So many things

A friend delivered a stillborn baby the other day—8 lbs. 6 oz, 22 inches long. She'd made it through ten long months of pregnancy. She was at the finish line. She had gone into labour naturally, her water broke, she called her midwife, the midwife came over to check for a heartbeat, and...there was none. After being rushed to the hospital, they found that her baby had suffered from a prolapsed cord—the umbilical cord dropped into the birth canal before the baby's head engaged and the pressure from the baby then engaging in the birth canal cut off the flow of blood between the baby and the placenta, essentially suffocating the baby (if I'm explaining things correctly).

And I just...

I'm so sad.

I mean, a lot of things make me sad. But I'm just so sad for them.

To be at that moment where you think, "This is it!" and then instead of "it" being wonderful, "it" is anguish. I just...

Dinnertime

We're a little behind on our thankful tree this year because instead of making one out of paper I decided to paint one on the wall, which feels like a rather bold move, but I think it will be fun...in the end...when I'm finally finished. 

Rachel pointed out that "it's a cool idea but might look kind of silly the rest of the year," so I explained that we had big plans for ever-evolving wall art. Not only is it a thankful tree—it can also be a poet-tree, a Christmas tree, a heart tree, a tree with blossoms, a family tree, a tree filled with butterflies. There's no end to how we could bedazzle a tree. So a tree is going on my wall.

It feels like a rather brave thing to do since (a) it's so permanent and (b) I'm not, per se, an artist. But we're going to roll with it and see how it goes. 

Instead of painting our thankful tree tonight, however, I'm working on another family book (free offer expires on Sunday) about our last couple of years in Spanish Fork. There's a lot of ground to cover there. And instead of doing that, I'm sitting here writing. 

*****

After pulling off Thanksgiving dinner on Monday, I made soup on Tuesday. 

It's cold, guys. 

It's put-an-extra-blanket-on-the-bed cold. 

We dropped from the nineties down to the fifties in the past week and we're f-f-f-f-freezing! 

Obviously we're not literally freezing because we haven't even turned the heater on yet (our HVAC system is so old that we have to switch over manually from cooling to heating, like barbarians) but we've definitely broken out our sweaters and fuzzy socks so that we can stand being inside our house (it's 66 degrees currently). 

So I made soup—cabbage roll soup, to be precise (this recipe).

Well child checks, part 3

Phew! We did it! We made it to all our appointments! Though the doctor did mention that in spite of Alexander starting to walk again she'd still like us to take him in for an x-ray since he's still limping. I just...honestly...they're so expensive and I'm kind of flying solo this week and I don't know if I can wrestle him down onto the x-ray table again.

Alexander isn't a fan of the doctor.

Or the dentist.

Or the bug guy.

Or his nursery leaders.

Or anyone, really.

When the bug guy came to spray last week, Alexander clung to me the whole time, whispering, "Scare me. Scare me. Scare me."

Today when he found himself at the doctor's office—yet again—he immediately grew nervous. I reassured him several times that it wasn't his turn. We were here for Benjamin and Rachel. He'd paid his dues.

He sat on my lap feeling anxious.

Finally they called us back and we went to the weighing/measurement station and everything was fine until the nurse explained to Benjamin that, "We're just going to do the very same things we did with baby brother..."

Alexander lost it.

"Noooo!" he screamed, wrapping his arms tightly around my neck. "Nooo! Not my turn! Not my turn! NOOOT! MYYYY! TUUUUURN!"

Happy Thanksgiving, part 1

Between orchestra, a quick stop at the playground, and general unruliness, we only got about half a day's schoolwork in (which is fine because I am considered the "superintendent, principal, teacher" of my school, according to Georgia law, and can declare that Saturday's field trip also counted as a half day of school (even though the trip was much longer than a full day of school...I'm not sure we were learning that whole time) so between Saturday and today we're right on track), not that we couldn't have just taken a break since technically it should have been our fall break. 

See? Fall.

Alexander is two!

I realized late on Saturday evening that Andrew wouldn't be home to celebrate Alexander's birthday on Monday (today) and then I further realized that he wouldn't really be home any evening this week (love that for us) so our options were to celebrate Alexander's birthday on Sunday this week or on Sunday next week. We decided to go with this week, so I quickly whipped up a cake so that we could celebrate Alexander's birthday on his birthay-eve (which is when I did the hard work of labouring with him, really, so it almost feels like his birthday since he squeaked into the world shortly after midnight).

The poor guy wasn't feeling well on Sunday and was running a low-grade fever all day. I'm not sure if it's from his flu shot or whether it's simply of an unexplained origin, but he was pretty miserable (he's all better today though). Here he is napping with Daddy after church while I finished decorating his cake:

Tales from the carnivorous forest

Here is Miriam's story about her walk through a carnivorous forest:

"SNAP!" a mimbi had landed on a tree, and it had disappeared from sight. It was pretty cold outside. 

