Heissatopia

Knock, knock. Hoosier?

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:15:00 +0000

There are a few things about the States that just I can't keep straight or that I simply don't know:

1) Memorial Day and Labour Day. It's possible this one can be bumped off the list now because I just realized (yes, just now) that Memorial and May start with the same letter. Ta-da! But they're both holidays of... barbecuing? Maybe. I'm not really sure what either of them are for. Don't hate me. I'm just happy for a holiday even if I don't quite get it.

2) Pint. Mint, lint, splint, sprint, tint, hint... Pint doesn't rhyme with any of those words. Apparently.

Additionally, quarts. And gallons. And things like that. Andrew and I just had the revelation (yes, just this year) that a quart is probably a quarter of something. And it is—it's a quarter of a gallon! Who knew? A pint is an eighth of a gallon. Then there are cups and ounces and...come on, people! I do love the metric system. Why do we even talk about pints anymore?

3) The Midwest. We're looking at schools in "the midwest." Apparently. But I've lived so far west for a good chunk of my life that living in Utah still seems like it is midwest while the midwest seems pretty far east to me. Really far east, to be honest. I mean, if you were to draw a line down the middle of the United States I think most of the midwestern states would fall to the east of that line.

4) Yosemite. Not /Yohz-uh-might/. /Yo-sem-ih-tea/. You're welcome.

5) Hoosier. I hadn't really come across this term until I began researching Indiana University—Bloomington. Turns out, you don't pronounce it /hoo-si-er/ or people (like Andrew) will laugh at you. It's pronounced /ho-zure/ (kind of a last-syllable rhyme with seizure). I don't know why but that's okay because nobody else does, either. In fact, nobody even knows what a hoosier is, even though it's the mascot for IUB.

Also, people from Indiana don't call themselves Indiana-ans. They call themselves Hoosiers, which is probably a good thing to know if you're planning on moving to Indiana (which, if Andrew gets his way, we will be). Right now his top pick for a PhD is IUB. So I figured...if we were going to be Hoosiers...I should probably know what a Hoosier is.

I turned to the all-knowing Wikipedia to shed some light on the topic.

Turns out, Hoosier has been in use since the 1830s, though no one is quite sure where the term came from. In some places, like St. Louis, it's an insult that means "hick." The same meaning also was carried throughout much of the south, though it's possible (according to Jacob Piatt Dunn) that this came from an English word Hoozer, which meant "hill." So, basically, it's possible Hoosier means "hicks from the hills."

It's also possible that the word came from the name of Harry Hoosier, a black preacher who spoke out against slavery and "the corruption of man."

My absolute favourite story, though, is that of frontier banter, a story which affirms the hick meaning of the word. Back in the day people would let their presence at a homestead be known by calling out "Hello, the cabin!" so that they wouldn't be shot at as an unannounced guest. The gun-wielder at the cabin would then call out, "Who'sh 'ere?" (translation: who's there?) and would then either welcome their guest or shoot at the trespasser.

I burst out loud when I read this and though it's a folk etymology it's the one I'm going to repeat to my children forever after, especially if/when we move to Indiana and Rachel says, "What's a Hoosier, Mommy?" because she probably will ask that because she's curious like that.

Is it just me or can you also see the old, toothless guy in the long underwear and ratty brimmed hat, a bit of straw sticking out of the corner of his mouth, pointing his gun through a crack in the wall and whistling through the gap in his teeth, "Who'sh 'ere?"

Excuse me while I snicker to myself once again because I find that seriously funny.

Folk etymology aside, I have to wonder if Hoosier isn't related to the term "hoser."

Hoser is a Canadian term, though I can attest that it isn't used very widely in Canada (at least not as widely Bob and Doug McKenzie would have you believe). Sadly, Wikipedia doesn't have much to offer regarding this term—perhaps it was invented in the 1930s to describe destitute farmers who siphoned gasoline from cars using a hose. Or maybe it refers to the losing hockey team having to hose off the ice at the end of the game.

Either way it's a negative term meaning "loser."

In my mind it isn't hard to connect this to the definition of "hick," meaning "an unsophisticated provincial person"— a hillbilly, a backwoodsman, a country bumpkin. Or, if you happened to be from the county of Cumberland (that's in England), you might say a hick was someone who lived in the "hoozers."

Hoozer?

Hoosier?

Hoser?

Since no one seems to know for certain where hoosier or hoser came from I'm going to suggest that they are related terms. And if I was the one getting a PhD maybe I'd research it more. Maybe. It's just about that interesting to me. Not even kidding.

But I'm not the one getting a PhD. That would be Andrew.

And so far he hasn't been accepted to IUB.

But he has been accepted at Duke—with a lovely financial package to boot. Go Duke!

It feels good to know that we'll at least be heading somewhere. Being accepted is much easier to swallow than being rejected.

