Thursday thoughts

July was a difficult month for reasons that I can't seem to put my finger on. 

We inched our way out of quarantine, but have spent two more weeks being sick with other things. The girls went to DC and I taught Benjamin and Zoë cursive. Alexander got a pedal bike. Phoebe only slept for half an hour at a time for several weeks (but is doing hour+ long chunks these days). I managed to read one book from cover to cover and can't fathom how I ever managed to be a mom and work and go to school.

I have about two more weeks to pull myself together before I dive back in again.

Elephant ears

This mammoth elephant ear surprised me by becoming my favourite plant in my garden this year. I honestly didn't expect this because when I was planning our garden I was thinking all about splashes of colour. Flowers. I was thinking about flowers. I was thinking native plants. I was thinking, but...

Andrew does most of the shopping around here. One day he came home with some lilac bushes (potentially colourful but non-native), which I was excited about because I love lilacs and you don't see them around here. Evidently that is because the deer keep them trimmed to approximately six inches tall...

Let's just say the lilacs are not doing well. 

He also brought home a bunch of elephant ear rhizomes, which I was entirely unexcited about (greenery and non-native), but which I helped to plant, anyway. They took forever to come up. I was half afraid they'd all just rotted away before having a chance to sprout, but they eventually started to claw their way through the soil. And I mean that quite literally. Their little shoots looked like thick fingers reaching for the sunlight. 

And now they're my very favourite thing. I could just stare at them all day. 

Boring stuff

We currently don't have COVID, as far as we know, but we've been quarantining and isolating like it's nobody's business. 

The girls dutifully fulfilled their post-trip isolation period with grace. Zoë, however, got sick with something that wasn't COVID but which had her laid up in bed for several days. We thought that with how well (but gently) we isolated her that the rest of us would be spared. Unfortunately, Benjamin got sick on Monday and has been in gentle isolation since Monday. 

Phoebe slept in our bed until Zoë was better (she usually joins us in bed, but it's nice to have her start out the night in her own bed so I can get some work accomplished). Now Alexander is sleeping on the floor in the girls' room so Benjamin can have his room to himself all night. 

We went a little crazy with air purifiers, but they seem to work. Andrew's been monitoring the AQI in his office and without the air purifier on, the AQI was above 150, but with the air purifier on it's been lingering around 50. So clearly it helps. 

Saltines, Butter, and Plum Jam

 

I'm not really sure why the kids got all dolled up for church this morning. I suppose it's because Alexander helped clean his room on Saturday morning and found his suspenders and bowtie from Auntie K, which he just knew he had to wear today, so he got ready for church, and then Zoë and Benjamin got ready for church and then I figured that I may as well put Phoebe into a dress since I never get her dressed up and...here we are.

Winky wonky

First and foremost, let it be known throughout the land that I find Phoebe phenomenally cute. It's not even just my opinion, though. It's a solid fact. 

Look at her sitting in the stuffed animal bin:

Zoë stuck her in there one morning while they were playing together. Adorable, right? 

Rachel is 15

This afternoon around 2:00, I looked at the time and then looked at Rachel, patted her on the cheek, and said, "Oh, wow! At this exact time fifteen years ago I was...at work."

"Really?!" she gasped. "What did you do with me?!"

"Uhhh..." I said, miming a large pregnant belly. "I just took you with me."

"Oh," she said. "Right. That makes sense."

Technically 2:00 was around the time I left work. It was my very last day, because I'd so brazenly decided to simply work right up until my due date because what could possibly happen otherwise? Babies always cooperate with our best laid plans. 

In this case, Rachel really did cooperate quite well. She only made me miss the last 1.5 hours or so of my work week. Silly girl. 

I had her in my arms shortly after 5:00. 

And now she's 15. And that's wild to think about. This evening I told her, "You know, I was fifteen when I met your father..." and she about panicked, though it's the absolute truth. 

And it's hard to believe that she's fifteen now. 

Somehow Andrew and I managed to raise an entire person for fifteen solid years. She went from a helpless mewling infant to a babbling toddler to a lisping child to this person-sized teenager who begs for me to sign her up for college courses. And I'd like to know how that happened, exactly, because I was watching the whole time and I never really caught her in the act of growing up. 

Somehow growth is both imperceptibly slow and happens way too fast.

But today isn't really about my parental existential crisis, is it? It's about Rachel's birthday, which was really quite boring. We did schoolwork all day. That's the scoop.

