Potty training and boiling water

Potty training Alexander has been, at least when compared to potty training his older brother, a breeze. I realize we've been at it now for over two months and I'm not sure I'd quite say that we're finished yet, but it's going very well.

We went through a very Pavlovian phase where Alexander would come find me whenever a timer went off anywhere in the house to tell me it was time to go potty. That's because when I started out, I would set the timer for every 15 minutes and take him potty very routinely (otherwise I'd just forget about the poor boy; I have so much chaos going on in this joint). So when I decided that he was good enough at knowing when he needed to go and stopped using timers, his poor little brain took a while longer to give up that little prompt.

So, for example, if he was colouring at the table and I was making dinner in the kitchen and a timer went off, he'd run up to me and announce, "Time to go potty!"

Or if the kids were downstairs in the basement cleaning up and we set a timer to motivate them to work faster, Alexander would be on his way racing to find me the minute it went off.

It took us awhile to catch on to why he was suddenly so verbal about needing to go potty (when otherwise he's pretty quiet about it). But it was only because hearing that alarm signaled to his brain that it was definitely time to go potty.

He's mostly forgotten about that by now and we rely on either him telling us he needs to go potty, or simply remembering to take him potty every few hours.

Sometimes he's golden and will tell us when he needs to go; other times he's not very dependable in this department.

Bush forts vs. snow forts

Ever since meeting each other one brief afternoon a year and a half ago, Miriam has formed the most beautiful friendship with my cousin's daughter. They send little messages back and forth on Marco Polo, an app Josie had me sign up for awhile ago (and I'm so glad she did even though she never messages me there anymore because Miriam and Alice hooked up there and they're still going strong)! They send letters, too, but instant messaging is...more instant...so their electronic messaging is much more routine.

The other day Miriam sent Alice a tour of the bush we found at the park that the children have claimed as their fort. Alice responded by giving Miriam a tour of the snow fort she and her siblings made in North Dakota.

It's the sweetest long-distance cousin relationship ever and I'm so happy they're getting to know each other! 

Fairy tale shadow puppet shows

We've finally finished filming our fairy tales, which are unfortunately still a little hard to hear even though we practiced projecting. In the future we'll have to do fancier editing, I guess, and record the story separately, but I'm honestly not quite sure how to do that and learning how feels like it will take more energy than I have right now (I have so many other projects going on myself). So that will have to wait for another time.

The good news is, you have access to the scripts so you can follow along a bit as they read.

The kids also found that it would have been useful to have a few extra pairs of hands; it was hard to work the puppets and read the show at the same time. I think a little more practice might have helped things run smoother, but...getting kids to practice things is hard. It also would have helped to film when Rachel was home so that she could work some puppets, I'm sure. 

Here's Miriam's retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, called Koochik Quermez:

A beautiful day

Today was one of those perfect January days that make you wonder how a day in January even gets away with being so perfect. I didn't have many January days like this growing up, if any.  The kids got their schoolwork done well and then we spent the afternoon playing at the park. Before we went home we went on a little hike and found a quiet area by some fields that are closed for the season, where the kids enjoyed climbing trees, playing in mulch piles, hopping drainage ditches, and exploring the secret worlds under the canopy of some shrubbery.

Zoë picked a bouquet (as one does...in January): 

We met a spy today

It was overcast and drizzly so we knew the playground would be all wet but we decided to stop and play on our way home from orchestra, anyway. I used an extra sweater we had in the car to dry off the slides and swings somewhat so the kids wouldn't get soaking wet and they had a great time running around playing pirates. 

"Ahoy! I spy a little dog!" Benjamin called out from the designated crow's nest. 

And, indeed, there was a sweet little puppy running around (and by my using the word "sweet" you must really know that this dog was, indeed, sweet because it's against my natural inclination to consider unknown dogs "sweet"; but this dog looked kind and happy and gentle and sweet). 

"DOGGY!" Alexander gushed, rushing towards it.

As sweet as the dog looked, rushing toward a dog isn't very good etiquette so I stopped Alexander just as the dog's owner came around the corner, his shuffling gait had trouble keeping up with spry little puppy, and he had the leash draped around his own neck instead of the dog's (which is technically against the rules of the park).

"Does he want to pet the dog?" the man asked.

"ME PET A DOGGY!" Alexander agreed. 

So we went over to pet the dog. 

"Do you know what kind of dog this is?" the man asked.

"I don't," I confessed.

"It's a Basenji," he said. "It's an African breed. Very quiet dogs. They can't bark."

"Sounds like my kind of dog," I said. 

Ward conference

Today was ward conference, which is an idea that always took me a long time to understand. I guess when I was young I didn't notice that stake leaders were there...so it just felt like an ordinary Sunday. Because it's basically an ordinary Sunday.

Stake Conference and General Conference feel different. They have different venues and involve more people than we typically meet with week to week, but ward conference is just your ward meeting together, like, "I guess we're calling this a conference now."

I understand the purpose of it better now. And today was our ward conference.

We met before church to practice our musical number and then Miriam played prelude and did a wonderful job.

