Heissatopia

So that's just what we'll do

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:09:00 +0000

This whole garden thing is kind of taking me by surprise. It started off as an experiment to see if we could get anything to grow. I've never been in charge of a garden and I was nervous because I have a history of killing off houseplants. We decided we'd start small—with one 4x4 garden box—and see how things would go this year.

Not to count our chickens before they hatch or anything, but our garden seems to be flourishing.

Here it is last week:

And here it is today:

I know the perspective is off, so you'll have to take my word for it that this garden is a growing concern. The biggest nasturtium leaves are as big as my hand. The corn, beans, and sunflowers (we were going for the Three Sisters companion planting method; I don't know if we did it right) are about as tall as Miriam. One of our tomato plants is also about as tall as she is (we have a few different varieties in there) and I just read today that tomato plants can grow to be six feet tall (or taller), which was surprising to learn. I don't think I've ever seen a tomato plant that tall...but we might just get one in our garden.

It's like a jungle in there. And we already have a few baby tomatoes growing. Our lettuce is coming up just fine. And we have a few pea pods. And we've already eaten two strawberries from our plants out front (though I'm not expecting a bumper crop from those).

The marigolds I planted are starting to develop flower buds—I'm excited to get some colour out in the garden (besides our tomato flowers, which are a little understated).

I really can't take any credit for this at all. I just threw some seeds into the ground, said a little prayer, and hoped for the best, all the time these lines running through my mind: The prophet said to plant a garden, and here I give a helpless shrug, so that's what we'll do, even if we have no idea what we're doing, I suppose. Our garden isn't an "obedience garden,"* but instead an "experiment garden," or as Rachel would say, an "experience garden." ("I'm having an experience!" she'll exclaim, rather than, "I'm doing an experiment." We've corrected her but she doesn't hear the difference, I suppose, because she's still experiencing science rather than experimenting with it.)

Did you know you could watch conference talks from 1985 online? I didn't, at least not until now. Sister Winder gave a good talk at my very first general conference (October 1985).

Another good talk is Elder Ballard's talk from this past conference (my 56th conference, in case you were wondering). He told a story about a granddaughter's tomato plant experiment and it was accompanied by a little video-reenactment where this second-grade girl manages to grow this huge tomato plant after neglecting (and almost killing!) it, just with a little water, light, and TLC.

As we think about the imagery of succoring the weak, lifting up the hands which hang down, and strengthening feeble knees, I am reminded of a sweet seven-year-old showing her grandfather a small tomato plant she had started from a seed as part of a second-grade school project.

She explained that form one tiny seed would come a plant. And if the plant were cared for, it would grow many tomatoes that would each have many seeds.

She said, "And if all those seeds were planted and grew more tomatoes, and you planted all of those seeds, in a few seasons you would have millions of tomatoes."

"All," she said in amazement, "from one little seed."

But then she said, "I almost killed my plant. I left it in a dark room and forgot to water it. When I remembered the plant, it was all wilted and dead looking. I cried because I thought of all those millions of tomatoes that would never grow."

Here I glanced at my tomato seedlings, which weren't doing very well in March, and scoffed to Andrew, "Yeah. Because tomatoes are impossible to grow! Why didn't her teacher use something like...sunflowers? Something that's guaranteed to...actually grow."

Back in March, I had my sweet tomato seedlings sitting in a tray in my window. They were still rocking their cotyledon—their little "fetus" leaves—when they should have been losing those and sprouting their true leaves. Mine simply weren't growing.

She was then excited to tell her grandfather about the "miracle" that happened.

She explained, "Momma said maybe the plant wasn't dead. Maybe all it needed was some water and some light to bring life back.

"And she was right. I gave the plant some water, and I put it in the window for light. And guess what?" she asked. "It came back to life, and now it's going to grow a million of tomatoes!"

Her small tomato plant, so full of potential but so weakened and wilted form unintentional neglect, was strengthened and revived through the simple ministration of water and light by the little girl's loving and caring hands.

Here we were shown a scene of this little girl proudly setting her obnoxiously robust tomato plant on the counter and it really got my dander up because tomatoes were a bit of a touchy subject for me, considering the sorry state of my own tomatoes. "Oh, I'm so sure," I smirked to Andrew. "There's no possible way her tomato plant fared that well. And they definitely hired a stunt-double for the tomato plant in that first scene. It can't be the same plant. Tomatoes don't just pick up and thrive! They're all destined to die!"

"Yes," he agreed, picking up on my sarcasm but ignoring the obvious chord of raging jealousy this girl's story had struck within me (I really like tomatoes, okay?), "You will never grow a million tomato plants. You can't even grow one tomato."

"Perhaps it's better that way," I told him. "Then you can't throw them at our house!" (because he did that to his parents' house when his was "cleaning up the yard" in his teen years and he will never live it down.)

We settled down to listen to the rest of the talk, the best we could with all the little ones around, and it was a wonderful talk (even if it did mention tomatoes a little too often). Near the end of his talk, Elder Ballard said, "If any one of you feels your faith or testimony of Heavenly Father's plan is less than you know it should be, then turn more fully to the Savior. Let his light and His living water do for you and your family what a little water and light did in bringing life back to the weakened tomato plant."

I thought that was a beautiful invitation. Even if I couldn't help the sad, sorry state of my tomato plants (how much light and water do those things need?!) I could at least turn myself more fully to the Savior. That was kind of the theme I got from this past session of conference, really. It seemed like so many of the apostles invited us to begin where we are now and start doing better.* And I love that. It reminds me of one of my favourite scriptures (Alma 5: 26): "...if ye have experience a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?"

Because if you don't, you can. I can. And, I was sure, my tomatoes could, too.

With enough time and care, my tomatoes finally let their true colours show and sprouted their second set of leaves—genuine tomato leaves. Eventually, but with very little hope for their survival, I planted them in our garden box. But I looked longingly at the tomato plants in the store and kept comparing my runty seedlings to the thick, strong plants on the shelves of the garden center. Temptation gave way and I bought a couple of plants, brought them home, unearthed my dinky plants, and put the nice big ones in my garden.

But I couldn't give up on my tomatoes—the ones I had started from little seeds—partially because of Elder Ballard's talk. I really wanted to grow tomatoes from seeds just to prove to myself that I could do it.

Andrew was against keeping them since I'd just spent $12 putting more mature plants into our garden, but I insisted, though I agreed that their future looked very bleak.

"If I don't keep them then I will never know if I could have done it," I explained, transplanting them into the plastic throw-away pot our azalea bush came in. "What if they do alright? What if they get tomatoes? What if these plants end up proliferating a million other plants? I would miss out on all of that! I have to keep them."

So we kept them. They're on our back porch right now. They're still pretty wimpy compared to the tomatoes in the garden box, which are already flowering and busting out little baby tomatoes (they grow up so quickly, don't they?), but at least they're getting a fighting chance.

I'm actually impressed with how much they've grown. They're now about the size our store-bought plants were when we brought them home. But I didn't take a picture of them to show you. I'll do that later.

Instead I took a picture of my pea pod! I have a couple, but this one is the biggest. It's also on our deck.

The solution to the aphids, it seems, was to just let them have a sacrificial pea plant. They're still munching away at the lone pea plant in the other pot on our deck and have been leaving the pea plants in the other planter well enough alone. I'm happy to share with the aphids as long as they aren't too greedy.

I've been in such high spirits about our garden. Every time we look at it it's noticeably bigger. We haven't actually been looking at it too often because the weather's alternating between torrential downpours and hot. Needless to say, most of our garden admiring has been happening during the "hot" times, which have been brief compared to the torrential downpours. The rain barrel we set up not too long ago, for example, is completely full. And all the nitrogen-rich water from the thunder storms (apparently thunder storms "charge" water full of nitrogen) has made for excellent growth for our crops.

They're still getting a healthy dose of sunshine, too. There were a couple of days last week where I hand-watered the garden because it was so hot and "dry" (at least comparatively speaking). When it's sunny our plants are getting the requisite 6 to 8 hours of sunlight per day and when it's rainy they're getting plenty of water.

Our garden is doing wonderfully, but I have very little to do with it, I promise. It's all...not me. It's nature, not nurture, which is to say it's God.

Today we decided to put in another garden box just to see what we can grow in there.

We have corn, beans, peas, sunflowers, tomatoes, nasturtium, carrots, lettuce and marigolds in the first.

In the second we're planning on trying cucumbers (and dill because Andrew wants to try to make our own pickles) and cantaloupe, as well as putting in more carrots and lettuce and perhaps some peas or green beans.

We really have no idea what we're doing, but things seem to be doing well. This second time, we put a layer of our bokashi compost at the bottom of the box to kind of sit and turn into dirt. Since seeds only need to be planted less than an inch beneath the soil and we have a good six inches of soil on top of the bokashi, we figure it will be soil-ized by the time the roots of our plants get down to it. We'll see. I haven't planted anything yet because we were all so hot and tired after finishing building the garden in the first place.

Here's what Benjamin looked like after we came inside:

He was as red as a tomato, was dripping with sweat, and was covered in a mixture of soil, graham cracker crumbs, snot and spit up. Andrew and I weren't looking/feeling much better so Andrew suggested that we hurry up and finish the rest of our chores before heading to the pool.

The pool just opened on Saturday and we were warned that it would be freezing but figured we'd try it out anyway because we don't really trust Southerners when they talk about things being cold (no offense, but...it just doesn't get cold down here).

The water wasn't warm, precisely, but none of us got goosebumps, either (at least not until the sun dropped below the horizon).

We had a wonderful time swimming (with some of the neighbours; it's a community pool) and tomorrow, if it's not raining (or at least in between the showers of rain that are expected) we'll have a wonderful time planting our second garden.

* Elder Uchdorf, who counseled us to "start where [we] are," and Elder Holland, who counseled us to "hold the ground [we] have already won," among others.

Wrightsville Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:13:00 +0000

When people ask me where I'm from I can never give them a straight answer because there isn't one.

Answering questions such as "Where did you move from?" or "Where were you born?" are easy to answer because there's only one possible answer. But "Where are you from?" is a difficult question with a complicated answer so when I'm asked this I take a deep breath while I think about how much of my life history I should share. I don't even have the privilege of that two word answer, "Army Brat," because I wasn't one, but I did do my share of moving around. I also have the added complication of being a dual citizen. Where do I belong? Here and there and nowhere at all.

Part of me feels like I belong at the coast, probably due to the time I spent living on the coast (briefly (but not in my memory...much) in California, several years in British Columbia, and a couple years in Egypt (those were Seas, technically, not the ocean but that still counts as coast)).

Going to the beach is a homecoming of sorts.

That's why I was so excited to move to a coastal state. But we've lived here for nine months already and I haven't seen even a hint of the ocean (except for that one time we went to South Carolina) so I've been whining about it to Andrew (and we planned and aborted a few trips) and finally, finally we made it out to the beach yesterday.

We left straight from the ballet studio and drove the 2.5 hours, past Wilmington (because, we were informed "there are no beaches at Wilmington"), all the way to Wrightsville Beach (which is in the town of Wrightsville, which is in the Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area (so is technically part of Wilmington ...ish)).

Parking was a bear, but we finally found a place to park after driving in a loop several times. All the parking is metered ($2 per hour—thank goodness you can pay by phone because we did not have nearly enough quarters on hand!) and there were meter~~maids~~-enforcers just strolling up and down the street, handing out tickets willy-nilly (don't they have anything better to do?).

Stumbling onto the beach was like stumbling into paradise. We were stumbling because we were dragging along three small children and a cooler (and various other packages) and it was paradise because it was the beach.

I was surprised by how warm it was. It's May and was only about 80 degrees, but the water was fine—it wasn't exactly warm but it wasn't terribly cold either. I didn't get goosebumps in the water but I wasn't sweating on the beach either. It was lovely.

The waves were huge, which is probably why both Miriam and Benjamin did their best to stay as far away from them as possible. Both of them cried whenever we tried to take them closer to the water.

Rachel, on the other hand, couldn't stay out of the water so Andrew and I took turns playing in the waves with Rachel and sitting in the sand with Miriam and Benjamin.

So now all that's left to do, I suppose, is warn you that there is an inordinate number of pictures for this beach trip that you'll have to live through. I took well over 300 photographs so I really did pare them down quite a bit. My family's just so cute (in my humble, yet amazingly accurate, opinion) that it's difficult to settle on just a couple of pictures.

Benjamin enjoyed the sand a whole lot. He ate an awful lot of it the first little while we were there but soon decided that this gigantic sandbox made a better toy than a snack. Unfortunately, the people whose spot we took (literally as they were packing up to leave) had spilled a bunch of goldfish crackers in the sand so Benjamin had a heyday with those—he was fighting the seagulls for them.

We had a lot of fun watching the seagulls. They aren't the California Gulls we're used to seeing back in Utah but I'm not quite sure what kind of gull they are. They're in the genus Chroicocephalus rather than the genus Larus (which the Califonira Gull is in) but I can't decide if they're a black-headed gulls or whether they are Bonaparte's gulls. I suppose they could be either of those or both of those or neither of those. Whatever they were, Benjamin liked to watch them and tease them with his crackers. They would somehow manage to catch air currents just right so that they could float right above you for a few seconds before diving for a piece of food.

I love how curious Benjamin is about everything.

He examines everything he touches very thoroughly. He wants to know how it works, what it tastes like, what it does...

Miriam was nervous about everything. She was nervous about the water, she was nervous about the birds, she was nervous about the people, she was even nervous about lunch. When Daddy told her that we'd be having sandwiches for lunch she thought we'd be getting right down to the root of that word.

"But I don't want a sandwich!" she wailed as we were getting lunch out.

"Why not?" we asked. "We brought grandma-jam."

Grandma-jam is the apricot/pineapple jam we made with Grandma a couple of summers ago. Miriam loves the stuff.

"I just don't want it with sand in it!" she informed us. So I told her not to worry; the food has little to do with actual sand—it was named after the Earl of Sandwich, which is a place in England, on the coast. In Old English, "wic" means 'trading place' so Sandwich was a sandy trading place, which makes sense since Sandwich is a bay in England. The earl part I learned from Sesame Street years and years ago (but it's also on wikipedia so must be true) and the etymology of the place I learned just now.

Incidentally, I also recently learned that "Ye Olde" is from Early Modern English when "th" was originally written with a thorn, which looked a lot like "y." So, Ye Olde Shoppes were actually The Olde Shoppes. But now we say "ye" because...we're awesome. Anyway...

Would you look at this boy's hair? And his smile?

He's adorable. He wasn't a fan of the waves either, though by the end of the day I was able to stand on the wet sand and look at the water with him while he was still smiling, he kept a sharp eye on the reach of the water and would start to cry whenever he felt it got too close to us. If it happened to touch my feet (heaven forbid) he'd start shrieking and would attempt to climb over my shoulders.

Needless to say, he and Miriam spent a lot of time playing in the sand together.

Andrew and I took turns playing with Rachel in the waves.

Andrew got more ocean time in since Benjamin kind of prefers my company to Andrew's at this stage in his life. He's saying Momma now and whenever I get back from an absence (whether it's half an hour in the waves with Rachel or thirty seconds to use the toilet) he repeats it over and over while clinging to me for dear life. "Momma, Momma, Momma!"

Rachel was confused when he called her Momma the other day so I explained that Momma is a generic baby word for "person I care about." So tonight when I asked her to do something she said, "Sure, Person I Care About."

"What?" I asked her.

"Uhhh...Momma—that's baby for 'person I care about,' remember?"

She thought I was saying that Momma is a baby word and decided that she shouldn't use it anymore. I told her that to Benjamin Momma means Momma and Momma means 'person I care about,' so Momma means Rachel and Miriam and Daddy, too, but for her Momma/Mom/Mommy could still mean me. She didn't have to go around calling me 'Person I Care About.' That's just awkward.

She's been very interested in foreign languages lately. Her kindergarten class has been studying the continents, and by extension various countries within those continents and by extension various languages spoken in the various countries on the various continents. She also has a new classmate who doesn't speak English well and so she's been trying to learn Spanish so that she can talk to her. She approaches it like she should be able to pick it up in a heartbeat.

"Mom, will you teach me Spanish so I can speak to Kiyara?"

Sure. It's just that simple.

We've worked on a few phrases but, frankly, I don't speak enough Spanish to go around instructing people on how to speak it. Rachel, though, is fascinated with language right now and was thrilled to learn that Benjamin has his own lingo, too.

Here's Rachel in the waves with another Person She Cares About, her Daddy:

He got her "over" her fear of sharks. She was so sure they were lurking just in front of her and if she got up to her knees then *whamo* she'd be mincemeat. This might be partially my fault because I found the story of Lucy Mangum when we were looking at graduate schools and considering Duke. She's a sweet little girl from an LDS family living in North Carolina while her father is a resident, or something (there are a lot of medical students out here) and she was attacked by a shark, and lived to tell the tale.

