The boringest

Just before FHE this evening we were talking about Andrew's upcoming conference in Hawaii, a trip we had decided would be a solo one for him even before COVID-19, and which we're not even sure that Andrew will be making (so I'm feeling pretty good about not going to Hawaii with him at this point). Anyway, he thought the conference was a week sooner than it actually is so was thrilled today to learn that he didn't have to submit his paper by this Thursday. He had until next Thursday.

"So that's a week of my life back!" Andrew said, relieved.

"Your job is pretty boring," Benjamin surmised. "I want a more adventurous job."

"What?!" I said, getting a little offended for Andrew who is living the dream. "Remember how excited you are about your next math unit?"

"Yeah," Benjamin shrugged. "Because it's graphs!"

"That's what I do!" Andrew said, excited to bond with his boy over x-axes. "I make graphs and then I write about them!"

"WOW!" Benjamin said with genuine awe. "That is boring!"

And I just...

Let's take a moment to remember 2014 when ickle-PhD-student Andrew was taking his comprehensive exams and his sweet daughters greeted him with cards saying:

"Congratulations Daddy. I'm glad you are out of work"

and

"I'm so glad you passed the test, Dad. You defintly will be a person who works for the government!"

It's perfectly normal for kids to not have any sort of concept of what their parents do for a living, right?

Walk-sicles and peppers

Yesterday was warmish and sunny-ish so the kids decided we should take a family walk after dinner—with popsicles! This is something they call a "walk-sicle" because they're nothing if not neologists (because why use an actual word when you can make up one word to do the job of many?). Unfortunately, Zoë wasn't a fan of dinner and refused to eat anything. 

Now, I know that the current advice is that you shouldn't force your child to eat because it'll cause obesity and so forth. But the thing is that if you're hungry enough for dessert you're hungry enough for dinner. And if you don't touch your dinner then there's no way you should get dessert, right?

So she agreed to eat her dinner and sat at the table crying to herself about her fate while her siblings did their after-dinner jobs and headed outside to wait for her. Eventually she grew tired of crying at the table but instead of taking just four bites of her dinner she tiptoed over to the garbage can and emptied her plate. 

News flash: Her parents were not born yesterday.

Sunny day, sweeping the clouds away

We stopped by the park on the way home from orchestra and we stayed for a long time because...

Honestly, I don't know when we'll ever see the sun again. But don't worry. Benjamin at least got his "maff wort" (as Alexander would say) finished while Miriam was rehearsing so the day wasn't a complete waste (and Miriam did her math work after we got home, and we did LA/SS before we left in the morning). 

Here's Alexander doing his "maff wort" (Benjamin's involved more (ie. actual) numbers and stuff)

Springtime music

I've recently spent some time looking at music to freshen up our ukulele binders, specifically focusing on springtime songs. I found a lovely version of Robin In the Rain by Raffi and Zoë and Alexander fell in love with it so we've been singing it a lot since...yesterday...when I found it.

This afternoon Zoë and I recorded it and I didn't even mess up until the very end when Benjamin started dancing around me with his notebook, silently pleading for me to drop everything and read what he'd written right then. You can see him briefly in the frame, but then his bouncing continued just behind the camera, so that was a fun distraction!



I've been meaning to start up a little ukulele/choir group the whole time we've lived here and looking for music always gets me feeling motivated to finally do it...but now's probably not the best time (given the global pandemic) to actually start something. Still, I think I'll try to do more singing with my own kids in my own house because music is so, so important.

So I will probably spend some more time looking for new music for us to learn. If you know of any lovely springtime songs, let me know!

Fuzzy Memories

We've been reading Brown Girl Dreaming, which has led us to some very interesting conversations—about civil rights, naturally, but also about life in general. It's a book of poems that tell about her growing up years, a format which Woodson says felt very natural for her to do because "that’s how memory comes to me, in these small moments with all of this white space around it.” I love that explanation about memories and poetry being so connected. Of course there's room to fill in all the blank space, but a lot of that is conjecture, isn't it? It's what you are piecing together from what you remember because we simply can't remember everything—even the biggest most poignant moments in our lives end up a little fuzzy in our memories.