Later the choir sang, bolstered by angels, I'm sure, since we were few in number. Alexander came up with us because he can't be trusted in the pew with his siblings and he was a little stinker up there. He started pushing around the step stool and going for the volume control on the pulpit. So apparently he can't be trusted to come up on the stand with me anymore, either. I'm not sure what we're going to do with him since I'm one of the few sopranos in the choir.

Perhaps we'll have to sit by his favourite nursery leader on Sundays that we sing.

After sacrament meeting the stake music chair ran up to me gushing about Miriam and asking me if I'd be willing to play for stake conference (hard pass, thanks...unless you want to sing the exact three hymns that I can play) and then she asked if Andrew would be willing to play for stake conference. So I roped him into that.

That's what he gets for calling an 8:30 rehearsal (the tyrant).

My mom pointed out that it's not great for me, either, since that means I'll be left to sit by myself with the kids. But, honestly, they're usually pretty good except for Squirmy McSquirmerson.

(Now watch them be terrible (they are, after all, descended from a tyrant).

(And you all get that I'm kidding about the tyrant thing, right? Because although I was sad to have to get up so early on a Sunday morning, no one loves sleeping in more than Andrew so it was a real sacrifice on his part, too).

Anyway, Miriam also had to give a talk in primary and she did a wonderful job.

Here's her talk:

Mind your b's and w's

I woke up from my nap this afternoon and groggily made my way down the stairs carrying the baby (who is, in fact, not really a baby but we'll keep calling him the baby for as long as we want) and found Rachel and Miriam in the kitchen making cookies.

It's Sunday, but they started their laundry late, late, late Saturday night so they ended up leaving a wet load in the washing machine overnight (my children always smell divine and never like slightly-musty clothing). And then they had forgotten about it—even though they'd rifled through their load of clothes that had run through the dryer—this morning. In their defense, we had to be to church super early because our tyrant of a choir director insisted on an 8:30 practice before ward conference.

(Andrew is the choir director).

When I noticed that their wet laundry was still in the washing machine I decided I should gently remind them of the fact so I thought the words, "You still have wet laundry in the washing machine," but apparently the words that came out were "You still have butt laundry in the washing machine."

Andrew was in the kitchen, too, and he was the third witness to what I had said and agreed with what the girls said instead of agreeing with me (the tyrant). So now I'm guilty of coining the phrase "butt laundry."

As it turns out, this is a somewhat useful term.

Zoë's third first haircut

Zoë had her first willing haircut this evening, her third first hair cut!

Her very first haircut was courtesy of Benjamin and she still talks about how naughty that was to this very day! The second first haircut was when I mournfully fixed what Benjamin had done, cutting off her sweet, sweet baby locks.

Luckily, her hair has grown in (ever so slowly) just as fine and feathery as before so it's almost like she grew her sweet, sweet baby locks back. Unluckily, when that fine, feathery baby hair grows as long as hers has grown it tends to get disastrously tangled and just snaps when you try to brush it no matter how gentle you try to be.

She's been enjoying her long hair, though—putting it into braids and curls and ponytails. Here she is last week looking quite a bit like Shirley Temple (though do not tell her that; she does not like when we refer to her as Shirley Temple or Curly Sue or anything like that):

Just some boring stuff

I'm not very good at keeping secrets.

At least, I'm not very good at keeping my own secrets. I can't help it! I just get so excited about things. I'm not very good at surprising people because (a) I'm either really boring or (b) I just get so excited about things that I can't not talk about them. Or (c) all of the above, I suppose.

I don't know if this is a boring thing or not. Maybe it is.

It's not boring to me, so to that particular end...it's not boring. But I'm afraid it might be boring for other people, so then perhaps it's just boring.

But sometimes the boring work is the important work. Hear me out.

I'm doing some boring research right now for a different boring project, not the one I'm excited about (even though this research could be classified as boring as well, even though it's not necessarily boring to me) and I've recently been reading a paper by Thomas Röhlinger, who joined the democratic party in Germany (more on his history later) and teaches students that "democracy needs democrats that work for and defend it," though he doesn't use the party name in his lectures. I'm not sure how he manages that, but whatever.

Musical beds

I put Alexander to bed tonight and, for the first time in a long time, just...walked away. Like a free person! I don't even know how long I've been held hostage on Alexander's floor every evening but it's been a long, long time.

He's been spreading his wings and developing his language skills and, in general, growing up far too fast lately. It's been a hard but good process (for both of us). With his new language skills he has started to express his desires and fears in very understandable ways.

His room is dark and scary and lonely. He doesn't like that his closet door won't close. He doesn't like the curtains above his bed. He doesn't like being in there alone.

Everyone else shares a room and he'd like to share, too! Maybe with Zoë. He likes Zoë. She's his buddy!

Also, while we're at it, everyone else has a special blanket that they say Mommy made for them. Rachel has a blanket. And Mimi has a blanket. And Benny has a blanket. And BoBo has a blanket. These blankets remind him quite a bit of his owl-birdie hat but they are not hats; they are blankets. Where is his blanket?