Birfday grill

While the rest of us played a ruthless game of Nertz (one of the things Andrew wanted to do after dinner), Phoebe decided she wanted to write a birthday letter to her cousin Oaklyn (whose birthday is tomorrow). She didn't really tell any of us this, so we all just thought she was happily drawing...until she said, "Can someone please tell me how to make an F? I'm trying to write Happy Birfday, Oaklyn..."

She had gone through several drafts by this point and was rather frustrated by her many false starts (you can see one paper in particular in the stack below with many attempts crossed out):

Dinner songs and yucky elbows

"A, E, I, O, U!" I sang at the start of dinner.

"I love you!" sang Miriam, Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander in response. 

"You can take me hot to go!" Phoebe sang loudly.

The first call and response was in reference to Muzzy, which I had thought that I had written about...but evidently have not. 

My Auntie Colleen once told me a story about when she and Uncle LeRon heard a song on a show that was so catchy. They would sing it to each other but they weren't sure what it meant. 

"Ah-ay-ee-oh-oo! Te quiero!" 

They decided they should probably look it up so they could know what they were singing. So they did and then felt silly because they were just singing the vowel names. 

We got really into Muzzy a couple of years ago so all the kids knew this song, but not Phoebe, who pulled from Chappell Roan instead—the line that comes after H-O-T-T-O-G-O. 

*****

We lived happily

Today the words of Ilya Kaminsky are running through my mind. I was fortunate to get to her both him and his wife speak at a poetry event a couple of years ago. His collection Deaf Republic is chilling.

We Lived Happily During the War

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

 

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

 

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

 

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

 

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

 

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

 

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

 

lived happily during the war.

It is a beautiful spring. And the world should be celebrating it together.

Stick it

One more story before I go to bed! 

I forgot that while we were at the playground today Phoebe asked to go on the swings. She wanted me to push her in the baby swing but I refused. She is four years old. It is time she figured out the big-girl swings. 

She reluctantly agreed to this and I set about pushing her...and coaching her on how to pump the swing herself (something she doesn't have a whole lot of motivation to do currently—she's so spoiled). 

I was pushing her from the front, encouraging her to stick her legs out straight so her feet could meet my hand...and then giving her a nudge to keep her momentum going...so she was going pretty high. 

Suddenly she says, "I want to play Stick It!"

"Ho-ho! I don't think so!" I started to say. 

*****

Stick It is a game the big kids play. I played it growing up as well, but didn't call it Stick It. I think we called it "Jumping Off the Swings Contest" or something like that. All the rules are described in those two names—you swing as high as you go, jump off as far as you can, and try to stick the landing.

Kids break bones playing this game...but...it's kind of a childhood rite of passage.

Winning at scripture study (some more)

We are only two months into the year and Phoebe has already memorized Moses 1:39, Moses 7:18, Psalm 119:105, and Proverbs 22:29. This last one has quickly become a family favourite because somehow or another we've taken to saying "business" in what can only be described as a Sam Eagle fashion.

"Seest thou a man diligent in his business?" we'll say, putting unusual and grunt-heavy emphasis on that last word. 

We all find that much funny enough all on its own, but then we had to have a discussion about what "mean men" meant for the second half, which says, "He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."

It just so happened that we introduced this scripture to the kids early in the year, soon after the, uh, "bog-standard cookie" incident—not a compliment, Andrew!—and so when we explained that "mean" here means, like, "average" and not "cruel," the kids really ran with it.

"You mean bog-standard men?!" Alexander howled with laughter. 

"Sure," Andrew said. "Bog-standard men."

That was all the permission the children needed. Now they all—including Phoebe—chant: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before bog-standard men."

We'll be lucky to make it through life without being tossed into a volcano.

Monday, Monday...

This week seemed like it was going to be incredibly stressful (and looking at the weekend's current events I think the week will continue to be at least a smidge stressful), but on Saturday one of my professors emailed and instructed the class to hold off on a major assignment due Tuesday because she wanted to talk to us about it more before we started it (I had finished all the readings for it but was still kind of like..."Uhhhhhh???"...and was going to cluelessly make something up...but now maybe I can create a more...informed...project) and then another professor emailed on Sunday evening to say that she was extending the deadline for our major project due at the end of this week for two more weeks. 

