Little Purple Pansies

One of the kids' favourite songs to sing during primary is Little Purple Pansies. They love it so much that they sing it spontaneously throughout the week and can relate it to virtually any lesson we have about anything...ever.

They also think it's hilarious to sing it with a thick Cockney accent, especially the line right before the chorus where they get to sing, "Try, try, try!"

Little purple pansies, touched with yellow gold,

Growing in one corner of the garden old;

We are very tiny but must try, try, try

Just one spot to gladden, you and I.

In whatever corner we may chance to grow,

Whether cold or warm the wind may ever blow,

Dark the day or sunny, we must try, try, try
Just one spot to gladden, you and I.

They put on their thick Cockney accent (as best as they know how...and considering everything they know they learned from Dick Van Dyke as Bert in Mary Poppins, their accent is not very polished) and belt out, "Troy, troy, troy!"

It just so happened that this song was selected for the opening song for family night and after the kids sang, "Troy, troy, troy!" Alexander hollered, "Greek joke! Get it! Because Troy! Like Helen of Troy!"

Spring Piano Recital

After a rough night with Phoebe, we spent the morning helping to clean the church building. I had been curious about whether the windows might open and, as I suspected, they do not. I don't know when we decided that schools and churches and things should not have windows that open. From my memory, all of my schools and church buildings had windows that opened...until I moved to the States. But I could be wrong about that. 

To be fair, a lot of the buildings I frequented growing up in Canada legitimately did not have air conditioner systems (only furnaces), so the only way to cool off in the summer months was to strategically let the cool early morning and evening breezes inside. We'd have windows open and fans on in June when things started getting warm at school. And I know for sure that we could open the windows at church (not that we would ever climb through them). 

But our church building here either has windows that doesn't have the option to open or has windows that had the option to open at one time (but has since been screwed shut). 

The state of emergency has ended, and I understand that and actually back that decision. We're not flying by the seat of our pants anymore. We need to move forward. But, in my opinion, moving forward involves opening windows, bettering our air filtration, or making any sort of mitigation effort whatsoever. The CDC strongly recommends that ventilation should be a top priority. Just throwing that out there.

Anyway, Phoebe was ready for a nap by the time we came home, so she and I had a lovely nap together while Andrew took Alexander grocery shopping. And then everyone played a lot of Zelda. "Tears of the Kingdom" came out yesterday so there has been a lot of Zelda play the past couple of days.

And then it was time to get ready to go to Miriam and Zoë's piano recital! Here's Zoë sitting pretty beforehand:

Swimming

This afternoon I made it to the pool with all the kids for the first time this pool season. We do wish the sun would have come out, but we had a lovely time splashing about, anyway.

Obstruction of Correspondence

On Tuesday we put together some Mother's Day cards to mail out to some important women in our lives (because it's good to tell people you care about them and it's nice to receive something in the mail that's not a bill every once in a while). We ended up choosing nine relatives. Zoë made a picture for each one (and printed off one of her recent poems) and we also had everyone sign a card for each recipient—that's 72 signatures in total! 

We got nine envelopes, put nine stamps on nine envelopes, addressed nine envelopes...licked nine envelopes. Alexander thinks that's the worst part. He's probably not wrong. And then we put those nine envelopes into the mailbox...for Wednesday (because by the time we were finished we had missed Tuesday's mail). 

Here's a couple of things to be aware of: (1) we are always home (pretty much) and (2) we check our mail all the time because that's one of our methods to cut Phoebe's fits short. 

She always wants to check the mail because it means she gets to go outside. But she also understands going into things that it's only going to be a brief visit to the mailbox (not an entire afternoon of outdoor joy) so she doesn't get upset when it's time to head back inside. 

We check the mail when we know the mail hasn't been delivered. And we check the mail when we know we've already collected the mail for the day. We check the mail a lot. Specifically Phoebe checks the mail a lot...with the help of many people over the course of the day.

I was thinking Tuesday was a pretty good day to get things into the mail. Aunt Ruth's card, I knew, would be late (since that would be international mail). But I figured all the domestic mail should arrive by Sunday.

Did you know that it costs $0.63 to mail a letter these days?! 

For some reason that feels outrageously expensive to me. But anyway...thank goodness for "forever" stamps.

Anyway, on Wednesday when we checked the mail, our letters were gone—off and away!—and our mail was in the box and we thought everything was right in the world. 

Then this afternoon, just as I was settling down with Phoebe for a nap, I got a message on NextDoor:

Lick-a-cat

Here is Phoebe trying to lick the cat:

She doesn't quite seem to understand why the cat might not want her to do this. The cat gets to lick herself, but Phoebe can't lick the cat? Seems unfair!

