Mid-mom crisis

I just finished editing the manuscript of book a couple of Andrew's colleagues wrote. They gave me about three days to turn around a 300+ page manuscript, which ended up being a rather intense deadline because—have I mentioned?—I'm also a stay-at-home parent.

Interestingly, I've been worrying a lot about the eminent collapse of my stay-at-home empire lately. I feel like I'm entering another phase of reinvention in my life and that's somewhat scary. Although I realize I have years of "at-homing" yet to do, we—I—have a lot of changes coming up in the next few years that I need to prepare myself for.

• I have spent the past 12+ years pregnant or nursing or both, but soon (within the next six months) I'll suddenly be doing neither. 
• After this school year Zoë will have one more year before she begins kindergarten and then I will have only one child at home during the day. That hasn't been the case for nearly ten years.
• Alexander is going to eventually begin school as well. 
• ...AND THEN WHAT?!

Grandpa Frank's 90th Birthday (February 23...well, 26)

We celebrated Grandpa Frank's 90th birthday on February 23 (though he was still three days shy of 90 then) and I finally got around to cobbling together a family picture where everyone is more or less looking at the camera with a somewhat normal face on:

Andrew's family is picture-averse, as a general rule. My family could stand around taking pictures for hours. I mean, sure, half of us might be gritting our teeth, moaning, "Take the picture already," behind our grins, but we will stand there until the photographer thinks they have captured the shot they were going for.

Andrew's family does not do this. Andrew's family grimaces at the camera or will duck out of the frame or hold something in front of their face or pull a goofy face.

So you can imagine the reaction everyone had when Grandpa Frank asked for a picture. But how can you say no to this face:



Sorry.

Hobble Creek Canyon

It snowed on Friday evening—big chicken feather flakes that had everyone's windshield wipers furiously dancing—and doubled Andrew's commute time. We made individual pizzas, watched Into the Spiderverse, put the kids to bed, and when we got up in the morning all the snow had already melted—which the children found rather disappointing because they'd been looking forward to going sledding on Saturday morning.

"We are still going sledding," I reassured them.

But, like, what if all the snow melted?

"Look at the mountains," I told them. "There is still snow in the mountains."

The mountain snow was what was relevant to our plans for the day because we'd planned to go sledding up Hobble Creek Canyon at Karolla's house.

"This isn't very much snow," Benjamin remarked from the backseat when we first entered the canyon.

"We're not very high up the mountain yet," I said.

As we drove the snow got deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and our fears turned from not enough snow to too much snow.

"Will this snow fall on me?" Benjamin asked.

"No," I told him (but truthfully...sometimes).

Here's Benjamin standing on a wall of snow by the road:

Snacks and things

Ever since Alexander has learned to climb onto the table we've had to limit a couple of Zoë's favourite things: play-dough and painting. Alexander simply isn't very good at either activity though he is rather passionate about wanting to join in! 

Today Zoë asked if she could get the play-dough out and I told her we could try it but that I wasn't sure how it would work with Alexander around. In the past he's started eating it right away. Today, however, he was very interested in all the tools we have to use with the play-dough and carefully watched and mimicked what Zoë was doing. 

He patted and rolled and stuck cookie cutters into his bit of dough like a big boy (then he'd hold the whole mess up, cookie cutter and all, and pout, "Mom?"—he never quite managed to pull a cookie cutter back out of the dough and wanted help every time).

Those two were doing such a good job together that I decided I could take a little break from supervising their play to work on some math problems, so I got my books and set up my work station across the table from them. I actually got quite a bit done—it worked so much better than when I try to work while they're colouring (because then Alexander wants to either colour in my workbook or he shoves his picture in my face every two seconds for approval). 

I glanced up every few minutes to see how they were doing, to praise their creations, to help dig cookie cutters out of dough, and to reassure Zoë that "it's okay to make mistakes."

Boy, do I really need to internalize that, myself! I get so frustrated when I don't understand something right away but she just says, "I mixed the play-dough colours but it was only an accident and it's okay to make mistakes, right, Mom?" and completely forgives herself. Luckily, I was on a roll this morning, math-wise, and didn't have to erase much (unlike last night when I should have been soothing myself with, "it's okay to make mistakes"). 

Anyway, I looked up from my book once and noticed Alexander was making an awfully sour expression. 

"What's up, Alex?" I asked. 

He shook his head no (which means either "no" or "I don't know" right now) and then I noticed he was chewing a little bit. 

"Did you eat some play-dough?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Yeah. I told you not to do that. It's pretty yucky stuff. Is it yucky?"

He nodded but continued chewing.

"Do you want to spit it out?" I asked, holding out my hand. 

He slowly stuck his tongue out, balancing a mangled ball of play-dough on its tip.

"There. That's better," I said, scraping all the blue bits from his tongue. "Don't eat any more, okay? It's yucky."

And Zoë said, "Mom, he just made a mistake. It's okay to make mistakes, you know."

"I know," I agreed. 

If she can keep remembering that—and picking herself up off the ground—she will go far in life.

Alexander's first hair cut

Alexander woke up this morning and the back of his head was, as usual, an absolute mess. I tamed it with some water and a comb, but then I thought to myself, it's time. So I took the scissors and started cutting off his sweet baby locks—but only on the back and sides, I left the top of his head untouched because it's just so fluffy!

The hardest part for me was definitely taking that first irreversible snip.

The hardest part for him—besides sitting still—was when I brought out the vacuum to clean up the carnage. Mostly he happily coloured, occasionally twitching his head to one side or the other when he thought I was tugging on his hair too much.

And now he looks like a little boy (but that's all a ruse because he's still my baby).

