A Puppet Show: The Boy Who Cried Wolf

We had a full snow day yesterday and the kids played together wonderfully. They watched a Magic School Bus episode while I rode on the bike, then we all did ABC Yoga together. While I had a shower Miriam and Rachel made some sheep (they got the idea at the back of the Sheep in a Jeep book), turned them into puppets, made scenery, and planned a puppet show based on the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.



I won't deny they were likely thinking of this story because I likened calling snow days to crying wolf not too long ago (and, boy, is that ever a touchy subject down here).

Anyway, I thought their puppet show was cute, especially when Rachel said something about the wolf wanting to show the little shepherd boy "what it was like to have his sheep attacked by a wolf." So then the wolf started "straying the sheep."

When we were re-watching it together, Rachel was shocked by her bossy behavior.

Around the time she was hissing to Miriam about how "you're not supposed to see the fluffy side—the audience is supposed to see the fluffy side!" her eyes got wide and she let out a little gasp before muttering, "Why hello, Miss Bossypants!"

It was probably good for her to watch herself being so bossy since she doesn't usually believe me when I tell her she's turned into Miss Bossypants. I think being bossy (occasionally, not always) goes with the territory of being an older sister.

She was also shocked to hear her own voice. I remember thinking my recorded voice sounded funny (and sometimes I still do) because it sounds so much different when I hear myself speaking. Rachel needed to talk about that a lot.

"So, that's what everyone hears when I talk?" she wondered.

"Yes."

"But I don't hear that when I talk. I sound different to myself."

"Yes."

"But everyone sounds different to themselves, right?"

"Yes."

It was a fun snow day project for the kids, that's for sure!

How's sleep training going?

Sleep training is going well. We've had a few nights where Benjamin's been in and out of bed like a yo-yo all night long. We've had a few nights where he's slept the whole night long.

Last night he woke up once but agreed to go back to sleep in his own bed.

Tonight he fell asleep in his own bed, completely on his own.

I put the kids to bed rather late tonight. Tomorrow's another snow day (no comment) and since both Benjamin and Miriam took rather long post-sledding naps they were in no condition to be going to bed when bedtime rolled around. Rachel's always willing to not go to bed. So we stayed up.

We coloured valentines and read stories and cleaned the house and played ring-around-the-rosie. It was a pleasant evening.

When I finally declared that it was bedtime the girls decided to have a sleepover and ran for the top bunk together. Benjamin followed right behind them.

The girls snuggled down in the covers together, each with a book in hand. Benjamin picked up Baby Norah (Rachel's very special baby doll) and cuddled her.

"Uh, Rachel," Miriam pointed out, "Benjamin's got Baby Norah."

"Meh. That's okay," Rachel said, shrugging her shoulders. "He'll give her back."

No tantrum or anything?! She's certainly growing up!

Snow Day

Here I go talking about snow again. It's like it's winter or something...

Benjamin woke up just as I was getting ready for bed last night. He was in a real panic because his door was closed all the way (I usually leave it open when I go to bed). I held him for a minute and then put him back in his own bed and stayed with him until he fell asleep. And then no one bothered me until nearly 9:00 this morning! It was wonderful!

The girls had already eaten breakfast and were on their way to head outside to play in the snow by the time Benjamin had finished nursing. They couldn't wait to get outside and were very excited about all the tracks they could see in the yard: deer tracks, rabbit tracks, bird tracks, squirrel tracks. We know our yard boasts a menagerie but we don't often see much solid evidence of that fact (so perhaps it's not so menagerie-ful in that sense of the word).

Some serious snow...for these parts

School let out three hours early today due to the threat of winter weather and Rachel came home expecting snow to start falling any second. She was bouncing off the walls with anticipation. She kept checking forecast.io to see how many minutes until it was "supposed" to start snowing. Then she'd set the timer on the microwave and when it beeped she'd rush to the window to check for snow. She even had a theme song.

