Not playgroup

I thought long and hard about going to playgroup on Friday morning. But...

A) playgroup usually starts at 9:00 and we weren't ready to go that early, so by the time we left the house we were already late. 

B) playgroup was at a playground a 15 minute—and slightly out of my bubble—drive from our house.

C) for whatever reason (spending half my life this month on the phone talking to insurance companies, perhaps?) I was craving solitude, not company.

So while I had (almost) every intention of going to playgroup, instead I found myself turning into the museum parking lot. We were right on time because there was no set time to be there, I didn't stress myself out on unfamiliar roads, and though the museum was quite crowded when we first got there, the crowd thinned by lunchtime—and I didn't run into a single person I knew, which meant I didn't have to talk to anyone but my children. 

It was lovely to spend the morning letting my children explore all on their own while I breathed in the warm smells of autumn. 

Wacky-Tacky Day

The girls both had Wacky Tacky day this week. Their school doesn't often do school-wide spirit days; rather they do classroom spirit days and sometimes grade-wide spirit days. Sometimes I understand this. Often I feel it makes life rather complicated.

Here's Miriam's Wacky Tacky outfit for Thursday:

Sleep it off

Last night Zoë slept fairly well. She woke up around 1:00 and I fed her (because I'm a pushover) but then she went back to sleep in her own bed, so we'll call that a success.

Breakfast bandit

Usually Zoë eats her meals strapped securely in her high chair because she's a filthy eater and it's nice to keep that mess contained. But she's growing up and is starting to feel a little left out when we gather around the table so sometimes I let her sit on the bench to eat. Breakfast this morning was one of those times. She wanted to sit beside Benjamin so bad and was thrilled to bits when I let her.

It worked alright for awhile...

Nothing to see here...

Sometimes my children make me feel like all I'm nothing but a big, ol' meanie. Truthfully, sometimes I probably am. But not always. 

And I know this now because Zoë accidentally recorded me (with my phone) while I was getting after her (for stealing my phone). When I started approaching her I didn't know what contraband item she was trying to hide from me, but I knew from her behaviour that it was definitely verboten.



I have a case/cover on my phone and I think it's made of leather. If I close the cover without first locking the phone, it sometimes won't lock on its own after x-amount of downtime because it seems to respond to the leather cover as if it was...human flesh. So a bit of a design flaw there. And now I really hope it's only cowhide. *shudder*

Anyway, I think that's how she was able to "unlock" the phone in the first place. There's no image to accompany the sound because she had the case open (thus covering the camera), but it's definitely evidence that even when I'm getting after my children I don't sound like a monster (at least...not all the time).

Here's the transcript:

"What are you up to, you...stealer-of-phones?" was said as I chased and tackled her.

"Oh, good!" was said as I realized she had been recording the whole affair.*

* Good thing we live in a single-party consent state or Zoë would have to lawyer up!

Motherhood, on repeat

"Can we go to the pool today?"

I have heard that question, bright and early, every morning since October 1st.

Every day my answer is the same: "No, buddy. The pool is closed now."

"But when will it open again?" Benjamin will invariably ask.

"In May."

"When's May?"

"In the spring."

Even after 46 days, he's always a little crushed when I tell him we can't go swimming.

Recently (you may have noticed), we ended daylight saving time. This worked well for Rachel whose clock, since March, has been an hour slow. I don't know how she was getting herself out of bed in the morning when the big, red numbers on her digital clock were telling her it was an hour earlier than it really was (she sets an alarm on her iPod rather than on her clock radio—and I don't blame her because I can't stand the bleeping of an old-fashioned clock radio either (clock radios are old-fashioned now, right? (because I'm old?)) so displaying the correct time wasn't important for alarm purposes).

But on the magical morning of November 6th, her clock suddenly began displaying the correct time since we'd fallen an hour back.

Every night for the past week and a half, before she goes to bed, Rachel has asked, "Is it still daylight savings?"

"Yes," I've been telling her (even though, technically, it's not, but the essence of her question is, "Are we still doing this weird time-change thing?" and, yes—yes, we are).