And she's not the only one to be attacked off North Carolina's coastline, either. According to ABC news, "sharks have attacked 41 people in North Carolina in the last 75 years," and only 29 attacks of those attacks happened in this millenium (with only one fatality) according to Yahoo Voices (referencing the International Shark Attack File). It seems only a handful of people are attacked each year in the states with the highest rates of shark attacks (we'll be extra careful in Florida).

The good news is that you can avoid becoming a shark's snack by avoiding the water when they feed (dawn, dusk, dark). They apparently often swim in shallow water but typically go unnoticed.

My brother Patrick warned me that most shark attacks take place in relatively shallow water, and indeed that's true, but I'm not sure if that's because that's where sharks are more prone to attacking people or if that's simply because that's where the people are. I don't know many people who just go swimming in the middle of the ocean.

So it's still a little bit scary for me—the ocean, that is—and I'm sure it's still scary for Rachel, but Andrew at least got her in past her ankles. Sharks are a danger, sure, but so are bears and she goes into the forest.

Andrew was giving her bodysurfing tips. She was getting quite good at it from what I could see—at any rate, the waves were easily washing her ashore!

Now I'm kind of squirming in my seat from looking up too many scary tales about shark attacks and Andrew keeps sending me links about that monstrous tornado in Oklahoma. So, how about something a little more lighthearted—like pictures of sweet Benjamin in the sand?

I can make that happen. Look how sweet:

I love this picture of Benjamin, doing the splits, and rocking out on the beach—it looks like he's playing the air guitar or something.

Andrew started burying Rachel in the sand and Miriam actually went close enough to look. She almost set foot on sand wet with ocean water. Almost, but not quite.

She preferred to take things in from a distance.

After being buried waist deep, Rachel requested that she be buried all the way. She was cold and the sand was warm.

So Andrew began burying her again while I kept my eyes on the littler ones. Miriam stayed far away, in case the ocean should suddenly jump out at her, but Benjamin crawled over for a closer look. Here he is doing his standard wave:

He slowly made his way over, stopping just by Rachel's head. He watched Daddy gather up handfuls of sand and plop them onto Rachel and then mimicked what he saw, plopping his handful of sand right on Rachel's face. He then sat back and grinned while everyone else laughed.

Even Rachel was a good sport about it. She had another good laugh when Benjamin tumbled face-first into the sand just seconds after flinging sand in her face.

He was not very impressed but Rachel sure thought it was hilarious.

Benjamin's face was usually covered with sand but he didn't seem to mind. His eyelashes are so long and luscious that I'd be surprised if any sand got through them. He didn't complain about his eyes one bit all day.

We did a lot of burying of each other. The girls love turning their legs into mermaid tails. Benjamin and Miriam covered and uncovered my legs more times than I could possibly count, and even Benjamin got buried a time or two. We were all so sandy you could hardly tell us from the beach!

We had fun sifting through the shells on the beach. Benjamin was happy to be involved in everything. So often he's told to go away so the older girls can do their own thing.

Picking up shells and putting them into a bucket was right up his alley.

He's such a fun little guy!

We all kept marveling at how Benjamin suddenly started crawling. I don't know what was so special about the beach, but it made Benjamin decide to get his tummy up off the ground and crawl on his hands and knees.

Miriam had a few close encounters with seagulls, thanks to the goldfish crackers that were scattered all around us in the sand. We kept unearthing new ones by all our digging and the seagulls would swoop down and snatch them. Some of them were quite brazen and surprised us with how close they were willing to fly to us just to eat a lousy cracker.

Soon, though, she decided it would be so much fun to be a bird and constructed a little nest for herself.

She took a long time doing it and spent a long time playing in and around it after it was completed.

Miriam also did some yoga on the beach because "that's what some people do—you know that?" At times she took herself very seriously. Other times she got a little goofy. She was doing sun salutations and tree poses as well as a lot of other silly stuff she made up on her own.

Meanwhile, Benjamin played and played and played...

...while Rachel and Andrew raced from the water to the sand and back again.

As we were getting ready to leave for the day, we paused to watch a beach wedding take place. It was beautiful, but I think it would be weird to have so many random people in swimsuits watching you get married. There was a whole passel of little girls, dripping wet, standing in a pack, just drooling over the bride. It was almost funny to see.

Our little girls were also intrigued. Miriam is already dreaming of her wedding day—she'll often tell me that when she grows up she wants a wedding—and Rachel gave her nod of approval to the colourscheme (turquoise is her favourite colour right now).

Here are the girls playing in the sand after the marriage was a done deal and the wedding party was busy taking pictures. They had a whole area set up with a pulpit and chairs and everything but started taking it down not five minutes after the groom kissed his bride.

Rachel, you can see, was jealous of Miriam's nest and decided to make her own.

Meanwhile, Benjamin finally decided to take a nap. He'd been so busy playing all afternoon that he couldn't settle down to nurse and when he finally did he was out like a light.

Unfortunately, we were getting ready to leave so we had to wake him up (it's easier to carry an awake child than a sleeping child and since we had so many other things to carry we needed him to be awake so he could hang on). He wasn't thrilled about having his nap interrupted...but then again, neither was I. He's not a very dedicated napper so I try to take what we can get.

We paused for a few family pictures just before hitting the showers.

For dinner we stopped at Wendy's and let the girls have their choice off the dollar menu (chicken nuggets or a Jr. Cheeseburger—exciting options, right?), but they loved it. As we were walking out to the van to load up our sleepy children, with freshly satisfied tummies, Andrew predicted that all three of them would fall asleep on the drive home, and that totally happened...twenty minutes before arriving home! Before that they watched a movie, screamed, fought, demanded snacks, and were little terrors in every other way imaginable.

It didn't help that the ride was longer than we'd anticipated due to heavy rains.

We stopped for gas when we were about halfway just so I could nurse the baby, who was thrilled to be out of his carseat. Unfortunately, he started screaming the minute I buckled him back in.

Rachel was the first to fall asleep, which was no surprise considering how long she played in the ocean. Benjamin was next, he screamed himself to the point of exhaustion, and then Miriam finally succumbed after peppering us with questions long after the other two had drifted off. Unfortunately, we only got twenty minutes of silence the entire ride home.

Once we got home we rushed to get the children showered and in bed. I think the girls were in bed by eleven. Benjamin stayed up screaming because he discovered that he could pull himself to standing in his crib. He gets so tired from staying up all the time that he wants nothing more of life than to fall asleep...except to stay awake a little bit longer. He's a champion sleep-fighter.

But even if an afternoon at the beach didn't make our children fall asleep on the ride home, and our house got sprinkled with beach residue, and I had several extra loads of laundry to do today, it was worth it. And I'm sure it will be worth it when we do it again.

The griddle, too.

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:48:00 +0000

The scene: A wife stands at the kitchen sink, barefoot (but not pregnant) with three young children swarming around her (who would have been pulling on her apron strings, I'm sure, had she been wearing an apron (but she's not)) while she attempts to wash dishes.

Enter Husband.

Husband: Hey, there's a griddle over here, since you're doing hand-dishes...oh...uh... I mean...uh...I wasn't... Oh, no. I just...uh... I. Appreciate. You. So. Much.

******

He certainly backpedaled quickly, didn't he?

In truth, it was the most hilarious thing he's done recently. We both busted up laughing about, right there at the kitchen sink—because Andrew is the most undemanding person in the world and didn't mean to come across quite so...chauvinistic. We've been joking about it ever since.

"Wife, clean my frying pan!" was tossed out, followed up by, "Wife no clean frying pan! Wife take nap!" (Thank you, Peter Pan (the girls watched it on Sunday as part of their "Post Peter Pan Party" so it was fresh in our minds)).

We also have been tacking it onto the end of pretty much anything we ask each other to do, for example:

"Could you get me a glass of water, please?"

"Sure; should I wash the griddle, too?"

It's one of those moments that will live on in infamy...at least in our home.

But the strangest of all were the people who lived in...

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 18 May 2013 04:25:00 +0000

...our house. Probably. The strangest of all were the people who lived in...

I was reading to the girls tonight, each tucked up into a ball and cuddled into either side of me, just as they were meant to be, while the Benjaboy listened in, practicing his standing while slapping my legs with his chubby baby fingers.

"These houses were quite small," I read, "the biggest of them reaching only as high as Dorothy's waist. There were also pretty little barns, with china fences around them. Many cows and sheep and horses and pigs and chickens, all made of china, were standing about in groups.

"But the strangest of all were the people who lived in..." I paused to turn the page—since our story was interrupted by a full-colour illustration on the next page—and found, to everyone's dismay, a new chapter heading.

Huh.

I quickly skimmed through that page and then flipped to the next.

"This forest is perfectly delightful," declared the Lion, looking around him with joy. "Never have I seen a more beautiful place." Page turn. for us to go any other way except due South."

Oh, no.

We skipped from page 182 to 190 and back to 184. Fortunately 190 was repeated, but in its proper location, eight pages down the road, but page 183 was no where to be found. With bedtime looming over our heads I made the split second decision to truncate an entire page of a childhood classic.

Miriam was already so distracted by the illustration because it was of Dorothy melting the Wicked Witch of the West (which happened over the course of pages 122–123) and she wanted to know why that picture was there. Was the witch back? That would be rather troublesome because Dorothy melted her (and she didn't say "Oh, what a world!" but instead "Look out—here I go!" (this book is nothing like the movie (silver slippers? Our iconic ruby slippers were invented to show off colour television) and both Rachel and Miriam have been a little conflicted about that).

"But the strangest of all were the people who lived in this place," I told the girls after we quelled Miriam's fears about Witches regenerating after being melted by buckets of water. "We need to head South."

We finished reading the chapter and put the kids to bed. And then I hopped online and headed over to Project Gutenberg to find out what happened on page 183. I threw it into InDesign and did a little guesswork on fonts and things but Andrew caught me fudging through the process and insisted that if we were going to create an addendum at all we'd be doing it right, crop marks and all.

So, in case you were wondering...

The page size is 38p6.047 (16.3 cm) by 53p7.5 (22.7013 cm).
The top margin is 2.2 cm.
The outside margin is 4.2 cm.

We didn't measure the other two margins because they'd fall into place on their own.

The main text box is 10.5 cm by 17 cm.
The running side-header is 0.5384 cm away from the main text box. It is 2.54 cm wide and 4.0053 cm tall.

The text is technically set in Bulmer but we don't have that font and didn't want to purchase it so we looked it up and found out that William Martin (who created Bulmer) worked with Baskerville and so his font borrows strongly from Baskerville himself (both were typesetters back in the day). We used Baskerville because we have that font.

The main text is 13.9 pt, with 17.1 pt leading. The side-header is semi-bold italic, 19 pt with 25 pt leading, and I scaled it up vertically to 110%.

We printed it out, cropped it down to size (with scissors because we don't have a paper cutter (though a paper cutter would have been incredibly useful in this situation)) and glued it in our book.

Problem solved, super-nerd style!

Don't worry: we didn't glue it in here!

"I just made a page in a book!" I sighed to Andrew, as I marveled at how perfectly everything lined up. "Is this how you feel every day?"

"Yup," he admitted. "It's kind of addicting."

He does this kind of thing for a living. Kind of. You know, besides going to school. He's working on a rather ancient medical book right now (by Maimonides), typesetting both the English translation and the original Arabic, side by side.

Here are a few wonderful snippets of this book:

"Someone whose body is very emaciated or dominated by a dry dyscrasia should be given milk to drink. The best milk is that of women—after that, the milk of a donkey, and then the milk of a goat. The younger the animal, the better the milk, especially if it has been well fed and well provided for. The best milk to use is that which is sucked from the breast; and if that is impossible, one should bring the animal close to the patient so that he can [drink] the milk the moment it is milked, while it is still hot and has not cooled off."

"The degenerated nerve, on the other hand, should be putrefied with melted butter until it falls off. "

"If the blood is not contained with the bandage, one should scrape off the skin and catch the vein on a hook, pull it upward, and bind both edges with a silken thread while the vein is in the middle."

"The setting of a broken bone is effected through straightening the limb, [so that] the deflected part is brought into one line with the straight part above it. Then it should be put together by gently and carefully bringing in the splintered parts, one upon the other, and the fissure should be mended so that [the bone] returns to its initial shape. Then it should be bandaged and splints should be put on it such that it reassumes it original shape. The splints should have the same shape as the [broken] limb so that they preserve it [the shape]."

"Do not treat evil diseases [so that] you will not be called a 'physician of evil.'"

"If we see a nosebleed that increases, becoming more severe, which cannot be stopped with remedies, we bleed from the veins of the arm that is on the same side as the nostril from which the blood flows, and we apply cupping glasses to the hypochondria. If the blood flows from the right nostril, [we apply cupping glasses] to the liver; and if it flows from the left nostril, [we apply them] to the spleen, so that the blood is attracted downward."

Andrew is typically sent a copy of the book after it's been sent to print, so I'm super excited to have this reference book on our shelf. It will go along great with our copy of On Hemorrhoids, also by Maimonides. You can get your own copy here.

Oh, come on—you know you want to.

Just another manic Thursday

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:30:00 +0000

Strawberry picking must simply be a bigger thing down here than it is other places. Never have I ever had so many people ask me about whether or not I'd gone strawberry picking before in all my life. It's like the thing to do in the spring. Benjamin's participating in a dental study at the doctor's office and he had his first appointment today. The doctor we saw asked us straight out if we'd gone berry picking, just threw it into her smalltalk.

"Have you gone to pick strawberries yet?" she asked, as if it was our right—even our duty—to do so.

Fortunately, we went yesterday so we were able to rave about the strawberries with firsthand experience.

The appointment was easy (and we earned $50). We just had to fill out a survey about Benjamin's teeth and brushing habits. He had a short examination, got a little toothbrush to take home, and we were done (until our next appointment, approximately 18 months from now). The only thing Benjamin wouldn't do is let them look at his tongue. We did everything we could to convince him to stick it out, but he wouldn't. He wouldn't say, "Lalala," which is one of his favourite things to do (he sticks his tongue way out to say it). He wouldn't make rude noises with his tongue (another of his favourite past times). He just plain wouldn't stick out his tongue.

I noticed the chart they had sitting out and asked if they were trying to see if his tongue was loose or whether he was in need of a lingual frenectomy. They said that was exactly what they were looking for so I informed them that he had been tongue-tied but had already had his frenulum snipped. They'll still need to get a look at his tongue (for the study) but said that they'll have more opportunities to see it (when he's older and more cooperative (or uncooperative, depending on how you look at it) about sticking out his tongue).

His teeth look great, show no sign of decay, but, oh! that labial frenulum!

Apparently it's not unusual for these frenulum problems to go hand in hand. Since Benjamin was so tongue-tied it was no surprise (to the doctor) that he was also lip-tied (or whatever it's called when you have an over-achieving labial frenulum). She said to watch that area carefully (ie. avoid running the toothbrush over his frenulum) because there are a ton of nerves and blood vessels in the frenulum so it's a sensitive area of his mouth. We'll likely have to get it cut someday (if we can't "arrange" a "happy" accident like we did for Rachel last year (her friend Michael had an accidental frenectomy at the park just a while ago, too (walked too close to the swingset—BAM! Free frenectomy. Just like that)). Those methods are so messy and painful, though (and sometimes, as in Rachel's case, the recipient doesn't even need a frenectomy)).*

Up until last February I wasn't even sure what a frenulum was, but look at me, look at me, look at me now! It's fun to use the word frenulum when you know how!

Having children is so educational.

This afternoon both Miriam and Benjamin took a nap at the same time which hasn't happened in...ever? It's been so long that I'm not sure if it's ever happened. It probably has. But it's possible it hasn't. At any rate, Miriam went down for a nap because she was out of control and Benjamin went down for a nap and then Andrew and I made jam and then I cleaned off my desk (somewhat) and then started making strawberry parfaits with Miriam (she was up; it was a short nap) and then we picked Rachel up from the bus stop and then we finished making strawberry parfaits. The girls wanted to eat them but they were for dessert so they took Benjamin and shut themselves in his room and put pillows and blankets all over the floor so that he couldn't hurt himself on anything and then they played around on our keyboard and were all happy as could be.

I made dinner—these, more or less. They were a hit and hardly took any time at all. We were finished with dinner and clean up by 6:30 so we went on a family walk.

I almost chickened out because there was a spider on the wheel of the stroller and its legs were touching either side of the wheel...

...but Andrew just shook him off the stroller and we went on our merry way.

Because Miriam took a nap, she got to stay up late. I say it that way because it makes me feel like I'm in control of the situation, like I was granting her permission to stay up late. In reality her circadian rhythm was all thrown off and she couldn't fall asleep, so she was up. Miriam composed the following for you, all by herself:

RACHEL 7TYHH77BTU7UBHGBJTTJKBHTL.BY.THGKKKLLHKHNUNKMVNBXXNMMMSNBNNHWTw6c6f5532r5r5qct5g5fgtf89584565774ko5lhkbmkmjfkj94mci4oiikconci3cotn

And this is what she told me to type:

Daddy and Rachel and Benjaboy and Mommy and me went for a walk and I was running around from the doggy so it won't peck me because I don't like peckies. We goed on a long walk and we sawed flowers. We walked on just the road and I fell down on the street. Benjaboy has a cute face on and he has blue, blue eyes. Who's a little bub-bub-baby-boy? Ticka, ticka, ticka... Oooh! See when I do that he laughs. He's so cute. Oh, who's so cute? The Benjaboy is cute...

