Getting a handle on things

It's been so warm out that instead of putting Alexander in the front carrier and zipping him inside my big winter coat, I broke out our two-kid capacity stroller. Zoë has been dying to try this out since we got it (used) but at first Alexander was too tiny and then the weather was too frightful (and it should still be frightful; I can't get over how mild this winter has been!) so Alexander has been bundled up next to me since he was born, basically.

But for the past few days he's been riding in the stroller and he seems to enjoy it (or at least not hate it). He's a pretty clingy guy. He already holds onto people when they hold him and he has his favourite little handhold in his car seat, so I wasn't at all surprised when I saw his little hand squeezing the life out of the side of the stroller. I texted this picture to show Andrew that Alexander had found a handle.

"He's all set," Andrew wrote back.

You could say he's really getting a handle on life...

Soapy heads

Late last night, just before bedtime, I was in the kitchen washing some dishes. I had already loaded the dishwasher and was working on some hand dishes. I popped the top off the dish soap, squirted some on a sponge and started scrubbing a pot that hadn't fit in the dishwasher (with nine people under one roof we can rarely fit an entire day's worth of dishes in one load).

Miriam was at the fridge getting some ice when Rachel grabbed the bottle of dish soap I'd just sat down on the counter, held it over Miriam's head, sang out, "Hey, Miriam..." and squeezed.

Soap came cascading out of the bottle. Miriam started squealing.

"What is going on?" I asked, turning around. "What are you doing?!"

"Whoa," Rachel said, clearly surprised. "I didn't mean to do that!"

"What do you mean?" I snapped. "What did you expect would happen? I mean, come on..."

"I thought the lid was closed. I was just going to pretend to squirt it..." she said sheepishly.

Miriam debated internally whether she should laugh it off or whether she should throw a hissy fit. Thankfully she chose option number one. Rachel apologized (and promised never to do it again), we all laughed about it, and Miriam had a shower before bed so she could rinse out her hair really, really well.

Other than my best disproving glance, I didn't really punish Rachel, so before she went to bed she took it upon herself to inflict a punishment:

I don't think this will be happening again any time soon...

Miriam's birthday party (at long last)

Miriam is now eight-and-a-quarter years old, so it was high time we threw a party for her! We would have done it sooner but...Alexander and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas (and then maybe I'm a little bit overwhelmed with life (I mean...five kids is super easy! Everyone should do it! Don't be frightened!)).

My kids know they get a birthday on their fifth, eighth, twelfth, and sixteenth birthdays (and today they tried to add eighteenth—as if they'd want their old mom throwing them parties when they're eighteen) and they're stubbornly sticking to that rule through hell new babies and high water the stress of living life in limbo, like I'm some kind of super hero. Kids: it's more of a guideline than a rule!

But, honestly, as much as planning a party can stress me out sometimes, I'm always happy to celebrate the wonderful people my children are growing up to be. 

This year Miriam wanted a weather-themed (but not-too themed) party and she wanted to tie fleece blankets for refugees, so that's what we did. She didn't want to invite very many people, which was surprising for me but also alright with me because small parties are more my speed. She invited three girls and two were able to come. And it was just perfect. 

Her friend Hannah is in her class at school (and just moved here this year from Kansas) and her friend Lily is a friend from North Carolina (who just moved to Utah last month). The three girls got along great together, I thought. 

Their first project was making plarn—yarn made out of grocery bags—so her friends brought along used grocery bags for us to use. In theory we'll be able to crochet the plarn into a lovely sleeping mat (but we'll see how that goes). They were getting pretty efficient at plarn-making! 

I'm not [giving] away my [baby]!

Today was a bit crazy. I had gamelan in the afternoon and then Andrew and I had to go his department's post-Christmas party and then we had to pick up some groceries for Miriam's (very timely) post-birthday party (nothing like having your party three months after your birthday, amirite?).

Andrew and I didn't even see the girls after school. Rachel had play practice and Miriam went to a friend's house. We left Benjamin and Zoë with Grandma and Grandpa (thanks for sitting!) and spent the night on the town (with Alexander in tow).