Here's what he looks like now:

I was going back through my pictures to see if I could find a good picture of bed head (I know I took one...recently...?) but I had to stop because it was making me regret having cut his hair at all because his hair will never be the same.

But also his hair was getting rather ridiculous. 

March tales

March is national reading month, which the children are celebrating whole-heartedly. Their celebration is, of course, spurred on by their school because I wouldn't have known it was national reading month otherwise. Part of their celebration is an at-home read-a-thon where the kids are asked to read above and beyond the twenty minutes per day that is usually required of them.

Benjamin's class has a goal to have each child read 125 minutes this week, so 25 minutes more than their regular 100 minutes. This should bring their classroom total up to 3000 minutes—and if they reach their goal they get to have ice cream at school next Monday (a thrilling prospect).

Benjamin, however, is under them impression that he alone is responsible for reading 3000 minutes this week (that's fifty hours of reading) and he has been doing his best to accomplish this.

Yesterday he read for 90 minutes. Today he read for over 120 minutes.

This does not include mommy-led story time.

It's a nice change from his usual after school craziness and I think it's safe to say that his class will meet his goal (even if half the class slacks off).

Alexander's cast removal

Alexander's cast was removed on Wednesday morning, which was quite the ordeal for him. Although it had been a month since we'd last been to the doctor's office he seemed to remember that his last visit had not been a fun visit—with the doctor examining his sore arm, the cold, scary x-ray table, followed by the trauma of casting! He was not happy to be back in that place.

Well, he was happy at first because they have some fun toys in the lobby, but when they called his name and we went back to our room he was as nervous as could be.

The poor nurse took his temperature—just sliding the thermometer across his forehead—and he wigged right out and turned around in my lap so he could wrap his arms around my neck while he howled.

"I'm going to go find someone to help you hold him down for me because I don't think he's going to cooperate for us..." she said, leaving the room.

She came back with a second nurse who helped me hold him down while the first nurse picked up the cast saw and went to work. Alexander squirmed and cried enough to work up quite a sweat by the time the cast came off his arm (which didn't take long at all).

Then he sat and pouted on my lap until the doctor came in to examine his arm.

Alexander did not want the doctor to touch him, but the doctor concluded that he didn't seem to be in any pain (compared to how miserable he'd been when we brought him in to get his cast put on).

The doctor wanted to make sure he had a full range of motion in his hand, so he tempted him to use his hand by offering him a tongue depressor.

"Do you want this?" the doctor asked, holding it out for Alexander to take.

Alexander took it—with his left hand (not the hand the doctor had been hoping he'd use)—but to show that he was not friends with the doctor he immediately handed it to Zoë.

Benjamin's book report

Despite Benjamin's teacher only wanting him to be reading at a level M when he finishes grade one (which means she hasn't tested him to move reading levels and hasn't been giving him any sort of challenging reading material all year long), he brought home a book report today about his favourite book, which is currently Little House on the Prairie.

This makes sense because (A) we've been reading through the series, but also because (B) it's like history time (his favourite pastime) and (C) it's been teaching him a lot about how to be a mountain man, which is still his chosen profession (though he's since decided that he could also like to go to school to be a doctor because that would only help him when he goes off to be a mountain man and because he was born in the year of the dragon and that's something kids who were born in the year of the dragon tend to do (and he wrote about this in a school assignment as well and I'm sure his teacher found it puzzling but...that's just what our dinner conversations are like sometimes)).

Anyway, here's his report:

Student-led conferences

Yesterday we spent a long afternoon at the kids' school for their student-led parent-teacher conferences. Their teachers had each prepared about 20 minutes of material for their students to slog through with their "guest," which was...meh.

On the one hand, it was interesting because I got to see what they were doing at school.

This has not been the...best...school year. For me, I mean. My kids are doing fine.

I feel a little bit like I'm treading water—trying to find a job, getting a job, trying to buy a house, dealing with Karen's death, the day-to-day of a rather difficult semester for Andrew—so things like, I dunno, signing reading logs has gone out the window (those things are the absolute bane of my existence). I basically have no idea what my children are doing at school, except that I know that they're doing fine.

That's what their teachers keep telling me: no missing work, high achievers, no behaviour concerns, etc. That's just what a parent wants to hear about their child(ren). And so I'm pleased. And also, I have just kind of checked out in that regard.

I'm still involved—I read with them and I help them study things they don't understand...I just expect them to come to me about things they don't understand because I don't have the energy to stay on top of what they're each learning at any given time.

So it was nice to see exactly what they're doing on a daily basis.

Speaking in church

Typically, soon after a family moves into a new ward they are assigned to speak so that they can introduce themselves to the congregation and so forth. At least, that's been our collective experience thus far so I'm going out on a limb and saying that it's typical.

But we weren't asked to speak when we first moved into this ward (and neither were Andrew's parents). I wasn't entirely sad about this because we'd spoken twice in rapid succession shortly before moving away from Durham and I don't particularly enjoy public speaking. So we thought that, perhaps, they simply didn't necessarily ask new families to speak in this ward. Fine.

We soon learned, however, that they certainly did ask new families to speak and we'd simply eluded that norm. It became a bit of a running joke for us, wondering how long we could go without speaking—or if we'd ever speak in this ward.

Andrew's dad tried to out us by brazenly telling the bishopric that our family had never spoken, but instead of asking us to speak they asked him to speak (which is only fair since he hadn't spoken either). But a few weeks later we got the call asking us to speak in sacrament meeting.

So what follows are the talks that Miriam, Rachel, and I gave. Andrew spoke as well but I don't have his talk on my computer. Our topic was "Each of us has the potential to become like our Father."