At this point her narrative fell to pieces (obviously) and she continued to get Benjamin all wound up. She loves him a lot. He loves her a lot, too (when he isn't terrified of her).

So, yes, we went on a walk, in our pyjamas and flip flops. Rachel kept trying to get us all to skip holding hands and I kept saying that skipping while a) holding hands and b) wearing flip flops is a bad idea because a) flip flops are trippy and b) we all have such varying levels of gross motor skills and c) pavement. She insisted that it would be fun (and she loves to have fun) so she grabbed Miriam and started skipping down the street.

Miriam soon fell down because a) she's three and can't really skip, b) she was being yanked around to her sister's cantering rhythm, which was not in concert with her own, and c) she's kind of a klutz in general.

It wasn't a terrible fall. No blood was involved (though tears were). Rachel felt guilty because I'd told her no and she knew it but disobeyed (because it was going to be fun) and then found out that I was right all along (I often am when it comes to scenarios like this).

Everyone survived the walk though, even if I had to carry Miriam for a bit so that she could recover.

We also saw a dog on our walk and I am not a dog-loving person but this puppy was so cute that almost he persuadeth me to want a puppy. It was the most adorable Sadie-dog (which is what we call all dachshunds, thanks to Auntie Emily's puppy). Its owner told us that it was a chiweenie (a cross between a chihuahua and a dachshund (also known as a Mexican hotdog)). It was so cute.

And tiny, yet terrifying. Miriam was almost crying (I had to pick her up) and Rachel was torn between running away screaming and coming back to see the puppy again.

Like I said, I ordinarily am not very fond of dogs, but I think I would've gladly taken that sweet puppy home if it was offered to me. The horrible thing about puppies is that they grow into dogs, but even full-grown chiweenies aren't usually more than 8 lbs. I could handle an eight-pound dog. But I think I have my hands full with all these kids, wouldn't you say? Also, dogs smell bad.

Now the children are all in bed (finally—I mean, it's only 10:30) and the kitchen is clean (which is a real treat because I usually clean it after they're all in bed) so maybe I'll start post about Rachel's schoolwork. I cleaned off my desk, remember, which means I've unearthed a motherlode of children's artwork.

*PS, Geneen, my doctor said that depending on the tenacity of the frenulum, it will reattach, so you might not be out of the water forever with Michael. Also, I hope his mouth feels better.

Strawberry fields forever

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:20:00 +0000

Strawberry season (which is much better than spider season) is here and the fields have been calling our name, so we picked Rachel up after school and headed for the hills (since there aren't any strawberry fields to speak of within city limits). The girls were excited to go on an adventure.

We went to Lyon Farms, over in Creedmor, mostly because we inherited some Lyon Farms baskets from some friends who will be moving soon. We have to cross Falls Lake to get from Durham to Creedmor (or anything else on the other side) and it makes us laugh every time because once when we were young and naive and knew next to nothing about Washington, DC, some friends of ours were discussing Falls Church.

We were pretty sure they said "False Church" until the last couple of years when we realized it was Falls, not False. But you can go around calling it False Church for years and no one will notice. We call Falls Lake False Lake just to laugh at ourselves.

Anyway, Lyon Farms was a cute place with a flair for originality.

The girls were excited to grab their baskets and go but I made them lather themselves with sunscreen first.

I even managed to smear some on Andrew—he burns so easily yet refuses to wear sunscreen.

I couldn't find Benjamin's hat—it's floating around our house somewhere—but I did find two hats the girls used to wear. Miriam claimed one of them, even though it might be getting a tad too small, leaving Benjamin with the other, so he unfortunately spent the afternoon with the word 'princess' emblazoned across his forehead. It's an occupational hazard for a boy following two sisters, I suppose.

He didn't seem to mind though because he was much more interested in trying to grab all those juicy strawberries.

Having him in the front carrier made picking strawberries a fairly onerous task for me. He doesn't like it when I squat down with him in the carrier (he gets a little squished—so that's fairly understandable) and he squirms around and reaches for things, which throws off my center of balance. Not to mention, it just takes me a second longer to get in and out of a squat with an upcoming 20-lbs. baby than it does when I'm just me (I'm not sure how much he weighs, truthfully, but we'll find out next month).

He and I kept getting lost in the dust, which was unfortunate because we only had three baskets and I wasn't holding one of them. I kept bending over to pick up strawberries and then would have to carry them over to Miriam to put them in her basket. She and I were sharing a basket.

Eventually we all caught up with each other and filled our baskets full of sun-ripened, beautiful, juicy strawberries.

Rachel was excited the whole time we were out there. She kept showing us different strawberries she'd found—perfect ones, silly ones, little ones...

Miriam worked hard for a while but quickly petered out. The plants were itchy, the sun was hot, the basket was heavy...

...but each time she'd resign, she'd soon after spy another tempting strawberry and would stoop to pick it (and a few more).

Then she'd hand me the basket and say, "I'm done." This was one of those times:

Here's Rachel, our little energizer bunny:

And here are the pictures Rachel took when I handed her the camera:

And here is a picture of me and the kids that totally cracks me up:

Just look at Miriam's face!

Yet here she is, back to work even though she's exhausted:

Those strawberries just looked so good!

We ended up with 9 lbs. of perfect strawberries. At $1.25 a pound, it was a great deal, considering they were all picked at the peak of ripeness (as best we could manage, at any rate) and there are no rotten ones lurking at the bottom. It always seems that the packages from the stores are already rotting, but these strawberries are perfect.

Our van smelled so good the whole way home!

We stopped by Kroger on our way home to pick up an angel food cake so we could have it with strawberries for dessert, and it was devine.

We finished off one entire basket of strawberries this evening and have two more baskets to work through. We'll definitely be making some more freezer jam since we've gone through our last batch like it's going out of style!

Around the house

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 16 May 2013 02:27:00 +0000

Benjamin enjoys pulling himself up on anything he can get his hands on. He still goes about it in the most awkward fashion. The splits are this boy's best friend.

He was clinging to the dishwasher for dear life and looking mighty uncomfortable...

...so I helped him step his feet a little closer together. He was so excited.

He's been so goopy lately—his eyes and nose are constantly oozing. When he wakes up in the morning I have to clean his eyes before he can even open them. They're not too bad during the day, though, and he doesn't have a fever and hasn't been complaining, so I guess we'll just keep cleaning his eyes throughout the day and night until it gets better (or worse).

Miriam took five million years to put away the dishes today. She was supposed to finish before her friend Claire came over to play but didn't so Claire stood in the kitchen and watched Miriam work while they told each other all the names of their siblings and exchanged meal ideas.

"I had spiral macaroni and cheese for lunch!" Miriam exclaimed.

"I didn't," Claire said. "The only thing we have in our house is just rice and beans. But I have two sisters."

"Oh," said Miriam. "I only have one."

Their conversations are hilarious (that means funny—and it's one of Miriam's new favourite words, only she thinks it starts with an L and says el-larious, as in "That's L-arious."). After Miriam finished putting away the dishes they played with play dough.

I asked Claire if she would smile for me but she told me that she could not.

Benjamin went down for a nap today and slept the whole time Claire was over. He was still asleep when it was time to pick Rachel up for school (we went on a family adventure today) so we had to wake him up. After we got home this evening he fell asleep nursing (which is getting more and more unusual) but woke up in time for dinner. He even went to be before 10 o'clock. He's having a rather unusual day.

In addition to pulling up on things, Benjamin's army crawl is morphing (ever slowly) into a true crawl and he can now get from his tummy into a seated position (though he's often content to make it into a kneeling position). He's up and down and go, go, go all day long.

His favourite activities include forcing the printer to print test pages, pulling all the shoes off the shoe shelf, eating, and trying to get outside.

We've been spending a lot of time outside lately, trying to get our yard up and running. We built an official place to keep our garbage cans (since they've been sitting in the middle of our lawn) and we really like it. It tided the yard up so much just having those can out of sight.

While we were making it, Miriam kept trying to show me these green spiders she was seeing all over the place. I told her that spiders aren't usually green...but I was wrong. We have green spiders all over our yard. I'm not sure what they are. I don't think they're green lynx spiders but they might be some sort of orb spider (doesn't that web look orbish?). They're pretty little, and rather green.

It looks like spider season is upon us. We've already found some freakishly huge spiders lurking in our yard. I try to tell myself that they're good for the garden but still find them shudder-worthy.

I had fun at school. I love school. School is good for you.

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 15 May 2013 04:32:00 +0000

Rachel was kind of on one today after school. She came off the bus smiling, ditched her backpack by Benjamin (who was outside in the bouncer watching Andrew, Miriam, and me do some work in the garden) and started a game with Miriam. Andrew headed off to help a new family move in and I started taking the laundry off the line, leaving all the clothespins in a pile for the girls to pick up.

I had asked them to pick the clothespins up yesterday when I took the laundry down but they both gave excuses and ran into the house where they sat at the table while dinner got cold and I finished taking down the laundry and picking up the clothespins. I reminded the girls of that today—that I'd asked them for help and they'd told me no and later regretted it—so they said they'd do it. But then they started fighting about it. Who would hold the bag open? Who would pick up the pins? Why did they have to do it at all? Was it even fair? Why didn't I just do it myself? Why were clothespins even invented?

Since picking up clothespins is one of the easiest jobs on the planet, I told the girls that they could work out the answers to all those questions while they picked up the clothespins and that they weren't allowed inside until all the clothespins were picked up.

That one little chore totally ruined Rachel's day. (Miriam got in a bit of a snit but quickly got back out of it).

"Work, work, work!" Rachel complained when I finally let them back in the house. It took them almost forty-five minutes to clean up the clothespins because they got sweaty and decided they should fill the watering can up and then dump it on each other's heads. When I nipped that idea in the bud, they decided they needed to fold paper fans to cool themselves off. I told them they were wasting oodles of time but gave them the go ahead (and the paper (because they weren't allowed inside)). They took so long to clean up the clothespins that Miriam even had to come inside for a potty break (before being ushered back outside to finish the job).

Seriously. I mean, I sorted the clothes, washed the clothes, hung the clothes out to dry, took them off the line and folded them and my girls can't even pick up a pile of clothespins? Come on.

Anyway, Rachel was all in a tizzy over having to work. They never work at school—they just get to have fun all day long.

"That's great!" I told Rachel. "That means you should be ready to buckle down and get to work when you get home."

The next item on my list was unloading the dishwasher. I assigned Rachel the top and Miriam the bottom. They got all upset about that and switched so that Rachel was doing the bottom and Miriam was doing the top. I couldn't even tell that this was something they'd "agreed" upon because of how much arguing was going on.

I expect them to do everything around here (because I don't do anything myself and save all the work for Rachel to do when she gets home from school, see?) and that's just not fair, Rachel was telling me...as I was flipping pancakes on the griddle.

She was going on and on about how unfair her life was so I...told her to keep talking about it...in her room...by herself....while she cleaned it up.

This was most unfair. But eventually she stormed down the hall and slammed her door.

Whatever.

So Miriam began monologuing about how good she's being to fill the silence Rachel left in her wake.

"Rachel is throwing fits and not doing her work but I'm doing my work and so I don't get in trouble because when you do your work you don't get it trouble. It's pretty easy. You just do your work—like me—and you don't get in trouble. Like Rachel, she's in trouble right now because she wasn't doing her work and she wasn't talking nice."

Miriam does this a lot and it drives Rachel bonkers, especially if Miriam starts doing it while Rachel is currently misbehaving.

"Come on, Rachel, just do your dishes like me and you won't get in trouble. I never get in trouble for doing the dishes because I always do them. See? It's easy. You aren't doing your dishes so you are getting in trouble. Just do your dishes and don't yell at mom..."

She could go on for ages, talking in her sing-songy voice while working very slowly (because she's spending more brainpower on talking than she is on actually working).

Rachel calls this "blah-blah-blah." She hates it when Miriam goes "blah-blah-blah" and will whine and cry and stomp her feet about it. Because it just isn't fair.

So often things just aren't fair.

Anyway, Rachel went to her room and emerged much sooner than I thought she would and with a much better attitude.

"I'm sorry, Mom," she said to me on her way to the dishwasher. She finished putting away her share.

"Did you clean your room, too?" I asked, amazed at the way she was able to flip-flop her attitude.

"I didn't. I decided I should just take some time to calm down, so do you know what I did? I danced my whole dance routine that I did for Peter Pan and when I was finished I felt better so I just came out of my room."

"That's wonderful!" I told her.

Rachel has a very difficult time changing her mood. She tends to let her emotions take charge, rather than the other way around. She's definitely that little girl, who had a curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she's good she's very, very good. But when she's bad, she's horrid!

The fact that she was able to go into her room, calm down, and come out behaving reasonably was huge. Though she did her very best to contain it, her bad attitude continued to pepper our evening. She just can't let things go and although she apologized for her diatribe regarding how unfair it was of me to expect her to contribute to our household...I think she still felt like I was in the wrong.

This is mostly because of her journal entry this evening:

May 14, 2013

I hade fun at school. I love school. School is good for you. You can read and write if you go to school. I love to read. Do you? I do! Do you?

Never mind the fact that I made Mickey Mouse pancakes for dinner and let her use as much strawberry jam as she wanted to turn it into Minne Mouse.

Never mind the fact that she got to feed Benjamin, a task she's been wanting to do for a while (and finally got to do it because Daddy wasn't home for dinner and I needed an extra pair of hands):

Never mind the time we spent cuddling on the couch reading The Wizard of Oz together. Never mind the time I let her spend running around the yard playing with Miriam. Never mind any of that stuff.

School is her sanctuary today, so she raved about it in her journal—with her neatest handwriting—and placed her journal on my desk so that I'd read it when I got home from my meeting (Andrew and I played a little tag tonight: I fed the kids dinner. Tag! You're it! Put them to bed! (It's not always like that.)).

At dinner when we were going around the table saying our favourite part of the day, Rachel's was "Everything at school and nothing at home."

Miriam's, oddly enough, was "cleaning up the clothespins," though in all fairness she took that back after her turn was over to say that her favourite part was actually eating Mickey Mouse pancakes (her favourite part of the day is usually whatever we happen to be doing when we ask what our favourite part was; Andrew calls this availability bias).

I suppose, in all fairness, that Rachel also included this little paragraph in her journal: I made fans. I made them out of papar because I wanted to be cool.

All the cool kids are making fans out of paper these days. She made fans for everybody (so we could all be cool). She helped Miriam make a fan. She made Benjamin a fan. She made Andrew a fan. She even made me a fan. That's how I know she wasn't actually all that upset with me after all.

Some days are just tougher than others. I suppose the tough days/moments only serve to make the good days/moments seem better.

(Rachel's actually matured quite a bit this year and has gotten noticeably better at tempering her strong temper, and obviously she spent some time being helpful and kind while she was home today (see photographic evidence above), but some days...I tell you...she's a handful!)

Moonboots: ballad means a festival

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 15 May 2013 03:38:00 +0000

As we were walking from the van to the church building on Sunday morning Rachel asked me a question. I don't remember what it was but I do remember my answer.

"That's a valid choice," I told her.

"What does valid mean?" she asked me.

"Valid means acceptable," I explained.

Andrew, who had been gathering up the rest of our stuff and locking the van (or who might take after his father more than he'd care to admit) caught up to us and tried to join our conversation.

"A ballad is a song," he corrected, "Not a festival."

Rachel and I both turned to look at him.

"What are you talking about?" I asked him.

"Rachel said, 'What does ballad mean?' and then you said, 'Ballad means a festival,' but a ballad is a song, not a festival," he recapped.

"I know what a ballad is," I assured him.

"Then what were you talking about?" he asked.

"She asked me what valid meant and I told her it meant acceptable."

"Oh," said Andrew, nodding his head in agreement.

Our entire family has been laughing about this all week. I suppose that's ~~a festival~~ acceptable.

Peter Pan 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 12 May 2013 03:07:00 +0000

Phew! Peter Pan is finished!

The end of a show always elicits such mixed emotions from me. On the one hand—huzzah for no more rehearsals, no more late nights, no more panic about fundraising or being late or running tights. On the other hand—no more thrill, no more anticipation, no more friendship-forming/costume-building pow-wows in the lobby. I'm sure the girls will continue to play Peter Pan and Flower Fairies for some time to come. Just this morning they turned their bunk bed into a theatre and dangled stuffed animals from the top bunk after tying ribbons to their limbs. The stuffed animals were "doing aerial dancing!" It was pretty cute.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the dress rehearsal on Thursday night.

I really was worried about the show running smoothly because the dress rehearsal was so choppy but the show went marvelously (aside from one glaring mistake when they left the tree trunk (of the Lost Boy's hideout) dangling down behind the mast of Hook's ship). My mom always said that it's good luck to have a terrible dress rehearsal because the show seems to run opposite of how the rehearsal goes. This time it worked out.

