Teasing Mr. Alligator

Benjamin was taking forever to fall asleep tonight. It took me about as long to figure out what song he was singing to himself in his room (and then later in my room because he insisted, "Me seep mommy 'oom"). I'm certain that he picked it up in nursery at church (because I don't think I've sung it in a while). And he's completely adorable singing it.



I don't usually sing "chomp" when I sing this song (I usually sing "snap") but it sounded like Benjamin was saying chomp so that's the way I said it (because I was hoping he'd just say it himself). 

Miriam's first day of preschool

Yesterday was Miriam's first official day of preschool. Since Benjamin and I had joined her for the open house she hadn't realized that I wouldn't be coming inside with her and instead would just be dropping her off.

"What? What?" she sputtered when I told her that she was supposed to practice her independence—getting out of the van on her own, going inside the preschool by herself, taking off her shoes, hanging up her book bag, and so on. "You're not coming with me?!"

"Nope. I'm just dropping you off. Is that okay?" I asked.

"Okay?" she said. "That's awesome!"

So apparently she's more than ready for some independence.

Slow growing children

So, I'm still stressing out about Benjamin growing properly. Today while Miriam was at preschool I looked up all the stats I have for him to see if he was ever in the 25th percentile and all my records show that he's just always been small. I even called the clinic today to check his records. This flagged my doctor so she called me back (I hadn't intended to bug her at all, I promise) to explain that the 25th percent figure came from his adjusted chart. And now he's sitting at the 5th percentile and she's not happy about it.

How do I explain to my doctor that my child is healthy?

Rachel weighed 26 lbs. at two years (she's always been my middle-ground child), so we'll leave her out of this discussion. But Miriam only weighed 23 lbs. at two years.

Benjamin also weighed in at 23 lbs. at his two-year check up.

But I guess 23 lbs is within the 5–10% range for girls and is below the 5th percentile for boys.

That doesn't change the fact that Miriam was 15 lbs at 4 months old—putting her between the 50th and 75th percentile—and that she dropped down to the 5–10th percentile by the time she was two.

Benjamin was apparently all the way up in the 25th percentile for his adjusted chart at 4 months (when he weighed 12 lbs). But his percentile has dropped quite a bit (like below the 5th percentile).

How is it that Miriam's doctor concluded that she was a healthy breast-fed baby ("Must've been making some creamy milk right around then!" he quipped) and Benjamin's doctor seems about ready to diagnose him with failure to thrive?

The World Health Organization seems to feel that breast-fed babies' weight gain does taper off around six months. They start growing slower than their formula-fed peers (whereas before that time they can grow faster).

I have a feeling my doctor is using the CDC charts, since that's the norm here. Should I ask her to check him on the WHO charts? I can't seem to find a WHO chart adjusted for prematurity...and I'm not exactly sure how to adjust for prematurity myself. Do I just take x-number of weeks off his age when I plot him on the chart (where x=the number of weeks premature)?

Also, I thought that premature babies were supposed to "catch up" to their peers by around two years. Benjamin is caught up developmentally, I think. His doctor wasn't at all concerned that the boy didn't even begin babbling until he was eighteen months old (I was concerned), but now he's a talking, running, jumping, happy little boy.

He's just small. But I thought we allowed premature babies to be smallish. I was told in the hospital that he should catch up to their peers and "land on the regular growth chart by two years of age." Benjamin did that. He's on the chart. So why is my doctor freaking out?

Is it because he's not as "chunky" as he was when he was four months old? Because all of my children chunked out at four-months old...and then their growth tapered off.

Seriously, when my doctor weighed Miriam at her four-month check up he actually did it twice because he didn't think it was possible for her to have gained that much weight—but she had. And then she started tapering off. No one expected her to stay in the 75th percentile.

I guess I'll just keep feeding Benjamin (because I was totally considering quitting that habit before...not) until I take him in for his weight-gain check in four months.

For lunch to day he had a whole container of yogurt (perhaps with a couple tablespoons of sour cream mixed in), a banana, and a plate left-over noodles with melted cheese. Oh, and half a gingerbread man cookie that Miriam shared with him when we picked her up from preschool. And he had a bowl of graham crackers just before we left to pick her up.

A morning on campus

When I asked Andrew what the plan was for today he told me that he hoped I could:

1. Load everyone into the car by 8:45 AM
2. Drop Rachel off at school
3. Drop him off at Duke
4. Go home and do my stay-at-home mom thing
5. Pick him up from school by 12:15 PM
6. Drop him off at the bus station by 12:45 PM

"That's not going to happen," I told him. "If you think I can drive to Duke twice in one day and still be happy person at the end of the day when I have to put the kids to bed on my own, you are mistaken."