17 weeks and a busy day

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:15:00 +0000

Today I'm 17 weeks & 3 days along, I believe, so I figured it was time for a belly shot. My first belly shot with Miriam was around 17 weeks. My first belly shot with Rachel was at 18 weeks and I had nothing to show for it, really...I had nothing to show, really, until late in March and even then it wasn't anything much.

I think my tummy's poking out about as much as it was when I was this far along with Miriam, perhaps a little more so but I was rather exhausted when this picture was taken and my stomach seems to poke out more the more tired I get because I get too tired to pay attention to my posture, I suppose.

I thought about changing into the blue shirt I wore with Miriam's 17 week shot but then I realized that would involve standing up. I am just tired enough that standing up sounds dreadful.

We had a rather busy day today—it was so busy that I didn't even get a nap (*sniff*). My mom picked the girls and me up at noon, which meant that we had to all be ready by then, so that we could go pick Josie up at UVU (she'd just taken the ACT) so that we could run to BYU for our dance practice. We danced for an hour and although there is no fancy footwork—no footwork at all, actually—it was rather taxing. We learned "the wave" today, which involves kneeling down and leaning back, then kneeling down with your torso flat against your knees, and then kneeling up with your arms stretched up, and then down and back, and then down and flat, and then up, and then down... Once you've done that several times you reverse the direction.

My legs were protesting all the stairs in the HFAC, that's for sure.

We spent a while hanging out in the art plaza because we were too early to head to our next appointment, which was a baby shower for my cousin Heidi. Then when we were ready to go my mom took us this special way over a catwalk, which Rachel thought was really cool. "We went on a bridge at BYU!" she told Andrew.

They also wanted to see the fountain in front of the ASB before we left.

And look! They're wearing matching ladybug outfits! Well, almost matching. Rachel was trying to convince Miriam, again, to wear her ladybug outfit but Miriam threw a fit about it so I showed her some pictures of her wearing it back at Thanksgiving and asked her if she looked scared then. She didn't so I guess she figured she didn't have to be scared of it now. "Not ladybugs is mean," she explained later. "They is just nice."

Heidi's baby shower was fun. It was nice to see some people I haven't seen in a long time (like Heidi and Shannon and Ellen, and my aunt's old neighbour) and chat. Heidi's ten years older than me and this is her first baby so it's really quite exciting. I sometimes think it's strange that I'm suddenly having kids around the same time as cousins who have always seemed grown up to me because by the time I was old enough to remember them they basically were grown up. My cousin Mindy is having a baby in June, too, and though it's her third she's quite a bit older than me, too. It's fun though because it helps us bridge the age gap a bit, I think.

After the baby shower we headed home and I made a quick shepherd's pie out of the leftover meatloaf that Andrew made last week. The girls didn't like it—Rachel even gagged so dramatically that she made herself throw up—and even he didn't like it because he put too much onion in it (a whole onion for one pound of hamburger). I ate it for lunch once or twice this week but we still had so much left and I was the only one eating it so it became tonight's dinner. We ate almost all of it so it was a pretty successful meal considering its roots were from such an unsuccessful one.

We ate dinner and rushed to get ready to head to Salt Lake for a friend Mark's wedding reception. He's from High River, which is where I'm from (twelve years ago). It was fun to see some old friends though I was already so exhausted I didn't do much mingling.

And now we're home and the girls are finally in bed and I'm really absolutely exhausted, which probably means I should go to bed...but Andrew's still up doing homework so I'm still up, too.

And because my brain isn't working and I can't figure how to tie this in, here's a random baby fact: Andrew can already feel the baby kicking. Sometimes the baby kicks a lot. Rachel really wants to feel it but is never patient enough to wait for the baby to start kicking. There will be lots of kicking in the future, though, I'm sure...considering it kicks so much already.

Bird games

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:58:00 +0000

This morning the girls were looking out the window, watching Daddy drive away, when they noticed some birds in the yard enjoying Grandma's callery pear tree. A few of the birds were robins and one of them flew right up onto the deck, which the girls got really excited about because they'd "never seen a robin that close up before!"

They've since been pretending to be a robin (Rachel) and a duck (respectively), making nests on the living room floor and so forth.

Rachel lamented that she has "two wishes: one, [she] want[s] to be Hermione because [she] love[s] Hermione and two, [she] want[s] to be a robin because they're so cool! But [she] can't be both..."

She drew a beautiful picture of their game—she's the robin, sitting on her nest (all seven of her eggs have already hatched into young robins). Miriam's the little duck in the pond. There's a butterfly and a dragonfly in the sky, some flowers on the ground. It's a beautiful picture. She's very proud of it.

She said I could take a picture of her picture and send the picture of her picture to Uncle Jacob but that he can't have the actual picture because she's keeping it forever.

