The case of the missing medieval blueprint

I can't find where I wrote about it, if I did, but last month (April 24) Rachel had a crazy busy day. She had school all day and came home in tears because when she went to pull out her medieval castle blueprint (which she'd been working on for weeks and which was due the following day) to show her friends she couldn't find it anywhere.

Together with her friends, Rachel turned the classroom upside down looking for it, but it was no where to be found.

She came home in tears.

Her little Beehive group was planning on going to the temple to do baptisms for the dead and they had to meet at the church at 4:00. And then she had committed to going to the wedding reception for her teacher's son with Naanii (Naanii knows her teacher's family fairly well from gamelan).

She didn't want to miss out on anything but she also knew that she'd have to redo her entire project from scratch in one evening and she was very stressed out about it.

But I assured her that, having done a rough draft, it would be easier for her to get it down on paper a second time, even with nothing to look at.

"It wasn't a rough draft!" she retorted. "It was my finished copy! And I can't find it anywhere! And I don't want to have to redo it!"

Alas, she had no other option.

Head over heels

Today was a day of mishaps:

• Grandpa cut the power cord of the hedge trimmer.
• Miriam dropped a wagon on her foot.
• Alexander climbed into a box, tipped it over, fell out, and conked his head on the piano bench.
• Daddy knocked an open bottle of water onto his laptop. 
• I got a sliver carrying a shelf out of Rachel's room. 

Benjamin was following me from the house to the garage in his usual haphazard fashion, eager to find some work gloves so he could help in the garden. Instead he tripped on the threshold and went sailing down the stairs face first. 

When he yelled I turned to look and saw his body twisting grotesquely in the air.

He landed on the cement floor, right on his sweet little face, but his momentum lifted him back up and over again, bending his neck in a nearly impossible fashion, and then slamming him back on the ground. 

"Benjamin!" I wailed and ran to kneel down beside his poor crumpled, bleeding body. "Take a breath, buddy! Take a breath!"

The stuff of summer

The kids left the house at 11:00 this morning and I didn't see them again* until dinner.

* (at the house)

They had a picnic at the park, which they took Alexander to and he got anxious for Momma, so they texted me to ask if I'd come pick him up. I did and also hung out the park with them for a while. But then I took Zoë and Alexander home and left the big kids there and they stayed and stayed and stayed until I was begging them to come home for dinner.

Then we had dinner and went swimming and came home and went to bed.

And that's just how summer should be.

I know an old lady who...

After a dreadful night of Alexander intermittently screaming for milk, kicking my back, chirping, "Mom? Mom? Mommy?" (and other general non-sleeping behaviours), I woke up on Sunday morning feeling tired and sore. So sore.

So sore I could hardly move.

So sore I thought, perhaps, I was going to vomit from the pain.

I had fallen asleep in the most awkward side-lying position so that I could nurse Alexander (but not cuddle him too much because sometimes he gets in these strange moods where he wants me to hold him and feed him but also not touch him too much, and that's, like, really difficult to do due to the nature of nursing) and it had apparently not been a good position to fall asleep in. Not that I'd even remained asleep in that position for very long (but however long I slept like that was long enough to do me in).

I took some ibuprofen and a hot shower and felt better, but still spent the whole day rotating my whole body instead of turning my head. Andrew rubbed my shoulders several times throughout the day and let me take a long nap to "reset," Rachel and Miriam rubbed my back (and feet) in the evening. Before bed I used some IcyHot and took some more medicine and I woke up on Monday morning finally feeling like I could move again.

And move I did—I moved couches from upstairs to the garage, couches from the basement to upstairs, helped load Uncle Jacob's truck, and packed several boxes. I think all that worked helped my muscles limber up...but I still couldn't help feel like I was hobbling around like an old lady!

I'm still a bit sore today, but hopefully I'll be back to normal soon, though I may have gained a permanent reputation as the grumpy old lady in our neighbourhood.

Last night I spent about 2.5 hours trying to get Alexander to go to bed. He nursed while I was reading By the Shores of Silver Lake to Benjamin and Zoë, and fell fast asleep. But when I tried to put him down he woke up howling and put up such a fight about going back to bed.