"Then how is it going to happen?" he asked.

"We'll go to campus a little later and the kids and I will visit Duke Gardens while you're teaching," I said.

He'd hoped to "get some stuff done" before teaching his class, but I think everything worked out fine in the end. He dropped Rachel off at school and ran to Kroger to get some last-minute groceries and some supplies for his class (he needed thirty erasers or something ridiculous like that and we simply didn't have that many erasers on hand), then he came home and packed while I got the little ones ready to go for the day. We packed a little picnic and were in the car, ready to go, by 9:43 (our goal was 9:45 so we felt pretty smug about this).

We parked the car and Andrew gave me instructions on how to drive from the parking lot to the Sanford building so that I could pick him up when the time came, then we took a "short cut" through campus to visit his office.

This was my first time seeing his office and my visit marks an end to a long-standing joke that perhaps he's not even going to school—because I've never actually seen his office. He's taken the girls to his office a couple of times when I've had meetings. But I'd never seen his supposed workspace.

(Truthfully, it's not a very funny joke because it always made me think of this).

Right now he's teaching some microeconomics classes to a group of Chinese bureaucrats for the DCID. He kept talking about the DCID last night and I kept smiling and nodding as if what he was saying made sense to me. Then I said, "So, what's the DCID?"

"What't he DCID?!" he said. "You don't know what that stands for? I've been standing here going on and on about them and you don't even know what they are?!"

"Yup. Nope. I..."

"The Duke Center for International Development," he said.

"Could have been anything," I pointed out. "How am I supposed to know who you're working for? I haven't even seen your office."

I put air quotations around the word "office" to prove my point.

But now I have seen his office so I guess he really does do stuff on campus (go figure).

Now that he's a big third-year student he has a little cubicle with a door and everything. His old "office" was only a desk—no door. He's certainly moving up in the world.

Benjamin was pretty sure that Daddy's office was the potty. When we pulled up to the door and Andrew unlocked it and swung it open, Benjamin said, "Potty!" and climbed out of the stroller.

"That's not the potty," I said. "That's Daddy's office."

"Oh," said Benjamin. "Potty."

"Do you need to go to the bathroom?" I asked.

"Ummmmm..." said Benjamin, who likes to take a minute to think before answer any question. "Yes!"

"Let's go find the potty," Andrew said.

We left Andrew's cubicle behind in order to find both the potty and the pencil sharpener. Along the way Benjamin told everyone he saw, "Me—POTTY!"

Andrew took Benjamin potty and then Miriam and I sharpened some pencils for him while he cut some paper for his class. We sharpened three whole pencils (out of, like, thirty) before leaving for Duke Gardens.

I mostly just let the kids do whatever they wanted while I followed them around. Benjamin's at a great age where he mostly wants to do whatever his sisters decide so he wasn't interested in straying too far away from Miriam in case she did something cool that he wanted to copy. This stage is much easier than the stage where he was always taking off in the opposite direction from everybody else!

Here a bunch of monkey-see-monkey-do pictures of my kids:

Bronto Trail

It didn't rain today so we were finally able to check out Wescott's Bronto Trail for family home evening.

Laughing Gas

Rachel's been doing a charming unit on the states of matter at school. I've been impressed, truly. Her teacher does fabulous science lessons. The other day Rachel brought home a little poster she'd made to show how the particles of solids, liquids, and gases behave (which she wants to keep forever...but it's a paper with dried beans glued on it, so...):*

We've had several dinner conversations about matter and particles and how elements combine to form certain chemicals and so forth. It's been fun! 

At dinner a few nights ago Rachel fell off the bench—something our family has managed to avoid for quite a long time (don't cry when you see how little my kids were two years ago). She managed to catch herself, which was impressive considering how quickly she fell. Still, she started making terrible noises. At first we thought she was crying but really it was only uncontrollable laughter.

"I was just putting my arm down to lean on it," she gasped out between peals of laughter. "But I didn't know how close I was to the edge of the bench! I thought I would put my hand down on a solid, but I put it down on gas instead!"

With that you'd better believe Andrew and I cracked up, too. Those pesky gas particles, flowing freely wherever they may!

*Just thought I'd clarify that this is not a frowny face. It's really just a parenthesis followed by a colon (followed by an asterisk).

Sunday Spelling

Tomorrow Rachel will be giving a talk in primary. It's possible we didn't remember to write this talk until after the kids had technically been sent to bed (even though I got a reminder email a couple days ago and it's been on the calendar for weeks) but when I reminded Rachel about her talk she immediately bounded out of bed, found a pencil and paper, and got to work while I was stuck in Benjamin's room singing lullabies.