The audience gasped when the butterflies unfurled their wings. At the beginning of the scene the aerial dancers are already up high in their silks, which they've wrapped around themselves like cocoons. The baby flower fairies do their bit and then sit down to admire the butterflies. The music changes a bit and the butterflies open their wings and...it just looked fantastic.

I have to admit that I was amazed at how good the show was. Most of the performers are still in school (preschool through high school; there are a few adults as well) but it was so well done. I laughed and nearly cried. I'm not kidding. Seriously, Tink!—you sacrifice yourself for Peter every time! It took so much clapping to bring her back to life—my eyes were misting up from the enthusiasm of the audience. My own little girls, on either side of me (because they got to come watch the rest of the show with us after intermission (they took their bow right before intermission)), were clapping so hard I thought their arms would fall off.

Don't even get me started on the final scene when the Darling children come home...and bring all the Lost Boys with them. It was beautiful.

The whole show was marvelous. Wendy and Peter were perfect. The Flower Fairies and Lost Boys were adorable. The Neverland birds were graceful and beautiful. The Mermaids were pesky and enchanting. Hook and Smee were foul and farcical. It was everything I could have hoped for and the girls were so caught up in the magic of it all.

Even though rehearsals were, at times, grueling, the girls have already forgotten all about that and have started talking about next year's show. That's Peak/End Rule for you.

Rachel's even decided that she wants to stick with ballet so that when she gets older she can start aerial dancing (which is like gymnastics only better (she's been on this gymnastics kick but we haven't gotten around to finding a gym and ballet lessons kind of fell into our laps and now that we've "invested" in tights and shoes and leotards, we're kind of happy that she's decided—without any prodding from us—to stick with dance. She doesn't like to do anything "too girly" but there were quite a few boys/men in this ballet production, which helped her to see how tough ballerinas can be (not that only male ballerinas are tough because the girls are, too), and the aerial dancing is simply amazing)).

Even though she generally eschews makeup, jewelry, and all things "too girly," Rachel sure does clean up nicely, doesn't she? I think she's gorgeous.

I worked backstage as a "kiddie wrangler" for this evening's performance, so I was in the dressing room helping all the little fairies keep track of their costumes and personal belongings, pushing bobby pins into place, strapping on flower hats, escorting fairies down the hall, and other fun things like that. I was happy to help out...and got the added bonus of getting to take pictures of the girls with their beautiful make-up on. The rule is that you have to wash off your make-up before leaving the backstage area because the make-up is part of the magic of the show, so whenever we'd pick up the girls, their faces had already been stripped of make-up.

I thought that one day in the future they'd appreciate a picture of themselves all razzle-dazzled up.

Here's Rachel showing off her fairy wings.

She got more excited about make-up this week than I thought she ever would. I feel like all I've done this week is hair and make-up. She would come home from school, I'd put her hair up properly, and then smear foundation all over her face, shove a snack in her mouth, and we'd be off running to rehearsal.

This afternoon when we went back to the dressing room to get ready for the second show (the make-up got washed off after the first show so they could join us in the audience, remember?) Rachel asked if she could put the foundation (they call it "pancake") on herself. So...I let her. And she did a fine job.

At dinner she told Andrew that she got to put on her own foundation and he said, "I'm surprised you even know what foundation is. I'm not even sure what foundation is..."

"What?!" she exclaimed. "Dad—you've been alive for forty-four years and you don't even know what foundation is!?"

"Uhhh..." Andrew stammered, his mouth gaping open with offense. "I am not forty-four!"

It was pretty funny. Here's Miriam in her make-up and costume.

And here she is in her make-up and costume with somebody's dirty sock.

It was such a challenge to keep every child's stuff together! They come into the dressing room and just start peeling things off left and right. You know that routine when your kids come home from school and everything they brought home starts dripping off their bodies and trailing behind them (usually on the way to the kitchen for a snack): backpack, sweater, right shoe, left shoe, sock, other sock...

That's how the dressing room was: bobby pins flying, costumes trailing, shoes flipping off in every direction.

I was running around catching stuff and nattering instructions, "We need to keep your costume together! Let's find your other shoe! Whose tights are these? Put your clothes in your bag, not on the floor. Let's pick up these hangers before someone trips on them!"

It was like a warzone.

But in the end we had all the Fairies and Lost Boys (all of whom were played by girls) appropriately dressed and make-upped. And then the waiting began.

At first there were games of hide-and-seek and Simon Says and other such things, but soon we were told we had to be quiet and listen for our cue—the sound from the stage was being piped into our room—and out the electronic devices began popping. Rachel was content to watch her friend play on her iPad.

Miriam was as happy as a clam in the colouring corner. She's always happy to colour. I don't even want to talk about the state of my desk right now. Let's just say I've been busy with Peter Pan, Peter Pan, Peter Pan this week/month and my desk is under a veritable mountain of "paperwork."

Miriam could hardly stop looking at herself in the mirror. She's my little narcissist. But if I were that cute, I might have trouble looking away, too...

Those pesky flower hats caused us such grief. They were supposed to be strapped under the fairies' chins but our little fairies were so opposed to that method so last Saturday when Miriam was crying about the chin strap and refusing to put her hat on for rehearsal I plopped the band behind her ears and pinned it to her hair. This trend caught on like wildfire.

And soon all the little flower fairies were comfortable and happy in their flower hats.

Act one ran approximately 45 minutes. You'd be surprised how little time we actually spent waiting after wrangling all those little bodies into those costumes and plastering their faces with make-up and their hair with gel. It seems like we were just putting on the finishing touches when the Lost Boys were called on stage and the fairies were told to line up for their turn.

Here's Rachel looking a little nervous about life:

Here's Miriam so thrilled to be standing next to a pointe fairy:

Here's Rachel trying to maneuver through the hallway with her big flower hat on:

Keeping the fairies lined up in order was a bit of a struggle as well....but somehow they managed to be in the right order when they went on stage (maybe; this afternoon's performance was a little off—and I know this only because Rachel and Miriam are supposed to be in line together but they weren't; I think they got that sorted out this evening).

Rachel's good at worrying—just like me! It's a wonderful trait. (Not.)

Still working on getting in the correct order...

The fairies walk on stage together, in a line, holding hands. Rachel's first, then Miriam, and then this other little girl...who is only one month older than Miriam. I kid you not.

The size difference between the two is almost alarming.

Both Rachel and Miriam look a little nervous here, don't they?

And here they go, off to find the stage.

Don't mind Miriam's wardrobe malfunction. She was a little smaller than the average fairy so her costume was a little big on her. They at least took in her leotard on Wednesday night. When I asked the head seamstress about taking it in she said that they weren't really fitting the leotards to the girls—they were just trying to find one from the bin that fit alright and claiming that for their costume.

"But Miriam..." I started.

"Oh, you're Miriam's mom? Yeah...bring her to me in her leotard. I'll take it in. That thing is going to just fall right off of her!"

It was so saggy! And because the stretchy part in the back was too big for her it was literally held up by the strings around her neck. If the knot came undone it would slip down to her ankles. Her whole costume was falling off her all the time. Fortunately, she's young enough that she has no sense of shame so to be suddenly naked in a room of mirrors, surrounded by a crowd of people caused her no embarrassment.

The girls danced well again this evening; I watched them from the curtains.

Here are all the little fairies traipsing back to the dressing room (including our sweet little boy flower fairy; he was too cute):

Here are all the fairies with Miss Andrea, their choreographer/coach. Miss Andrea actually attended the University of Utah on a full-ride, four-year dancing scholarship (though she isn't from Utah originally). She's a beautiful dancer and was wonderful with the kids.

The halls of the theater (backstage) have been signed by visiting performers for years and years. You have to be invited to sign the wall...I'm not really sure how it works, but it's some kind of "honour." So, that's no ordinary graffiti in the background.

Somehow the girls were under the impression that they would get to keep their costumes at the end of the show. When I told them that they'd be taking them off and leaving them behind, they decided we should pose for a couple more pictures. Because you can never have enough pictures of yourself in the same costume, right?

They were pretty exhausted—having danced two shows back-to-back. Miriam got a little glazed...

I helped the girls out of their costumes and then left Rachel to be in charge of getting the two of them back into their street clothes while I helped the other fairies rush out of the costumes and make-up so they could meet their parents at intermission. I figured my girls could stand a little neglect since I wasn't waiting for them in the lobby.

They managed to get dressed, wash their make-up off, and put all their stuff into our basket very responsibly.

We grabbed Miss Andrea for a couple of pictures before we left:

Daddy and Benjamin met us all in the lobby, where Andrew presented each of the girls with a rose.

Rachel saw Miss Boleyn and Wendy being presented with bouquets at the end of the afternoon show. Then she saw other dancers carrying around flowers. Then she saw the bucket of roses for sale in the lobby (but apparently didn't see the sign) and asked if they could just take a rose because they were dancers. I explained that the roses were for sale and that we hadn't purchased any.

She did her best to maintain her composure, but I could see that inside she was breaking.

Why hadn't we bought her a rose? Didn't she do a good job, too?

She didn't voice her concerns. She didn't whine or complain or throw a fit. She just said, "Oh, okay."

I've never been given a rose after a performance. And it didn't ever break my heart. And I think I turned out just fine. But I do wonder how it would have felt to have gotten a rose... I imagine that probably it would have felt great.

As Andrew and Benjamin were leaving (after the first show today), I mentioned to Andrew that if he wanted to find some flowers for the girls...cheaper than for what they were selling them for in the lobby...that they'd be thrilled. It just so happens that a random flower vendor had set up shop at the corner of the main street by our house. He bought two roses from him at a steal of a deal and presented them to his little ballerinas with gusto. They were pleased as punch.

They danced out of the theater together, high on the thrill of the evening.

They did a terrific job, and in spite of all the craziness, I think we might be signing up for this again next year. Like I said, the girls were already discussing next year's show on the way home...

Dress Rehearsal

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:50:00 +0000

Last night the girls had a dress rehearsal at the Carolina Theater, which they were very excited for. The strangest part was that we just dropped them off and then had nothing to do. It was the weirdest feeling because the past few months have been such a frenzy of costume-making. We'd walk into the theater and be bombarded with yarn and fabric and scissors and glue. Even just on Thursday night we were all slaving away, trying to finish the Nana costume.

But last night we just dropped them off. We were instructed to be back to pick them up by 7:30, when hopefully they'd be finished. So we left.

We stood outside on the sidewalk puzzling over what to do with two hours free from children (except Benjamin, who was strapped to me...like always).

"We could go on a date," I suggested.

"I'm hungry," Andrew said. "Let's go out for dinner."

"Where should we go?" I asked.

We stood on the sidewalk and puzzled over that some more. The theater is right downtown. There are dozens of upscale (when compared to McDonald's) restaurants to try but we didn't even know where to begin, nor how much we wanted to spend. We don't have an eating-out category in our budget because we don't usually do it. After walking around downtown hand in hand (because we weren't wrangling children) and surveying a few menus, we settled on around $20 and found a cute pizza place called Pop's Trattoria. We're suckers for Italian food (especially Andrew).

They open at 5:30 and we arrived at 5:40, walked right in, and asked for a table for two.

"Do you have reservations?" the hostess asked.

"Do we need one?" Andrew asked.

"No," she said, looking through her book. "Do you want a window seat or would you rather sit in the dining room."

We opted for a window seat, even though the tables were abnormally high for dining.

"It's okay," the hostess assured us. "I can just stack a couple of high chairs for him to sit on. You can pick any table you'd like!"

We found our table and sat down to look at the menus. Their wood oven-fired pizzas are $10 a piece so we thought we'd each get one. That's how we survived our honeymoon—we'd find the cheapest pizza joint we could and then we'd each order a margherita pizza since that's typically the cheapest thing on the menu. It's somewhat normal to eat a whole pizza in Italy, according to Andrew (and my observations). Andrew asked the waiter for two pizzas, but then I went and asked how big the pizzas were.

"They're pretty big," he said. "There's no way each of you are going to eat a whole one. But half of one might not be quite enough. I'd recommend getting a pizza to split and then a salad or something as well."

So that's what we did. And it was good, though I'm pretty positive we each could have eaten a whole pizza.

We had bread while we waited, which was good. They gave us a dish of olive oil...but no vinegar. Sad day. Andrew still did a lot of dipping, but I didn't.

We also had a nice view of the bar but only realized that we were sitting in the bar when one of the owners/managers stopped by to ask Benjamin how he was enjoying sitting at the bar.

Then we realized why the waiter looked at us a little funny when we didn't order a drink—they gave us three pages of alcohol to choose from but didn't seem to have anything else beverage-wise on their menu so we stuck with water. Even Benjamin was offered a cup of water—with a straw. He mangled the straw horribly and though he got so close so many times he never quite managed to suck any water up. He enjoyed snacking on Cheerios (and little bites from our dinner). He also enjoyed playing peek-a-boo with the kitchen staff.

The pizza itself was delicious—this critique coming from someone who has eaten a lot of pizza (Andrew).

Our waiter offered us the dessert menu but we declined since it 7:00 was approaching and I was hoping to get to the theater in time to see the girls dance. We left so that we'd have time to walk back but walking back took far less time than getting there since we'd wandered ourselves in a bit of a loop and were closer to the theater than we thought we were.

The Carolina Theatre is a pretty amazing venue, I have to admit, even if they are charging us $10,000 to rent it (which is why the tickets were prohibitively expensive (in my opinion)).

It's swanky inside and out.

It was built in 1926 for theatrical productions but just three years later was turned into Durham's first cinema. They hadn't expected Vaudeville to phase out so quickly, I guess, and had to make room for motion pictures. Fortunately, the need for a performing arts center was recognized in the late 1980s and stage performances were brought back, with a separate theater for movies.

We made it back in plenty of time to watch the girls perform because at 7:00 PM they were just running Act 1, Scene 1. Considering they asked the dancers to be there at 5:15, this was not what we were expecting. So we sat through the entire first half of the ballet, with all the starts and stops, which involved a whole lot of baby wrangling. He loved the music and lights and dancing. He didn't love the lectures and staging and technical difficulties.

Here's a little glimpse of the Nana costume. It's a suit, latch-hooked from head to toe with curly yarn. It took forever. I had nightmares about this costume (which isn't surprising because I have nightmares about nearly everything). We were working on it on Wednesday night (the last night we were working on costumes before moving everything from the dance studio to the Carolina Theater) and just when we'd finished, we picked it up, turned it over, and the other side was completely unfinished! It was such a depressing dream (not really a nightmare, I suppose). Fortunately, the costume is finished. And it looks great.

We got a few pictures of the girls but I'm saving them for later. I feel like if I blog about it now it will be like blogging about it before it happens. Besides we had our pick of seats yesterday and we won't when we watch the show later so we might not have good pictures of when they are actually performing. j

They loved getting into their costume and make up, though. Of the rehearsal Miriam said, "I love dancing on stage! It's so amazing because I've never danced before on a real stage. But now I have and I love it!"

We let Rachel sleep in for as long as she could this morning, so she was late for school. Being part of the ballet company, her teacher was very understanding.

"Did you get yourself some sleep?" she asked when I dropped Rachel off.

"I did—I had a super sleep-in!" Rachel told her.

"I can't believe how late they kept them out last night! When it got to be 7:00 and they hadn't even started running the show I started to get a little worried for my kindergarten babies! What time did they let go?"

Truth be told, we got out at around 8:45, which isn't terribly late. But then we had to drive home, eat, shower, and finish homework. It was a late night!

Tonight should be better; they just perform and then come home. I suppose tonight's technically still a "rehearsal" since it isn't open to the public. They're doing a special-needs performance/rehearsal tonight and have two performances tomorrow. They're excited to be finished with rehearsals but are also so excited to be performing!

This week

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:48:00 +0000

Just as I suspected, this week is being gobbled up with ballet, but we've done some other things, too. On Sunday, for example, Miriam did my hair (after church).

Here's the front:

And here's the back:

"Holy hardware," Andrew remarked when he saw what Miriam had done. There are seventeen barrettes sprinkled throughout my mane—most of them in that one clump but a few in other places—as well as that lovely gigantic heart clip.

She's also decided to start doing her own hair. Barrettes are definitely her specialty. Here's she's put two barrettes in by herself and has come to ask me to put her hair into a ponytail because she can't quite manage that part on her own yet:

We got a special package in the mail from Grandma Pat. The girls are always excited when they see packages from Utah sitting on our front porch because it usually means the contents are for them (though a couple of times they'e been for Benjamin). Inside this package was a crocheted doll for Miriam. Aunt Nicki had sent Rachel's doll home with me when I was out in Utah but Miriam's doll hadn't been finished yet so I put Rachel's aside until Miriam's came.

They love them. Miriam was especially thrilled that her doll has a tutu on. Rachel was especially thrilled that the doll's dress was turquoise. Aunt Nicki certainly did her research before she commissioned these dolls (a girl in her neighbourhood makes them).