Sprinkle, sprinkle, little hose...

Since our first little trip to the pool on May 1, it's warmed up significantly. Whatever little springtime cold snap we were experiencing was replaced with weather that is quickly turning hot and humid. We, however, have been unable to make it back to the pool due to super fun things like (1) it's the end of the semester and I had a poetry reading to give and a poetry reading to attend and a major paper due and so forth, and (2) we took our van in to get a tune-up before we try driving across the country with it.

The good news is that our mechanic felt nothing major needed to be done. Even better is that we have our van back again, which means we can go to the pool!

To make up for not being able to go to the pool, I did let the kids talk me into setting up the sprinkler for them yesterday. They had a blast!

Poetry readings

On Saturday, Andrew planned to make tacos for dinner, but then decided Sunday would be a better day for tacos. Besides, Grandpa came over and gave us all a lesson on how to change a tire and we ran out of time to make tacos:

1) Loosen the lug bolts

2) Jack up the car

3) Take off the lug bolts

4) Take off the tire

5) Put on new tire

6) Tighten lug bolts in a star formation (top, bottom, side, bottom, side)

7) Done!

A good day

Benjamin was on fire today!

Not literally, of course, but by 11:00 am he had worked on his programming course (he requested to learn Python and has been doing great so far), revisited any math lesson he only got "two stars" on and earned "three stars" (all without prompting or asking for any assistance), he unloaded the dishwasher (Alexander's job) and took out the kitchen trash and recycling (Miriam's job, but his favourite chore), decided that we should have spaghetti for dinner because we had leftover meatballs from the meatball subs Daddy made for dinner last night, pulled out some noodles and sauce from the storage room and set them on the counter...

And so on.

As I said, the boy was on fire!

The only thing I sort of asked him to do was take out the trash, and I didn't even really do that. I was just throwing something away and sighed, "We've really got to take the trash out..."

And Benjamin said, "Done!"

And started preparing to run it outside to the bin...in the rain. No hesitation!

It was wonderful to have such a good helper today! I'm sure this is a sign that Benjamin is maturing.

Here he is with a lovely bouquet of flowers he picked for me at the park this afternoon:

Phoebe: Potty + mouth updates

Phoebe has been reaching some milestones. I believe I already documented that she has eight teeth now. Given that she's just about 18 months old, that's not a huge accomplishment. However, in the past couple of weeks she has been working hard, hard, hard on cutting her one-year molars. The top pair are about half-way through and the bottom pair are getting ready to erupt any day now. 

She has been somewhat chompy, and even left a few bruises on me from some well-placed chomps. 

Fortunately, she's figured out that Mommy does not like to be bitten (and she's typically a sweet and loving baby who doesn't want to hurt her mommy) so I've had fewer chomp marks on my arms and legs. 

*****

Piano Auditions for Zoë and Miriam

This afternoon, Miriam and Zoë attended their National Piano Playing Guild Auditions and they, of course, did wonderfully. These kinds of auditions are kind of like the ACT or GRE in that you can't really fail them. You simply...get the score that you get. The guild notes that "should your grade be lower than you expected" students should "not be discouraged" but "encouraged to work harder the next year! If you have a higher grade, we congratulate you but encourage you to remain humble and seek even greater goals in the next Auditions." 

I think that's pretty good advice for life! 

Both girls were very stressed out about their auditions, perhaps Miriam more so than Zoë. Miriam entered 10 pieces for this Audition (all of which had to be memorized; last year she played only 2 pieces) and had to review all the scales and chord sequences in existence, basically, since she would be quizzed on them at random. Originally she thought she had to play them all during her Audition, which would have been about 90 minutes of scales and things, but her teacher soothed her spirits. It would only be 10 minutes or so of scales; they were simply making sure she was comfortable with all of them so that she wouldn't falter when the judge asked her to play. 

Miriam practiced every day until her fingers went numb. 

Zoë was equally present at the keyboard.

And their hard work paid off! They did very well (but even if they had scored lower than expected, nothing bad would have happened (just to clarify for those of us (*ahem*Miriam*ahem*) who need clarification on that issue).

Here's Zoë in one of the practice rooms (or out in the gallery? It was held at a piano store/studio) that Andrew took before she was called in for her audition (parents aren't allowed in during the audition, but he waited around with her prior to her audition and then after the two of them went out to the car and accidentally drained the car battery and had to jump start the car after Miriam's audition):