As long as it lasts

I had been reading The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict to the children in the evenings, which was fine. 

But the chapters are so long.

And the book is so long.

And I'm so tired...

And when I was at the library last week, a book called Blue Mountain caught my eye, so I pulled it off the shelf and was surprised to see it was written by Martine Leavitt! I'm familiar with a lot of what she's written, but evidently haven't kept up with everything because I hadn't heard of this title. Marti, by the way, was my Young Women's president when I was...you know...young! So I checked it out and have been reading that to the kids instead, while The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict languishes beside my reading chair (we'll get to you, Trenton Lee Stewart). 

Painting Pumpkins

Auntie K sent the kids a Halloween activity to do a while ago and we (embarrassingly) just got around to doing it today. 

Life's been a little hectic! 

But today was "Friday Free Day!" and so I just let the kids have their free time while I worked on my school work and I got a lot accomplished! This week one of my classes didn't have any assignments while another one of my classes posted the rest of the assignments for the semester. So naturally I've spent this week hammering those out so I can have them out of the way. I haven't turned them all in yet, but I have read everything I need to and have written everything I need to and have them queued up to be turned in (I'm going to parcel them out over the next couple of weeks). I finished my final project for another class (though I still have three quizzes left to take, but I have to take those certain days so can't get ahead with those). 

Anyway, I was feeling rather on top of things with my school work and though there was more I could have done (and still should probably do before this baby arrives), I decided I could take some time off this afternoon to have fun with the kids. So we painted squishy pumpkins together. 

Alexander put this silly face on his pumpkin:

Presents last week, presents this week...

Miriam (whose birthday was on Monday) opened up her gifts on Saturday since Andrew's flight was on Sunday (though his presentation was on Monday and he ordinarily teaches that day, anyway, so he is typically busy on Mondays).

Alexander chose a spot of honour next to the birthday girl:

Still Pregnant

So now that Andrew's trip is over and done with, I can tell you that he flew out to Utah this week to give a research talk. We didn't tell many people he was heading out there because (a) we knew his schedule would be packed and (b) we didn't want certain people to have to worry for longer than they should. If you're a worrier (Hi, Mom!), I probably mean you!

But no worries! 

Before he left Andrew told me not to have the baby while he was gone and in an act of solidarity, Alexander ran up to me, gave my belly a couple of pushes and said, "Shove! Shove!"

He was all about doing his part to keep the baby inside.

We also had our cul-de-sac on "high alert" and my cousin Dylan even postponed her surgery so that she would be available to help out at the last minute, if needed (technically she postponed her surgery so she could have fun with her kids on Halloween, but she also let me know that she had postponed it so that if I needed anything I shouldn't hesitate to let her know and she'd drop everything to come be with the kids).

It's here that I'll admit we had a little bit of a scare a few weeks ago (on Alexander's birthday, of all days, but long after he'd been put to bed) and we ended up here:

The hospital

We're so very thankful that...

What I really need to do is hop on the exercise bike (because it's cold and rainy and no one wants to go for a walk today)—and I'll do that—but first, I'm going to share a quick story. 

I'm 35 weeks today! I had an appointment this morning, including another BPP (biophysical profile) ultrasound. Evidently I get to have a lot of those because I'm (a) geriatric and (b) have gestational diabetes. Some good news to come out of this was irrefutable evidence that the baby has flipped and is now presenting vertex (head down), as she should. We're rather excited about that over here.

A slightly funny part is that she's so very head down that the ultrasound technician had a little bit of trouble getting a decent head measurement, so while the rest of Phoebe is measuring in, like, the 30th percentile for growth, her head came in at, like, the 80th percentile for growth. The technician must have seen my eyes grow large as I tried to digest the numbers I was seeing on the screen (so many centimeters) because she said, "That head measurement is not accurate at all! She's just squished so far down there I can't get any closer to her to get a better measurement. I'm sure her head isn't that big because her head has always been proportional to her body and her body is measuring fine." 

Also, measurements get more and more inaccurate the farther along you are. We're not so worried about measurements at this point as we are about making sure she's getting the blood flow she needs, etc. 

