From Uncle Patrick's Baby Book

I'm going to get to Thanksgiving, I really will, but first I have to write a bit about this evening when we went over to my parents' house with leftover pie because, well, Uncle Patrick got out his baby book so that we could look at some pictures to see whether or not Alexander looks like him because my mom has been saying that he does.

And it's really kind of true; Alexander often has that same quizzical expression on his face (not annoyed, like Zoë's face always seemed...just perplexed (or like he's trying to withhold judgement)):

Uncle Patrick

Uncle Patrick (August 1989) and Alexander (November 2017)
(so about the same age)

So many pictures

A few years ago we brought these three little ones together for the first time:

Riley, Maren, and Zoë (July 2015)

Two and a half years later we got them back together:

Riley, Maren, and Zoë (November 2017)

Cheaper by the dozen

The last time we took Heiss family pictures (about three years ago (December 30, 2014)), there were five grandchildren. Rachel and Kayl were seven, Miriam was five, Benjamin was two, and Gavin was one. In the last three years we've added seven more grandchildren (like rabbits, I tell you) and for the first time ever we had all twelve grandchildren together (with seven children under the age of three) over Thanksgiving this year.

But...the tomatoes...

When Andrew was much younger than he is now, he and his sister Katherine were sent out to clear out the old tomato plants from the garden. Now, forcing siblings to work together can yield several results: they can turn the task into a game and have a lot of fun working together, they can fight with each other and get nothing done at all, or they can turn the task into such a fun game that they get nothing done at all. From my experience, the last two options occur most frequently.

Andrew's not a very high-conflict person, so on this occasion, like many times before, he managed to turn cleaning up tomatoes into a game. Unfortunately, this game fell into category three and instead of ridding the garden of tomatoes, Andrew and Katherine made things worse. They started throwing rotten tomatoes at the house.

And, boy, was it fun!

We gather together...

"You can have Thanksgiving dinner at our house!" Benjamin called out, ever enthusiastic, to every person we ran into on our way home from school. "It's only two sleeps away!"

Most people ignored him.

His teacher said she would but she wasn't quite sure where his house is (then he reminded her of our address (because he had to memorize that last month) and gave her verbal directions ("You just turn at the stop sign and go straight down the road until...")).

His friend Lucy's dad mumbled an apology: "Oh, uh, well...thanks for the invitation but we've already got plans."

I have no idea how many people will show up for Thanksgiving dinner, but at least I know that my little boy is very friendly.

Would-be kidnapper

We headed to BYU for family night last night. We had to go to the library because—confession time—we hadn't gone since before Alexander was born. He's five weeks old now; it's fine.

The kids ran around like we'd released them in a candy shop, grabbing far too many books (we checked them all out), and then we decided we'd stop by the creamery on our way home since I hadn't yet been able to go and the kids felt sorry for me.

Herding a family of seven into The Creamery on Ninth on a Monday, of all days (hey, everybody–it's family night!), proved to be a little chaotic. Let's just say we weren't the only family with a handful of children to think of swinging by the creamery. There were also several FHE groups there. It was, in a word, pandemonium.

As we were heading into the creamery, with Benjamin and Zoë wildly skipping about in front of us (literally screaming for ice cream), we ran into a family on their way out, with their little ones bouncing around in a post-ice-cream frenzy, and soon found ourselves aswirl in a frenetic current of towheaded munchkins.

Parents began frantically grabbing at children, trying to stop their offspring from crashing into store displays, pulling over rope barriers, or running into innocent bystanders; trying to keep the children that should be in the store in the store while also shooing out the ones who were supposed to be leaving.

As I was reaching out to constrain a little boy, about Benjamin's age and about Benjamin's height—I swear he could have been his doppelgänger, I locked eyes with the other mother, who was also reaching out to constrain the aforementioned little boy.

I looked at her in surprise, but she just laughed, nodded her head toward Andrew and said, "He's got yours."

She was super nice about it, considering I was about to kidnap her child.

I guess she knew that with my arms all full of Alexander I wouldn't have been able to keep hold on her little boy, anyway. Plus, she probably counted up my children and figured I wouldn't purposely bring another one home! Who knows? Maybe she also made a mad grab for Benjamin?

It's been over five weeks since we've really tried going anywhere as a family; it's fine. But now that I think about it, maybe it was a little too soon for us all to take on the world...

And that's how I almost kidnapped a child yesterday.

Idaho and back again

The kids spent Friday night up in Idaho with Andrew's parents. They went swimming at the hotel and watched a movie on Friday night and spent Saturday playing with their cousins (at the Artitorium). The main event—Arwyn's baby blessing—was Saturday afternoon, shortly before they left to come home, so they didn't end up arriving home until it was bedtime.

"You might want to make them some dinner," Reid told me. "We didn't stop for dinner so all they've had is candy."

So I started scrambling some eggs.

"It's time for dinner," Andrew told Benjamin.

"We already had dinner," Benjamin objected, "And it was awesome!"

After eggs and toast and bath time we got the kids all tucked into bed—rather late. Still, we were surprised when we woke up this morning and all of our kids (five out of five) were still asleep. Granted, Alexander had just fallen back to sleep after being up, but having all five children asleep while we were awake felt like a grand (albeit eerie) accomplishment.

Zoë and Rachel were sleeping on the couch, so obviously they'd been up a bit earlier. Rachel said Zoë climbed into her bed around 7:00 and she had managed to convince her to cuddle.

First and Second Zoë haircuts (and other stories)

Since Alexander was born, Andrew's made an effort to stick around—at least for a few minutes—in the mornings to help get the kids up and ready for school. Quite often he's gone before they leave for school, but he'll usually have them all up and dressed and at the breakfast table by the time I get up, which really only gives me an extra fifteen minutes of sleep or so (but believe me, that fifteen minutes is so precious).

This morning, however, Andrew was in Michigan. That meant I was left to get all the kids moving on my own. And, because I'm a genius, I scheduled visiting teaching appointments this morning as well, which meant that in addition to getting the kids off to school on my own I also had to get Zoë, Alexander, and myself ready to leave the house. Smart, right?

So instead of getting an extra fifteen minutes of sleep, I woke up fifteen minutes before the kids got up so that I would (hopefully) have time to get everything done. And I did. I got all the kids out the door, I pumped, I fed the baby and changed his diaper (twice (for both the feeding and the diaper changing), I wrangled the wee ones into clothes, and I got out the door. And I was only, like, five minutes late to my first appointment. So...boom!

Here's Zoë saying good morning to Alexander:

One Month: belly stickers and park pictures

Enfamil sent me some "belly stickers" for Alexander (because they love me, obviously (and they also want me to buy their products (which, I'm a milch cow, so...yup))) and he turned a month old on the 14th and they're sitting on my desk, untouched. 

I should probably give them to some other mother who can keep on top of that kind of thing. One who actually remembers to stick a sticker on her baby's belly on the same day, every month, for an entire year...and snap a picture of it.

I'm not that kind of mother. 

I'm not saying a mother who remembers to stick stickers on her baby's belly is a better mother than I am. Nor am I saying that I am above sticking stickers on my baby's belly. I'm not a Sneetch.

I'm just saying I'm not that kind of mother.

But, here is a picture of Alexander that I happened to snap on the 14th (his one month...birthday):

Sunday and Monday

As promised, I put Miriam's hair in rags Saturday evening. I didn't manage to get a picture of how lovely her hair looked on Sunday morning, but it did indeed look lovely and she was very satisfied with its sproinginess.