A guest post from Reid (to appease the masses)

I totally stole this from his blog, which can be found here.

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When I got back to my computer screen Sunday morning, the website for the Mountain View Hospital in Payson, Utah's was still displaying. It was right where I left in, at the bottom of the Contact Us page showing the phone number of the hospital.

I called that number less than 24 hours ago and just now got back to my computer.

I called on behalf of Karen, my wife. But to understand why we need to go back in time a few days.

Sunday, October 28

Karen had been burdened with an infrequent cough and mild muscle aches. It is the beginning of flu season had she had recently received her flu shot, so she thought it was just a persistent cold that would go away on its own.

So she declared that she was sick.

We all pitched in to minimize what she needed to do for the next couple of days. Nancy, our daughter-in-law, did all she could to remind the five grandchildren to “leave grandma alone so she can rest.”

While such instructions worked well with Rachel and Miriam, who are older, Benjamin, Zoe, and Alexander didn't quite understand the concept of “leave grandma alone.” So Karen did not have the most peaceful of recovery time, but how can resist a visit from a grandchild?

Wednesday, October 31

There was no demonstrable improvement in her health Monday or Tuesday. On Wednesday evening we had tickets to see a live show of Lore, a podcast of spooky, semi-historical stories at BYU. She was concerned she was not going to be able to make it to the show. She really wanted to go. So she pumped up on non-drowsy medicines and had a purse-full of cough drops.  We went to the show. She was fine during the performance but I could tell the event had drained her strength so I was glad to get her home as soon as possible

For the past few months, she has struggled going to sleep. Her biggest fear was to lay in bed and not be able to sleep. Part of her sleeping problem stemmed from the constant pain she suffered in both her feet from diabetes. A while back, she was prescribed a painkiller for her feet that has the uncanny ability to put her to sleep in a matter of minutes.

This has created a series of comical sleeping experience. On many occasions, I have found her sleeping on her keyboard in her office. When she was up late making birthday cakes for three of the grandchildren, she fell asleep at the kitchen table. So, on several occasions, I would roam the house looking for where she had fallen asleep.

On Tuesday and Wednesday nights, she took a cough medicine to help settle her lungs before she went to bed. This cough medicine included a powerful sleeping agent. Now she was taking two sleeping agents at the same time. This significantly decreased the time it took for her to fall asleep and greatly improved her quality of sleep.

Do you or I or anyone know?

I still need to write about Halloween (let's be honest—I still need to write about a lot of things! I still have a list of things to write about from summer break!) but Halloween festivities seem rather trivial in light of recent events.

Though I can't find any evidence of it, I seem to recall my mom's cousin Mary repeating the adage "Life is fragile!" on Facebook (several times). Usually I just smile a little as I look at the hearts and flowers surrounding her reminder. It's true. Death, it seems, is almost as common as birth.

Somehow, even though my brain knows this, I sometimes feel like I'm still in that super-human phase of life—that phase where I'm untouchable. Like, sure, pain and death exist for other people but not for me.

My friend's brother passed away the day before Halloween from an accidental heroin overdose. She had just moved her little family, nine days before, to China. So as you can imagine, she's feeling all sorts of ripped apart right now. My heart broke for her as she described her sorrow.

Life, as they say, is fragile.

When death is for others it feels so matter-of-fact.

When death is knocking at your door it gets personal. It feels like blinking in and out of consciousness. It feels like chaos and like peace. It feels like forever and all at once.

And that is only for the living.

My grieving friend, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, who writes beautiful serious poetry shared a beautiful poem about grieving called What the Living Do by Marie Howe. Rachel has been alluding to this poem as she shares going through the actions of, for example, getting her children dressed in their Halloween costumes while drowning in agony.

As a somewhat sassy poet of an entirely different genre, my thoughts turned to the traditional English/American folk song Oats and Beans and Barley Grow. It goes like this:

Oats and beans and barley grow
Oats and beans and barley grow
Do you or I or anyone know
How oats and beans and barley grow?

But my mind wasn't on oats and beans and the only words screaming in my mind were: "Do you or I or anyone know?!?!?!!!"

Stories upon stories upon stories...

How does someone come up with so many beautiful words?

