Peekaboo! (And a cute sweater)

One of Phoebe's favourite games is peekaboo, but it's usually something we play when she's getting dressed or undressed and she can use her unworn clothes to cover her face. She thinks it's hilarious to hide that way. 

She doesn't have much practice hiding without a prop, evidently, because when I asked her "Where's Phoebe?" while we were playing at the park and she didn't have anything to cover her face, she wasn't quite sure what to do. But she thought quickly and remembered that she has hands! So she used those hands to cover her face:

Not the most effective tactic, honestly. Cute though!

Pasleep! The baby!

Over the past three weeks, Andrew has gone to two out-of-town conferences: one in Denver and one in Chicago. The week before he left for Chicago, he had his special little operation, so the house was already falling apart by the time he left (I really can only hold things together for so long without his help; we literally have our hands full of children...and then some). It was a long four days.

This week he left for Denver and before he even made it onto the plane, Phoebe had spiked a fever of 104°F. When Alexander fell off the bench while eating breakfast (or lunch?) and gave himself a ginormous goose egg, I knew we were in for a long couple of days. 

But somehow three days seemed so much more doable than four. I don't know why. 

Phoebe was sick and miserable and gave up sleeping entirely. On Thursday night she didn't really get settled until around 8:30 in the morning on Friday—after a long night with a lot of screaming, a lot of coughing, a lot of mucus, a lot of frustration, a lot of nursing, and a little bit of Tylenol—when she finally passed out in the middle of crawling across my bedroom floor. I quietly rejoiced and then went to ask the kids to just, like, very quietly play down in the basement or something because I needed to catch a few zzzz's. They agreed to play nicely and I finally crawled into bed around 8:45 in the morning. 

But somehow my instructions to play quietly in the basement got lost in translation and the kids ended up fighting at the bottom of the stairs (that lead right up to my bedroom door). So at 9:09 I texted Rachel to ask her to hush up the children and usher them into the basement. But then I remembered that I was forgetting something. What was it? What was it? What was it? Oh! 

Two of my children had well-child appointments at 9:30!!

Phoebe's first steps!

Phoebe has begun to take a few teetery-tottery steps recently, which is good news. 

She's been rather reluctant about standing on her own and whenever we'd try to get her to walk holding our hands she'd just lift up her feet and swing from our fingers. She was not interested in walking one bit. 

This is rather how she was with food. When she was five months old we could hold a spoonful of food right up to her lips and she showed zero interest in it, could not understand why we kept putting that horrible stuff in her mouth. 

Miriam is 13!

Miriam has been 13 for over a week now, but I finally managed to get everyone's birthday balloon contributions for her tonight, so I can finally tackle her birthday post today!

I'll also share that she had a piano adjudication this weekend and was so worried that she had messed up on one of her songs (which she had to play from memory), but today at her lesson her teacher gave her her scoring sheet and she was ranked...superior. So she did just fine (and more than fine—excellently)!

She played Prelude in C (J. Bach) and was told she gave a "good solid performance with great continuity and memory," along with many tips to improve her piece (like, "if you use 5-3 fingers at the end of the measure, you might be able to connect to the chord at the beginning of measure 4, which would really add a lot to the sound here").

She also played Solfeggietto (CPE Bach) and received similar instruction and appreciation for her hard work. 

It truly is a joy to listen to her play, to watch her enjoy something so much, and to have her share her love of music with others. Sometimes I think back to those early days in Durham when I was teaching her piano lessons and my mind is blown because she took the rudimentary knowledge I could give her and just...has run with it. She knows way more about music than I probably ever will and plays so beautifully! And she's so gracious about it, too!

The other day I was stumbling through a piece that she'd arranged and I mentioned something about how fluent she is with music. Like, she can see music and know just where to place her hands while I still have to pick my way through things. And she can hear how music might work together in her mind and is able to put it on the page...another thing that I really just struggle to do. 

And she just smiled and told me that I'm fluent in other things, that it takes all kinds of people to make the world run, and that you don't have to be fluent at something to enjoy it (that is, it didn't bother her that I was stuttering my way through her piece one bit).

So, you see, she's wise, too!

How dare you?!

This morning Phoebe woke up to nurse and then rolled over and patted Andrew's face until he woke up and rolled over to greet her. She did her best to back up a bit to make room for him, but although she withdrew her feet, her the little footies of her pyjamas got pinned underneath him. This was frustrating.

In order to free herself, she began kicking her little legs, which just happened to be right in Andrew's face, which meant, ultimately, that she was kicking him right in the face. 

"Hey! Hey! Phoebe!" Andrew said. "Ow! Stop kicking me, Phoebe!"