"No-flakes! No-flakes! No-no-no-no snowflakes!" she sang as she raced through the house checking windows on all sides.

I endured six hours of this before it finally started snowing. Six hours!

Rachel had Benjamin and Miriam in quite a tizzy, too! All three of them were racing around the house singing about no-flakes and snowflakes and screaming and bumping into each other and falling down.

Finally I told the girls to bundle up because they were going to head outside to wait for the snow (that I was beginning to lose hope in). And, boy, did I ever bundle them up! Sweaters, snow pants, scarves, boots, hats, mittens—the works! It was already below freezing so not only did I not want them to freeze I didn't even want them to notice that they were cold.

"And don't come inside until you're good and cold," I warned them as I sent them packing across the street to play in the neighbour's backyard.

Benjamin was so sad about being left behind in the house with boring old mom so I took pity on him, bundled him up, and wandered around in the yard with him until Andrew came home.

It still hadn't started snowing when the girls came home from the neighbour's. We made grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner (with soup and broccoli (raw, which everyone loves—or at least tolerates)).

Soon after dinner someone noticed that the weather report said it was currently snowing. We checked outside but couldn't see anything but then...but then we did! And there was much rejoicing (from everyone except Benjamin, who cried—because snow is awful).

We bundled up for a family walk. The girls pranced around the street pretending it was a slippery ice rink. It wasn't remotely slippery but they ended up falling several times anyway. When we got home from our walk they still didn't want to go inside so I told them they could keep playing on the back deck (where the snow had begun to stick). They didn't want to play outside in the dark alone so I took one for the team and played outside with them (I really don't like being cold). Andrew had tons of reading to do (that's always his excused—it's like he's in the middle of a doctorate degree or something).

Here are a bunch of pictures we took. Bear with us. This is the first time we've seen real snow since early 2012, which is the first time in memory for some of us. It was a little bit exciting.

A cardboard box

We got a package on Saturday. The kids couldn't have cared less about what was inside. They just wanted the box.

This boy!

There's never a dull moment over here with Benjamin around.

The other day he walked around with a metal bowl on his head for the longest time. It was quite entertaining.

Outside time

This afternoon we took advantage of the 60°F weather. We have another cold front moving in—promising several inches of snow according to the forecast, so already school is getting out early, people are scrambling for bread and milk and other comfort foods, as well as winter gear like sleds and gloves and things.

We're not going to buy a sled. Our kids can take apart that cardboard box they've been playing with for the past several days if they're desperate for a slide. Garbage bags work as well. We'll get creative. I think the only thing my kids want is to build a snowman.

We have a few pairs of hand-me-down snow pants that we've been holding onto for these "just in case" moments. As my friend Becky told me when she gave me her son's too-small snow pants, "I wouldn't recommend buying winter gear, necessarily, but it's nice to have sometimes—if you can get it for free."

I remain doubtful of the forecast, but I still don't like cold fronts. Avoiding the cold is the whole reason we moved here! You know, besides grad school and all that. Anyway, that's why we went outside—to soak up some sunshine before it's too cold to be pleasant.

Rachel wouldn't play with us after school. She came home with a headache. She stayed inside to read. She totally missed out.

Like Mother's Day in January

"How do you spell heart?" Miriam called from the kitchen table. "H...what? H-O?"

"Not H-O. It's H-E-A..." I tell her.

"But heart. Listen: huh-ah-ah. So, H-O..."

"Sweetie, it's H-E-A, I promise."

"H-O. What's next? Huh-ah-rrrr. R! T! I figured it out!"

She raced over to present this card to me:

I love you because I have a heart.

Talks in Church (and other things)

Yesterday Rachel attended a birthday party for one of her school friends...at the movies?! Is it crazy that I was a little nervous to let her go? I was. I must not be too crazy, though, because the mom of the other little girl who was invited emailed to ask if Rachel was going before she RSVP'd. We decided that if our little girls went together they'd be fine (they're rather good friends with each other...and another little girl who was invited but wasn't able to go). That trio of girls were the only girls invited. The rest of the invitees were a bunch of boys. I knew who all the little boys were. And I know a few of their parents. It was a good little group. But I did feel better knowing there would be another little girl for Rachel to glom onto, even though she's friends with all the little boys, too. 