When we came home—at 8:59—the kids were all still up. Grandma was really glad we came back because 9:00 was her cutoff for bedtime (she'd told herself that if we weren't home by 9:00 she was just going to have to tuck all the kids in herself, which she really didn't want to do because, frankly, bedtime is a lot of work). So when we walked in the door she offered to take the baby while we got to work putting the bigger kids to bed (all except Miriam who wasn't even home from her friend's house yet (she'd stayed for dinner and a movie)).

We went upstairs and found Zoë on the couch, watching a show with Grandpa. Rachel was in her room watching some Doctor Who on her Kindle, and Benjamin was in his bedroom wrestling with his footie jammies (those suckers are difficult to put on, apparently).

Zoë only had a minute and a half left of her show, so Andrew said she could finish it, but she didn't want to. She wanted Mommy to hold her, so we turned off the show and headed to the bathroom to find her toothbrush.

"Where's the baby?" Grandpa asked jokingly. "Did you lose him or something?"

"Naw," I answered. "We gave him away."

Oopefy

Zoë has been exposed to Harry Potter and...loves it. How could she not, having been born into this family? It's like Benjamin whispered to Alexander while he was holding him the other day, "By the time you're three I will teach you everything you need to know about Star Wars." Except, of course, this is about Harry Potter...and I don't believe anyone actually whispered those words to little baby Zoë (but, then again, perhaps they did and I just didn't hear them).

Any long stick-like item she touches becomes a wand. Her favourite spell is stupefy, a stunning spell. But she also knows protego, because no wizard is properly equipped to duel without that spell under their belt, right?

While Benjamin pronounces stupefy almost like "stupid-fy," Zoë tends to elide the initial consonants and says "oopefy!"

Last night during scripture study, she had procured a wand from somewhere and was waving it around like crazy casting imaginary spells (because my children are always perfectly reverent and well-behaved during scripture study...obviously).

The older children had cloaked themselves with a quick, "Protego!" so that Zoë couldn't get to them with her blasts of "Oopefy! Oopefy! Oopefy!"

Because even if you know it's pretend, you still have to protect yourself, right?

Benjamin was stretched out over the couch but he was "too sick" to shield himself with a protego charm so he decided to pick a fight with Zoë instead (he honestly was so, so ill yesterday, but he was feeling better by bedtime (naturally) so while he didn't have the energy to conjure a spell he, of course, had the energy to stir things up a bit).

"It's not oopefy, Zoë," he said sagely, with great annoyance. "It's with an S."

"Oh," Zoë said. "ES-OOPEFY!"

"Still didn't work," he said, cockily, "'Cuz you just can't say stupid-fy right."

She'll just keep working at it until she gets there and we'd all better watch out because the other day I caught her brandishing a broomstick while yelling oopefy. A wand that size probably packs a powerful punch...

In sickness and in health...

Poor Benjamin did not want to get out of bed this morning. He doesn't want to get out of bed a lot of mornings, if we're being honest, but Mondays are the worst. He's always craving a good sleep-in.

For anyone jealous of a kindergartener craving a sleep-in, please see: Benjamin's babyhood.

I woke him up a few times, turned on his light, picked out some clothes, handed them to him, and urged him to get dressed. Eventually he staggered out of his room, draped in a blanket from his bed.

"No, sir!" I said. "You can't take a blanket down to breakfast."

"But I'm cold!" he whined.

"Then put some socks on," I suggested. "But you can't eat breakfast wrapped in a blanket."

So he put on some socks and slowly made his way downstairs. I sat down to pump, hoping that I could finish pumping before either Zoë or Alexander woke up (it's usually easier to pump without them around (no offence, guys)). Soon Miriam came up and tattled that Benjamin was sprawled out on the couch downstairs instead of getting breakfast, so I called down for him to put some food in his belly. A few minutes later when I still hadn't heard any noise that sounded like breakfast I asked Rachel to check on him and report back to me (with explicit instructions not to say anything about what he's doing to him because that would just cause a fight). She reported that he was still moaning and groaning on the couch, not getting breakfast.