Her topic is "The Sabbath Day is a Day of Rest and Worship."

She got pretty far on her own. Using the creation story was her idea and she came up with the list of Sunday activities all by herself as well. After I'd put Benjamin to bed I helped her find a quote from The Friend Magazine (from 1975) to beef up her talk a bit (it was a tad short but she wasn't sure what else to say).

The story of how we didn't die today

Andrew pulled into the parking lot, threw the van into park, and let his shaking hands slide from the wheel. He was white as a ghost and looked about like he was going to throw up. Instead he started to cry.

I reached over and turned off the car.

"You did a good job," I said, stroking his cold, clammy arm.

He nodded and took a shuddering breath.

"We should say a prayer," I said.

The kids immediately folded their arms and I said a prayer of gratitude, thanking Heavenly Father for sparing our lives, for keeping Andrew alert, for moving us out of harm's way.

"Can we go play now?" the girls asked. "We'll take Benjamin with us," Rachel volunteered (as bait to eke out a yes from me).

"Sure, go," I said.

The girls unbuckled their brother and the three of them struck out for the playground where many of their friends were already playing.

The ward Pig Pickin' was today. Even though it started much earlier in the morning we aimed to arrive around lunchtime. For some reason it feels weird to start an activity three hours before you eat when you're planning on staying a couple of hours after you eat.

We left the house around 11:30 and headed down Guess Road toward Little River Regional Park. We drive that way a lot—the kids and I—we have friends who lives out there (we meet at their house for ukulele a couple times a month). I even drove out to Little River Park by myself once. It was my first time going 55 MPH and...it was rather scary. Even though I've had to go 55 MPH several times since that first time, I was more than happy to have Andrew drive today.

Slime'n'Snails vs. Sugar'n'Spice

It's funny to me when people ask if raising Benjamin—a boy—is different from raising "the girls," as if they're assuming Rachel and Miriam are personality clones. A boy certainly has presented different challenges, for example, when Benjamin decided he could go potty like a big boy the other day and dragged a stool over to the toilet so he could pee standing up. He peed everywhere.

I never had that particular problem with either of the girls, but still raising Miriam has been quite different from raising Rachel.

When people ask me that—if raising our boy is different from raising our girl—I try to explain that Rachel and Miriam are polar opposites, personality-wise, and that Benjamin fits somewhere in the middle.

Rachel was a loud baby, a fit-thrower, and about as precocious as could be (fully crawling at five months old (when her peers were barely starting to roll over)). Miriam was a quiet baby, a self-soother, content to play in one spot (I thought she was developmentally delayed until I realized she was actually right on target). Benjamin can throw a good fit, but he also easier to comfort than Rachel ever was. He didn't crawl or walk particularly early, but he was rolling over before he'd even reached his due date (front to back and back to front—a skill probably attained, in part, to the gravitational pull of his huge head).

Now Rachel is a self-proclaimed tom boy, a tree-climber, a soccer player. Miriam is a self-proclaimed girly-girl, a dancer, an artist. Benjamin is a toddler, still too young to tell exactly how his boyhood is going to be. All three children are different.

But I was reminded (again) this week of how different Miriam and Rachel are when they each found an article of clothing that needed to be retired. For Miriam it was her Minnie Mouse swim suit, which she passionately needed to cast off:

"Mom," she said, "I need to get rid of this swim suit. It doesn't fit. I don't need it. Can I give it to Marcella? I just need to get it out of the way because I have a new bathing suit now. Can I put it in the give-away box? Where is the give-away box? I just need to get rid of this old bathing suit!"

For Rachel it was a pair of purple clogs (not Crocs, but same idea) that she's been wearing almost everyday for the past year. The strap broke on our way up to Palmyra and Sister Kellis gave us some pretty duct tape (a floral pattern) to fix it with until we could find a replacement shoe for her to wear. Now she's developing a hole in the sole of one of the shoes. Besides which they're getting too small. We bought her a new pair of Crocs when they were on sale at Costco but she won't wear them. Not yet.

"When these break for good," Rachel murmured solemnly (probably while caressing her shoes), "I'm going to take one of the heel straps and glue it into my journal so I can remember these shoes forever. I think I'll put the duct-taped strap in, so I will remember the very first time my shoes fell apart. But I'm going to keep wearing them until they completely wear out."

So that's why I giggle a bit when people ask if raising Benjamin has been different from raising his sisters, because, frankly, raising his sisters has been two very different adventures.

...and we did not

Instead of going to a soccer game, we went to the park. I think my two little ones found that just as much fun as going to a soccer game (if not more fun).