Anyway, Rachel went to that birthday party; Miriam, Benjamin, and I attended a baptism at our ward building; and Andrew played chauffeur. (He's a good man.)

The baptism was wonderful. I haven't been to a baptism in ages (I think the last baptism I went to was my nephew Malachi's back in 2011). This baptism was beautiful. It was for a lovely grandmother as well as a little girl from our primary (whose mother was baptized last year), and because it was so beautiful we might start attending more baptisms as they come up. We've been missing out.

Sleep Training

It's time to do some gentle sleep training at our house. I came to this decision a couple of days ago when I was still rocking Benjamin to sleep at around 11 PM after he'd been up since around 8 AM and had been up a couple of times in the night, as per his usual.

He's nearly two years old. Children who are nearly two years old shouldn't need to be rocked to sleep (for three hours) anymore, right? I think so. And we really can't have him in bed with us.

Some kids are easy to sleep with. Miriam was one of those kids. She falls asleep and wakes up in the same place. She's fallen off the bed maybe five times in her life. She doesn't kick or toss and turn. She hardly even has to brush her hair in the morning because when she wakes up it's as if she hasn't even lain down.

Rachel hates this because when Rachel wakes up her hair is a complete rat's nest. She thrashes, kicks, tosses, and turns. She used to end up on the floor nightly (it was a brave, brave move to put her on the top bunk but it has a railing so she hasn't ever fallen off (yet)). She knocks things off the dresser and onto the floor. Perhaps worst of all, she talks in her sleep. When she was little we called her "ping-pong baby" because whenever we checked on her she'd be in a different position—a different corner of her crib. She'd always get her limbs tangled in the bars of her crib. She'd bump her head as she shifted positions. She was the saddest little sleeper...but we couldn't sleep with her because sleeping with Mom and Dad didn't seem to settle her down at all.

She was kicked out of our bed quite early in her life. Miriam, on the other hand, slept in our bed nearly 100% of the time until we moved to Utah (when she was eight months old). She'd fall asleep in the crook of my arm (or—get this!—she'd just fall asleep on her own) and wouldn't move the entire night (except to nurse, but only once, and always at 4 AM—her circadian rhythm is clockwork).

Benjamin falls between these two extremes, I think. He certainly isn't a sleep-lover like Miriam, but he's not as bad as I remember Rachel being. I'm not sure if that's because I've changed as a mother (I've spent the last few years building up an immunity to sleep deprivation) or if it's because he really isn't as spastic of a sleeper as Rachel was/is.

At any rate, he's spent most of his nights sleeping in our bed lately and although I enjoy cuddling with him I'm tired (in more than one way) of being punched in the face or kicked in the stomach as he flops around. By the end of the night he's taking up the majority of the bed, leaving Andrew and me clinging to the edge of the bed for dear life. It's time to reclaim our bed. I need to sleep for just a couple of hours in a row (that's all I ask).

Yesterday I took the front rail off of Bejamin's rarely-used crib and turned it into a toddler bed. Part of me was wondering if I was crazy for doing it because this meant there'd be no place to contain him but then I realized that we never used the crib for containment purposes anyway. Benjamin tweaked his screams and squawks until they're the exact pitch and timbre that drives me instantly insane enough that I will do anything to get him to stop. Usually picking him up will do it so I never let him just cry anywhere (because insanity).

Needless to say, the cry-it-out method isn't going to work for us—I can't stand the screeching—so we'll be going with a gentler method.

Both Miriam and Benjamin were excited to play in Benjamin's "new" bed and once the crib front came down and the toddler railing went up I let them play to their hearts' delight, hoping that such happy playtime would help improve Benjamin's relationship with his bed.