We've been doing quite a bit of yard work during school hours, at least when it hasn't been pouring rain. We often settled for working while it was sprinkling because the sun just hasn't been shining lately (except for today—today was beautiful and we went over to the neighbours' to play—but it's supposed to rain again tomorrow). We got the awful, awful holly bush pulled up and put in some more aesthetically pleasing azaleas (and a butterfly bush). I planted some gladiolus bulbs and some petunias and have some Impatiens waiting to be planted. Basically, we took whatever was on sale for super cheap because gardening can get rather expensive!

Benjamin's mastered the army crawl now and squirms his way anywhere he wants to go. Our floors have been hopelessly filthy lately—what, with all the gardening and then running off to ballet—that all his outfits have ended up covered in yuck. He's our own personal roomba, cleaning the floors everywhere he goes!

He is drawn to open doors like a fly to honey. He loves being outside and would escape if he could.

Here he is outside with us while we're putting up our rain chain. I'll have to get pictures of that later. I had to stop working and take him inside.

He was a sleepy baby and had a give-me-a-nap-now meltdown soon after these pictures.

Things seem to be doing fairly well on the garden front. My peas are being attacked by aphids. I squirt them off sometimes, or even just pick them off with my fingers. I also transport ladybugs to them. Alas, the aphids just really seem to like them. We'll see how they do.

I found a millipede while I was filling up the watering can. It was huge—like as long as my finger. These are the kind that can squirt out acid that will burn your skin. But it seems like they're more likely to just roll up into a ball and pretend you're not there.

Benjamin's taken a new liking to his rocking horse since figuring out how it works a little better. He still doesn't quite get it yet but seems to enjoy trying to keep his balance while sitting in it.

Look, Mom! No hands!

Tally ho!

We've also been keeping very busy with ballet, which is nice I suppose because otherwise we'd be feeling very cooped up with all the rain we've been having!

In which I talk about a lot of random things

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 08 May 2013 04:54:00 +0000

In yesterday's crazy storm, a friend's house got struck by lightning—or, as Miriam would call it, flashling. This is the second family I've known of to have this happen to them right here in North Carolina. I don't think I know of anyone else whose house has been struck by lightning (unless that's how the fire in the King's apartment building started when we lived in Burnaby. I can't remember, but if it is then that would bring my total up to three).

Andrew and I were talking about this last night and I said, "How does that work? I mean, how many houses do you know around here that are taller than the trees in the yard?"

"I know, right?" he said. "It doesn't make sense for the house to get hit if there are taller things around."

We both looked at each other and instantly knew the truth: we'd been had.

It turns out that lightning is fairly impartial to where it strikes. It turns out that we and everything else on the earth are partial to where lightning strikes. The whole water cycle plays a role in charging the atmosphere with electricity but somehow we begin radiating electricity, too, daring that thunderbolt to strike us. So, whenever a downward leader (from the cloud) gets close to an upward streamer (from the earth) is when lightning strikes. It doesn't matter how tall you are compared to your surroundings. Lightning's been known to strike the bare ground mere feet away from tall metal poles.

"Oops," admitted Andrew. "Just this morning when we were waiting for the bus, I told Rachel that she didn't have to worry about lightning because of all the trees. She pointed out which tree was most likely to get hit first—the tallest one—and I told her she was right."

Even though lightning does not strike the tallest object you're still not supposed to take shelter under a tree because trees are more likely to be hit since they are proven "paths of least resistance" to the ground. But not only because they're tall—like, if you chose the second or third tallest tree of three trees to hide under during a thunderstorm, anyone one of them could be hit. Lightning doesn't measure to see which tree is tallest; it will just pick one. Randomly. Or maybe it will pick the puny sapling. It doesn't care.

Ideally you'd get inside a car or a building to get out of the storm—and not because of the rubber tires on the car rubber is no match for the electrical power of lightning. Rather, the car acts as a Faraday cage. I imagine houses are similar. If I'm inside, the electricity isn't going to choose me (hopefully) but will instead choose my pipes or something.

Andrew and I were both a little spooked after reading so much about lightning yesterday.

"It's like we're all just walking around—like targets—even raising our hands to volunteer to be hit," Andrew said gravely. "I always used to calculate my safety by my height. I will never feel safe ever again because I now know that I constantly have upward streamers reaching into the sky just waiting to connect with those downward streamers."

"I know! That's so freaky! I guess that's why feeling your hair rise is a warning sign that lightning is near—because the electricity is reaching up through you to meet the downward leaders."

"Yeah," Andrew said. "When we were walking out of Target [we went to Target to get makeup for the girls for their ballet performance...in the middle of this crazy storm] I was watching your hair to see if it was standing up because that's a sign you're about to be struck by lightning."

"Oh, thanks," I said. "And what would you have done if it had been standing up? Jumped out of the way?"

"That was pretty much my plan."

We had fresh pineapple with dinner yesterday—because they were on sale for 99 cents each. I don't know that I've ever seen a pineapple for that price!

We were enjoying it along with our oven-baked macaroni and cheese (made by me which is true love because I don't really like macaroni and cheese) when Andrew remarked that he was about done—his mouth was starting to burn.

I thought this was an odd statement since I've never really noticed my mouth burning when I eat pineapple, except for when I have canker sores—and I have one of those right now—but I figured that was because of the acidity of the fruit and not because I was allergic to it or anything.

Andrew mentioned that when he was in Ghana, bingeing on pineapple in the jungle while I was at home chasing rugrats, he had a discussion about this mouth-burning sensation pineapple produced with his peers, all of whom began to experience slight discomfort after eating too much pineapple. Without a ready internet connection, they decided that everyone must be somewhat allergic to pineapple and everyone would begin to have a reaction after consuming their threshold level of pineapple.

I've never eaten enough pineapple to experience this, I guess, but I do know that my sister Josie doesn't like pineapple for this very reason and I thought it was intriguing (because who doesn't like pineapple?).

It turns out that humans aren't allergic to pineapple. No, no. Pineapple simply contains bromelain, which "breaks down protein." We use it in extract form as meat tenderizer. So basically, when you put pineapple into your mouth it immediately starts breaking down the proteins in your tongue and cheeks—thus the burning sensation. Bromelain is destroyed when you cook or can pineapple, in case you still want to eat pineapple without breaking down the proteins of your tongue in the process.

The word pineapple, in case you are wondering is super old—from when pinecones were called pineapples (back in the, oh, the 1300s (up until the 1600s)). Explorers to South America saw the pineapples growing and thought the fruit resembled pinecones (which are just the "fruit" of pine trees, and which used to be called pineapples) so that's what they called them. They aren't related to pine trees at all, really. But they really are an excellent fruit—which is what the word nanas means (in Tupi).

You can also grow your own pineapple from the top of the pineapple, if you have about two years.

I kind of want to try it...since my poinsettia is doing so well...and I have a fresh pineapple top waiting to be experimented with.

What did people do before the internet? Encyclopedias can only take you so far. Research is much easier than it was even when I was a little girl. I especially love that my children know this and often ask for help to look things up.

We were driving somewhere with the kids the other day and Rachel piped up, "Did you know that not all insects go through four stages? The milkweed bug only goes through three stages: egg...something...and adult. Only I can't remember what comes in the middle."

"Pupa?" I offered.

"No!" she laughed. "Mom—3-stage bugs don't pupate!"

Silliest suggestion ever. What was I even thinking?

"Larva?" Andrew suggested.

"Well, it's like larva but it's another word. I just can't remember it. But it's like egg, kid, adult. Like, four-stage insects have egg, larva, pupa, adult. I wonder if pupas are like teenagers. People are really weird because we have a lot of stages: mommy's tummy, baby, kid, teenager, adult. That's five stages! Not three. Not four. Five!"

Yes, yes, we're very complex creatures.

I was impressed with how well she knew her stuff. Her four-stage insects are insects which undergo complete metamorphosis. Milkweed bugs (and other three-stage insects) undergo incomplete metamorphosis—hemimetabolism. The word she was searching for is "nymph" and it states quite clearly that "there is no pupa stage."

We're supposedly about to be inundated with cicadas, which are hemimetabolic insects. They've been nymphs for the past seventeen years and it's nearly time to get their adult on.

Firefly season is coming up as well. Fireflies are four-stage bugs. I'm kind of excited for fireflies.

I'm not so excited for cicadas. And after working in the garden this morning and encountering humongous hairy spiders (huge, guys!) and four-inch-long millipedes (that either curl up when threatened (or release "a noxious liquid that contains large amounts of benzoquinones which can cause dermatological burns" (that's all; no big deal))) I'm not sure that I'm ready for bug season in general.

Fortunately the carpenter bees and paper wasps seem to have quieted down, but it seems like I'll always have one contender or another.

I won't even tell you how much I've read about copperheads (because our neighbours walked past a 3 or 4 footer while they were walking their dog). I will tell you that after reading as much as I did I feel better about them than I did before. But I still just want them to stay out of my yard...always. Because when they're threatened, they give a warning bite. Other snakes give a warning rattle (rattlesnakes, duh) or will just show you how big and scary the inside of their mouth is (water mocassins). Not the copperhead though. Oh, no, not him. This snake is like, "I'm scary, see?" *chomp*

Thanks, copperhead.

The good news is that because they bite so often, they tend to inject very little venom (at least with their "warning" bite) so you probably won't die (they only say that because copperheads are in charge of many, many bites but comparatively few deaths).

So, there you have it: snakes, bugs, research evolution, pineapple, and lightning all thrown together in one anecdotal essay.

This is why I struggled picking a major in college.

Poor statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 06 May 2013 02:52:00 +0000

Today was a long and draining day as well. I felt like I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off for the entire three hour block at church. Nothing seemed to be going quite as planned. For example, we're trying to coordinate male teachers for all of the classes next week to give our female teachers the opportunity to attend Relief Society meeting for Mother's Day. We needed—and got!—seven volunteers. I began emailing them their assignments (once home from my crazy day of running around at church) and even as I was still sending out emails began to get replies to my message saying that they were really sorry but wouldn't actually be available to substitute next week.

Four out of seven men replied saying that other things had come up. They forgot they had to teach elsewhere. Or they got called into work. Or their wife informed them they'd be vacationing.

All good excuses. All good intentions. But such a headache for me (and Marian, who I forwarded all the emails to).

4 out of 7?! That's a 57% drop-out rate! I'm crossing my fingers we can hold onto the 43% we have left...

That's just the way today went. Three steps forward, four steps back. You can't win 'em all.

But your babies can make it onto the front page of the local newspaper and that's just as good, right?

I had no idea until a woman in my ward sneaked into the back of the primary room to talk to me.

"I'm going to bring you a copy of today's paper next week," she told me.

"Oh...okay..." I said.

She looked at me, smiled, and said, "You don't know?! There's a big picture of Rachel and Miriam on the front cover! Rachel looks very graceful but Miriam looks a little...wilted."

Rehearsals are long and tiring and a whole lot of responsibility is heaped upon that three-year-old's shoulders. Rachel handles it better—but she still gets tired, especially after yesterday when she took off her ballet slippers and stretched her toes.

Miriam had dissolved into tears from sheer exhaustion. She just collapsed into a heap on the floor, leaving me to remove her slippers for her. Noting this, Rachel remarked, "I feel like crying but I can't because I'm five and I really don't want anyone thinking I'm four or something. I don't think they'd think I was three because I'm a little too big for that but they might think I was four and that would be really embarrassing."

Indeed.

Yesterday was exhausting but last week's rehearsal wasn't so bad (it was only 45 minutes). In the middle of the girls' scene a photographer showed up to take some pictures of the dancers. Miriam (in the pink leotard with the skirt) and Rachel (in the white leotard with the skirt) ended up on the front page of The Durham News today (and also at newsobserver.com)! They are also in the picture of the kids sitting around Boleyn (Rachel is obvious, in white, and you can just see Miriam's bun (she's sitting beside Rachel)) and you can actually see Benjamin in the picture of "Wendy" spinning (he's in the doorway; I'm holding him).

Several friends have graciously offered their copies of the newspaper to us (since we don't get the paper). I think it will be fun for the girls to see themselves in a newspaper!

We're basically famous...because not only were the girls in the newspaper, but Rachel was also in a movie that's set to premiere this summer. You can see her in the trailer (at around 1:17). Who knows if she'll make it into the movie (my sister Josie once got a part that made it into the trailer but was cut when the film was released).

Yup. That's our split second of fame, right there. We're probably set for life.

*****

I just realized that Andrew did the girls' hair for ballet last week. So a big kudos to him for managing to leave the house with two very presentable ballerinas. I had the March of Dimes thing and left the house just as the girls were waking up. Fortunately I'd braided the girls' hair the night before and had Andrew practice tying their braids into a double knot and clipping the ends under, turning their braids into the cute ballerina buns that are required for class and rehearsal (because he would never have been able to manage forming a bun otherwise). The buns the girls are sporting in these photos are daddy-styled!

He's amazing!

A Little Wilted

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 05 May 2013 03:27:00 +0000

Our entire family is exhausted. We've worked very hard the past couple of days.

Yesterday Andrew and I spent hours digging out three large holly bushes (that wanted very much to become a tree) in our front yard. It took us between three and four hours to remove one of the stumps if that gives you any idea how long we were out there. It was back-breaking labour and Andrew, the dear boy, did most of it because I was no match for that huge stump.

Andrew rigged a lever system to pry the stump out of the ground after we'd sawed through many (many, many) roots. He'd jump on the lever and you could see the stump being wrenched from its stronghold in the ground. I'd jump on the lever and...nothing.

It took us hours of digging, sawing and...levering...to get these stumps out.

I think Miriam might now know the word "fulcrum" because Andrew kept saying that he needed "to adjust the fulcrum." I'm really not sure how many people use phrases like that while doing yard work, but Andrew does.

Miriam was careful to stay out of harm's way while she was "helping" and also helped keep Benjamin happy while he was watching us from his bouncer, which really was helpful.

We were so happy when we got that first stump out, but it was bittersweet because it meant we had two more stumps left to dig out.

We're planning on putting some prettier shrubs in front—some azaleas and a butterfly bush—bushes that don't have secret wishes to become fully-fledged trees. It's always a good idea to check what you plant close to the house. It might be small when you pick it up at the nursery but, like puppies, those things grow.

The bushes we picked out are small now, but they say their maximum height is 4 feet tall.

The holly that we had in that spot was so big that I couldn't trim it because I couldn't reach the top. I suppose I could've just used a stool or something but, honestly, I'm glad we ripped them out because now we can look out our window.

While Andrew was hard at work (and before I started helping him with his levers) I trimmed the bushes underneath the bedroom windows. They're smaller and easier to trim and hopefully we'll be able to keep them that way!

When we finished (after Rachel was home from school) we were all very exhausted and came in to make dinner. I strapped Benjamin into his high chair for a snack while I got dinner started and he kept pushing his feet against the table to lean his chair backwards. It's a terrible habit.

The girls hate it when he does it. "No! No!" they tell him. "You're making me nervous!" Then they'll rush over to him and upright his chair. Miriam, who once pushed herself completely over in the very same chair at the very same table, decided that she'd be a helper by standing behind him to keep all four chair legs firmly on the floor.

"I'm arabesque-ing so he can't tip over, Momma!" she told me.

And this is what happened when I asked the kids to set the table for dinner...

Poor Andrew is so sore from all his work yesterday. He got a big gash in his leg when he lost his balance on the lever and scratched his leg on another stump. It's pretty gross—a good six inches long. He peeled off his bandage this evening and asked me if I'd re-bandage it for him.

"Ew—it looks like there's a lot of infection draining out," he said.

"I'll come look at it," I said.

I grabbed some (big ol') bandaids and the Neosporin and joined him at the dinner table where he had his old bandaid laid out in all its glory.

"Gross!" I said. "Why didn't you throw that away?!"

"I thought you said you wanted to look at it," he said.

"Ew. No! I meant I wanted to look at your leg."

The cut doesn't look fun but it doesn't look too deep...or even infected, though there was a lot of discharge (mostly clear, it seems) on the bandaid.

How's your stomach?

I came out of our holly battle a little sore, myself, though not nearly as sore as Andrew. My arms are aching from all of my hedge trimming. And my legs are sore from all of my shovel jumping and lever bouncing but I didn't acquire any open wounds. I did however manage to give myself a nice goose egg on my shin.

After we got up that first big stump, Andrew asked if I thought I could help him lift it into our yard waste bin. I told him I could, so we hefted it up and walked it over to the bin...but then we couldn't lift it up any higher to get it in.

"Put it down," Andrew said. "I need to rest."

"No!" I said. "If we put it down I will never be able to lift it up again! We have to get it in there now."

We counted to three and gave it one last heave-ho and managed to get it up on the lip of the container and from there—with much maneuvering—inside it. I am so glad to see it go!

We were so very weary—and quite beaten up—by the time we went to bed last night, knowing full-well we'd have to get up for ballet in the morning. I couldn't remember what time, though, and didn't want to get out of bed to check. We had a "Fairy Walk" in the morning as well as the girls' regular lesson. Their lesson is at 10:30 but I couldn't remember what time we were supposed to be there for the "Fairy Walk."

"It's either at 10 or 10:30," I told Andrew. "Let's just get up with enough time to be ready for either."

