Childhood games

We had some friends sleep over last night and they've been playing here all day. We started at the pool, where I ended up playing with Phoebe (the poor youngest child). She wanted to play "family," as she ordinarily does, and that's fine. I'm very familiar with the game "family."

We have one little baby doll (Baby Dora for the past 12 or 13 years, but suddenly Baby Anastasia, which is much fancier, don't you agree?) that we use in the pool. And then we set out the sinky rings to use as dishes and cook up a good meal, pulling ingredients magically from the water. Sinky sticks are for stirring. Reusable balloons are eggs. 

We just...bake a lot of stuff...take care of the baby...and take many trips out to sea...or have sunset picnics...

Phoebe will narrate the whole thing, which is usually fine. But today there was another family with young children at the pool playing close by and I began to feel self-conscious about how awkward Phoebe's speech patterns become when she plays this game.

"'Mother, will you hold my head while I attempt a back float?' I ask," she'll say. 

Or, "I say, 'This recipe needs three eggs, not four.'"

Or, "What time will the sun set?' I ask. 'We should set up the picnic,' I say." 

But she includes that little "I say" or "I ask" in every sentence she utters...because she's not really saying that or asking that. Her character is saying. She's just the narrator. 

I can tell it sounds strange to hear a small child speak like that because we definitely got a few weird looks. But that's okay because it's her go-to game at the pool and it keeps her entertained for literal hours. 

Waterpark with swim team friends

One of my swim team mom friends started a group chat with about a dozen swim team families, suggesting that we meet up at a water park this afternoon. So that's what we did! 

When we took this picture we had about 25 kids (though some more came later). You might think it would be difficult to gather 25 kids from several different families together for a picture, but this waterpark enforced "adult swim" for the last 15 minutes of each hour. 

Adult swim is not my favourite concept, but I do admit that it has a few perks. It forces the kids out of the water so they check in with their parents. You can reapply sunscreen, make sure kids go to the bathroom, take a group picture...and so on. 

We really took advantage of the first adult swim that was called. 

"Come on, moms!" one of my friends called. "We've got the pool all to ourselves. That's right—all of us. Miriam grab Phoebe. Who will take Baby Red?"

She marched us all over to the water slide and demanded we head up the stairs. It was really quite fun! We all went several times. 

And then the kids suggested a jumping contest off the high dive. 

It was also fun to just float around in the pool, taunting the children that we were swimming and they weren't!

Sparklers, take 2

When Phoebe saw the pictures of the kids playing with sparklers on the 4th, she was like, "Wait a minute—when did that happen?" 

So we had to tell her that it happened...after she had gone to bed. She immediately began to have some serious regrets about bedtime, so Andrew promised that we'd pick up some sparklers at the store on Monday and do them again for FHE. 

This sounded like a good plan to her.

Could she remember what they were called?

Absolutely not.

Sprinklers? Spracklers? Spritzes? Sprinkles?

Twinklers? Twizzlerss? Twirlies? Twinkles?

If she was talking about something yesterday, it was highly likely that she was talking about sparklers. 

Or trying to...

Unfortunately for her, there were no fireworks left in the grocery stores on Monday morning—zip, zero, zilch!

Every last firework display had been replaced with back-to-school displays. Yuck!

So I sent out a plea on the good ol' Buy Nothing Group to see if anyone had any sparklers left for my poor youngest child who had slept through the late-night fun the big kids had in the cul-de-sac. 

It took a couple of minutes but soon I had offers pouring in. 

"I have a few boxes!"

"I have so many left over! TAKE MINE!"

"You should have just asked me! The big kids didn't burn through my entire stash on the 4th!" (this last one was from our neighbour who had supplied the sparklers in the first place).

We ended up with plenty of sparklers—enough for Phoebe and all the cul-de-sac kids to enjoy another evening of pyromaniacal mayhem!

Here she is anxiously waiting for her first sparkler to...spark:

4th of July

Seven years ago, our first ward activity was the 4th of July breakfast, just the day after we closed on our house here! It's fitting, I suppose, that our last ward activity here was also the 4th of July breakfast.