"B U R P!"

Out came the bones.

Suddenly, the human-eater was sucking me out of the mud. I grabbed my knife and cut the tongue off my arm. The poison dart rocks were hard to avoid. They were everywhere! I always got them confused with the non-poison dart rocks. Suddenly I sunk into a patch of hungry-earth and grabbed one of the sausage vines. I sung like Tarzan until it was safe. I sung down and landed on the dippopotumas's feathery back. 

"Go! Go! Go!" I cried.

Then the man-throw trees unfurled their roots and slithered towards me. I grabbed the sausage vine and a giant stick bug and jumped onto the tree. It started to swallow and "SNAP! SNAP! Buuuurrrrpp! Beeeelllccchh!"

Out came the bones.

Kennesaw Mountain (family adventure, part 2)

This second part of our little adventure—the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park—was the part we didn't research well. We simply didn't realize that the battlefield was the mountain (though they also have this lovely little field out front):

But Atlanta traffic is such that it's worth it to stop and hike up and down a mountain (even if you're a little underprepared for such an undertaking) rather than be stuck in traffic forever. So we hiked the mountain.

Etowah Indian Mounds (family adventure, part 1)

Andrew suggested we go on a family adventure this weekend. He originally suggested we attend a famous apple festival, but the more we looked into it the more we felt it would be very off brand for our family—milling about booths with hordes of people, looking at things we had no intention of actually buying, trying to keep track of our children, paying for overpriced rides...

It's true we need some apples, but a festival didn't seem like the place for us to get them. 

So with very minimal research (admittedly also a little off brand for us) we struck off on a different sort of adventure on Saturday morning—a "history time" adventure (which sounds much more like us). Benjamin was elated to hear our first stop was the Etowah Indian Mounds, which he'd heard about at school while studying the regions of Georgia. They're not too far from us—about an hour's drive—and it was well worth the visit.

We learned that the mounds were built by prehistoric tribes (that the Muscogee (Creek) would later descend from). The museum had a beautiful timeline featuring various pottery sherds showing the age of the pottery (and thus dating the occupation of Etowah). The oldest pottery is found around the mounds is from around 1000 AD (though older pottery (200 BC to 600 AD) has been found at the site, archeologists believe such pottery pre-dates the mounds themselves) and the newest from the 1500/1600s. A large ditch was built around the village and the earth removed during ditch construction was used to create the center mounds where important buildings would be placed (the chief's house, ceremonial buildings, a mortuary, and things like that). 

Here are the kids in front of a replica of a wattle and daub house:

Fall "break," day 1

Rachel is out of school for fall break but Andrew doesn't have any sort of fall break so we decided to keep on homeschooling through fall break to save our vacation days for later. Besides, we enjoy learning because it's fun. What else would we do with our time off if not keep learning?

My friend Julia posted an article about a new monument of sorts going up at the aquarium in Salt Lake (because she can see it from her house and doesn't like it, which I can understand because it's kind of strange (though in the aquarium's defense, the view from the aquarium is much more aesthetically pleasing than the view from my friend's house)) that said their motivation for the monument was to help get people into a state of awe because, "studies show that when people are in a position of awe or wonder, they’re more open to learning."

The study itself says that "Awe experiences are self-transcendent. They shift our attention away from ourselves, make us feel like we are part of something greater than ourselves, and make us more generous toward others."

People who often seem to experience awe also tend to have an "appreciation of beauty, gratitude, religiousness, creativity, and love of learning," though scientists don't quite understand the connection. Personally, I feel like awe is the appreciation of beauty, gratitude, religiousness, creativity, and learning. It's the rush you feel when you finally solve that tricky word problem in math (we worked through some doozies this morning, Miriam and I), it's being filled with wonder at the world around you, it's being dazzled by discovering something previously unknown, it's seeking enlightenment. All of that is awe (so that's the connection (there; I solved it)). 

Anyway, I'm not saying that all school teachers don't strive to create "awe" experiences in their classrooms. I'm just saying that the current focus on test scores doesn't lend itself well to creating "awe" experiences in the classroom. That's hard for teachers and students alike. 

At home I'm hoping we can collect more days full of "awe" to keep our creativity, love of learning, and generosity thriving. 

So, we started our day with a little game I quickly made up for the kids. I saw it somewhere online originally, (though now I'm not sure where) but the idea was for a spring activity, so the game board was a flower. I quickly made up these little ghost boards for the kids and we had fun practicing our addition facts together (Benjamin has been needing to practice these but he's not one for flashcards or rote memorization and needs to be tricked into practicing). 

In other news...

Zoë can (more or less) pump on the swing! She's been working (somewhat) diligently on it all year long, it being a goal she set out to accomplish back in January. She's spent a lot of time practicing timing her pumps just right and today she finally nailed it (for a bit).



We're calling this a victory for today, though! She was doing it!