Swelling, Schooling, and...sledding?

Here is Miriam on Monday when I woke her up from her post-extraction nap so she could take some pain medication and drink some water and things like that:

And here she is this morning:

She is straight up not having a good time and is so swollen. But she did go to her organ/piano lesson, as well as to mutual, and she plans on attending seminary tomorrow morning. And she's eating more and I really think her recovery is going...okay...so far.

Extractions and Excavators

Miriam had five teeth removed on Monday, so she's been pretty miserable. She's sore and swollen and pretty miserable.

Here she is trying her hardest not to laugh (probably about something that Rachel said):

Phoebe is a Sunbeam!

Phoebe had her first day of Sunbeams yesterday and it went swimmingly. 

I really just think the difference is in how the teachers approach the children in Sunbeams versus in the nursery. Not that the nursery teachers did anything wrong! I think it's rather instinctual in the nursery to coddle a little bit, to say, "Aw, sweetie, come here! Let me hold you! Mommy will be right back!"

And Phoebe didn't want that. 

She wanted to be told, "Welcome to class. Find a seat. Listen to the lesson. And then we'll go to singing time."

No hugs. No random toy-stealing. No talking about her mom.

Where's My Pants? (Again)

This morning while Andrew was out grocery shopping I called the kids into the living room to help me fold the laundry—their laundry, to be precise—so we could put it away. Zoë and Phoebe came right away, but Alexander was lingering in front of Zelda. He was in the middle of figuring something out and apparently wasn't able to save his game until that part had been figured out, so I gave him a few minutes to get things sorted before joining us in folding the laundry.

He ended up failing in whatever quest he was in the middle of, dying somehow, and respawning, and...so he quit and saved his game and entered the room still feeling a little dejected...a little distracted.

"Did you save your spot?" I asked. 

"Yeah," he sighed and started explaining to me all about how he failed and died and respawned and...

He pulled off his pants.

"Ummm...buddy..."

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"What am I doing? I'm..." he looked down at his hands, which were holding his pants, which were no longer on his body. "What am I doing?! I think I thought I was getting dressed! Ahhhh! I'm not getting dressed! I'm folding laundry! I'm folding laundry! Ahhhh!"

Buttercup

Last year, our friend Edson (who is on a mission now) was messing around with the young Korean boys in our ward, teaching them to say, "Listen up, buttercup!"

And now this is "A Thing" for all the young kids in the ward, no matter what language they speak. Even Phoebe has picked up on it. 

In fact, whenever there is a phrasal verb that includes the preposition "up," you can pretty much assume that "buttercup" is coming after it.

She'll often say, "Pick me up, buttercup!" rather than "Hold me!"

*****

We still don't think she has a stomach bug. My kids just happen to have very sensitive gag reflexes. Half of them were formally diagnosed with GERD. The other half, well, based on how much they spit up as infants I'm pretty sure most of them could have been diagnosed with GERD if I had pursued such a thing. But usually the GERD diagnosis came with other things—like Benjamin was diagnosed with GERD in the NICU and Alexander was diagnosed with GERD when he was diagnosed with laryngomalacia. And Zoë was diagnosed with GERD when she spent the first year of her life screaming her head off (she's the only one we specifically asked for reflux medication for, I think).

All that is to say that my kids have always thrown up. A lot. 

Believe me, I know. 

Why are children?

On the last day of co-op last year, Alexander's class was released early and they came outside with what was a rather messy art project at the time. You can see it on the whiteboard just behind Rachel's head in this picture. 

It's a Santa that he painted on a piece of paper that he made in his class...that he then glued to a piece of black construction paper with liberal amounts of glue. It's fine now...but at the time it was exceedingly messy.

He came to me with this drippy mess in the middle of my ukulele lesson and just...handed it to me. And I was like, "What am I going to do with this?!" not because it wasn't lovely but because it was so soggy. 

I tried to put it down in a safe place—out of foot traffic, away from toddlers, and where it wasn't liable to blow away in the wind—but soon Phoebe came up to me with her hands covered in paint.

"Excuse me while we take a quick break to wipe our hands off in the grass," I said to my class. "Phoebe is covered in paint."

"Paint?!" one of my helper-moms echoed sympathetically (she apparently hadn't seen the artwork hand-off). "We are outside! How did she even find paint?! Ugh. Why are toddlers? I'm so glad I'm out of that stage..."

I mean, I certainly feel that sentiment. Not so much the "being out of that stage" part, but the wondering about why toddlers are the way they are.

But lately I've been wondering if children are any better. 

The Dreidel Game...and gingerbread

After an entire month of advent calendars counting down until Christmas, the kids (Alexander, in particular) were excited to start counting the days of Hanukkah. As it happened, the first day of Hanukkah was on Christmas Day this year...but somehow we didn't get around to playing the dreidel game until today. We didn't get any gelt this year (although technically the kids got chocolate coins at both the live nativity we went to and in a Christmas gift from Jessica (their primary teacher), but they ate all of that) so we played with M&Ms instead. 

They were left over from our gingerbread houses...which I never did post about, did I? 

Guys! We made gingerbread houses! On December 19!

And, honestly, Phoebe ate so much candy it was concerning. She ate so much candy that her tummy hurt. When I suggested she could...stop eating candy...she simply batted her eyelashes at me and said, "No, fanks!"

New Year's Day

As it turns out, Phoebe does not have a stomach bug. This is lucky on two counts (1) because stomach bugs are awful and (2) because she basically slept on top of me last night.

Happy New Year!

Last night someone on the Buy Nothing Group offered up some NYE balloons, available after noon today (since they were throwing a Noon Year's Eve party at their house, wouldn't need the balloons for the evening, and wanted to spread the joy). I wasn't selected to get the balloons.

But! The person who was selected messaged me to say that she only wanted the word balloons (that spelled out "Happy New Year!") and since I live just around the corner...did I want to come pick up two big garbage bags of white and gold balloons? 

We had just finished preparing all the pirogies, but they were in the oven warming...so I said yes! We could come right now! So we got the balloons and then had our dinner. 

After dinner I set up a balloon drop in the living room:

 

The last shall be first and the first... (Or: Oh, Phoebe!, part II)

Phoebe woke up just before midnight and she was not happy about it, but we invited her downstairs to ring in the New Year with us anyway (even though we'd already done that with her earlier in the evening).