Un|reality

Lately my girls have been blurring the line between reality and unreality. 

Not last night but the night before I went into the girls' room to check on Miriam. She was crying because she had fallen asleep all curled up in the doll crib and was too sleepy to unsquish herself. I thought it was pretty funny that she thought it was a good idea to squish her big self into that itty-bitty crib...until I saw Rachel do it this afternoon.

How in the world?! That's what I would like to know.

The creme-de-la-creme of their reality blur came this afternoon when Miriam decided that the doll potty was an appropriate place to relieve herself. And did so smack dab in the middle of the living room.

Fortunately she didn't have very much in her system—that hole in the potty is smaller than a 3 oz. Dixie cup—and the only place I found that she spilled was on her dress.

I feel like I need to give my kids a tour of the house. This is a real potty. This is a pretend potty. This is a real bed. This is a pretend bed...

Oh, no you didn't say that about Lady Liberty!

There are a select number of people I enjoy discussing politics with—and you probably know who you are if you are one of them. There are far more people I don't enjoy discussing politics with, which is why more often than not I keep my opinions to myself. You'd be surprised at how often I hold my tongue. I learned to do that pretty quickly after moving to Utah when I was in my teens because I seem to be a somewhat original thinker for the area and if there's anything the majority doesn't like it's the minority.

To avoid conflict—and, more importantly, name-calling and far-flung accusations of my sanity and/or patriotism and/or testimony—I tend to bridle my tongue. Often.

Sometimes, though, I do feel justified in commenting politically and did so today.

The conversation took place on Facebook, which is an interesting but rather inadequate forum. One of my friends posted a little "forward" in their status.

Stormy summer

It was a dark and stormy night, not unlike tonight. We've been having a lot of storms a lot lately. This particular storm was about two weeks ago. The wind alone was loud enough to keep us up but it was the ear-splitting cracks of thunder that made it impossible to sleep—I can only imagine what those bunkered down on the east coast for Hurricane Irene are going through. Anyway, it was a wild enough storm that Andrew and I decided that sleep was futile. We got up to watch the storm from the living room.

I walked into the living room first and was taken aback when a bolt of lightning illuminated the window, silhouetting the figure of a person!

I just about jumped out of my skin before I realized it was only Karen, who had also gotten up to watch the storm (being unable to sleep through it as well). She gave me quite the shock.

After a while I began to wonder how our children were sleeping through this cacophony—the rain was beating right against their window, after all. Perhaps their room had gotten struck by lightning and we didn't even notice...or maybe a giant sinkhole opened up and swallowed both the girls and Grandpa (who happened to be asleep in his bedroom below the girls)...it could happen.

I decided to check on them, just to make sure they were alright.

Rachel was fast asleep but poor Miriam was sitting up in bed, sucking her thumb, pulling her ear, and looking quite terrified.

"Momma!" she wailed when I stepped in to get her.

I love that self-soothing, thumb-sucking girl...but, seriously! Sometimes it's okay to cry out in the night!there was no need for her to be frightened in her crib, alone. Poor thing.

She slept through last night's storm and so far has been sleeping through tonight's, but these last couple of storms hardly hold a candle to the one a few weeks ago. We've been having such a wet, cold summer. If I'm not mistaken there is still snow on Timpanogos—from my earlier memories of life in Utah the snow was always gone by the middle of summer, but not this year. 

How Lakhi you are!

I recently started a cross-stitch and I'm happy I did because today was such a gloomy day that I needed something mind-numbing to do. Up, down, up, down, up, down...very methodical...very soothing. It's been perfect. As my mom mentioned on her blog, not only did we learn some very disturbing news but we also had to bury our precious little Lakhi today.



She died last night after presumably being hit by a car. We're not sure how she died, really, but my mom found her curled up under the car in the carport. She opened the door to let the cats inside because it was so stormy. Winter came in immediately but Lakhi wouldn't come. My mom called and called for her but she wouldn't come out from under the car. That's when she realized that Lakhi was probably dead.

Big girl bed

We've been having such a problem with Miriam stripping off her clothes, throwing her diaper across the room, and wetting the bed, that we decided we may as well put her in a big girl bed and begin the long and painful road of nighttime potty training. 

She was so excited to have a big girl bed and went down for her nap like a little angel. While she was napping Rachel and I put together a model of a covered wagon that we found at the craft store for 20 cents—score!

I thought all was well until I went in to check on her and found her awake in her bed with fecal matter smeared all over her sheets. After further investigation I found a stinky little package right beside the door and we had a fun little chat about knocking on the door if she needs to be let out of her room during nap time. She's always so quiet and instead of voicing that she wants to do something she'll just suck her thumb. *sigh*

Bedtime went much smoother than we thought it would. She only got out of bed twice. Each time she just walked up to me, patted my arm, and said, "Hi, Mommy!" Then I'd walk her back to bed and tuck her in. She stayed in bed for the whole night and this morning walked into our bedroom carrying her blanket and looking mighty proud of herself. 

"Meme. Good sleep. Nice big bed!" she said.

Tonight has been a bit more of a challenge. She has been out of bed several times. I've plucked her out of Rachel's bed a few times. I've tucked her in more times than I can count and took her potty twice. But I think she's finally settling in for the night and soon she'll get used to the freedom of not being in a crib and will go to bed when she's told to. Maybe...

Line of Demarcation

Miriam is a rogue colourer. For some reason she never seems to remember that we colour on paper. She coloured all over one of Grandma's benches the other day—I was relieved when I learned that was on Andrew's watch—and a few days before that she took some plates out of the cupboard and coloured on those.

"Why did you colour on these plates?" I asked her. "We only colour on paper!"

She looked at me innocently and explained, "Nephi. Colour. Plates."