"When does that stop?"

"I'm not going to answer that question," I finally said a few days ago.

There is beauty all around

Freshly dropped leaves littered our front walk. Bright red and dew-covered, glistening in the warm rays of the morning sun, they were mostly ignored as we bustled out of the house on our way to church. But...

"Stop!" Miriam commanded as we made our way down the stairs. "No one step on them!"

"No one step on what?" I asked. 

"The leaves!" she breathed solemnly. "Look how beautiful!"

So I looked. We all looked. And it was beautiful.

We stood on our front porch and we stared at the sidewalk like it was the first snowfall of the year—taking it in like a majestic rainbow after a storm—and let it speak peace to our souls. 

"I think November might be my favourite month," she said. 

Oh, November! You done us wrong, but we can't hate you because you're so beautiful. 

You can't really complain about autumn in the south—sunlight filtering through warm-hued leaves, baby bear temperatures for weeks (not too hot, not too cold, but juuuuuust right), Canada geese arriving by droves in tidy V-formation.

No, no. This Canadian girl can't really complain about autumn in the south. 

It's too wonderful. 

"I think November is one of my favourite months as well," I agreed. "Here—in this place—November is one of my favourite months."

Sad baby

Zoë's croup seems to be on the way out, thank goodness. We've had some rough nights around here. On Sunday I think I spent as much time sitting outside in the cold night air with Zoë as I did sleeping.

Lucky for us, that was the night of the supermoon—largest full moon since 1948!

Unlucky for us, it rained all night long so we didn't even catch a glimpse of the moon.

Thanks, November.

Monday night was better than Sunday but it was still pretty bad. After I managed to get Zoë down, I gave Andrew a haircut, and then he went to have a shower while I sat down to write for a little while. Soon I heard a tiny, hoarse voice squeak out, "Mama! Mama! Mama!"

"She'll go back to sleep," I told myself.

"Mama! Mama! Mama!" that pathetic little voice cried again.

But she hadn't come to find me (when she's serious about needing me she'll get out of bed to look for me) so I told myself there was a chance she would still put herself back to sleep. But then she called for me again.

"Mama! Mama! Mama!"

I opened the bedroom door to peek in at her. She wasn't in our bed (sometimes she is).

I walked into the bedroom. She wasn't on the floor (sometimes she is).

I peeked into her bed. She wasn't there either (occasionally she can be found there).

So, for family night...

For family night we discussed gratitude. We briefly told the story of Samuel, the boy prophet, using the back of the picture from the Gospel Art Kit. That synopsis leaves out any mention of Samuel's mother—which is mind boggling when you consider what a faithful, strong woman she was. Eli surely played a large role in Samuel's development, but I'm sure Hannah influenced him bigly* as well.

It was good for the kids to hear the story of Samuel—the boy prophet—because a few weeks ago we talked about Samuel the Lamanite, so that story was fresh in the children's minds. Samuel wasn't really what our lesson was about, however. I wanted to focus on Hannah.

We read 1 Samuel 1 and talked about how difficult life was for Hannah and how she had so many reasons to be miserable. She goes to the temple to pray and the priest there accuses her of being a little tipsy. When she says, "Uh, no. Actually, I'm legitimately upset," Eli responds by reminding her that Heavenly Father has heard her prayers and then she "was no more sad."

She had enough faith in prayer that knowing her Heavenly Father had heard her was enough to change her outlook on life. She didn't even have to receive an answer; knowing she'd been listened to was enough.

But then her prayer is answered, she ends up having Samuel, and then allows him to go live at the temple, and then is blessed with five more children. Her words exemplify humility and gratitude so perfectly: "For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him: Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord."

Anyway, we talked about how showing gratitude can help us to be "no more sad" and also how it is an expression of love. Elder Eyring spoke about showing gratitude in conference last month; he said, "what matters most is the love we feel for the givers of the gifts."