He screamed, he cried, he kicked and squirmed.

But it's been a particularly rough several nights in a row (rougher than the usual, which isn't great to begin with) and I wasn't going to give in because I knew that it could take 2–3 hours to get him to sleep now or it could take 2–3 hours to get him to sleep later. It's not like if I let him stay up late he'd gently retreat to his bed later. No, no. He'd still put up the fight and then I'd be doing bedtime until 11:00 or midnight (only to then wake up at 1 and/or 2 and/or 3 in the morning). So I fought him.

And at 9:47 he finally surrendered and I tiptoed out of his room.

At 9:52 a bunch of giggling hooligans slapped their hands all over our front door, rang the doorbell, and ran away.

And I was livid.

Zoë's Preschool Graduation

The week before the other children got out of school, Zoë had her preschool graduation.

I can be a bit of a stick in the mud when it comes to pomp and circumstance. I suppose it's...neat...that we finished an entire year of preschool, but I honestly believe all these children would have learned their letters and numbers and colours and such anyway. Because that's what children are ready to learn at this age and because they all live in generally stimulating environments (as evidence, I offer the fact that all of their mothers took turns teaching this preschool).

Also, all these children have another year of waiting before they get to start kindergarten so they aren't technically advancing from anything. So what's there to celebrate? 

This is probably why I wasn't put on the graduation committee (which was a volunteer position (and I didn't volunteer for it because I know well my lack of enthusiasm for such things)).

However, I'm grateful for people who can get excited about things like preschool graduation. The moms in charge had hats and certificates and crafts and cotton candy and little popcorn graduation jars. It was a fun little party!

Here are some of the, uh, graduates (?):

Zoë is in the stripes

School's out for summer!

I can hardly believe it, but somehow we made it through the entire school year. We outgrew our shoes, gained a few inches, put on a few pounds, lost a few teeth, and we have a few more holes in our knees (and a few more holes in our hearts), but we're really none the worse for wear. 

The last week of school was busy, but full of fun. Rachel had a hike and a dance and a barbecue, which I'll maybe post about some day. It's hard to believe that she'll be headed to middle school next year (but it's even harder to believe that next year will be Miriam's last year of elementary school—their elementary school here is K–6, but their elementary school in Georgia is only K–5 (I think I prefer keeping them in elementary school that extra year, honestly)). 

Ever the scientist

To celebrate the end of the school year we went out to dinner at Brick Oven. They give out "free kids' meals" coupons to lure us in, but, oh boy, did our meal end up costing a lot anyway! I suppose that's one reason we only ever go out once in a blue moon.

The other reason we hardly ever go out is because kids can be embarrassing!

Benjamin can read so learned our waitress's name pretty quick. Soon Zoë caught on as well. Then they were both loudly asking things like, "Where's HANNAH? When will HANNAH come back? HANNAH, where are you? Why is HANNAH hiding behind that stand? When is HANNAH going to bring us our food?!"

I suppose the upside of this is that Hannah certainly didn't neglect our table!

Once when she stopped by she asked if we were all doing fine, sipping our waters while waiting for our dinner, and those of us around the table who are somewhat versed in out-to-dinner etiquette smiled and nodded and said, "Yes, thank you."

Benjamin, however, bellowed, "I WANT MY PIZZA!"

"I will bring it as soon as it comes out of the oven," she assured him.

Like I said, she didn't have much opportunity to neglect our table.

The kids' meals came with a root beer, so Benjamin and Zoë had both a cup of root beer and a cup of water to drink while we were waiting. Zoë drank hers at the same time—with two straws in her mouth—and both she and Benjamin drained their cups before our food arrived. This led to a field trip to the washroom with Daddy (as well as a quick jaunt over to the brick oven).

Benjamin came back beaming about the brick oven.

Zoë came back feeling relieved.

Andrew came back red as a tomato.

Zoë is four!

Zoë must not be a morning person because she woke up this morning and everything was going her way (from what I could tell) and she was grumpy as all get out!