This year was much smoother for us than some years have been. Last year we noped out of there because Alexander had a raging ear infection and it was so hot and humid and the pancakes weren't ready and no one had told us there would be swimming so we were just sitting there sick and sweltering. The year before that they started at 8 AM instead of 9 AM and we collectively decided that no one wanted to get out of bed at 7:00 on a Saturday (swim season already has us up early most mornings). We've skipped out on several other years as well... 

This holiday can be a tough one for me. 

Miriam's last Sunday

 

Today was Miriam's last week at our ward. Technically she still has one more Sunday left in Georgia, but we aren't going to our ward next week. So this was it for her. 

Funemployed...in Greenland [Qatar]

We had been operating under the assumption that I could continue working remotely from Qatar, but unfortunately we recently learned that that will not be a possibility. Since I am moving for personal and not professional reasons (unlike Andrew, who is moving for professional reasons), UGA can't allow me to continue to work, which means that I lose my stipend and scholarship. 

Which is all...fine. 

It simply...changes...my path toward graduation a little. I'll still continue my studies, just...differently...than before. 

We're still working out precisely what changes this will entail. But it'll be fine. 

It is a little sad for me because I've liked my job, but it will also be nice to slow down a bit and focus more on being a mom and (Andrew says this part is important) having fun. 

To get a scholarship/stipend at UGA you have to work part-time (13 to 20 hours a week, depending on the contract) and you also have to take 12 credit hours (that's four classes; three classes is considered full time). Last semester, in particular, felt a little rough for me, so I think it will be nice to let that go...and then I can be more present during our homeschooling. The past couple of years I've really had to assign the kids their tasks and work on my own tasks instead of joining in on tasks with them (and honestly the latter can be much more fun—and sometimes effective—for all of us). 

So that will be nice. 

But Andrew also insists that I become like the fancy housewives from, like, a Jane Austen novel and just...frolic about the town...and have mid-afternoon teas...and whatever. 

He insists that it's funemployment rather than unemployment. 

Stripey kids

 I came across this memory of a very stripey outfit that Rachel put together for Zoë on July 3, 2017:

I noted on Facebook: "Rachel dressed Zoë this morning. She wanted everything to, uh, match. So, rainbow-striped shirt (18 months), rainbow-striped pants (9 months), rainbow-striped hair bow, and striped socks."

Oh, what do you do in the summertime?

It was hot today.

Our swimmers were hosed down with cold water while they swam because the pool was a little too warm to work out in. It was hot yesterday morning—hot enough that we got hot just playing around and had to go home to cool down. 

We didn't plan on extra pool time today because...it was just too hot.

But our little neighbour knocked on the door asking if they could have phase two of the water fight they started last night. 

"Only this time can we use your hose?" he requested. "Because my dad is working. I can bring all my water balloons! I just need a grown up to fill the tub with water!"

So that's just what we did because...it was hot!

We brought out one of our empty bins as well. I haven't decided on the fate of this bin yet (it doesn't have a lid) but it made an excellent little pool today. 

Here's Phoebe dancing around in the arc of water from the hose (I had to keep making water rainbows for the kids to run under while I filled the bins with water).

Sounding things out

Apparently Phoebe's doll Anastasia turns one in just five days (we're on a countdown until the party—it's going to be huge, I'm told...there's fireworks and everything). 

Mountain mint

It is wild how quickly the mountain mint I planted has taken over my garden. Not that I mind! 

It's native to Georgia, the deer don't eat it, pollinators love it. 

Our relator was like, "And we'll have to get some landscapers out to remove all this weedy overgrowth..."

And I was like, "Sure...weeeeeds..."

I don't want to seem like I'm attached to this house or what happens to it. I'm not. I don't really care what the future owners do with the yard. But I am also a little morally opposed to overly manicured lawns when we could be planting things that could do a little more for the ecosystem. 

So I have this huge swath of mountain mint on one of our terraces and I think it's great. It's absolutely teeming with pollinators. The kids joke about how bad it would be to fall into the mountain mint and make all the bees angry...but they're mostly content to sit nearby and watch the bees and things buzz around. 

Now, you might be asking, "Why on earth would you want this in your yard? Isn't this The Summer of Stings? Don't you feel responsible for drawing all these bees to your yard and endangering your children?"

Not at all!