Yeah. But he wrote on the golden plates. Not the kitchen plates.

Plates are not the only thing we fight about in the kitchen. Miriam and Rachel often fight at the kitchen table but fortunately this is often avoided, or at least alleviated, by the very nature of the table. It's a sectional table you can add varying numbers of leaves to in order to change the size according to your numbers, so it always has at least one crack in it, usually two. Miriam sits on one side of the crack and Rachel sits on the other—we call the crack the Line of Demarcation.

The girls are very serious about it. We joke that they're going to go to school and the topic of the Treaty of Tordesilla is going to come up in European History and the line of demarcation will be mentioned and our sweet girls will raise their hand and explain what the line of demarcation means to them, which of course is completely historically inaccurate. I suppose it isn't entirely inaccurate since Pope Alexander VI hoped that by drawing his line on the 38th parallel he'd keep Spain and Portugal from fighting over table area new territory.

Now instead of fighting over whatever it is they would have fought about if the Line of Demarcation had not been established, the girls put their foreheads and noses together right at the crack and shout at each other in an effort to get the other one to observe the sacred Line of Demarcation.

"LINE-A-CATION!" Miriam will shout at Rachel.

"LINE OF DEMARCATION!" Rachel will shout back.

"LINE-A-CATION!"

"LINE OF DEMARCATION!"

When a grown up asks what the matter is one of the two will usually express something about how the other one crossed over the Line of Demarcation and into their table territory. I'm pretty sure Spain and Portugal had the same problem because they later ignored the papal line and redrew the Line of Demarcation a couple of degrees to the west in order to placate Portugal, I believe, because they wanted to claim Brazil...or India. I'm not really sure. Does it really even matter? They were both trying to take things that weren't really theirs, anyway.

Half the time I'm not really sure what my children are fighting about, either. Usually it's about taking something that's not theirs.

Thus the Line of Demarcation is an apt phrase.

Routines

This has been the summer of tantrums—tantrums specifically directed at Andrew. When he came home from Ghana and it became obvious to the girls that he wasn't going anywhere they got a little antsy. Andrew was home five days a week, going into work at Quiet Way on Tuesdays and BYU on Wednesdays. Other than that he worked from home—long hours from home, but home nonetheless—and the girls weren't used to having him around so much.

Rachel became quite antagonistic towards him, saying things like, "I wish you'd go back to Ghana and never come back!" and "Get out of our family!" and things like that. She stopped asking for him to tuck her in at night and would instead request that I ask him not to come in to say goodnight at all. I could give more examples of her meanness, but I won't. In short I'll say that she was breaking his heart.

He went back to school full time this week, which is kind of lame since classes don't start until next week, but he's a Sherpa (peer tutor) for the newbies in the program and was helping with orientation. He also taught some excel classes and took some others. He had several meetings for his position on the MPAA student council thing as well as with individual professors. He presented at the staff and faculty retreat and has done a whole bunch of random stuff. In short I'll say that he has been pulling eleven to twelve hour days—he leaves the house at 7:30 in the morning and gets home at 6:30 or 7:30 at night.

Now when he comes home the girls' faces light up. They yell "DADDY!" and run to greet him at the door. They request stories and fight over who gets to sit by him and ask for him to come in and kiss them goodnight. And they do whatever he asks them to do without talking back—pyjamas, brush teeth, clean room. It's awesome.

I guess having him home so much kind of threw off the girls' groove and now that he's back to being gone all the time they're happy to have him around when they get him. It's like some magical switch was hit and now we can all be happy again. I'm sure it won't last long—soon we'll be bemoaning our schedule and longing for the relaxed atmosphere of summertime—but for now we'll enjoy getting back into a routine.

First day of school = fail

Today I was going to do a wonderful post about Rachel's first day of school. I failed in even capturing a decent picture.

She zoomed out the door before I even had the camera out so I figured I would just take her picture at school. Then right before we turned the final corner before getting to her school she ran straight into a mailbox. 

Tears, tears, tears.

She was not a happy camper when we got to school. 

"Hi, Rachel!" her new teachers greeted her (because her old teacher *sniff* moved to China), "How are you today?"

Rachel didn't say anything.

"Well, she just ran into a mailbox, so..."

"Ouch," said her teacher. "Well, we'll give her a few minutes to warm up to things."

The low point of my day was reading the parent handbook and learning that I was supposed to have packed a snack. Last year they provided snacks. Luckily Rachel's little friends with prepared parents were willing to share their snacks with her.

The high point of my day was reading the parent handbook and learning that class goes until noon this year. Last year they got out at 11:30. 

I guess I'll try to do a better "first day of school" post later. For now this will have to do.

And let's just not talk about how I never wrote about Rachel's last day of school, mmmmkay?

$2 Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point and Cabela's

To celebrate Rachel's first official day back at school, Grandma took us on a field trip to Thanksgiving Point. Every Tuesday in August every venue at Thanksgiving Point is only $2, which is a steal of a deal when you consider the exorbitant amount they usually charge per entrant. And, yes, I consider $10 per person an exorbitant entrance fee. 

We went last year and even though it was rather crowded (ie. packed!) we had a lot of fun.

Rachel even remembered a lot about the Museum of Ancient Life; she talked about it the whole drive. Miriam was too young last year to remember much of anything but she was very excited about it and she kept saying, "Dia-saurs. Rawr!" She had a blast this year.

Do not disturb the CAVEGIRL

Grandpa has a sign on his office door that Auntie Em made for him years ago. It's a hand-lettered sign on a piece of white paper and it reads: Do not disturb the CAVEMAN!

Today Rachel suggested that we make her a sign like Grandpa's but hers will say: Do not disturb the CAVEGIRL! So we did. Here's Rachel's door today: