Zoë's first talk

Zoë gave her first talk in primary this past Sunday. She helped write her talk and I stood beside her and whispered prompts in her ear while she very bravely talked into the microphone. I loved that every time I prompted her to say Benjamin she instead said "Benny." She sure loves her big brother (and I sure love when he's a good example for her).

Here's the transcript of her talk:

Before the Last Supper, Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. When they asked him why, Jesus said that it was, “an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” He wanted his disciples to follow his example by serving others. He wants us to follow his example, too, and gives us the promise that “if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” This means that if we serve others we will feel happy. 

Serving others means being nice, loving them, and taking care of them.

My brother Benjamin set a good example of service yesterday. My mom asked him to empty the dishwasher, so he put away all the clean dishes, and then he loaded the dirty dishes into the dishwasher without being asked. It made my mom happy, it made Benjamin happy, and I’m sure it made Jesus happy as well because Benjamin followed his example!

I serve when I play nicely with my baby brother, when I do my chores without crying, and when I deliver cookies to people who are sad. There are lots of ways to serve others and when we do that’s following Jesus’s example. And that makes everybody happy!

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

*****

She had trouble thinking of times that she's served others, but when we were walking home from church she reminded me about the primary's service activity a few weeks ago where her class got to go back into the nursery and wash the toys for all the babies (now that they're great big Sunbeams). That would have been a good example to include, I suppose, but the things she thought of were just fine.

The Hogle Zoo

If my memory serves me correctly, I haven't been to the Hogle Zoo since February 2008, when Rachel was just seven months old! We took a commemorative photo by the elephant statue to mark the occasion. Rachel is just a tad bit bigger than she was back in 2008 (and I look a tad bit tired-er) but we're still both pretty cute!

Alexander was very unhappy that I chose to hold someone other than...him

One of my mom's students works at the zoo and told her that she was able to get a spectacular deal on admission, so my mom's been meaning to treat us on an outing and realized that we're running out of time—fast! So today was the day!

Helping hands

After dinner I asked Benjamin to unload the dishwasher so that I could do the dishes that had accumulated in the sink today. He complained for a bit, but I told him I would work along side him—he could do the low stuff (kid dishes and pots, pans, and tupperware) and I could do the high stuff (glass and sharps, mostly). He thought that was a pretty good deal but was still being a bit of a stinker.

And then I turned on some music—OK Go—and suddenly he didn't want to leave the kitchen.

I completely expected him to run away the minute the dishwasher was empty but instead he turned around and started rinsing dishes and loading them into the dishwasher! He did the dishes entirely by himself! Without being asked!

(Don't mind the shocked look on his face; I was rather shocked myself.)

It was such a lovely gift (that I hope keeps on giving).

Part of the magic may have been that he couldn't get enough of OK Go, so when we're settling into our new routine in Georgia, perhaps we'll have the child whose dish night it is choose the clean up music (because—brace yourselves—you're all getting a dish night).

Leave it to beavers

Last Saturday my parents took the kids (all save Alexander) to see the new live-action Aladdin and Andrew and I worked ourselves to death (just about) packing stuff up. It was wonderfully helpful (and the kids had a good time, which is nice because we have absolutely abysmally boring plans for this entire summer, I fear).

We repeated last weekend's plan this weekend, but on steroids.

Aunt Linda took the kids (save Alexander) out to lunch on Friday and then kept Benjamin and Zoë the entire afternoon. Andrew and I worked while they were gone and got Rachel and Miriam's bedrooms just about emptied. After Linda dropped off the girls we finished up their bedrooms (and now they're camped out in the guest room downstairs for the time being).

This morning my mom picked up the kids (save Alexander) to go to her ward's primary fair, where they had a blast eating more cotton candy than sounded appetizing to me (ie. any). She then kept them for the entire afternoon. They watched cartoons with my dad, did some art project with Auntie Josie, played with the cat, and came home happy.

Andrew and I worked like beavers, disassembling bookshelves to take with us, selling furniture we decided didn't make the cut, backing boxes, rearranging spaces.

The fact that we're moving is really starting to sink in—empty walls and echoey bedrooms tend to have that effect.

Black and blue

This poor baby can't catch a break. Alexander's poor little noggin is so pathetically covered in bruises that I feel sad every time I look at him. And then yesterday he and Zoë had a fight over whether the bathroom door should be open or closed and...Alexander lost.

Or won.

I'm not sure. It's kind of hard to adjudicate this mess.

This picture was taken after he shed many, many tears

Zoë was team "close the door," but she was having a hard time because Alexander—team "keep the door open"—had his hand through the hinge-side of the door. So Zoë kept slamming the door, trying to get it to shut, while Alexander was holding onto the door screaming wildly because he was acting as a door stop.

So, like, he won—technically—because the door stayed open.

But did he really win? Because two days later he still has a bruise on his hand.

If you ask him what happened to his hand he will put on a pouty face and point toward the bathroom door and, will say accusatorially, "Bwo-Bwo!" which is how he says Zo-Zo.

Bustling

Yesterday Andrew promised the children that if they were good we could watch Captain Marvel as a family. And they were rather well-behaved. But then Karolla invited Benjamin to go to the baseball game with her and Grandpa.

"No, thanks," Benjamin said when Grandpa asked him if he wanted to go.

"What?" I asked, truly shocked.

Benjamin adores Karolla and is always asking to do things with her.

"I want to watch Captain Marvel," he explained.

"We can do that anytime," I told him. "This is a one-time offer. They only have baseball tickets tonight. And besides, we're moving in three weeks and then you won't be around to invite to a baseball game."

"Yeah. I still want to watch Captain Marvel."

"I'm not sure you're making the right choice here," I said. "When you're given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity versus an any-old-day opportunity you take the once-in-a-lifetime thing!"