It was a rough night. Miriam joined us because her tummy ached. Benjamin joined us because he's Benjamin. We were fortunate that Rachel stayed put because there was no room for anyone else to sleep in our bed. There was hardly room for us!

Morning came a little too soon. Our alarm clock went off at 8:30. We didn't roll out of bed until 8:45.

I slogged over to the computer and pulled up the ballet calendar.

"Oh, no!" I called out. "We're supposed to be there at 9:30!"

We flew around the house getting ready. I made the girls oatmeal in the microwave so they could eat it in the van. I gathered diapers to for the diaper bag. I grabbed all the hair stuff needed to put the girls' hair up for their lessons. I packed lunch just in case we weren't going to be able to come home.

Andrew packed the ballet bag. He herded the children (like cats!) and got them all into the car.

We were out the door by 9:15 and managed to make it to the studio by 9:35. Only to find out that they hadn't used the word mandatory literally. We totally could have skipped out and no one would have minded. As it was, we decided the girls didn't have time to dress as fairies to go out and deliver flyers downtown so instead we went in our street clothes. The girls were a little disappointed in that because it was supposed to be a fairy walk. But it was a little chilly this morning so they ended up being happy in their pants and sweaters while we walked to deliver flyers.

The person in charge handed us a pile and said, "Will you do scratch?"

"I'm not sure I understand," I told her, taking the flyers.

"You just hand the flyers out to people..." she said, looking at me quizzically.

"We don't know what 'scratch' is," Andrew clarified for me.

"Oh, it's a bakery downtown, kind of by the courthouse," she said.

We're obviously still somewhat new here.

Finding Scratch was a little tricky. They're on a road that isn't actually a road. It's like...a pedestrian walkway now, I guess. But it took us a long time to figure that out.

We handed out our flyers and then headed back to the studio to get ready for ballet. The girls danced. I worked on costumes. Benjamin scooted around on the floor finding dried globs of glue gun glue, little bits of fabric, and fun things like that. Andrew worked on his final final paper.

We rushed home for lunch, I fed Benjamin and put him down for a nap, and then I took the girls back to ballet. By myself.

I helped them into their costumes because all the parents of the baby flower fairies were under the impression that while we were doing a "full run" of the show, we were running the flower fairy scene first so that the little kids could go home. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Instead we waited around—in costume—while they ran the whole show scene by scene. Twice.

Kids were crying about their hats, their shoes, their leotards. They weren't supposed to run around. Or make noise. They weren't allowed to eat in their costumes.

It was awful.

Fortunately they ran each scene twice in a row before moving onto the next scene. So, they did scene one...and then they did it again. Then they ran scene two...and then did it again. All the way until they got to our scene. I'm not even sure what scene we are, but I do know that we're the very last scene of Act I.

We were there for about three hours.

Part of me thinks Boleyn did that on purpose in order to hold the parents hostage so that we'd work on costumes while we waited. The older ballet students just get dropped off, but the parents of the little ones wait in the lobby and while we wait we're supposed to do the "work while you wait" projects.

So while our children were being wrangled by the coaches and in between taking them potty and fixing their costumes (I invented a stunning alternative method to keeping those flower hats on heads without using the chinstrap), we worked and worked and worked.

There's still a ton of work to do this week (the show is next Saturday!) so I could understand it if this really was an ulterior motive of hers. However, we'd been at the studio all day, going home only for a quick lunch break (and to drop the boys off). The girls had been dancing, more or less, from 9:30 in the morning until 5:00 that afternoon! They were exhausted.

The director wasn't happy with how the flower fairies performed their part when they were finally called back to rehearse at 4:00. It's because they were up for the "Fairy Walk," had their morning lesson, and then spent the entire afternoon in the studio. No wonder our little Flower Fairies were looking a little wilted!

In other news, Benjamin is reaching new heights—he pulled himself up on the TV/computer stand today. He's been trying to do this for a long time (there's a keyboard up there!) but this is the first time he managed to do it. He can be a little melodramatic when he's trying something difficult. He pulled himself up on the couch at my parents' house and was grunting and making faces the whole time (probably hoping I would take mercy on him and help him up).

He was the only member of the family not completely wiped out from the past couple of days and took quite a bit of time to get into bed.

I'm so happy tomorrow is Sunday so we don't have to do yard work or ballet! I'm looking forward to resting up (as much as that's possible with a calling in the primary) so that I can face next week with some positive energy. We have tech rehearsals on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, dress rehearsal on Friday, and two performances on Saturday. It's going to be one busy week!

Pyjama Party

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 04 May 2013 03:03:00 +0000

In this month's BYU Alumni email, Cute Girls Hairstyles was featured since the creator is a BYU graduate. I actually think I may have stumbled upon her blog years ago when Rachel was little but the timing just wasn't right for me to become an avid reader (perhaps because Rachel's never really enjoyed having her hair brushed). I pulled it up a couple of days ago and watched a few videos while I was nursing Benjamin. Miriam soon wandered over to join me and was absolutely hooked.

"Let's watch another one!" she'd say after each video ended.

I don't even know how many we watched but now Miriam's all about hair. Yesterday morning she requested that we do "just plain straight hair with two braids—one on this side and one on this side. Then womp, womp, put them over my head. With two headbands."

She described (and pantomimed) the Double Braid [Sparkly] Headband and sat perfectly still while I did her hair. Her hair's a little wavy because yesterday we had it in another hairdo we'd found on CGH.

It turned out pretty cute but she took it out while she was "napping" and when she woke up she asked if she could watch a few more hairstyle videos while Benjamin finished up his nap. I let her sit at the computer and watch a few while I did laundry until she found the hairstyle for the afternoon. I let the laundry sit while I did her hair in the requested fashion. She loved it and wore it all afternoon, all evening...and all day today (we just tightened up the elastics and were good to go (we spent all day doing yard work outside so there was no temptation for her to watch hairstyle videos)).

Anyway, here's her finished hairdo...and her gussied up giraffe.

The giraffe's hairstyle is called "Indian Stagville Giraffe."

I threw my hair up into a double braid headband (sans sparkly headbands).

Benjamin has learned how to comb his own hair but dislikes having things on his head and around his face so while he is trying to comb his hair he keeps blinking and squinting like he's going to get poked in the eye or something. It's pretty funny.

For our Relief Society meeting last night we had a Pyjama Party. All the girls were invited—from babies to grandmothers—and Rachel and Miriam were thrilled that they'd get to come to Relief Society with me instead of going to nursery (which is where Benjamin went (with Daddy because Andrew's awesome and signs up for nursery so that I don't have to drive in the dark)).

Before we left I did a fancy "stacked braid" in Rachel's hair—another thing we learned watching CGH videos. I did it while she was eating dinner and didn't say what I was doing but when Andrew noticed that I was braiding differently than I usually do he said, "What are you doing?"

"She's doing a stacked braid," Miriam explained. "You do a normal braid on the bottom but feather it out and then you take the feathers and do a Dutch braid with them."

It was jaw-dropping.

We might have an upcoming beautician in the family and that's alright with me because goodness knows that I could use a hairstylist in my life. Raise of hands: who hasn't cut their hair in the past two or more years? Anyone else? Just me. Oh.

Here we are at the church, just about to go in:

And here's one with Rachel being a little less goofy and Miriam being a little more goofy:

The girls have been on pins and needles waiting for this party. They were so excited to be there!

Rachel hooked up with some of her friends right away and the girls decided they wanted to "run around" the church for a little while. The church is in a loop—with classrooms on the "outside" of the loop and the chapel and cultural hall on the "inside" of the loop. The girls like to wander in circles giggling about who knows what and stopping to get drinks from the drinking fountain and so forth.

This particular evening there was quite the gaggle of girls: Rachel and Miriam, Grace and Lily, Rylee and Meggan, Wendy and who knows who else...I can't remember.

They'd only been gone for a few minutes when Rachel ran back into the cultural hall bawling like a baby. The other girls followed minutes later.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I was trying to catch up to the other girls," Rachel blubbered, "When someone told me to stop running in the halls."

"So what did you do?" I asked.

"I stopped," she said.

"That was good of you," I said. "It's always good to obey your elders (when they tell you to do something that's right)."

That's my caveat for that rule. You should obey your elders (even strangers) but not all grown ups can be trusted (even the ones you know) so only obey if what they tell you is good/right.

Help me find my puppy? No.

Stop running in the halls at church? Yes.

Get into my van and I'll give you candy? No.

Stop sticking that straw in your ear? Yes.

It's a confusing principle to put into practice—that not all strangers are bad, that not all grown ups are good, that you should obey your elders...but not always.

Anyway, Rachel obeyed. That was right. I told her that she didn't need to be so upset. None of the other girls were crying and they'd all been reprimanded as well.

"Well, they didn't hear what she said next. She just kind of like said it quiet after she told us to stop running and I just don't like hearing grown ups talk that way."

"What did she say?" I probed.

"She said, 'Tsk! Their parents don't take any responsibility.' And she said it in a mean way. She said both in a mean way. She told us to stop running in a mean way and she talked badly about you in a mean way and I don't like that at all!"

I explained to her that sometimes grown ups sound meaner than they're trying to be. The line between firm and just-plain-mean is rather thin. I told her we should give the reprimander the benefit of the doubt—she might have come across as mean but she was really just trying to express to the girls her desire to have them treat the church building with respect.

I see where she's coming from, and I explained this to Rachel. Some people feel that we should behave reverently in the church. All the time.

"Then why did you say I could run through the halls with my friends?" she asked, as if accusing me of getting her into trouble in the first place.

The reason is simple: I don't think we need to be reverent in the church building all the time.

On Sunday? Certainly.

In the chapel? Definitely.

At a weekday Relief Society meeting? Not so much.

I mean, first of all, we invited approximately fifty children to an adult meeting and then filled the cultural hall (gymnasium) with tables, so where were they supposed to run around? It's been raining every day for a solid week. They needed to run around together. And better through the church's loop of hallway than around our walk-through kitchen loop...right? Rachel usually only sees her church friends on Sundays because they all go to different schools. She behaves on Sunday. I say let 'er rip on Thursday.

Also, we often do irreverent activities at church. For example, at our Halloween party, several classrooms were turned into carnival activities. The primary room was a haunted house, for crying out loud! How reverent is that? Not at all.

A couple of months ago we did an exercise class for our Relief Society meeting. Granted, it was in the gymnasium. But it was in the section of the gymnasium that is used for overflow during sacrament meeting. Where's the distinction there?

In Cairo we'd do a weekly yoga class at the church building and we had to walk through the chapel in our exercise clothes to get to the sun room where we held our class.

In other places, women have met at the church and used the hallway as an indoor track so they didn't have to walk outside.

Church buildings are more for than quietly sitting. They also double as community centers.

So, yes, we need to be reverent when the activity is reverent. And there are places that we always treat reverently. But, no, I don't agree that walking (or even running) around the halls with your friends is an inappropriate thing to do in the church hallways.

As far as whether or not it was irresponsible of the parents to allow our children to do that? Well, I don't think it was. The girls in the group ranged in age from 3 to 10. They tend to look out for each other and don't get into too much mischief—I mean, it's not like they're leaving graffiti on the walls or anything.

If my children running amok (ie: in circles around the church) on a weekday evening happens to annoy someone and they feel that makes me an irresponsible parent then, I suppose, that's that. I happen to feel it is equally irresponsible of adults to run amok on a weekday evening and making my children feel awful.

Rachel sat on my lap and sobbed until I whispered in her air (with very little patience) that if she didn't cut it out I would send her to the nursery to hang out with all the boys. She took a deep gulp of air and moaned, "Okay." She managed to change her attitude around and had a great time but was still so upset about whatever happened in the hallway between her and whoever it was she ran into in the hallway. (She's not even sure herself because it was dark; but I'm sure it was all a big misunderstanding).

Ahem.

So, we had a wonderful evening together, the girls and I. There were so many activities to choose from that the girls were a little overwhelmed.

Rachel wanted to do the painting first because she didn't "want to do anything too girly." Miriam was happy enough to follow along—they had pink paint and glitter, so...yeah.

Rachel made a blue heart and put an R in the middle with rhinestones. Miriam made a pink heart and randomly placed her rhinestones all over. It looks like a constellation stuck in a cotton-candy pink sky.

Miriam wanted to make a bracelet next but Rachel didn't because she "doesn't like jewelry," but when she saw all the fun beads she decided to make a bracelet for me...because I love wearing jewelry (I don't).

After bracelets we went to a lip gloss making class. Rachel didn't understand that it was a making class and was afraid that she'd have to *gasp* put it on. Miriam was up for anything—making it, wearing it, whatever. Rachel's on this kick lately where she doesn't want to do anything "too girly," as if doing girly things is somehow demeaning. I personally feel that girls can be girly and still assertive and successful and I'm trying to show Rachel that even though I'm not incredibly "girly" myself.

Miriam is all girl. Except the other day when she, dressed in a white skirt, ran and jumped on the neighbour's freshly cut lawn while she was "getting her wiggles out" and landed on her bum and got grass stains all across her backside. Other than that she's just a little princess.

She made one tub of lip gloss. Rachel made two. She was all over it!

She made one for each of her teachers at school (next week is teacher/staff appreciation week, which, while I think showing gratitude important, the way her school is celebrating is almost embarrassingly over the top (and here's a list of gifts to get for your teacher, and this is the day you should bring your teacher a sweet treat, and this is the day you should bring your teacher a thank you card, and so forth. Seriously? That's a little bit awkward. Like fishing for compliments. And what about Christmas gifts and Valentine's Day and end-of-the-year thank yous, not to mention good ol' fashioned "I'm feeling grateful now so...here"?)) so that she could bring them to them next week.

The recipe was so simple. Vaseline + juice crystals. That's it.

Personally, I'm not sure I want to spread that on my lips but the girls had so much fun making it. And if Rachel's teachers go home and throw them away, I'm sure they'll at least effuse gratitude in her presence.

After making lip gloss, the girls wanted to do manicures. Even Rachel, who at the beginning of the evening scoffed and said she didn't want to paint her nails, was jumping up and down with excitement at the prospect of visiting the manicure table.

I painted Miriam's nails two different shades of pink. Then I painted Rachel's nails purple and blue. Then I let them each paint one of my hands. I hate putting polish on my nails (though I don't mind covering up my toenails with the stuff) but I don't mind letting the girls give me a manicure once a year. Maybe.

They painted my nails how Auntie Josie does hers. Because Auntie Josie is a star!

Here's a picture Daddy took of us at home right before bed:

After nails it was about time to leave but the girls were distraught because we hadn't made it to bath salts or hair braiding classes or to the photo booth! We quickly ran over to watch the end of a bath salts class and I told the girls we could do it at home since I wanted to get some epsom salts for my tomato plants, anyway. We could reserve some to make bath salts with (add food colouring and essential oils, shake, finished).

I assured Miriam that we could practice braiding at home. All we've been doing lately is looking at hair tutorials so I'm pretty sure that counts as braiding class.

And as far as the photo booth goes, well, we walked by just as the sister in charge was trying to give away some of the props to the younger guests at the pyjama party. She'd gotten some leis and flower clips and crazy headbands to use as props for the photo booth...but only has one boy left at home...and he's kind of over the dressing up stage. So we got to take some props home with us!

Here's Rachel posing at our "photo booth" at home:

And here's Benjamin, an unwilling photo booth victim:

He hates having anything on his head so much that he'll often check for things up there, just to make sure his head is bare. Recently he discovered that his ears are on his head. He spent a fair amount of time at dinner this evening trying to get those to come off. The nerve of those ears being on his head.

(Note to self: Maybe watch for an ear infection? I don't know. None of my kids has ever had one.)

Benjamin had a fun time hanging out with Daddy in the nursery. When they came to find us, Benjamin was as happy as a clam, chowing down on...pizza. Andrew, who'd grabbed a leftover piece (we were served pizza and M&Ms because that's "sleepover food"), kept holding it up for Benjamin to take a little bite of.

"What? He's almost one!" Andrew said.

It sure was a fun evening for us all. Miriam told me today that she wants to "go back to that girl party again tonight." I told her that the thing about parties is that they only come around every so often. She then asked if we could recreate last night's party for her birthday. I told her we'd see.

It was a lot of fun and the activities were just simple enough that I might be able to pull off planning a "girly" party for her one of these days...

Living Now

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:50:00 +0000

Sometimes the best medicine to fight unwanted nostalgia is to settle down for some playtime on the floor with the kiddos. Ignore the memories. Ignore the dishes. Ignore everything but them. Because they are what's really important now.

Benjamin's somehow fallen into this miraculous sleeping pattern where he, like, goes to bed at a decent hour, wakes up to nurse once in the night, and then demands to take at least one (and sometimes—get this!—two) naps a day. It's been going on for more than a couple (but less than several) days now and it's kind of amazing.

When he went down for his nap today Miriam wanted to play butterfly princesses but I just couldn't see myself doing that at the moment. Besides when "the whole house is the sky" and we're supposed to "use blankets for wings and run around the house to fly" and the baby is actually napping I start brainstorming quieter activities. So I suggested that we do some puzzles together.