15 years!

I suppose I should have saved that picture of Rachel for this moment—the moment where I'm thinking about having been her mom for fifteen years (which feels unreal, if we're being honest).

When I think about Rachel, I think about grace. Offering her grace, sure, but also offering myself grace. 

My mom told me something that my friend's mom used to say (which I never heard her say, but I suppose she had no reason to tell it to me)—when she and/or her daughter found themselves or their relationship in a "tricky situation" that they had to sort out (and I'm sure my children are hearing me say, "Tricky situation!" in the goofy way I do when I talk about Phoebe's insatiable efforts to crawl and climb over everything), she would say, "We need to be patient with one another because we've never done this before. You have never been my daughter before [in this situation] and I have never been your mother [in this situation]."

Something like that. Honestly, I was probably about 15 years old when my mom told it to me and oddly enough, that wasn't yesterday (though it almost feels like yesterday), but it's stuck with me. 

I think it's applicable to all people, every day. Or at least almost every day. We are all learning, all the time. 

Or, at least, that's my hope. 

Rachel arrived with a fiery personality. She was quick-witted and passionate. Her favourite phrase when she was a toddler—which is perhaps her favourite phrase even now—was, "What else about _________?"

These were the magic words that could unlock stories and knowledge (and prolong bedtime). 

Visitors II

One reason I was nervous about sending the girls to DC was because, well, we're in the middle of a big wave (of COVID, in case we ever get so removed from this situation that this will need to be clarified for future readers; one can hope). We still haven't done much or gone many places and DC is a bustling city teeming with human vectors. But I also felt like I can't take everything away from my kids. And they felt like the risks were worth it to meet up with Michael. And I did annoying things like ask that the plane riders in our group wear masks on the plane...and forbid that my children should dine indoors (good thing food trucks are plentiful in DC)...and insist that my children wear masks indoors...and send a HEPA filter with my girls...and...and...and...

We did what we could to make it as less risky as possible. But naturally there were still risks.

So when Grandpa told us that he was up coughing all night on Sunday, we began to feel a little worried. 

Already we'd mostly confined Rachel and Miriam to the basement. But when we got word of Grandpa's cough we got a little stricter about their period of confinement. They've been wearing masks whenever they come upstairs and have been taking their meals downstairs and so forth, we've got air purifiers set up around the house. 

Grandpa tested negative on Sunday. He tested negative on Monday. 

Zoë woke up with a fever around 2 AM last night. And then she just...stayed up...the rest of the night. And I mostly did, too, between running to check on her and getting up with Phoebe and just having my mind spiral with stories of doom and despair. It was a busy night! And then there was a big storm around 6:00 this morning, which Zoë was remarkably calm about. 

I'll have to share some of our text messages back and forth. She's a hilarious texter.

Anyway, eventually I fell asleep until around 8:30 AM, when Phoebe and Alexander woke up. We were making our way downstairs together to get some breakfast (and to fetch some breakfast for Zoë, who has been taking her meals in her room today) when I looked out the front door window and noticed a little brown orb scooching around the front porch.

It was a little box turtle!

Visitors I

Rachel and Miriam are working on narratives about their DC trip, so I'll hold off on posting any more pictures of them for the moment. They have some super fun pictures from their day at the spy museum, for example. (I was about to say that they had some darling pictures from the spy museum but because they (Rachel, Michael and Miriam) are a trio of teenagers, I figured "fun" would be a much more "hip" thing to say than "darling," but the pictures are absolutely darling).

Anyway, on Saturday evening Diana texted me to say that the flight she and Michael had been supposed to take had been cancelled, so they were stuck in DC for an extra day and were now routed to fly through Atlanta rather than having a non-stop flight to Salt Lake (where Richard and Diana's other kids were during this trip; Richard, on the other hand, flew straight home to Washington (state)). 

They would have a five-hour layover at ATL, so...

They showed up at our house around 10:00 on Sunday morning. We'd just finished watching sacrament meeting and I hadn't told Rachel or Miriam that they were coming, so the girls were pretty surprised (I had to tell the younger kids because they demanded to know why they had to get changed out of their pyjamas; the girls were watching sacrament meeting downstairs on their own because they're having a little quarantine period, just in case). 

Here's a picture of everyone together (sans moi):

Phoebe the oral explorer

At eight months old, Phoebe enjoys sticking out her tongue. A lot.