Life and Science

Yesterday Miriam, Benjamin, and I went visiting teaching. Ordinarily this is a solemn affair, a sit-quietly-and-don't-interrupt affair, a don't-touch-that-it's-not-yours affair, a yes-yes-we're-almost-finished affair. Not that the ladies I visit teach are grumpy or hoity-toity at all; it's simply that visiting teaching is an adult thing to do (which means that children find it very boring).

I've been lucky here, truthfully, and have only gone visiting teaching while Andrew's been home during the day so he's kept Miriam. I don't know if that's really luck since the only time I get the car (ie. am forced to drive it on my own) is when Andrew is home and if he's home then what's the point of taking all the kids with me when I go out? There hasn't been one...until yesterday.

One of the ladies I visit teach suggested that we meet at the Life and Science Museum this month instead of meeting at her home. She has a pass that's good for six people—we filled the quota with me and Miriam, my visiting teaching companion and her daughter Gwendolyn, and the two ladies we visit teach...and a baby for each of us (but babies don't count against the pass). It was a rather relaxing visit.

We just wandered around the museum, following Miriam and Gwendolyn around while we visited.

Miriam was especially excited about the space ship and, oddly enough, the sunscreen exhibit upstairs. The spaceship is understandable because you can actually climb inside and play around.

One Hundred

A few weeks ago Rachel rushed off the school bus absolutely beaming.

"Something exciting happened at school today!" she gushed.

"What?" I asked.

"I made the hundred club!" she managed to squeak out. "And I'm the only one in it! I'm the first one! I did it! I have got to tell Dad!"

Being the member of such an elite club is no easy feat—and, no, this isn't some club she invented to inflate her ego. The "hundred club" is a classroom club invented by Rachel's teacher. To get in said club you have to write the numbers one through one hundred in order after finishing up your worksheet at the math table during "centres."

I watched this in action when I helped out in her class a while back. That day the kids had each been given a little container of tiddlywinks that they had to count out and then draw on their paper. Rachel finished the task quickly and easily and then got to work on the back of her paper—that day she wrote all the way up to fifty (following a hundred chart). But she was bound and determined to get all the way to one hundred and was so proud when she did it.

We've been working on counting by tens at home, which had Rachel confused for a while due to a little speech quirk of hers. I'd call it a disorder but she's only five; I have a hard time saying that five years olds have speech disorders unless it's rather severe (like the case of my cousins' children who suffer from apraxia) because five year olds are simply five years old—they're still babies! We're required to send in an extra change of clothes to school, including underwear, because kids are still wetting their pants. If you suck your thumb, wet your pants, and can't say your own name correctly you're on the caboose of babyhood, the cusp of childhood. That's a completely different thing from having a speech disorder.

Be that as it may, we've been working on correcting Rachel's quirks, specifically when it comes to numbers. As I said, we've been working on skip counting by tens to one hundred. Last week we turned on the macarena and I taught the girls the dance while we counted by tens. It took Rachel about thirty seconds to understand the concept of skip counting to one hundred (we're still working on the dance part). The problem, though, is that she says thirty and forty completely the same and this confuses her.

"Ten, twenty, forty, fifty..." she'll say. Or, "Ten, twenty, forty, forty, forty, fifty..."

Alive and Laughing

I have a few topics for posts kicking around in my brain but unfortunately I'm so exhausted right now that my tongue keeps tripping over simple words like "lingonberry" and "empanada" no matter how often I've been forced to repeat them in conversations—and today that was a lot! So instead of blogging about something different I'll select a topic from my regular blogging fodder: my daily life.

Our story begins with this little one, who opens his mouth like this every time he sees me. I used to think it was the camera but, no, it's just me. He thinks that every part of mom is edible and if he just opens his mouth wide enough something yummy will drop inside.

Happy Everything Day!

It's 11:45 PM on election night and guess what we were doing? If you thought we watched the election results, you're probably right...but only kind of because we don't actually have, like, television. Instead I mixed up some pumpkin bread, Andrew pulled up a website (NPR, maybe) that was tracking the election, and we streamed some more of the West Wing. To prove how irresponsible we are, or perhaps merely to help cool our nerves, we watched three episodes right in a row—up to the episode where President Bartlett is reelected president.

We turned off the show and checked the election results just in time to watch the president win Wisconson, passing the 270 votes he needed to be reelected president.

It was kind of wild to watch two great wins right in a row!

But you didn't come here to hear about politics, I'm sure, and as luck has it I have a very non-political and very happy story to share with you all: we fixed our van!