"Yeah. I still want to watch Captain Marvel."

I'm clear, you're clear, we're all clear

Seven years ago I had a hard day.

I can say that with quite a lot of confidence because even though I don't precisely recall what happened on June 5, 2012, most of my days seven years ago this month were difficult. June 2012 was an exhausting, scary, overwhelming month.

When Benjamin was getting ready to turn one, I had a hard time being happy. I had a healthy baby boy (now), it was true, but reflecting on his birth was not remotely a fun thing to do.

I had spent the past year experiencing mini panic attacks whenever he nursed (I had heart palpitations the entire time (25 months!) I nursed him; thanks, anxiety), always afraid he was going to choke or that he wasn't getting enough nourishment. He was small for his age. He had severe reflux. He was behind in his milestones. He had not had an easy entry into life, and I didn't find much joy in reflecting on his first year.

I remember wondering if I would ever feel at peace on his birthday. Would I ever "get over" this?!

I'm happy to report that the answer to both those questions is yes.

I don't know when it happened, or how, but this year I noticed that I was...fine. I didn't feel like crying once. There were no hospital alarms ringing in my ears, no thoughts of how things might have been different had he not jumped the gun.

He's fine. He's happy. He's thriving.

I'm fine. I'm happy. I'm thriving.

The ol' noggin

So, on Monday, as I mentioned, Alexander fell out of his high chair and landed on his face, giving himself a nice little goose egg. Well, today, Zoë was carrying him across the cement pad in the backyard (even though she's not supposed to, for reasons which will be made clear) when she tripped and dropped him flat on his face...and then landed on top of him (← this is why she's not supposed to carry him; she's just too little to really manage it).

So now he has another goose egg, this time right in the middle of his forehead.

A nice pink/purple one in the middle, and a green one to the side.

He's a very colourful boy right now.

Benjamin's 7th birthday

I have been making cakes for several years, with ever increasing frequency. It has been both fun—a creative outlet and labour of love—and frustrating. I have hated crumb coats. So much. 

While necessary for keeping the cake glued together, it's just such a frustrating process to get the crumb coat on. My cakes have always torn apart, no matter what I've done to keep them together. I always end up close to tears, with thick, thick icing covering up a multitude of mistakes. And I've never understood why because I have been through dozens of tutorials on cake decorating. 

"I have here a batch of Wilton buttercream," the host of the tutorial will say. "It's such a perfect recipe for icing cakes—light and fluffy. We're just going to put on a quick crumb coat...*spin, spin, spin*...and done!"

And that's literally how long it takes for them to ice their cake and I've always been like HOW?!?!

Because I have made up dozens of batches of Wilton buttercream and it's always been thick and glue-like and then I've taken hours sometimes to get a decent crumb coat on. And then I have to make another batch of icing to do the actual design and then I end up with far too much icing on the cake.

I've researched how to make this process easier for myself (with poor results).

Freezing your cake layers can apparently help keep them from crumbling, but that's never helped me very much. In fact, the last time I froze my cake layers (for Zoë's cake), my icing seemed to freeze on the cake. I could not spread it at all! It was horrible! It was spreading more like play dough than like fluffy frosting. 

I was not looking forward to having to make another cake so soon after that particular disaster. But, alas, Benjamin's birthday falls soon after Zoë's and so I found myself making another cake anyway.

And then, when I was looking up the recipe for Wilton buttercream—which to my credit touts itself as being, "softer and more spreadable than most icings, making it perfect for icing cakes and cupcakes," and also mentions that it can be stiffened " if your goal is to decorate your cookies or cakes with pretty flowers or piped messages"—I saw a link for "icing consistency" under "tips and techniques."* So I clicked on that and watched the tutorial. 

That one time Zoë got hit by a car

There's been some joking around on the Twitterverse about this vlogging couple being melodramatic about the wife of the couple falling off a cliff. Because they're vloggers they have footage of the accident and it really wasn't that terrible (and they were a little melodramatic about it after the fact, crying and carrying on, and "you’re-whole-world-can-change-in-a-matter-of-seconds.-mine-almost-did.-a-good-reminder-to-be-grateful-for-every-moment-of-it.-the-good-and-the-bad.-the-happy-and-the-sad.-because-you’re-here"-ing [sic] and so forth).

However, I also believe that it was a really scary moment for them, so I don't really like seeing everyone making fun of them.

Having watched my husband fall off a ledge with my baby—and having them emerge from the waterfall wet, bruised, but mostly unscathed—I know it can be terrifying (even if it ends up being no big deal). In the moment it is terrifying because, frankly, a fall doesn't have to be that far to cause a tragedy.

My friend's husband fell off a 100-foot cliff. He's still—miraculously—walking around today.

My husband's uncle fell off a bike. He's a quadriplegic.

Not to sound trite but...life is fragile.

And wildly unpredictable.

We went on a family walk today, as we so often do. Zoë decided she wanted to ride her tricycle, which I told her was fine if she promised to stay ahead of us (because she runs into us when she's behind us).

"And you need to put on your helmet," I reminded her.

"Mom, I have my hood on, see?"

"A hood is not a helmet. That won't protect your head."

"But I don't want to wear a helmet!" she objected. "I won't go fast and I won't crash, I promise!"

"Does your tricycle have wheels?" I asked.

"Yes..." she mumbled.

"Wheels on, helmet on," I said firmly, placing her helmet on her head, buckling it up, and adjusting the straps just so.

And she was off, chasing after Benjamin (who never complains about his helmet, one of his better qualities) on his scooter.

Zoom! went Benjamin.

Zoom! went Zoë.

"Phew!" went their parents as we strolled along behind them, pushing the baby in the stroller.

The children were intense today.