Tadpoles: Day 42

Rachel got brave enough to finally touch a froglet today. She noticed that our tadpole population is dwindling and that her opportunity is running out, so she asked me to fish one out for her to hold.

This is the face she made when I put it in her hand:

If I'm not mistaken that's the very same face she makes when she's trying to not throw up.

Rachel's Soccer Game

I finally made it to one of Rachel's soccer games. Andrew's been playing the role of soccer dad. It just makes more sense to send him to games/practices where he can passively watch (sorry Rachel, I mean actively watch) while he reads articles, rather than have me take Rachel and the other kids. So usually I stay home and either get Miriam and Benjamin ready for bed (while Rachel and Dad are at soccer practice) or stay home and get Miriam and Benjamin ready for the day (while Rachel and Dad are at a soccer game). Even Grandma made it to a soccer game before I did!

But today's soccer game was in the afternoon and we were in charge of snacks, so today the whole family went to enjoy Rachel's game. Or at least the first quarter of it.

Dear Neighbours,

I'm so sorry about this little boy. He can open the storm door by himself, just so you know. I don't purposely let him out dressed like this:

But he saw a puddle across the street and apparently couldn't resist—a street, I should mention, that he was helped across by his sisters because of said puddle. All three of my children—and one neighbour—were jumping with barefooted bliss in that puddle.

And Rachel went to bed with the cleanest feet she's had all week.

The end.

Nancy Newt Needs Naps

When I was in kindergarten we learned an alliterative verse for each letter of the alphabet that we'd chant every single day. There were twenty-six of them (obviously) but I can only remember two.

My name happened to be featured in the verse for the letter N, which was (as you've probably gathered from the title of this post), "Nancy Newt needs naps."

Now that I'm a mother I have come to enjoy both naps and newts (in that order because naps are way better than newts) but as a five-year-old I found this verse rather offending. First of all—Nancy Newt?

Not anything elegant like Nancy Nightingale.

Not anything interesting like Nancy Narwhal.

Not anything exotic like Nancy Numbat.

(Yes, I'm reaching here—Numbat sounds too similar to Dumb-bat so it wouldn't have worked at all. There aren't really many creatures that begin with the letter N. Naked mole rat? I don't think so).

It had to be Nancy Newt—a slimy creature, the pet of witches, lover of dark and scary places.

And then there's the whole nap thing. I'm pretty sure I began shunning those long before kindergarten. I loathed how my babysitter would make me take a nap because I was "so little" while she'd let my brother (who was "only" 2.5 years older than me (as if that even makes a difference when you're 4)) and her son (who was my age only properly proportioned (ie. he maybe didn't look like he was 2)) play outside. I could see their long shadows dancing through the curtains while I sat in bed and seethed at the ceiling. Naps were lamer than lame.

Nancy was not a newt and Nancy certainly didn't take naps!

I came home from school and outraged complained to her mother, who took it up with the kindergarten teacher, who was in her last year before retirement and—although kind enough—was rather set in her ways. When my mom suggested changing the verse in some way—Nicholas Newt, for example, could be the one in need of a nap, or Nancy Nightingale could nibble...nectarines—Mrs. Thornton was aghast.

"Change the words?" gasped Mrs. Thornton. "But I have said it this way for many, many years!"

"But have you ever had a Nancy in your class?" my mom might have asked (because I am totally making this conversation up).

"Well, no, but I simply couldn't change the words now. I have said them the same way since I very first began teaching," likely when dinosaurs were still roaming the planet. "Nancy should be honoured to be in the poem. We say it every day!"

"That's part of the problem," my mom might have sighed before continuing her explanation, because not only was there a vain repetition of my name every single day at school there was also a girl named Allison.

Allison and I did not have an amicable relationship.

Everyday Allison would be sure to sit close to me—not too close but just close enough—and then she would leer in my face and scrunch up her nose as menacingly as a kindergartener can as she chanted, "Nancy Newt needs naps!"

One day—several days into the school year since we didn't get to the letter N until after we did the letters A through Z (with one new verse introduced every day during the first few weeks of school)—I decided to get my revenge and when it came time for everyone to gather on the carpet to recite our alphabet verses I made sure to sit as close to Allison as I could—but not too close, mind you.

My revenge cut fast and cold (as revenge is meant to be served), coming on the very first letter of the alphabet.

"Allison Alligator eats apples!" I hissed at mean ol' Allison.

And do you know what Allison did? She told on me. She went and cried to the teacher about it, about how it hurt her feelings, about how mean it was.

And do you know what happened to me? I got in trouble because "changing the words to the verse was wrong."

The proper verse, in case you were wondering, was "Ally Alligator eats apples."