Andrew was pretty frustrated after he tried to take the door apart on Saturday. Of course we arrived home with only an hour to spare before nightfall so his time was limited. We didn't have the part we needed to fix the van, anyway, but he was feeling like van-fixing was a little out of his realm. I didn't blame him because even van-driving is out of mine.

He tried desperately to fix the van on Sunday—he took it into a shop so they could look at it but they told us that they didn't have time and to come back in a couple hours later. He returned a couple hours later only to be told that they didn't have the part either. He came home feeling morose.

"Thwarted!" he said, "In all my attempts to break the sabbath!"

So we did the only thing we could do: we bundled up in coats and hats and blankets and drove to church with arctic winds blowing through our window.

That might be a bit of an over-exaggeration. I have to admit that of all places to have your window break, North Carolina in November isn't a bad place. It's chilly but not freezing and though it rained while our window was out of commission it didn't storm hard enough to rip off the garbage bag that we taped over our window.

I asked a few of my friends around here for recommendations on car shops since the place we went to quoted us $300 to fix the window regulator. That was going to be a hard bill to swallow.

Did I ever mention that we spent every penny we had moving out here? That we didn't buy any groceries for the whole month of September because Andrew only gets paid once a month...on the last day of the month...and he didn't get paid in August? I don't know if you've ever tried to move and then not stock your refrigerator; it was an interesting experience, that's for sure.

Election Party

I have a hunch that tomorrow after the kids are in bed and Andrew's home from class we'll be having an election party. I don't know how I got so wound up in politics. I remember watching the results for one Canadian election. And I think I remember my parents going out to vote once. My family's simply not that political—my parents have opinions, I know, but we never really talked politics at my house growing up.

Andrew's getting a PhD in Public Policy. We talk politics all the time. We snuggled up together to watch the presidential debates. I did a lot of yawning and eyeball rolling. Andrew, though, was riveted.

Rachel doesn't have school tomorrow. All the public schools in Durham county are closed for election day. I'm not exactly sure why but as far as my friends and I figured at book club it was because some elementary schools are polling locations and since they're super strict about visitors at schools here (you have to have a photograph taken every time you come to the school to do anything) we guessed they didn't want hordes of strange adults wandering around elementary school campuses while the children were in school. It was easier to tack an extra day on at the end of the year than it would be to patrol everyone coming to vote.

We only figured that because having a day off from school certainly doesn't make it easier for parents to vote...

So, the girls and I had an election party tonight. We stayed up late playing games and eating cookies while Benjamin hung out with his turtle, a fork, and a burp cloth.

As testimony fills my heart

Last week the girls wrote down their testimonies while I was at choir practice. I didn't make it to choir practice this week because of our blasted van but hopefully I'll make it next week!

Here's Rachel's sweet testimony:

It says: I know the Book of Mormon is true because I know Joseph Smith is the living prophet.

Life is what happens when you're making other plans

Last year we didn't take portraits of our children. This year it's already November (for real!?) and we haven't taken portraits of our children (Emily Pilmer did, but we're greedy and need four shots for a specific frame we have). And so, I decided that this weekend was the weekend. We were going to get all fancied up, we were going to head out to some place pretty, and we were going to take decent pictures of our children, or so help me!

I told the children of our plans while they were still in their pyjamas.

"...and then in the afternoon we're going to go take pictures at the Duke Gardens!"

The girls rushed off to their bedroom to pick out their outfits:

Interesting choices.

Tummy Time

The other day Miriam informed me that her tummy was big because she was going to have a baby. That poor girl was so pregnant that the baby's feet were not only in her ribs...they were all the way to her chin!

More about Benjamin (5 months)

There's always more to say about Benjamin. He's  had a pretty busy life, and just this week he's made some major changes around here.

Last Sunday Andrew took away the little infant headrest from Benjamin's car seat. *sniffle*

Artwork Extravaganza

We'll begin today's artwork extravaganza by paying tribute to Disney's acquisition of the rights to Star Wars. In truth most of these picture were taken before Disney's announcement but rest assured that our girls are always excited about Star Wars so they were certainly excited to hear there will be more.

Rachel drew this picture for Andrew while he was at a scout leader training meeting one Saturday last month:

She brought it to me and apologized for not writing my name on the paper—it just wasn't something she thought I'd enjoy.

"I just can't remember what it's called. It's like a bunch of planets up in space and...oh, why am I asking you? You wouldn't understand; it's a Star Wars thing. Trust me, you don't know this word."

Galaxy. The word she was looking for was galaxy. I might not get all hopped up on Star Wars but I do know what a galaxy is.