Quiet. No imagination on my part. Perfect.

We did "big girl" puzzles until he woke up and then brought out the baby puzzles after (because Miriam was still in a puzzle mood).

She was trying to teach him how to do the puzzles and he was trying to explore the puzzles and it caused a little frustration for both of them because neither one of them were playing "right" in the other's eyes. But they did well together.

One of the "big girl" puzzles we did was one with a set of words in Arabic and you had to put the letters/pictures together in the proper order. Because we did that, Miriam wanted to know what everything was in Arabic. My lexicon is rather limited so I broke out our little picture dictionary and we spent some time flipping through it.

Benjamin wanted to look at the book, too. Miriam really didn't want him to and kept turning in a circle to keep the book out of his reach. He was ~~crawling~~ squirming in a circle around her, continuously trying to get at the book. Both were very frustrated.

But eventually Miriam gave up and let him look at the pictures with her, which was all he really wanted to do anyway (besides eat the book).

Once he had a few minutes to look at the book he was happy to be forcibly returned to playing with a puzzle.

When we were tired of puzzles (or when Mom was tired of breaking up fights over puzzles and books) we brought out Benjamin's stacking toy (which used to be Miriam's and before that was Rachel's) and turned the cups into balls and played that game where you sit with your feet touching and then roll the balls to each other. Benjamin was surprisingly good at this game and thought it was great fun. Miriam did, too, but kept breaking our "circle" because she just can't sit still.

When she was thoroughly sick of that game we broke them all down and let Benjamin play with them. One of his favourite games (still) is "Up so high! Down so low!"

Rachel was more than happy to play butterfly princesses with Miriam when she came home from school so I sat Benjamin on the floor with a plateful of (dehydrated, dissolve-in-your-mouth) apples and cheerios while I started dinner. He thought that was awesome.

He's getting a lot better at feeding himself finger foods. And not choking on them. Even just since coming back from Utah.

It was fun to listen to the girls yelling as they ran around the house.

Rachel: Stop chasing me!!
Miriam: But I'm a butterfly witch! A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Rachel: There's no such thing as a butterfly witch!
Miriam: I know. It's pretend!

Rachel: Stop it! You're getting too close to my chrysalis.

Miriam: And then tomorrow will be my wedding! But don't worry it's not my real wedding. It's just a pretend one!

Miriam kept throwing in the "pretend clause" just so that everyone was aware that the whole butterfly/princess/wedding senario wasn't really happening. It was just for pretend. Phew.

When they got too out of control, I called Rachel in to help with dinner. She cut up cucumbers and tomatoes for our salad.

Dinner was peaceful. Benjamin had eaten enough Cheerios and apples to keep him content while I fed myself before he started demanding that I feed him, too. Then the girls helped clean up the mess they'd made while playing princess butterflies and we got ready for bed.

We're reading The Wizard of Oz now that we're done with Harry Potter. There are more books in the series so maybe we'll read those, too. Or maybe we'll try something different. Truthfully, I miss Laura Ingalls Wilder. But I think it's a little soon to read those again.

Benjamin went to bed nicely a couple of hours ago. Ten o'clock might seem like a late bedtime but I think it's blissful. First of all, it's not 2 AM (or later). Second of all, I get to cuddle him for as long as I want without any interruptions from the girls. Because I still rock him to sleep. I really don't remember how I ever transitioned my girls from being rocked to sleep to just going to bed on their own, but I'm confident that we'll figure that out with Benjamin, too.

I'm not in a hurry.

Unfortunate Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:40:00 +0000

Suddenly it's May. Did you notice? That sure crept up on us! And May is such a scary month, too, because after May comes June and that thought alone is bringing a lot of painful memories to the surface.

I didn't think it would be like this. I really didn't. I've always been one for moving forward, but this year has been hard. In just two days, Benjamin will be eleven months old. We're coming up on his first birthday and have already started our anniversary memories.

"This time last year, I was in Ghana," Andrew reminded me yesterday.

I'm glad that he went to Ghana and I was happy for him last year, too—or at least as happy as an expectant mother can be when she's told it will be up to her to do dinnertime and bedtime by herself every day for three weeks while her husband is on the other side of the globe. I wasn't entirely alone, I realize, since we were living with Andrew's parents and mine were just down the street—but still, it was a burden.

When Andrew came home from Ghana I was thirty weeks pregnant and was due to have my glucose screening the following week. I'd fail that, have the more complicated test the next day and be diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Then we'd go camping.

I'm glad that we went camping and I was glad last year as well—or at least as glad as an expectant mother can be when she has to climb up and down a ladder to the sleeping quarters and tiptoe through a mouse-infested cabin to go to the bathroom twenty thousand times a night. It was a wonderful trip and I'm truly glad we went, even if I ended up catching Rachel's horrible cold.

We'd get back from camping, I'd go to the doctor and we'd look over my glucose numbers to see if I am able to control my diabetes through diet and exercise. I will. But I'll complain about being sick and my doctor will tell me that it's just a cold and I'll be fine.

By now we're already at the end of May. It's Memorial Day and my parents invite us to go to the copper mine, a trip which doesn't work out at all, so instead we'll go to the park to play with them (and with Auntie Emily who'd come down to visit from Idaho). On Tuesday, I'd take Rachel for her kindergarten check up. She'd have to get shots. I'd have to wrestle her to the table in order for that to happen. On Wednesday, I'd take the girls to their dentist appointments but will talk Andrew into coming with us so that he can wrestle Rachel to the chair instead of me. She'll throw a fit, though, so I'll go with her and Andrew will go with Miriam.

I'm now 33 weeks pregnant.

On Thursday I don't feel well. I'm still sick and I'm having a ton of Braxton Hicks. But that's normal. For me. I think. We'll go out to dinner to celebrate Shayla's birthday. My father-in-law will fuss about my contractions. I'll assure him I'm fine. Was it this night Emily's friends came over to play games? Was it this night that I said, as if foretelling my own future, that "even when you plan for babies they just come whenever they want?"

I can't remember.

On Friday, the girls and I go to BYU with Emily. We stop to buy yarn on our way so I can start a blanket for the baby—still have seven weeks! We'll go to the dinosaur museum and the Bean Museum. Later Emily will babysit for us so we can go out to see Arabian Nights at BYU. It will be a great performance. I do my best to hide my sniffles and snuffles from the rest of the audience because I will still be sick with the cold I caught from Rachel while we were camping. I'll think to myself how happy I am that I still have seven weeks to kick this cold before I have to birth this baby. Who wants to give birth with a horrible head cold? Not this girl!

On Saturday we do a bunch of packing. I'll stop in the middle and take a nap because I'm exhausted. We'll have whole wheat waffles for dinner. I'll forgo syrup and have plain berries on top. I eat bacon to get in my protein like a good little diabetic. I also eat a handful of almonds because I just seem to be so hungry all the time but can never think of anything to snack on. I'll take my blood sugar levels shortly before we put the girls to bed. They'll be too high and I'll cry. I try to exercise after I put the girls to bed but just don't feel well so resolve to do better with my blood sugar levels the next day and settle down in my rocking chair to go through my mom's dissertation.

I'll work on it until I think I'm going to fall asleep on the spot. I'll ask Andrew if he's ready for bed. He'll tell me he's not. I keep working until Andrew's ready for bed. He's never ready for bed before midnight. I'll be so exhausted but I won't be able to sleep.

I'll be bothered with contractions.

I'll keep trying to stop them.

I'll take a big drink of water. I'll lie on my left side. I'll get up to go to the bathroom. I'll take another drink of water. I'll get a snack. I'll walk around a bit. I'll lie back down. I'll get up to go to the bathroom and...

Кошмар! (NIGHTMARE!)

Blood. Panic. Confusion. Fleeing. Driving. Begging. Pleading. Hopelessly dilating.

Pushing. Birthing. Meeting. Parting. Grieving. Longing. Learning. Hoping.

Praying. Praying. Ever praying. Five long weeks of never sleeping.

So many rules. So many alarms. Tachy. Brady. Desaturating.

Commuting. Pumping. Test weights. Trying. Trying. Trying. Ever trying.

More tests. More time. More tears. More fears. More tired than I've ever been.

Then home. With baby. (Oxygen. Wires. Monitors. Alarms. But home).

Together. Mother. Father. Sisters. Brother. Under one roof. At last.

***

Last year's June 3rd isn't precisely a happy day when I remember it. I was just laying around waiting to have a baby, having a baby, holding that baby for a split second, then sitting alone in my recovery room. That's not exactly how I envisioned things going.

And ever since Andrew mentioned that he was in Ghana at this time last year, panic has been rising to fill my chest.

I've been having nightmares. Last night's was perhaps the silliest of all.

Instead of living in the house part of our house we were living in the attic. We don't have a ladder or staircase leading directly to our attic and often the hassle of bringing the ladder inside and setting it up in our uniquely-shaped closet is too much for us so we've come up with a circus-worthy method of getting things in and out of the attic.

I climb onto Andrew's shoulders. He stands up. I stand up and pull myself into the attic. Then we pass back and forth whatever needs to come up or down.

In my dream we were living in the attic, with all three kids—just the ages that they are now—and we still had no ladder to get up and down through the "door," and I was hugely pregnant.

Everything in our house was still where it should be—bathrooms, kitchen, living room—except for the bedrooms. All the bedrooms were in the attic. So we had to go up and down several times a day for naps and bedtime and things like that.

Well, one night we were sleeping in the attic and I went into labour. Early.

But when I tried to climb down the hole onto Andrew's shoulders I was suddenly too big to fit through the hole and was stranded half in, half out, having a baby, prematurely. Yup.

It sounds so ridiculous now but I've been absolutely plagued by nightmares like this.

I don't know if it's because we have a pile of stuff in our bedroom waiting to be transferred to the attic (air mattress from Karen's stay here, suitcases from my trip to Utah, etc) and it's throwing off the feng shui of our room or if it's because I'm anxious about this impending anniversary.

I've had a rough year, anyway. I'm sure I've been going through some post-partum depression (since from what I've read up to 15% of the general population will suffer from post-partum depression while up to 70% of NICU moms will—and it's not exactly difficult to assess since the questionnaire they use at doctor visits to screen for PPD is online. Oddly enough, I was never asked about PPD at my six-week appointment with Benjamin, though I was when I went in for my six-week appointment with Rachel (I didn't expect to be asked with Miriam and wasn't). But, uh, having taken that quiz I'm fairly certain I'm not my regular self.

And flipping the calendar into May has not helped matters.

But Andrew's wonderful and understanding and lets me sleep when I/he can. Like today. And yesterday. And I love finals week when he gets up early to work on projects but doesn't have to leave the house. I don't think he loves it. But I do.

Like I said, I've always considered myself a forward-moving kind of person. But it's taken/is taking me an annoyingly long time to "get over" this past year.

I've always thought looking to an unfortunate anniversary with trepidation to be somewhat silly. After all, it's just a date and you can't control what happens when. My grandfather died on December 13th, 2011—right between my parents' birthdays. His viewing was on our wedding anniversary so instead of going out to dinner on our anniversary we went to a funeral home (though we did go out another night). That's an unsavory memory at best, but it didn't taint our anniversary last year and is unlikely to do so in the future.

I suppose December was a harder month for my grandmother...but time will heal all wounds.

Just like she'll eventually enjoy December again, I'll also eventually enjoy May and June again because instead of reserving those dates for sackcloth and ashes, I can fill them with happiness. Good memories eventually push out the bad ones—it's been proven. I think. And if it hasn't, I will prove it one day.

We'll get to celebrate Benjamin this year. And the next. And the next. And we're so lucky!

At the March of Dimes walk this weekend, it was heartbreaking to see how many families were walking in memory of lost little ones. I felt so blessed that my little one was strolling along with me, as healthy and happy as can be.

My friend Jake and his wife lost a baby yesterday. Their sweet twins were born at 23 weeks, and yesterday, after fighting for three long weeks, little Brooklyn decided to return home to her Heavenly Father.

I'm trying to imagine having to deal with that while continuing to live the NICU life with the surviving twin.

It hurts my heart just thinking about it.

But my friend Nicole, who walked with me this weekend—her parents went through that with her (and her twin). Somehow we make it through these trials that seem so impossible. I don't know how—besides having faith.

Benjamin's beginning was the scariest, hardest thing I've ever done in my life. It's still so fresh in my memory that I can't believe it's been eleven months. And all too soon it will be June and Benjamin will have completed a complete trip around the sun, and although we had a few cloudy days, I think over all it was a bright and beautiful trip.

Tiny friends

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 23:13:00 +0000

Benjamin and his friend Oliva are just about (but not quite) a month apart but Oliva's got a whole head and shoulders on that boy, not to mention a number of skills. But that's okay because he's slowly catching up to her.

Here they are on Thanksgiving Day 2012 when Benjamin was still 5 months and Oliva was 6:

I love how their limbs are all blurry. I don't think these two ever stop moving!

Today I met Olivia's mom at the library for story time (and to visit teach her since it's the last day of the month and I hadn't gotten to her yet). We stayed to chat after story time with a few other moms who were there and Benjamin and Olivia played "together" in the way that babies their age do (which means that they didn't play together at all; rather they were both exploring the environment they happened to share at the moment (which isn't exactly parallel play either)).

At one point, Olivia, who is still a full head taller than Benjamin and who pulls up on everything she can in order to cruise around the room, decided she needed even more height to play with the beads better, so she enlisted Benjamin as her footstool:

She's standing on his leg and has her knee on his shoulder. He growled at her a little but didn't show he minded too much otherwise. It was pretty funny.

Later Olivia decided she wanted to be on the other side of Benjamin and crawled right on over his lap.

Kathleen was quick enough to get these pictures but (rather unfortunately was not quick enough to capture the shot of them sitting side by side with their arms around each other or the one where they were patting each other's heads.

It sure is fun to watch these two play together!

(Miriam was off looking at the turtles in the fish tank and playing hopscotch with a friend's granddaughter while I was watching the babies play; she had fun, too!)

Temple Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 04:14:00 +0000

Karen arrived on Tuesday evening and I was leaving on Thursday morning. Andrew had class on Wednesday night so Karen treated us to a Wednesday morning date—our first time going out together without any children since the one time we went out to breakfast at Kneaders after or before visiting Benjamin in the hospital.

We went to the temple and it was relaxing and wonderful and rejuvenating and very much needed.

We got to talk the whole drive there (and back) and enjoyed each other's company immensely (without ever having to tell anyone to stop poking/looking at so-and-so or passing back packages of fruit snacks in desperate attempts to keep children from screaming or listening to a baby scream or anything like that).

And Benjamin survived the whole time we were gone! Of course, we left the house before 8:00 (I can't remember when) and got home at around 11:30, and Benjamin didn't even wake up until 10:30. Still, he was quite happy to spend the morning with Grandma and Miriam after having a breakfast of applesauce. I really wasn't sure how he'd do without nursing first thing in the morning but he was surprisingly happy about life.

That's not to say that he wasn't excited for me to get home or that he didn't want to nurse when he saw me because he was and he did. It just means that we can survive several hours without each other...which is something we haven't done since leaving the NICU.

I'm not sure when we'll get back to the temple. It's a bit of a hassle now that it's an hour away (poor us, right?) but I think that once Benjamin gets a little easier we'll be able to trust him with people other than our own flesh and blood which will mean that we'll be able to go more regularly. I might be a tad paranoid and panicky about that baby. I'm sure I'll get over it eventually.

Until then, I'll be happy that we were able to go last week and I'm super grateful that my mother-in-law flew over 2000 miles "just" to babysit for us!

March For Babies

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 03:52:00 +0000

Today was the Durham/Raleigh March For Babies. Benjamin and I participated in it along with my friends Nicole (who was a preemie) and Heidi (whose preemie Andrea recently turned two). We raised a fair bit of money together—far more than we would have been able to donate ourselves—though I will admit that I could have tried a bit harder.

With everything I had going on this month I kind of put fundraising on the back burner. So last night is when I started asking for donations...and I raised $64 (with special thanks to Nicole, my mom, Auntie Emily, my cousin Tara, and Andrew).

Nicole was kind enough to drive our little team to the event, which was way over by the airport. I'm so glad she did because I was absolutely exhausted this morning—Benjamin stayed up partying until nearly 2 AM last night and then I had to wake him up at 7 AM so we could get ready to go. He was not a happy camper (and neither was I). He cheered up though once we were registered and began to explore all the booths they had set up.

We hit up the stroller decorating station before visiting the emergency response vehicles. Benjamin wore his Life Flight t-shirt his crew gave to him when he was transfered from American Fork Hospital to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.

Benjamin thought the firetruck was fascinating.

The walk itself was pretty mild—a three mile stroll. There was a huge turnout, though, and the crowd at the "starting line" made me have flashbacks to the races I ran a couple of years ago. This was a walking-only event and I think we were moving about the same pace as we were at the beginning of the marathon I ran (which says more about how crowded the start of the marathon was than anything else, I suppose).

It was fun to walk with these wonderful women and to get to know them better.