I'm having a hard time thinking about Miriam last February, when we were enjoying looking out at the robins together and all she could say was "Buh! Buh!" and she wasn't running around the house saying, "Mommy! Come see this! There's birds outside! A robin, a robin, a robin! And one's on the deck!"

Yup. A year can change a lot of things.

Good thing we have a new baby coming because my baby Miriam is hardly a baby at all anymore.

Miriam's been trying to draw a duck picture this morning and although she was satisfied with her work, Rachel was not. Quote: "That doesn't even look like a duck, Meme."

So Rachel drew Miriam this picture of a mother duck, and her four baby ducks swimming after her. It's sunny and raining at the same time, so there's a rainbow streaming down from the sun.

And then Rachel asked that I take a picture of her and smiled sweetly at the camera but by the time I had snapped the picture her face had morphed into this:

FHE fail

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:28:00 +0000

For FHE yesterday we had a lesson on gratitude, specifically on gratitude to the Lord. I filled a brown paper bag with items from around the house (toy food, a picture of the scriptures, a toy animal, etc) and then had the girls pull out the items one at a time so we could discuss how it was a blessing in our lives and how we can show the Lord we're thankful for it.

We told them to close their eyes when they reached in the bag, which Miriam took very seriously. She pulled out the toy pear. We talked about how food helps our bodies grow and that we can thank our Heavenly Father for our food by praying before we eat so that we can say thank you but also by eating responsibly—for example, eating good things that actually nourish our bodies and not wasting food, that kind of thing.

I think it was also Miriam who pulled out the toy elephant.

"I am not thankful for elephants!" Rachel said at once—that day at the Cairo Zoo was a little traumatizing for her—"Remember that one time that elephant tried to eat my hair!?"

"What about animals in general?" I asked.

We talked about how cows give us milk and meat and chickens give us eggs and meat and we can ride horses and listen to birds sing and so forth.

At the end of our lesson we challenged the girls to be thankful for at least three things when they pray. Miriam offered to say the closing prayer.

"Dear Fadder," she said, "Bless a day. I'm thankful for three things. Name of Jesus Christ. Amen!"

We just about died laughing.

Then we had some BYU kids over for dinner. And then we put the girls to bed.

Miriam's bedtime prayer was much the same as her FHE prayer, though I was able to guide her into saying a few more things.

Rachel's prayer started out well and then her voice faltered and she said, "...and I'm thankful for elephants, too. I guess. And that's five things, so... AMEN!"

"Ummm, Rachel?" I said. "You know how to say a prayer and that's not how we end our prayers."

"Right," she said. "In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

"Thanks," I said. "But what's with the five things?"

"Well, you said only three things but I thought you meant that for Miriam because she'll be turning three but because I'm almost five I thought maybe you just forgot to tell me to say five things in my prayer."

"Rachel, you can say as many things in your prayers as you want. We just challenged you to be grateful for at least three things before you start in asking for all sorts of blessings."

"Oh! I get it!"

And she did. Tonight's prayer went a lot smoother...for Rachel.

Miriam, on the other hand, simply said, "Dear Fadder, Bless a day! Name of Jesus. Amen! Oh...I forgot! Fadder, Thankful for three things! Name of Jesus! Amen!"

At least when she says it she says it with feeling. She is thankful for those three things, whatever they might be.

I'm a pirate!

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:57:00 +0000

On Saturday Rachel game with me for the dance practice my mom, sister, and I had. She was asking a lot of questions about it in the car on the way to BYU. We gave her the brief rundown:

It's called Saman. It's a dance from the Indonesian island of Aceh. It's kind of related to Gamelan, which is music from the Indonesian island of Bali.

Rachel might be one of only a few North American four-year-olds who knows what Gamelan is so she didn't ask for more of an explanation about that. Instead she asked what an island was.

It's a piece of land surrounded by water. But America isn't an island because we're on a continent which is connected to another continent which, yes, is surrounded by water...but when we say island we usually are talking about a piece of land that's relatively small. For example, if there's a big river—like the Nile—then sometimes you can just look straight across the river to the other side. But sometimes there's a piece of land right in the middle of the water and the water flows on both sides of the land so you need a bridge to get across to the main land but it can still be big enough for people to live on—like, remember how Miriam was born on an island in the Nile? We had to cross a bridge to get to the hospital because the hospital was on an island!

She seemed to understand that answer and was able to talk about some other things. And she was an absolute gem during the practice—she coloured in her colouring book and watched us practice and sang along with the words that she remembered and only bothered me once so I could give her some help opening her granola bar. And Auntie Josie took her to get a drink but only because Auntie Josie was going to get one, anyway.

She didn't say much about the practice later—or I took a nap and don't remember her talking about it—but by the time dinner rolled around her mind had wandered back to the topic of islands and dancing.

First she couldn't seem to understand whose BYU kids those were. Her words.