That said, Woodson seems to recall a lot about her childhood, perhaps because she's a natural storyteller. I, too, find myself constantly telling stories and as I've been reading more and more books about writing I find myself identifying more and more as a writer. It's easy to miss the very obvious things about you, I think. At least, it is for me.

Miriam and I were out walking a while ago and she said to me, "I think I want to devote my life to music. I just love music so much. I love listening, I love practicing, I love playing, I love writing music. It's just what I love. And I can study music at college and teach music lessons and perform and..."

And I don't think I had any such solid plan for myself when I was ten years old.

I don't know that I have such solid plans for myself now, going on 35.

Passive-aggressive prayers

Alexander has reached the stage where it's always his turn to say the prayer. Even if it's not his turn to say the prayer there's a good chance he'll be praying aloud along with whoever's turn it is to pray (which is good because it means we've moved past the stage where he'd beg for a turn to say the prayer and then would just sit there in absolute silence while we prayed for him).

Today he "stole" two prayers by diving in and praying when it wasn't his turn at all, but his sweet siblings are mostly good sports about his naughty prayer-stealing ways. Only Zoë really gets upset about it.

A few nights ago (it really could be about a week ago now because I think it was the first night my mom was here last week) Zoë was asked to say family prayer for the evening. Everyone was kneeling down reverently, except for Andrew (who hasn't quite gotten to a full kneeling position with his knee yet) and Alexander (who was, for unexplained reasons, lying on the floor with his nose mashed into the carpet), so Zoë began her prayer.

"Dear Heavenly Father," she said.

"De-enly-fa-ah," Alexander mumbled into the carpet.

A poem for the first sunny-all-day day in March

The sky is blue today
And the wind is blowing,
Shooing away the last
Grey days of winter.

The sky is blue today
And the wind is blowing,
Scattering leaves that have
Clung to trees since autumn.

The sky is blue today
And the wind is blowing,
Stroking each sleepy blossom,
Ushering in the newness of spring.

The sky is blue today
And the wind is blowing,
Staving off the blazing heat
Promised to us this summer.

Very Big Things

With a lot of encouragement and help from Andrew (thanks for the encouragement and for taking the little ones grocery shopping so I could have some alone time), I did two Very Big Things today. First, I finished and submitted my writing sample—the very last requirement for my grad school application (aside from soliciting letters of recommendation (technically they've all been solicited; they simply haven't all been fulfilled)). Second—and probably more emotionally monumental thing—I cut my baby's hair!

Andrew wanted me to buzz it all off but I simply could not, could not part with all his baby fluff, so I buzzed the back and sides and used scissors on the top. Here he is before:

Farewell to Naanii

The morning my mom left I finally broke out my actual camera to take a few pictures because although my cell phone camera takes fine pictures I'm never quite satisfied with the quality of them. Unfortunately, I didn't check my camera settings and it was set all wonky so the pictures ended up just as fuzzy as a phone picture, which I'm rather sad about. But here are the pictures we took on Thursday morning, anyway...

My mom got up early to say goodbye to Rachel before school (we let the little ones sleep in because they had gone to bed a little later than usual after all the excitement of having cousins over the night before) and we took a picture to compare their height because Rachel is getting close to being as tall as Naanii:

Borrowing babies

My (second-) cousin and her son (my children's third-cousin) came over to visit while my mom was here. We weren't sure we'd be able to see her because she recently revealed that she is, at long last, expecting again and has been so terribly ill. But she was having a good day so she came to hang out and we had a lovely visit (me, my mom, and I) while the kids ran wild around the house.

Late in the evening, while I was making some grilled cheese sandwiches for the kids (because we'd completely neglected dinner), Alexander was hanging around in the kitchen and my cousin's son was kind of shadowing him. I tried to make some small talk with him, asking him if he's excited to have a baby at his house (he is, by the way, completely thrilled about it). Then he approached Alexander and said, "Hi, baby. Can I try holding you?"

Alexander looked him up and down, giving his request careful consideration, and then lifted his arms up. So little G. picked Alexander up and carried him around the house for a few minutes and it was the most darling thing ever! Alexander doesn't look particularly pleased here but I know he enjoyed it because he went over to G. several more times and latched onto him (and when Alexander said his bedtime prayers he was thankful for so many things—Daniel Tiger, and Naanii, and G).

What sweet little cousins!