Heidi just signed up for a marathon and for a while I was tempted to sign up as well. After all, I told myself, I'd trained for a marathon with a baby this age before and it wasn't half bad. I quickly talked myself out of that, though, because my marathon baby was Miriam and she could be depended upon to go to bed at night (Benjamin can't) and I had a running partner in my neighbourhood (I don't this time) and we lived with my in-laws who could "babysit" my sleeping children if I went out running on nights that Andrew had work/class late (I don't have that cushy lifestyle anymore).

No, I don't think I'll be doing another marathon for a while, but a three-mile walk was just up my alley.

The March of Dimes was founded in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who suffered from polio, to fight against polio. By 1958, polio was on the road to being fully eradicated in the Unites States and the board met to discuss what they should do now that, you know, they'd solved the polio crisis and everything. What would it have been like to be in that meeting, I wonder!

Good job, guys. We created a polio vaccine that will eventually eradicate polio worldwide. What should we do next?

They've done lots of things since then, including funding research that culminated in the development of surfactant therapy for premature infants suffering from respiratory distress syndrome. Benjamin had a surfactant treatment to help open up his lungs when he was first born. We're certainly happy that he was born after surfactant therapy was a thing.

I will admit that we were laughing at some of their more lofty goals. We saw one sign on our walk saying that the March of Dimes hopes to bring the number of premature infants born in the United States (500,000 annually (or one in nine births)) down to zero. That sounds like a lofty goal, especially since the causes of preterm deliveries are so varied and not well understood. But I suppose that 75 years ago the idea of creating an effective polio vaccination sounded ridiculous as well. Perhaps it's good to have a reach-for-the-stars goal.

Eradicating polio is a more direct goal than eradicating preterm births, but already the March of Dimes has made great strides to help decrease preterm births and increase knowledge surrounding the cause of preterm births. I hope they continue to make breakthroughs that will help these sweet little babies (and, who knows, perhaps eventually make it so a lot fewer babies are born too early (see, I can't even make myself say zero)).

Leaving Utah

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 02:38:00 +0000

Wednesday afternoon my mom and I went to pick up Rosie from school—she's taking driver's education and has range after school—and to visit Josie at work—she's been working from 5–midnight every day this week—so that I could say goodbye.

Benjamin got acquainted with the driver's seat while we waited for Rosie.

Benjamin was happy to walk with Naanii to the library.

Auntie Josie was happy to see us. She had wanted to go to the airport with us the next morning but a group of her friends invited her to go camping and she also wanted to do that. I'm glad she chose to go camping because from the pictures I saw it looks like they had a great time. I would have hated for her to give that up in order to watch me walk through airport security!

Josie works in the media center at the library, which used to be the LRC (Learning Resource Center). I'm not sure why they changed it from the LRC to the Media Center, but part of the reason might be that there is also a Language Resource Center on campus and it got rather confusing when a professor would say that something was available in "the LRC" because there were two of them. Also, a lot of the media isn't educational at all...it's just fun. Anyway, we had a great visit.

She showed Benjamin all the gagets at her desk.

Here's Benjamin looking at the scanner:

And getting desensitized:

And here's a final picture of me and Benjamin with Auntie Josie (and Enjolras):

My mom and I went for a walk that evening and met up with Reid on the new pedestrian path they put in over the canal. We borrowed Life of Pi and watched that with my dad and Patrick and it was awesome most of the way through (though a little lengthy in the middle—just get rescued already!).

Thursday morning I packed and then we headed up to Salt Lake to stop in at my Grandma's house before my flight. She was happy to see Benjamin again.

And me too, of course.

The flight home was not horrible but it wasn't that great either. Benjamin took a short nap and other than that was awake for the entire flight. He wasn't particularly jovial either but we managed.

We ran into some turbulence as we were coming into Denver and right before we hit the worst of it the pilot warned us to make sure our lap belts were securely fastened.

"Oh, and hang onto your children," he added.

No sooner had he said that than we hit a big bump and things (but fortunately no children) went flying and there was an audible gasp heard throughout the plane. The radio clicked on again.

"Told you," said the pilot.

It was pretty funny.

Because Grandma ended up having to leave early to go to Aunt Susan's funeral, Andrew was left alone with the girls for the day. After Rachel's bus picked her up for school, Andrew, Grandma, and Miriam left for the airport. When Andrew and Miriam came home, Andrew took a shower...only to find that he'd run out of clean underwear.

He's responsible, so he threw in a load of laundry to remedy that problem.

When Rachel came home from school, he got the girls interested in playing a game together and then retreated to his office to work on a paper. The next thing he knew it was a quarter past eight and he hadn't fed the girls dinner or anything!

They took care of business, though, and scarfed an entire plateful of cookies (without permission).

My friend Anne picked me up from the airport and tolerated Benjamin's fit of exasperation the entire way home. She's got eight kids so she says she hardly notices crying anymore. It's good to be back!

Play dates

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:55:00 +0000

On Tuesday morning we went to BYU to visit Naanii at work. One of Uncle David's teeth broke so he had a dentist appointment; he dropped us off on his way and we walked up to the library. Naanii was surprised to see us because she was expecting us to be my friend Carrie (since she saw the stroller wheels first). We had missed Carrie by minutes!

My mom quickly escorted us to the PIVA room (which is where Carrie had been headed) but Carrie wasn't there, either. Fortunately, one of her violist friends was there and he had her phone number so he texted her to say that I was looking for her and she came back to visit for a few minutes with her son James, who went around shutting every door he could see (which reminded me quite a bit of Josie 17 years ago). She and her family live in Maryland, which for some reason I was thinking was far away (because Virginia is close...but Maryland...that's super far) but she then said, "I know, it's hot in DC already, too."

And I was like, "What were you doing in DC?"

And she was like, "We live there."

And I was like, "You live in DC?"

And she was like, "Well, in Maryland."

Right. So sometimes my geography's a bit off. Because DC is rather small, as far as geographical sprawl goes, and I know that it touches both Virginia and Maryland and if we can drive all the way through Virginia to get to DC, Maryland really isn't that far off.

It was fun to see her; we invited her to the BYU playgroup that afternoon but she wasn't sure she could make it (and she couldn't so I should have grabbed a picture when I had the chance; we'll have to rendezvous back east sometime).

David came back to get us after his appointment and he taught Benjamin how to play on this xylophonic instrument.

We ran home for a couple of hours so that we could have lunch and so that Benjamin could spend some time with his favourite toys.

Just as we were leaving the house Kelli and Allen drove up to pick up the last of the leftover wedding cake. They arrived just in time to visit with Benjamin. Kelli thought it was funny to hold him out to Allen, who "is nothing but a big teddy bear," but Benjamin didn't hear her say "teddy."

The play date at Geneen's was fun. I had a number of friends come from all different chapters of my life, but they got along royally. Courtney I've known since almost forever. She was in our Parkland ward in Calgary (I moved there when I was nine and the middle of grade four). Then we moved to High River and then she moved to High River and then we moved to Orem and soon after I started at BYU and then she came down to BYU and we were roommates for a time. So we've followed each other around and have shared three different wards.

Her baby Laila was born just as we were getting ready to come home with Benjamin.

Shallee was in our ward here in Orem. She became one of my good friends in the ward and neighbourhood and at school. I've known her since I was fifteen. She worked for my mom in the library and went to Ghana with Patrick. Her son is Miriam's age and she has a daughter who was born right around the time Benjamin should have been (but she was left napping with Daddy).

Julia was a co-worker of mine at the Orem Fitness Center. We were both lifeguards and swim teachers. She was a lot of fun to work with and so it was easy to be good friends once we both started at BYU. Both she and her husband worked for my mom in the library. They have a bushel of children. I'm not sure any of my children actually line up with any of theirs precisely but it doesn't matter because mine fill in any gaps they might have left. Although it would have been fun to see Julia's children, she played it smart and left them with her mother. Of course, I can't blame her for doing that since I left most of my children with my mother-in-law (and that was certainly relaxing).

Geneen hosted for us. She lives in her parent's future retirement home where her bathroom and closet combined are about as big as my entire house. You might think I'm exaggerating but I'm really not. Our children fit together like shuffling a deck of cards. Evelyn, Rachel, Eloise, Miriam, Michael, Benjamin, Asher. Together we've had a baby every year (and have the same number of children as Julia (almost--she's expecting #7 right now)). I know Geneen because she married Doug, who used to work for my mom and who now works with my mom. She's a lot of fun!

My mom, Julia, Shallee, Me (with Benjamin), Courtney (with Laila), Geneen (with Asher)

My mom and Josie came as well, of course. Josie took the picture for us. The older kids are all playing outside (and were having too good of a time to call in for a lousy picture) but we had fun watching the babies play. Benjamin and Laila were fascinated with each other and they're almost the same size, though Laila is taller (of course).

Here's Benjamin "sharing" a toy with Laila. He put it exactly where he'd want it if he were "playing" with it himself:

My cousin Mary showed up just as everyone was leaving. She had to wait for her kids to get out of school and then hurried over to the party. I'm so glad she came!

Her kids are getting so big. Her youngest and my oldest are the same age. Our oldest are both named Rachel/Rachael (and my cousin Michelle now has a Rachael as well!) and Mary's Rachael is blossoming into a woman before our very eyes. I suppose it was more shocking for me because I haven't seen Rachael in ages. She's nearly as tall as her mom and is almost in middle school. It's crazy how time flies!

Benjamin was very interested in Anthony's head. Anthony didn't like this one bit. I have a feeling it's because Benjamin's hands are typically fairly slobbery so anything he touches gets a little slobbery, too. I enlisted Geneen's kids as photographers, so this picture was an interesting one--I was in the middle of telling them how to work the camera when they figured it out--but Anothony's reaction to Benjamin is too great to not include it.

That afternoon Benjamin spent some time playing with Rosie. One of his favourite things lately has been practicing his walking, so anyone who will walk with him is a friend.

On Wednesday morning we went out with some friends from our old ward to Nielson's Grove Park to visit the duck pond. Benjamin thinks ducks are hilarious--especially these ones who were not particularly nervous around people.

I can't believe this little boy Zach! He was such a bitty thing when we left and now he's walking and talking. He was chasing the ducks all around the park. We wondered whether the ducks enjoyed that or not and decided that they must because Utah Lake isn't that far away and if they really wanted to not be chased by babies the ducks could go there.

Asher was all about the ducks, too. He was so sad when he found out that Rachel and Miriam weren't coming but recognized me right away. I stopped by their house on my way up to my in-laws' once and he just told me to come in and then ran off yelling to his mom that "Rachel's mom" was at the door.

Benjamin didn't do much duck chasing and I didn't actually leave him on the grass too long either because we all know how fond he is of picking grass and eating it. That little habit of his in tandem with all the duck droppings was a little too much for me.

So we moved to the swings, which Benjamin enjoyed very much.

We also did a little walking by the pond, but just a little. Zach was a little unsteady on the rocks and made everyone nervous.

Benjamin enjoyed staring at the ducks from his perch on a rock, though he didn't do as much exploring as the other boys (occupational hazard of being a rather unmobile baby, I suppose).

We had a great time in spite of the chilly weather.

It's so funny to me that the trees in Utah are starting to bloom and get leaves and it's only in the fifties because the trees in North Carolina were just barely starting to bloom when I left there and it was in the eighties. North Carolina trees weren't about to put their leaves out when it was fifty degrees!

Now I'm busy packing up to get back on a plane again. It was fun to be here and see everyone but I think it will be nice to get back home as well.

Slacklining and so forth

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:10:00 +0000

On Sunday I went to my parents' ward in the morning, at least for sacrament meeting and Sunday school. I went to Relief Society for a few minutes but Benjamin was so tired and I'd spent the last hour and a half bouncing him without getting him to take a successful nap and I was getting mighty tired of holding him. So we just went home and took a nap together.

That afternoon we went back to visit our old ward for the third hour, which was Relief Society. My mom came with me and took her afternoon nap while I bounced with Benjamin in the back (but at least I got to visit with some of my old friends).

We went for a walk in the afternoon while we were waiting for Grandma Sharon and Grandpa Frank to visit. It was a fairly uneventful until the very end when we heard a loud crunch. We all looked to where the noise was coming from and saw, to our surprise, a van driving into our neighbour's yard. It went up over the sidewalk and smashed their fence and then, to our greater surprise, backed out of the yard and just drove away.

Flabbergasted, we wondered what we should do. Call the cops? Tell the neighbours?

Just then the bishop drove by so we decided we should tell him because aside from being the bishop he's a good neighbour and a rather diplomatic man. He asked which direction the van was coming from and since it was coming from inside the cul-de-sac figured it must belong to (or have been visiting) someone in the cul-de-sac. So we began knocking doors.

The culprit was an elderly man in the ward, who had pressed the gas pedal rather than the break. He knew the neighbours weren't at home and that they weren't due to come home any time soon so figured he'd be alright to just go about his business and resolve the problem later. He hadn't counted on there being so many witnesses, though, and since we didn't entirely recognize his van we of course had to do something. What if the driver had had a heart attack? Or a stroke? Or something.

It happened that the bishop knocked on the door of the culprit, who had gone home teaching. His wife called him at his home teachee's house and asked if he had driven into the neighbour's fence. He sheepishly admitted that he had. He was terribly embarrassed, especially because he's a former driver's education instructor.

When he came over to talk to us about it he was still quite embarrassed but was characteristically in high spirits. He'll make amends with the neighbours (who are only renting, but he knows the people who own the house so he's going to talk to them as well). I suppose he's just lucky he missed the tree!

Later in the day I went out with my brothers to try out Patrick's new slackline. It took us quite a while to figure out how to set it up, but it was a lot of fun once we did.

David was frustrated at first because both Patrick and I had figured out how to balance well enough to take a few steps before we'd fall off, while he couldn't manage to take even one step. But then when he figured it out he was able to walk almost the whole way across while Patrick and I were still stuck taking only a few steps at a time.

That evening Patrick announced that he had a single transverse palmar crease. I don't quite remember how the topic came to that. Patrick swears that he told me about it before but I don't remember knowing. Patrick's is a little different because he has two creases that meet and then split again, while Benjamin's is a true single crease.

Benjamin and I (but especially Benjamin) have been having a difficult time with the air out here. My mom got out the vaporizer for us so now our room is our personal humid biosphere and we're sleeping much more comfortably.

Saturday Evening

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:38:00 +0000

I am just on a roll with my creative post titles, aren't I? Anyway...

We took all the nephews home with us after the wedding (Rosie had prom to attend and the twins went to their dad's house otherwise we might have had all the nieces as well) and played around and ate leftover wedding cake all afternoon and evening.

Stephen, Matthew, and Andrew walked up to the park to play basketball while David, Benjamin and I headed for the swings because Benjamin loves swinging (almost as much as he enjoys bouncing).

Soon Andrew quit basketball to come play with Benjamin. I wasn't kidding when I said he was a baby charmer.

He and Uncle David spent some time convincing Benjamin to try to walk but Benjamin wasn't incredibly interested in that. He seems to think that as long as there's someone around to pick him up he shouldn't bother trying to get anywhere on his own.

The boys came home to play with Lego, which meant that Benjamin was banned from the area. They had a whole little game going on where they were bartering pieces and building little forts and things. I didn't really understand why they were trading pieces with each other when there was a whole pile of Lego in the middle, nor do I understand how they were able to engineer such complicated structures at all because my Lego buildings typically end up being rather boxy.

I thought the lid to the Lego box was funny:

It originally said Patrick. I'm not sure who wrote that. Later someone added a saxon genative on the end there to denote that the tub was definitely Patrick's. Someone else wrote "Nancy's and David's" and also "Josie's" but at the top. Then the faces running down the side, the top three screaming "Ah!" and the bottom one yelling, "Warr!"

Josie said she thinks she wrote all the other stuff, including mine and David's names. The esses all seem to match and I certainly don't remember doing it...

Here's Benjamin waving to me. He's a champion waver now. He loves the power it gives him because with one tiny flick of his wrist he can make an entire roomful of people raise their arms to salute him. He's been doing it all weekend.

That evening we went over to see Uncle Clark and Aunt Lynnea, who were staying at Reid and Karen's place while they visited some grandchildren out here. They brought Leah along with them--one of their granddaughters from Colorado. It was fun to see them!

Lynnea had both her boys about as early as Benjamin so we talked about about our experiences in the NICU with our boys. Her boys are strapping young men now--you'd hardly guess they were ever tiny little babies struggling for their life.

Benjamin finally conked out while I was over there so we just spent the night (I think there was a little less energy at the Heiss's so he was able to settle down).

It was kind of funny because Matthew and Andrew had asked if they could spend the night at my parents' house but my mom said she was afraid she was all out of beds with me and Benjamin and David and Josie and Stephen all spending the night (in addition to Rosie and Patrick who ordinarily are the only two at home). The house was a little packed. But then I ended up spending the night at the Heiss's and Josie's roommates ended up picking her up to go do something so she spent the night at her apartment so the boys totally could have slept over. But it worked out fine with them going home on Saturday night, too.