We made a list of all the hard things that have happened the past couple of weeks: the car crash, the broken oven, the broken toilet, Rachel losing some competition at school, a ludicrous presidential election, Zoë having croup, three of my mom's cousins dying over the weekend.

After we made our list the children quickly figured out what we needed to do for the other side of the column—turn the bad things into good things (and if that's not possible, then just listing any old blessing).

"For example," I offered, "Yesterday David Hardy died."

"That's a sad thing!" the kids pointed out.

"Yes, but yesterday was also his daughter's birthday," I said.

"That's even worse!" the girls objected. "Having your dad die on your birthday doesn't make anything better!"

"But," I said. "When my mom mentioned this sad time surrounding her birthday, Camilla responded with, 'I now share a birthday with my dad! It's been a beautiful day.' She was grateful that her dad had passed away peacefully and that he was having a spiritual birthday on her special day."

Camilla had taken a tragedy and turned it into a blessing. I guess a lot of tragedies are—often, eventually—blessings. Our blessings for the past couple of weeks are: a new van, popcorn & hot chocolate while at a dealership on Saturday, learning something new (about plumbing), getting new boxes to "live in" (from our new car seats), Zoë isn't sleeping well and I'm really feeling it because it's a break from her schedule (yes, she's been going to sleep around 9:00 every night for a few weeks now and it's amazing), art (I can't remember why this was on the list), the kindness of others (and specifically the Browns, who helped us get our new van today), and good health (because Benjamin was sick with a cold before Zoë got croup and he's feeling better).

We probably could have kept going but sometimes it's best to keep lessons short and sweet so we finished up by driving home the point that expressing gratitude fills you with feelings of love and peace.

And then we gathered round the table to sample some Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans that Andrew had brought back from London. The girls have been begging to get into them for weeks.

Here's Miriam discovering that the beans are as disgusting as they sound:

A few more ups than downs

We went car shopping today and, as it turns out, we have no idea how to buy a car. We went to one dealership and they had either a terrible $6000 van or a rather-too-nice $30000 van but nothing in between. We looked at a few vans online, while sitting in the dealership parking lot, and found a decent van at a nearby dealership so we decided to drop by.

Unfortunately someone was out test driving it by the time we were able to speak with a sales associate and they ended up buying it, so all we ended up doing was wasting an hour or so in the lobby eating popcorn (which the kids rather enjoyed).

We had no idea that you're supposed to make an appointment with a sales associate (for real?) and the associate we spoke with at the second dealership told us that we're going about it all wrong because we're looking for a "unicorn" and are wasting everybody's time. Apparently we should be calling around to places and asking them if they have exactly what we want and then head over, ignoring what we see online.

But, we were this close to getting that unicorn in their lot. I would say that probably if we had called before coming over they would have said they did have that van for sale still. But I doubt that would have stopped them from selling it out from under our noses.

We have a few more to look at on Monday. We even called one place to ask about it and he said that it would probably still be there for us since they're closed on Sunday.

Buying used is cheaper...but it is rather difficult to find that perfect compromise between dollar and mileage.

In better news, we stopped by Lowes for another part for the toilet and while Andrew went to campus to "write like he's running out of time," I fixed the toilet.

So that's one thing off the list of broken things!

Also, our LullaDoll came in the mail today and we're trying it out tonight. It was rather expensive but I was willing to pay just about anything that promised to decrease the odds of waking up with a toddler screaming in my face several times a night.

It's basically a white-noise machine stuffed inside of a doll. It has eight hours of heartbeats and peaceful breathing. Heavy breathing is definitely a pet peeve of mine (don't breathe on me!) so I don't know if I'll be able to handle the white noise, but she seems to be enjoying (or at least she seems to have been lulled by) it thus far.

I don't know if it will work all night (though I'm really hoping that it will) but she's currently sleeping while holding it. Anything else we've ever offered her as a comfort item has been tossed over the edge of the bed: blankets, teddys, dolls, soothers, books, mama's shirt, anything and everything we could think of. The fact that she willingly went to bed with it (and didn't try to rip its head off before tossing it across the room) is itself groundbreaking.