thing. Literally whatever they wanted, so long as it meant I didn't have to plan it or prepare it.

We also had a movie night so that I could finally suffer through watch the new Star Wars movie.

Miriam was eating her peanut butter and jam sandwich (with, I should mention, homemade peanut butter and homemade strawberry jam (Andrew's been having a little too much fun with the food processor lately)) a little too slowly so we decided to start the movie before she'd finished. She happily moved her dinner into the living room, setting up on the picnic blanket we'd spread out for popcorn.

She left her plate sitting on the floor while she went off to put on her pyjamas. Andrew came in to set up the movie and stepped right on her plate. Jam and peanut butter oozed out of her sandwich, all over his sock.

"Apparently Miriam left her sandwich on the floor," he said with a grimace.

I haven't laughed so hard in a long time.

Chickery Chick

The little ones and I headed into school today to help out during the teacher appreciation luncheon. More specifically I'd signed up to watch Miriam's class during the luncheon and then we stayed for the rest of the afternoon because the kids really wanted me to. And by kids I mean my kids.

I think Rachel asked me every single day this week if I would be picking them up after school on Friday and, if that was the case, if she could meet me in Miriam's classroom. I couldn't figure out why she was so fixated on this scenario until I walked into the classroom and heard, "Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!"

Miriam's teacher hatches chicks every year with his class. Sometimes, for variety's sake, he's able to score some duck eggs. Once he even got his hands on some peacock eggs! These particular eggs are the eggs of the chickens Rachel's class hatched. "So I'm basically a grandparent now," Rachel said.

Anyway, she's been racing to Miriam's class to look at the chicks before class starts (and she has to be on the other end of the school) every morning this week, but so far Mr. A has not let the kids pick up the chicks because they were so new and he has so many visitors before school and isn't quite ready to supervise. But he promised Rachel that they could hold the chicks after school if I was there.

So that's where her sudden desire to meet me in Mr. A's room on Friday afternoon came up.

Honestly, I was rather exhausted from (surprise, surprise) an agonizingly long night with Zoë, and I knew that if I went home I would crash and not want to leave the house ever, ever again, so at the behest of my children I stuck around for the entire afternoon. And I even survived. And Rachel came to meet us in Miriam's classroom and everyone got to hold chicks and there was much rejoicing.

Sadly, I didn't get a picture of Rachel holding her "grand-chicks" because I forgot the camera and then my phone ran out of memory before she even got there. We'll be in to see the chicks again, I'm sure. Everyone loves the chicks! All my children agree that it's the most wonderful time of the year.

Miriam likes to hold them wrapped up in a kleenex to avoid feeling their claws and/or getting pooped on:

Yes and No

Zoë said the word "no" before she learned how to shake her head "no," but recently she picked up on our head signals and started testing the waters. And it's been hilarious.

Now she thinks whenever I say no it's a game, which is fine because ultimately it stops her from doing whatever it is I want her to stop because if she hears the word no she must shake her head.

Yes is a little trickier. It takes mad balancing skills to nod. We witnessed Zoë fall completely over a couple of times tonight while we were playing with her. Unfortunately I didn't catch any of that on the camera, but here she is showing off her new skills...



In other news, the girls asked if I would braid their hair while we were watching a movie so I told them to grab a brush and some hair elastics, which they did. Zoë had a little meltdown trying to steal the brush from me. I sent Miriam off to find a different brush fro Zoë to play with, thinking that would calm her down.

As it turned out, Zoë didn't want a brush. Zoë wanted to brush.

Miriam handed her the hairbrush and Zoë immediately started running it through Rachel's hair. She was so proud of herself (but eventually had to be removed because she was making more of a mess of things; she screamed while being bounced in Daddy's arms while I finished braiding her sisters' hair).

It's fun watching her learn things.

Learning is an amazing process.

This and/or that

Benjamin spent a happy few minutes pushing Zoë around the yard on this little toy tractor. Unfortunately, when I ran to get the camera (quick—they're getting along!) he decided that instead of pushing her he'd instead sit on the tractor with her. She was not impressed.

That Benja-boy

This morning we were sitting in church, quietly listening to the ward announcements being read over the pulpit. We'll be having a ward campout in the next couple of weeks, so that's super exciting. 

"Breakfast will be provided..." we were told. 

"BREAKFAST!" Benjamin squealed loudly. 

Sometimes he seems irreverent but is very attentive. Other times he's rather inattentive but seems reverent. I'm not sure which is better (since it's very rare that he's both attentive and reverent at church (and, let's be honest, quite frequently he's both inattentive and irreverent)) so I suppose we'll just be thankful for any moment he's quiet and calm as well as being thankful for the moments when he's paying attention to what's going on.

Recently he's become quite interested in writing and drawing (as I think I've mentioned) and I'm pretty excited about it because it means that maybe he'll be ready for kindergarten after all!

We got a package in the mail a few days ago and as soon as I emptied the box, Benjamin wanted it.

"Can I have this box?" he asked.

"Sure," I said.

"Can I use the markers?" he asked.

"Sure," I said. 

A few minutes later he excitedly shouted, "THIS IS EVEN BETTER THAN PAPER!"

Here he is with a recent, boring, ol' on-paper drawing: