Even dump trucks

On Monday we had (yet another) family night lesson about prayer, more particularly about how to behave properly during prayers. We had a short discussion about how we can pray to Heavenly Father anytime, anywhere, geared toward the girls and then for Benjamin's benefit we went over the ditty "we fold our arms and bow our head and listen while the prayer is said." I made up a little paper doll with moveable arms and head and Benjamin helped the doll get ready for the prayer.

Then I said, "Now we're going to get ready for prayer and see if we can sit quietly for one minute, okay? Everyone get ready. We fold our arms and bow our head and listen while the prayer is said. Good. Now everyone get ready to be so, so quiet and still...starting...right...now!"

Benjamin surprised us all by starting to pray. It was such a thoughtful prayer at first, but soon turned painfully hilarious. The seconds ticked by slowly as we listened (and tried not to laugh) while Benjamin went on and on about his dump truck, of all things.

"And thank you for my dump truck, even though I don't really like it," he said. "I do like the blue part on the back, but I don't like the yellow part on the front. I prayed for you to change it but it's still just the way it was. But I like it anyway, I guess."

The boy went on and on and on—for well over a minute—and when he was finally finished I tacked a post script to our FHE lesson.

"Heavenly Father always answers our prayers," I said, "That's true. But sometimes the answer is 'no' or 'you need to be content with what you have.' We should approach Heavenly Father with our righteous desires, not a checklist of things we want. What I'm saying, Benjamin, is that it might feel like Heavenly Father isn't answering your prayer about your dump truck when really he's saying, 'I recognize that you aren't happy about the situation you're in but you still have to go through it.' Or maybe he'll just let things stay the same because He knows they're not that big of a deal in the long run. I'm just not sure Heavenly Father cares that much about toy dump trucks."

And I knew for sure that I wasn't going to get him a new dump truck just because he didn't like the one he had!

Before, During, and After

Before the storm we spent the morning cleaning the bathroom and closet in the master bedroom so that we would have a place to shelter. When we were finished with that we put away the dishes and played with LEGO and had lunch. Here's Zoë helping with the dishes:

NOT a snow day

The kids had an early-release day scheduled for today already, but now they're coming home even earlier. This time we're not expecting snow. We're expecting this:

Scattered thunderstorms in the morning, strong thunderstorms in the afternoon with damaging winds, large hail, and possibly a tornado.

Toot Sweets! Toot Sweets!

We've been doing a lot of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang around here lately—singing, dancing, listening, reading, living. And we only have minor roles (I can only imagine what the leads are going through).

Zoë passed some gas during our couple prayer this evening.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. She smiled big and looked mighty proud of herself.

I won't speculate what that says about the environment she's being raised in.

Instead I will tell you that after the prayer Andrew quipped, "Those were some pretty sweet toots, Zoë."

And then I died laughing. 

Zoë at nine months

Zoë had her 9 month well-baby visit today. Considering she's nine months old today I'd like to take this time to pat myself on the back for being right on top of things (for once). The visit took forever!

They called us back at 11:00 and the nurse weighed and measured Zoë and then said that our doctor was "a few minutes behind" but that she was working on getting caught up. I didn't see the doctor until after 12:00! It was a long wait. I was so glad that it was a rainy day because that meant Andrew decided to stay home with Benjamin this morning rather than getting soaking wet riding his scooter to school. He took the van in to campus when Zoë and I (finally) made it home.

Zoë's doing well. She's going for the title of heavy weight—at 19 lbs. 7.5 ounces and 28 inches she's certainly my largest baby at this age. She's bigger than either Benjamin or Miriam were at 12 months and is only 4.5 ounces lighter than Rachel was at 12 months. And she's only nine months old!

More likely than not she's trying to get caught up to Benjamin so that she can take him by surprise one day by beating him in a wrestling match. He's always picking on her—putting a choke hold on her and throwing her on the ground, pulling her down whenever she stands up, twisting her arm behind her back—and she hates it, but whenever she sees him lying on the floor she crawls over as fast as she can and starts wrestling with him (so she must not hate it too much).

She's doing just fine, meeting all her milestones, and growing well (obviously).

I'd list her most recent milestones, but I feel like I've already talked about a lot of them recently. She's doing regular baby things, zooming around the house, destroying anything in her path, shunning anything that is actually food, and consuming everything questionable without a second thought...like this diaper box. She literally ate a corner of this box—had cardboard in her diaper the next day and everything. But will she eat applesauce, peas, Cheerios, or rice? Not a chance (at least not so willingly).

But she's a cutie and we love her, even if she's hopeless at mealtime. Clearly she's getting enough calories with the amount of milk and cardboard she's consuming.

3rd grade musical

Rachel had her 3rd grade musical this evening called Choices Count! They sang songs about six pillars of character: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. They also each had a speaking part (and evidently they've also all reached that mumbly age where they could use lesson on diction (I have no clue what 98% of them said)).

Here's Rachel delivering her line:

Rachel got to say: "It’s really easy because there are only ten words and each word only has two letters in it!"

Primary Talks

Both Miriam and Rachel gave talks in primary this month. Poor Miriam was supposed to give a talk on January 17, but a special stake conference was called so they told her to be ready to speak the following Sunday (and moved the children who were supposed to speak that Sunday to the first week of February) but it snowed so church was cancelled come January 24. Miriam finally got around to giving a talk on Valentine's Day and Rachel spoke this week.

Here is Miriam's talk:

My talk is about why Jesus created the Earth. I will tell you why. So that we could get a family and so we can get sealed together and so we could get a body so we could do all the stuff that I just said. 

In family scripture study we recently read Alma 12 and in Alma 12:24 it says that “this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God.” That means that we are supposed to use our life to learn and grow so we can be ready to go back to heaven. The earth was created to give us a place to be away from Heavenly Father so that we can learn things on our own. This means that we will make a lot of mistakes, but that’s okay because “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16.

God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sins, to make it so we can return to live with Heavenly Father. Jesus is the great Mediator of all men and makes it possible for us to choose liberty and eternal life instead of captivity and death.

Because Jesus and Heavenly Father love us they wanted to give us a beautiful place to live while we are away from them, so they spent a lot of time creating beautiful things for us to enjoy, like flowers, butterflies, and sunsets. Heavenly Father wants us to treat the world nicely because he worked hard on the earth. We don’t want to hurt the earth and make Heavenly Father sad, so we have to help take care of the earth.

I bear my testimony that Jesus made the earth.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be...

I only had to follow Zoë around with the camera for about three minutes to catch her whistling. She'll sometimes do it on demand (as you can see in the video) but she's mostly a spontaneous whistler.

She also really loves the babies we hide around the house for her to play with. We keep them in every bathroom, in the oven, in the doorknobs, in our phones, and in the camera. Any reflective surface is her BFF for life (because the baby she sees is just too cute to resist).

So, here she is whistling (you may have to turn up your volume):

Language Learning

I can't remember where we were when Benjamin picked up a copy of Where the Wild Things Are but we were probably at the elementary school. Maybe in Miriam's classroom. I'm pretty sure that's where. I know it wasn't at the library, still Benjamin asked if he could check it out anyway. I explained to him that we couldn't check it out because (a) we weren't at the library and (b) we have it at home anyway so even if we could borrow it (sometimes Miriam's teacher lets us borrow books) there wouldn't be much point since we own a copy ourselves.

"Can we read it at home?" he asked.

He's really big on commitment patterns lately and asks me to commit to everything from the obvious ("Can I eat breakfast in the morning?") to the foreseeable future ("Can we get this for my birthday?") to undefined moments in time ("Can we have animal crackers one day?").

Side story:

Ben woke me up on Friday morning saying, "It's one day, Mom!"

"Mmmmhmmm," I agreed sleepily.

"So?" he said expectantly, grinning from ear to ear.

"So...?" I repeated.

"One day," he said emphatically. "It's one day!"

"Is that significant?" I asked.

"Animal crackers," he hinted.

"Right. Yes. Okay. Today can be the day we eat animal crackers."

Anyway, as my little side story demonstrated, I can be a total pushover. So of course I said yes.

"Yes, we can read that book at home, Benjamin."

However, as my little side story also demonstrated, I can also be a little absentminded when it comes to all the commitments I'm forced to make and I forgot about reading that story to Benjamin.

Whistling and tongue rolling

We met some friends at Duke Park for a picnic today, which was a nice treat because we don't go to Duke Park very often. Zoë had fun exploring the playground while Benjamin ran around with his little pals.