That wasn't the only time I got unjustly punished in Mrs. Thornton's class, but Mrs. Thornton wasn't all bad. She did knit little stockings (big enough to hold a small candy cane) for every single child in the class for Christmas, so...that's a redeeming quality, right?

Anyway, it took me awhile to get over the whole Nancy Newt thing. And it's possible my family still teases me about it.

Whatever, I'm so over it.

I'm nearly-a-quarter-of-a-century over it.

I'm my-girls-found-a-newt-today-and-I-didn't-even-write-an-800-word-essay-about-it over it.

Ahem. So, perhaps I'm not as over it as I thought. But my girls really did find a newt today.

A Red Eft (juvenile eastern newt)

Leaves of three

We had our first harvest from the garden this week—a handful of yummy radishes!

They were supposed to be ready about a month ago but it was so cold that they just wouldn't grow. They're nice and big now. 

Tadpoles: Day 41

It turns out that froglets suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome a little bit and if not released from their childhood home they forget that they don't have gills anymore and drown trying to continue acting like tadpoles. In the wild I suppose they would simply crawl out of their puddle and find a new one to live by. In captivity I figured that their rocks and sticks and floating islands would be enough to entice them out of the water, but I figured wrong.

After finding a dead frog in the bottom of the tank yesterday (its siblings had kindly chewed off its arms and legs and tails) and another one this morning (with all limbs in tact) I decided that these frogs weren't going to leave on their own. I fished out the remaining four froglets (leaving behind a dozen or so tadpoles) and put them in a separate, shallower dish.

Within minutes they all hopped away into the wild of our front garden, hiding in the mulch, taking cover near the bushes. This one hopped into our butterfly bush but soon disappeared along with its siblings.

Good luck little one

Bike Riding

Now that all our company is gone and things are getting back to normal we're trying to get back into our biking groove. We just passed the 900 mile mark on our exercise bike—we're nearing the half-way point of our goal!—but we still have some serious biking to do before the end of the year (our goal is 2436 miles).

On Monday the kids really wanted to go for a bike ride so after dinner and a quick FHE I took them around the neighbourhood while Andrew took Rachel to soccer practice. I downloaded a GPS app thing that will track my mileage and speed and so forth (though ads pop up every time I swipe the screen because I only downloaded the free version—and I'm still not convinced I like it enough to actually buy it...anyone know of a good app like this?).

My speed graph and elevation graph were mirror images of each other. Whenever the line of my elevation graph went up, the line on my speed graph plummeted. We have a few good hills in our little neighbourhood and hauling ~70% of my body weight behind me didn't help matters either.

Cute Cargo

Tadpoles: Day 39

One of Miriam's frequently asked questions these days is "Can I hold the frogs?" Unfortunately we usually have to put that off until Benjamin is napping or otherwise distracted because he just can't handle the frogs (more like he can't handle the container of water—it's just asking to be splashed in).

She's become a pro at catching the itty-bitty things:

Easter Egg Smackdown 2014

We dove into our annual Smackdown as soon as we finished finding all the plastic eggs. The girls were so excited. Rachel was talking smack all the way to church in the morning.

"I'm going to be the champion this year," she challenged. "You're all going down!"

I'd like to know when she got old enough to put sentences like that together. She was super competitive this year.

We first had to set up the bracket. Andrew put me in charge of that while he cut up potatoes.

"Why do I have to draw the bracket?" I moaned (I'm as bad as my kids sometimes). "I'm so bad at it but it seems like I do it every year!"

"Oh, you're great at drawing brackets," Andrew assured me.

"Okay, fine," I sighed. "Let's see. There are fourteen eggs so we'll needs seven...ah, whatever. I'm going to see what I can find online."

I found a lovely bracket-generating website that would make up a bracket for you with however many competitors you wanted. Perfect.

Next we went through the eggs, named them, and listed them on the bracket. Andrew, who'd abandoned his potatoes, would pull an egg out of the carton, ask whose it was, someone would claim it and christen it and then I would write the chosen name on the bracket. I was careful to make sure that no one was competing against themselves. The last two slots were automatically in Round 2. And the last two eggs both belonged to Andrew.

"Hey, wait a minute!" I said. "That's not fair! You get to skip Round 1. That's totally an advantage—your eggs will enter Round 2 untouched!"

Rachel might not be the only one who gets competitive about the Smackdown.

"I didn't mean to," Andrew said sincerely.

"Fine, I believe you. But if you win I will never let you live this down," I promised.

First up were Rachel and Miriam competing with Pinky I and Pinky II—they'd both dyed an egg pink.

Easter Sunday

The girls were so excited to check out their curls in the morning. They looked beautiful.