Anyway, the kids were all excited that she had turned, even though there were no cute profile pictures to share with them (I mean, the technician kindly sent along a few pictures from today's scan but they were definite what-the-heck-is-that pictures and not that's-definitely-a-baby pictures). 

Alexander offered our dinner prayer. He's been pretty good at being thoughtful during his prayers lately, rather than praying his sweet little vain repetitions. This is both adorable and...unpredictable.

"We're thankful for this wonderful day that we could have today," he began (with a vain repetition). "And we're so very thankful that Phoebe..."

Here he paused and we all waited for him to say "flipped around" or something (even though he had been so very opposed to praying for such a weird thing a month ago). His pause was long. Pregnant even. 

Halloween Recital

Zoë and Benjamin both recently finished their primer level piano books and moved onto their level 1 books and it just so happened that they both had Halloween-themed songs near the beginning of their books. We figured this would be a good month to learn them (so I skipped several songs for both of them and assigned the Halloween songs, but we'll go back to what we missed; it'll all work out in the end). They haven't been practicing very long, but we decided to record them anyway...before it was time for Christmas music, ya know?

Rachel joined in with Funeral March (Chopin), which she'd learned a while ago but freshened up for the recital, and Miriam bravely decided to attempt Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Bach), even though she hasn't quite finished learning the last four page-turns or so. 

Alexander decided he would sing his favourite Halloween song. We all ended up being back-up singers for him because he kept singing too quietly on his own. But he did great.

Miriam's birthday cake

Miriam wanted a s'more cake for her birthday, so Rachel did some research and planned out a phenomenal cake that sounded mouthwatering to everyone in the family...except me. I mean, besides the fact that I'm completely off sugar right now...marshmallows + chocolate = a big "no thanks" from me. When Andrew lamented that he wouldn't be around for cake (since Miriam's birthday is on Monday and he's otherwise occupied Monday(s)), Alexander smacked his lips and said, "Goody! More cake for us!"

And so, in an effort to spite Alexander and include their father (because in this house, we're both vindictive and virtuous), the girls made the executive decision to celebrate Miriam's birthday with cake today rather than on Monday. 

Rachel spent practically all day Friday and Saturday in the kitchen. She made a (homemade) chocolate cake with (homemade) marshmallow fluff filling, covered in (homemade) buttercream frosting, topped everything with (homemade) ganache, and bedazzled it with mini s'mores that she made by roasting mini marshmallows over a candle flame.

We teased her for not making her own graham crackers and marshmallows, which she kind of took as a challenge so don't be surprised if you see her whipping up those from scratch in the near future just to prove that she can (as I said earlier: vindictive and virtuous).

Just...no one say anything about making chocolate to her, okay?

(Although, I have a friend who took a chocolate-making class when she was living down in Mexico. We're talking, like, "Step one: Open cocoa pod. Step two: Roast the beans. Step three: Mash the beans." Except that I have no idea what the actual procedure is, so don't follow those steps I just told you. Let's just say, the class took her through the whole process and what she shared looked very interesting...if you're into that sort of thing (and even if you're not, because I'm not particularly interested in making chocolate from scratch and yet it looked interesting)).

Here's the finished product, fresh from the fridge so it could get warm on the counter while we went on our family walk:

OOB and fee

We spent some time doing some Halloween crafts this afternoon—namely: getting Miriam's birthday "balloons" ready (she decided to stick with the Halloween tree theme, much to Alexander's delight) and getting some Halloween cards ready to send out.

Now that Alexander can actually pronounce things, he's becoming very interested in reading and writing. For example, went the whole way around the block today running ahead to each mailbox, sitting down primly on the curb to wait for Andrew and me to catch up,* and then proudly "reading" the numbers on the mailbox for us. He still gets 6 and 9 confused, but he does fairly well otherwise. He's also doing reading lessons and has begun sounding out words all on his own as he goes about his day (there's this one superhero book that has been particularly motivating for Alexander; he wants to know every word in that book).