Phoebe ignored him and continued her efforts to free her clothes. After all, she wasn't kicking him. She was simply kicking...to free her jammies. She gave another good kick to try to pull them loose and really pegged him in the nose.

"Phoebe!" he said a little more sternly, "Don't be mean!"

At that cruel and unfounded accusation, Phoebe stopped kicking and stuck out her lower lip in the saddest little pout before she started howling about all the injustices in the world while I pieced things together.

"Oh, honey!" I said. "I think she's just frustrated. You're on the feet of her pyjamas."

"Oh, no!" he said, pulling her pyjamas free. "Were you stuck?"

He apologized and she gave him some I-forgive-you snuggles and they're back to being best buddies.

But it's good to know that Phoebe considers herself to be a generally "nice" person—apparently—because she did not appreciate insinuations otherwise!

Happy Halloween from these trick-or-treaters!

Halloween seemed to take forever to get here (because my kids started planning and counting down way early) but then once it was here it really seemed to pounce on us. Somehow I'm always scrambling on Halloween and it seems like Andrew frequently has had to work on Halloween (he had to work Halloween evening again this year), so I was grateful that Grandpa was able to come over for the most chaotic dinner of the year. 

I dunno. Something about dressing a half dozen children in finicky costumes while trying to temper their excitement enough to get some healthy food in their bodies before sending them out door to door collecting candy gets me feeling like Cinderella. 

"Cinderella! Fix my hair! Attach my breastplate! Put on my arm bands! Change my diaper!"

Benjamin FTW!

This morning Benjamin was sitting at his computer taking his math test on expressions and equations—and I mean really taking his math test. In past units he'd spend about 10 minutes on a 20 question test, fail, and then have to do it over again, but today he was really working. The test ended up taking him just over two hours to complete, but he did amazingly well on it (only had to take it once!) and, in his defense, there were a few distractions here and there.

For one thing, his little siblings couldn't seem to stay away! 

Phoebe would crawl up to his desk to see what he was doing, and then I'd cart her away, and the next thing I'd know Alexander would be there as him a question about Minecraft. While I was off finding a book for Alexander, Zoë decided she'd better get down her ukulele and sing and play at the top of her lungs...in the same room as Benjamin. So we had a little revolving-door circus going on.

For another thing...is something burning? It smells like something is burning...

Benjamin—thankfully—allowed himself to be distracted by the burning smell (I'm sure the smoke helped distract him, too) and located a charging cord that was feeling a little too hot, hot, hot!

Alexander's well-child check

Briefly—before I blog about Miriam's birthday—I have to write a little bit more about our wee birthday boy this month. 

I took him in for his well-child check and he's doing well. He's just tiny. 

Pick Me Up

Warning: This story is not a pick-me-up kind of tale. It's sad and scary. But the title works.

We're all familiar with The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a fable wherein a shepherd boy gets bored and decides to alert the village that a wolf is approaching the flock, so they all come running to help save him and he's like, "Just kidding! There's no wolf! I just wanted to see what you'd do!" And everyone gets kind of grumbly because that's not a very funny joke, but the next time he cries wolf they all come running back anyway because what if it's real this time?! And, of course, it isn't real. He's just pulling their leg once again.

This continues until the townspeople get sick of having the wool pulled over their eyes and decide they'll just ignore the silly shepherd, which does not bode well for the shepherd when he sees an actual wolf approaching the flock. Naturally he cries out for help and...nobody comes. 

As a fable, there are various morals offered, but it basically can be boiled down to this: liars don't get to choose when people believe them (and thus it's better to be known as being honest and truthful).

That story is important but peripheral background knowledge for the following story:

My family has a family group chat. 

This was a surprising but welcome little institution to spring up out of the loneliness of the pandemic. We'd never had a family group chat before! And we really do feel much more connected to each other (if I may be so bold as to speak on behalf of everyone). It's nice.

But my sister Kelli—I tell you!—she is the most notorious butt-dialer on the planet!

The chipmunk mystery

Things that we know:

1) There was a mysterious smell in the TV room (entertainment room?), a musty, rotty, yucky smell that we couldn't quite identify. We could only smell it from one specific spot in the room but couldn't find anything musty/rotten/yucky nearby. And if we got too far away from this one specific spot, we'd lose the scent, so we knew the smelly thing had to be near that one spot. 

2) Phoebe loves to go outside and she loves putting everything in her mouth. When we go outside she mostly just wants to put things in her mouth. If there is a thing outside, she will try to put it in her mouth. Often she succeeds in putting things in her mouth. Rocks. Dirt. Leaves. Acorns. Bugs. Wood chips. She wants to taste it all. We went outside on Tuesday and she crawled around putting everything in her mouth.