I just finished Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson and it was simply beautiful. I started reading it while I was lying on the floor beside the crib while Alexander was taking forever to fall asleep and I had to grab a paper from Miriam's floor ('twas easy because her room is a bit of a mess) to use as a bookmark for a passage that stuck out to me because of something my mom said to me this week (she said that I need to write, not that she was nagging me to write, just that she was telling a truth about me):

"My uncle says that when you tell stories, it's like letting out all the scared inside of you.... It's like you help stuff make sense" p. 41.

But then I couldn't stop marking passages. It's a book that explains so eloquently that we're all a little bit broken and which illustrates the ideas (if not a little too obviously) that we can be someone's safe harbour. There were so many words I wanted to remember forever.

Retweeted by a past-PM

The day before Halloween, Andrew texted me to say, "I just had a former Canadian PM retweet me."

"I hope it's not Kim Campbell," I thought to myself. 

But it was Kim Campbell, which is fine, I suppose. She simply wasn't very well-liked as Prime Minister (in fact she very often ranks dead last). But, like, whatever. It's still cool. 

She falls on the conservative end of the spectrum but scrolling through her twitter feed to find this retweet (the Right Honourable Kim Campbell retweets a lot of stuff which almost makes the fact that she retweeted Andrew less amazing, but not really) revealed that I agree with her on quite a bit, which, I told Andrew, just goes to show how liberal conservative Canadians are!

Keyboarding

Term one report cards were sent home this Monday (all three kids are doing just fine) and I was anxiously awaiting them when the kids got home because earlier in the day I had gotten the following email from Miriam's typing teacher (or "keyboarding" instructor):

I read that and I just about died.

Originality is not his strong point

Benjamin read somewhere (in her little biography at the end of the 4th Harry Potter book) that JK Rowling started writing stories at age six.

"Wait a minute," he said. "I'm six! I'd better start writing!"

"It's never too soon," I told him and off he ran to his bedroom with a paper and pencil.

We didn't hear from him until we called him back out for scriptures and prayer. He came out proudly carrying a freshly written story and asked me to read it.

"Harry Potter is midway through both his training as a wizard and his coming-of-age. He wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the Quidditch World Cup," I read.

"Pernicious!!?" Andrew said, nodding approvingly. "That's my boy!"

"Wait. You think he wrote this?" I asked Andrew. "The fact that our six-year-old used (and spelled) the word 'pernicious' correctly didn't raise any red flags for you? He didn't write this. He copied it from the back of the book!"

"But that's piracy!" Rachel spluttered, but when Andrew and I started laughing she had second thoughts about her word choice. "I mean...that's something that sounds similar to piracy and has a similar definition to piracy but which is not piracy. It's...it's...it's...plagiarism!"

"That's the word!" I applauded.

Andrew later said he thought perhaps Benjamin had just been reading some Fancy Nancy books or something. Pernicious, after all, is simply a fancy word for terrible.

But, no. He simply copied JK Rowling's words down verbatim. Mimicry is the highest form of flattery, is it not? He is working on his own writing as well, but it just comes with practice.

Miriam is nine! (She's so nice we celebrated twice)

Miriam turned nine on Thursday. I for one would like to know how she managed that. How did my sweet little baby turn into such a lovely half-grown little lady? I honestly cannot fathom it. Her babyhood is so fresh in my mind that it's sometimes shocking that she's a living, breathing nine-year-old.

I loved all my babies, but her babyhood is much more vivid in my mind than other memories. Perhaps because she was born at such a precious time in our lives. Egypt will never be far from our hearts. We still cherish the friendships forged there and often recall the adventures (and misadventures) we went on and the lessons we learned. We did a lot of growing and stretching in Egypt.

Once you drink from the Nile, the saying goes, you will always return. 

Though we've yet to return physically, we frequently dip into our memories.

Miriam doesn't remember anything about her birthplace at all, but she is rather fascinated with ancient Egypt and requested a pyramid cake for her birthday this year.

Much overwhelm: the pudding that broke the camel's back

Monday is Rachel's day for dishes right now, which is only relevant so that you know that because it was Monday (1) was Rachel's dish day and (2) was family night. It was a particularly rushed evening for family night because things have simply been particularly rushed lately. On Monday morning we had taken the three little kids to apply for their passports, which meant Andrew got to campus late, which meant he felt obligated to stay a little later, which mean we had dinner later, which meant we were scrambling to clean up from dinner and get to our family night activities before bedtime.

We decided that we'd leave the dishes to do for later (our meal wasn't extravagant so honestly there weren't many cooking dishes (and I had already done the dishes from lunch and breakfast so it was really just the plates we'd used for eating on and some containers from leftovers, I think)) and jumped into family night.