So that was all quite a relief, considering I was about to implode from stress.

I did have revisions of a paper due today (that is accepted for publication...with revisions) and I also had to review an article. And I, of course, have to be working on the aforementioned (and other upcoming) assignments. And I need to write a talk for Sunday and prepare another conference presentation for mid-March. And...so forth...

But I took the kids to the park this morning (since I didn't have a meeting this afternoon) and let them play for a while.

YMCA Championship Meet

First thing in the morning, I registered the kids for swim team. I had to be fast so I could be sure to secure a spot for Phoebe on the "futures" team, since space is limited in the "futures" program. Benjamin is applying to be a "futures" coach again. So we're gearing up for another busy summer full of swimming. 

We left for church an hour early so we could go to choir practice before church. We are just barely starting our Easter music...like today. It's rather late to be starting Easter music, but choir has been...to put it delicately...going through some hurdles...recently. So we're starting Easter music now. It'll be fine.

Grandpa joined us for our meetings this morning and then took Benjamin home from church ahead of us so that Benjamin could get changed and pack up some dinner for himself. They were just leaving for the pool when the rest of us arrived home from church. We met them at the Georgia Tech pool at 3:00 for Benjamin's championship meet.

Here's Benjamin diving into the water for his 50 yard freestyle (lane 9, closest to the audience there):

Interesting...very interesting...

Currently our read-aloud book is Radiant by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. This morning we read the part where the two sisters are pooling their money to buy a Beatles album but are still coming up short, so they appeal to their brother to loan them fifty cents. He agrees to this—with interest. 

"Oooh! What's the interest?" Alexander asked.

"Do you mean how much interest? Or what is interest?" I asked.

"Ummmm..."

"Okay, so you mean what is interest..." 

"Sure."

Visible Mending: Death to the Death Star Pants

During the April 2025 General Conference, I did some "visible mending" on a pair of Alexander's pants. I actually turned a hopelessly ruined pair of pants into a pair of shorts and used some of the cut-off part to make patches for a less-ruined pair of pants. 

You can see how awful the ruined pants were at his seventh birthday celebration (2024):

I wasn't sure Alexander would like my handiwork, but he did! He dubbed them his Death Star Pants and wore them a lot, though it took me a while to locate any pictures of him wearing them...first I found many pictures of him wearing his cutoffs.

Here he is wearing the cutoffs at Rachel's graduation:

Puddling and Panopticon

We did, in fact, make it outside to play in the rain. 

Alexander and Zoë got up at 6:30 this morning and finished all their (individual) school work by 10:00 this morning, so they were free to go outside and play. Benjamin slept in a bit so he had to do math hour.

Sometimes we have issues with...accountability...at our house. 

But I was talking to my friend Bekah in class on Tuesday and she mentioned that the teacher she's observing has this, like, surveillance screen on their computer where they can see the screen of every child in the classroom at once to know whether they are on the appropriate screen or not. And I was like, "Ummm...what program is this, precisely??" 

She told me, but it is not priced for private use. It's more of a thing a school district buys. 

But I was telling Andrew about this and so he, of course, came up with a solution—screen-casting through Discord! Apparently a lot of people do this for study groups and things, just for an accountability measure. And it seems to work for a lot of people. So Andrew made a channel where the children can stream their screens and I can see them all at the same time. That way I can easily see whether they're working on their math lesson (or whatever) or whether they're watching a YouTube video (or whatever).

And because the kids don't know whether or not I'm watching...they act as if I'm always watching.

The potential of being watched is motivation enough. 

Andrew initially called the channel "Panopticon" and we explained to the children a bit about what that was (some of them had listened to a 99% Invisible segment on Panopticon so they already knew about it), but he was like, "We can rename the channel to be less threatening...like "study hall" or something instead of the foucauldian panopticon. School-time to match gaming-time..."

So he changed the name to boring ol' "school-time" and there was quite an uproar about that.

It's back to Panopticon. 

Here's a shot of Benjamin looking at his own screen through his own screen through his own screen through his own screen through his own screen...

Screen-ception