* I've been insisting the past several weeks that I'm walking at the very same speed I always have, but it turns out that my waddle is getting real. Andrew checked his Fitbit to show me just how much I've slowed down as my belly has grown. I've about doubled the time it takes for us to walk around the block! And, really, we have been lagging behind the children more and more recently. But, boy, do I ever feel like I'm moving as fast as I ever have. Getting up our hill takes so much work!

Anyway, Alexander wanted to write his own messages, but he wanted the messages to be meaningful rather than nonsense, so he worked really hard on them!

Organ embroidery

Last week Miriam's organ teacher texted us out of the blue one evening to say that she was moving to Korea to take care of her mother (recently diagnosed with a terminal illness), so this would be her last week of lessons. We're sad to lose such a wonderful teacher, of course, but I'm so happy that her teacher has the flexibility to go! Living far away from family can be difficult. 

She gave us a few leads for replacement teachers, so we're working on filling that gap, but in the meantime, Miriam had her lesson coming up (on Wednesday) and she wanted to get a goodbye gift for her teacher. But what?

If my last post didn't make this clear...I'm not a good shopper. Knowing what to buy other people is...not in my skillset. Luckily, gifts don't always have to be purchased and sometimes something homemade offers that special touch of je ne sais quoi. So Miriam decided she'd "whip up" some embroidery—a set of organ pipes—for her teacher. 

It took most of her spare time between that sad text message and her lesson, but she finished it just in the nick of time. Andrew snapped a picture of her (and it) before taking her to her final lesson.

Matchy-matchy

Way back when I first found out I was pregnant and was experiencing All The Emotions, I decided that if I really was doing this again (which evidently we were), then I at least could be cute and comfortable: I was going to buy maternity clothes.

This was a great plan for me...except that I'm frugal to a fault...and spending money is really hard for me. So I was lucky that my neighbour gifted me a bag of maternity clothes because I still couldn't quite bring myself to buy very much, especially because we're really at our caboose now. For real. 

Still, I convinced myself to buy a couple pairs of maternity leggings, which was important for me even early on because I think I was the absolute sickest with this pregnancy that I've ever been—throwing up and fainting (which I haven't really ever done during pregnancy before)—and feeling elastic around my waist was just unbearable. So I wouldn't have made it through the first several months of this pregnancy in my regular leggings, even though that's mostly what I wore when I was expecting Alexander and Zoë. But maternity leggings really are more comfortable than non-maternity leggings; that's just a fact (that I know now).

Anyway, I also got a couple of tunics to go with the leggings. They aren't technically maternity shirts, but I have this thing against buying clothes I'm only going to wear for a few months (which is why I haven't ever bought a lot of maternity clothes). Tunics are something I can wear after Baby is here as well. When I was looking at tunics, a lovely fall-striped one caught my eye but I was going to be pregnant mostly through the summer, so getting a long-sleeved tunic sounded like a bad idea. I chose a short-sleeved one instead and I think I've worn it once a week since it arrived. It's very comfortable.

Things have been cooling off recently, however, and I've found myself still thinking about that fall-striped tunic. So I went ahead and ordered it. Because if you've wanted something from April to October, maybe you should just go ahead and get it.

It arrived today and I tried it on and when Alexander saw me his mouth fell open.

"We match!" he managed to squeak out in spite of his excitement, and he ran to give me the biggest hug.

I hadn't planned on wearing the shirt the whole evening, but...I couldn't take it off now!

Alexander rifled through his toy box until he found his sunglasses (so he could match me even further because I have glasses) and insisted that we both wear flip-flops on our walk (because then our shoes would match). He held my hand the whole way (he's only recently given up the stroller—completely cold-turkey, as is his way (one day he was too little to walk the full mile, but the next day he was plenty big, thank you very much)) and whenever a car drove by he would squish up against me and robotically announce, "CONNECT! Nobody can see me. We are camouflaged. CONNECT!"

He's a goofball.

Here he is saying hello to Phoebe, who has made it past the 34-week mark (by one day). Every day we count our lucky stars that she's still baking away. Even though I'm so over being pregnant, I know that she's better off on the inside.