After family night we rattled off the same getting-ready-for-bed list that we recite every night (which, for whatever reason, our children cannot seem to get ready for bed without):

• Get on your pyjamas
• Brush your teeth
• Go potty
• And so forth

If we miss saying an item they will surely forget about doing it and when we say, "Why haven't you brushed your teeth?!" they'll say, "You didn't say to brush your teeth. You just said to get ready for bed." No matter how many times we explain that getting ready for bed means doing all the things they still pull this routine regularly. 

Oh, but then we forgot that Andrew had made a treat for family night: pudding. 

So we said to scratch the teeth-brushing. We'd go from pyjamas to pudding to teeth to scriptures and prayer. Rachel somehow got behind in this process (I think she got hung up making her lunch) so when she came up for scriptures and prayer she was not in her pyjamas and she hadn't brushed her teeth, nor had she done the dishes. 

She managed to get her pyjamas on before we'd corralled the rest of the kids for scriptures and prayer and then as we dismissed them went through their list of things to do.

"Zoë, go potty and hop into bed. Benjamin, put your papers into your backpack, go potty, and hop into bed. Miriam, finish tidying your bedroom and hop into bed. You still have some reading time. Rachel, you need to brush your teeth and wash the dishes."

"But I haven't had any pudding yet!" she objected (because I think pyjamas were requisite to get a dish of pudding).

So Andrew appended his statement. "Rachel: pudding, dishes, teeth. Go!"

And with that she flew into a tizzy. She yanked the baby gate open and stormed down the stairs, angry words flying, feet pounding. 

"Rachel!" I gasped, shocked by her outburst (though this is probably mere foreshadowing of those dreaded teenage years, I'm sure someone will point out). 

I followed her downstairs and asked what was the matter. 

One year stats

Alexander had his one-year well-baby visit this morning. The nurse warned me that it would be a tough appointment because he needed shots and labs done today but it ended up being extra tough because his labs didn't go well, which meant she had to repeat them three times.

So the poor boy ended up with four shots (two in each leg) and two finger pricks. The first time his iron level was 9.4, which is too low, so the nurse came back and squeezed his poor little thumb again. This time his iron level was 9.7, which is still too low, so the doctor poked his head in and said we could either try another finger prick, but in a different location, or we could do a complete blood count (which is a lot more involved than a quick jab to the thumb). This third finger prick worked like a charm and he passed his iron test. The doctor seemed to think that third test was the most accurate because Alexander is growing so well.

He is 21 lbs. 1 oz. and 29 inches tall and is the picture of health.

We just have to wait around for him to walk and talk now. And when I mentioned that he still insists on being swaddled in order to sleep soundly the doctor assured me that wasn't a problem because if he really wanted to break out of the swaddle, he could. He assured me that eventually Alexander would give up swaddling (but that if it comes down to it we can always give his roommates a tutorial when we send him off to college—"just wrap him up real tight").

I'm sure he'll eventually decide that walking is a necessary thing as well, but so far he's perfectly content to crawl, climb, and be carried.

So soapy it hurts

Last night before Andrew washed his hands he opened the soap container and added more water to it. It's one of those foaming soap bottles. We've been reusing the same bottle for a long time; we just add regular liquid soap to it (about a quarter of the way full) and then fill the rest with water, shake it up, and—presto!

It's not an exact science, however, and sometimes the mixture ends up too watery. Other times it ends up too soapy. This time it was a little soapier than it should have been, which is why Andrew had added more water.

"Too soapy for you?" I asked with feigned indignation (I had been the last one to refill it).

"Yeah," said Andrew. "It's too soapy for my shirt."

"So soapy it hurts?" I asked him.

"Uhhhhh...sure," he said, obviously confused by my remark. Shaking off his confusion he said, "But did you get my reference?"

"I did," I said patronizingly. "Did you get mine?"

"I did not," he said.

"It's the second line of the song you referenced."

"Oh. I don't really know that song."

"I could tell."

I know that song from Encino Man, which I remember watching several times as a child. From my memories this is a very funny movie and I still quote it every now and then ("Shoo, fly, don't bother me...'cuz you belong to my friend Link!"). Andrew doesn't think he's ever watched that movie (probably because he didn't have older siblings because I doubt I would have watched it in the 90s if I hadn't have had older siblings).