This is not unusual behaviour for him in the mornings.

What is unusual is him jumping up from the couch, running to the bathroom, and puking in the toilet.

Miriam was doing her hair at the time, I think, so she had a front row seat to his theatrics and rushed upstairs to tell me all about it (in very vibrant detail). I asked her to help Benjamin get a throw up bucket and tuck him back into bed (older kids are very handy) while I finished pumping.

I ended up calling him in sick, obviously, and he threw up three more times throughout the day. Mostly he rested in bed, but he also watched a Star Wars movie and his sisters read him a lot of stories. Aren't they sweet?

In January it's so nice...

We've admittedly had a weirdly warm winter so far. It got cold enough for coats a couple of times and it snowed on Christmas Eve, but mostly it's been warm enough to play outside comfortably all season. It finally snowed again yesterday—and I only say finally not because I've been hankering for a good cold snap but because it's supposed to snow here and it hasn't been. We depend on the snow for stuff (like water through the summer).

Durham was hit with a big storm last week—they got twelve inches! Meanwhile, we were playing at the playground with no coats on, which is just weird for January!

In January we should be doing things like trudging over to the sledding hill:

Gamelan

Easing back into academia, I attended my first (though unofficial) university class in over ten years this evening. 

I thought that I had arrived a good ten minutes early, but in actuality I had arrived fifty minutes late. 

So, basically, I'm off to a great start. 

Good thing it's a two-hour class!

When we found out that Andrew was officially going to be working at BYU this year I excitedly hinted to my mom that I would love to finally get to play with the Gamelan ensemble. Unfortunately, Alexander kind of threw things off for me last semester.

But now that Alexander is three months old and we have a handy pair of noise-cancelling headphones, we're ready to jump in with both feet:

Alexander at 3 months

At three months, Alexander has begun developing hobbies other than eating, sleeping, pooping, and spitting up. Hurrah! It's about time.

It's what's for dinner!

I took the kids to the dentist this afternoon—all of them, by myself—and it actually wasn't terrible, which only testifies how awful our previous dentist office was. I never left that office not hopping mad (and I'm not really a hopping mad kind of person, usually, so...); I was pretty satisfied with this office.

I called a dentist this morning because on Friday night Rachel said her tooth hurt so I asked her to show me and...let's just say she had a pretty obvious issue with one of her teeth (a baby tooth, thank goodness). I don't spend a lot of time looking into her mouth these days (though I still do brush checks for the older girls I don't help either of them brush their teeth anymore because (a) they're old enough to brush their own teeth and (b) I have enough other mouths to worry about) but apparently I should be!

It was time for a check up anyway. I was surprised when they said they could fit all four of our toothy children in at the exact same time that very afternoon.

So after we picked Benjamin up from kindergarten and had a lovely lunch (Zoë hardly touched hers; she ate half a banana and then threw a big fit) and a little play time, we got ready to pick up our big sisters and head to the dentist.

Even though I'd scoped out the office online and knew it was rather child-friendly, I packed some books to keep the kids entertained and we headed out.

Packing books was a waste, though, because we didn't need them. There were bins of books in every room, a train table in the waiting room, and the kids got to play Mario Kart while their teeth were worked on.

We all got to go back together for x-rays and cleanings and check-ups (our old office always made me stay in the waiting room, which I thought was weird) and everyone was super nice.

They didn't even wrestle Zoë down for a cleaning. Instead the hygienist gave her rides up and down in the chair and let her spray water into a cup with the water pick and then slurp it back up again with "Mr. Thirsty," the suction tool, all in the hopes that she'll remember it as a happy place the next time she comes and will let "the tickle brush tickle the sugar bugs out of her teeth."

So it was a positive experience overall, even though all three girls have to go back for a little work in the next couple of weeks (Benjamin's mouth was just fine).

Once home, I gave Miriam a piano lesson (she's on the very last song in her book and is excited to "level up") and then I started on dinner.