The birthday banner was up, she had special blueberry birthday cereal, and we had big plans for finishing her cake up together later in the morning, and still she sat fuming at the table because I was unable to tell her what the fourth letter of her name was.

"Z-O-Ë that's three," she said. "So what's the next letter of my name?"

"There isn't one," I told her. "Just Z-O-Ë. That's it."

"But what about the fourth letter?" she asked.

"Fourth letter?" I asked. "Your name only has three letters in it."

She must have thought I was playing stupid because she turned to me exasperatedly and said, "Mom. Stop. I'm four years old now. Just tell me what the fourth letter is."

"Right, so...you are four years old now..." I agreed. "But the length of your name doesn't always correlate with your age. Like...my name only has five letters and I'm thirty-three...so..."

Mixed bag

If you ever want to eat cereal at our house, I hope you like it mixed because this afternoon Alexander premixed all our cereal.

Petsitting for Auntie Josie has helped Alexander develop a bit of autonomy, which I've been enjoying because instead of following me around all day long he follows the cat around all day long. This means that I can do so many things without tripping over him (laundry! clean the kids' room! pack boxes! disassemble a shelf! do the dishes! twice!), but it also means that he's been getting into mischief that he otherwise might not.

I can't really say what I prefer: that he never give me a moment's peace ever or that he make a little mischief.

Honestly—probably—I prefer the mischief.

As I told Andrew tonight, it's not that I don't want to spend time with my kids (because I do). It's that I think I would want to spend time with them more if they would ever leave me alone ever (to be fair, at the time I was lamenting Alexander waking up to cry for me for the second time this evening (which isn't so terrible (last night was a complete joke of a night))).

It's cute that he can't stand to be apart from me. But it's also tiring.

Like, he could probably play with blocks while I do laundry or go to the bathroom or whatever, but no. He has to follow me around, begging me to pick him up and hold him. With how neglected he acts, you'd think I never picked that child up, but I actually hold him all the time.

And so I feel a little bit proud of him for exerting enough independence to raid the pantry and mix the cereal.

I survived the GRE

After months of preparation, I finally took the plunge and sat for the GRE today. The results were unsurprising: I performed excellently (95th percentile) on the verbal reasoning portion and only mediocrely (50th percentile) on the quantitative section. This was a little disappointing given how long and hard I studied, however, I'm confident my studying paid off and that I wouldn't have known a gosh darn thing if I had attempted the test without studying. Plus, I wasn't planning on entering a math-heavy program anyway so that score isn't quite as important.

While I only have my preliminary scores, I'm sure my official scores will be high enough to get into the graduate program of my choice...whenever I officially make that choice (that particular matter is still up in the air).

I was surprised that the writing section came first because in my prep book (I used Kaplan for both verbal and quantitative and, I suppose, for writing (but that was in the verbal book)) the information came last. Or maybe I just looked at it last? Either way, I expected it to come last.

I didn't prepare for that part very much other than reading through the prompts and thinking, "I have literally nothing to say on this subject." And reading through the sample essays and thinking, "Yes, I can see how that would get the score it got."

Luckily I felt like I had some good things to say for the two prompts I was given, so hopefully I will score proficiently there (though I won't get those scores for a couple of weeks yet since they are graded by humans).

The quantitative reasoning sections had me sweating and shaking. I ran out of time on both sections and quickly went through to guess on any unanswered questions before the timer ran out. Some of them I know that I knew how to answer but that I didn't have time to come up with the answer. I much prefer a more relaxed mathematical environment (studying for the test was actually kind of fun (in a way); I enjoyed tackling new-to-me concepts (hello, quadratics) and the feeling of (eventually, kind of) understanding things). But the actual GRE quantitative reasoning test? That was no fun.

The verbal reasoning sections were marvelous. I didn't take the ten-minute break in the middle of the examination because the vocabulary sections were like a break for me. I finished each section in fifteen minutes, then had about that long to go over my answers and stretch and take a few deep breaths before skipping on to the next section at my leisure.

After completing the essays, two quantitative sections, and two vocabulary sections there's a "bonus" sixth section, which I was literally praying would be a verbal reasoning test and not a quantitative test...and it was. I was so happy.