"Whose BYU kids were those?" she asked. "Were they Grandpa's?"

"No. None of those kids were in Grandpa's ward."

"Oh. Were they Daddy's BYU kids, then?"

"No. None of those kids are in the MPA program."

"Well then whose BYU kids are they?"

"I guess they're kind of...mine."

"YOURS?!"

"Yes. Mine. And Naanii's. And Auntie Josie's."

"But...you...what...Mom!? You don't even go to BYU!"

"I did once."

"You did?!"

"Yes—you know that. I graduated before you were born."

"Oh. What does graduated mean?"

"It means I finished all the classes they said I had to take so they gave me a piece of paper that says that I learned something at their school and could move on with my life. So then I married your daddy and became a mom."

"Oh. But then how do you know these BYU kids if you went to BYU a long time ago?"

"I met them today, just like you."

"So they're my BYU kids."

"Sure."

Completely changing gears Rachel then said, "So, what was Naanii talking about when she said Miriam was born on an island in the middle of the Nile?"

"Oh, well, there's an island called Rhoda in the Nile—it's pretty big. Big enough for streets and cars and buildings and houses. And that's where the hospital was that Miraim was born in. So she really was born on an island in the middle of the Nile."

Miriam looked confused for a minute, like she was trying to put two and two together. Then all of a sudden she threw both arms up into the air and shouted, "WAHOO! Then...me is a pirate!"

She put two and two together and came up with seven-billion. Her answer was much more exciting than four, don't you think? Days later she is still convinced she's a pirate. For fun we keep asking her about it.

"Where were you born, Miriam?"

"On an island!"

"And that makes you..."

"A pirate!"

"Wow! How come?"

"'Cuz! Pirates is born on islands—captain says so!"

Can't really argue with that logic, can you?

Bookmarks and Arabic

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:13:00 +0000

If you look on our bookshelf between Harry Potter 1 and Harry Potter 3, you'll find this:

It's a little booklet that Rachel made so that we know Harry Potter is "checked out" and is in her bedroom instead of on the shelf. She wrote Harry Potter on the front. Or rather, she wrote:

HARR

OPY

TTER

And in the inside she drew a glamorous picture of Hermione with her two ugly sidekicks, Ron and Harry (who are evidently way less important than Hermione):

I'm so glad I have her around to help keep our home organized! Now if I could get her to stop piling papers on my desk...

And just because I took pictures of the girls doing puzzles the other day, here are a few:

Miriam is doing a princess puzzle that she has completed on her own a number of times but for some reason was finding it difficult to focus (because Rachel's puzzle was so much more interesting).

Rachel's puzzle was a gift from my aunt in France. It's an Arabic puzzle—each picture is divided along the letters of the word so as you build the picture you also build the word. When I first showed Rachel the box she said, "Ew. I hate Arabic!" and pushed the box away. I told her to do the puzzle, anyway, and she ended up loving it and put it together more than once.

Both the girls were very interested in saying the Arabic words as well. Their favourite word was bananas—mooz.

Pizza night

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:34:00 +0000

On Friday night, Daddy proposed we make pizza for dinner. He mixed the dough and got all the toppings out. I shaped the dough in the pans and everyone helped put the toppings on—except for Rachel who was busy learning how to type on Andrew's computer (she can do home row at 2.7 WPM—be amazed).

Miriam was put in charge of cutting the olives in the egg slicer, a job she took very seriously. Usually Rachel slices the olives and Miriam puts them on the pizza so she was quite honoured to have gotten a promotion.

Unfortunately, her arms are so short that she could only put the olives in one place so either someone was going to get a whole lot of olives on their slice of pizza or a parental unit would have to rearrange the toppings. We chose the latter option, which Miriam wasn't exactly pleased about.

But as my grandpa always said, "Life is hard and then you die."

We made Miriam tough out her disappointment.

And the olives were fairly evenly distributed.

And Miriam survived the whole thing!

Hermione Hair

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:27:00 +0000

Last night after the girls had their bath I braided their hair—Miriam got four braids and Rachel got five. In the morning after they had eaten breakfast we undid the braids and they were excited to both transform into Hermione for the day.

Rachel's wearing the dress Andrew brought back from Ghana for the girls to share (not a well thought-out plan, really) and it's way too short for her but she wore thick tights...so it all evened out. Andrew will have to pick one up in a bigger size when he goes to Ghana this spring so that each of the girls can have a dress from Ghana. The reason Rachel chose to wear it originally is because I put on my red flowered Maxi dress that I got in Egypt. Andrew calls it my pregnancy muumuu even though it works as a normal dress as well.

So far no one has noticed my pregnancy at all—unless they've been told about it no one seems to be the least bit suspect. I'm starting to feel a little insulted by this because when I look down all I see is baby bump but no one has mentioned anything. In fact, Rachel told her teacher today that I'm going to have a baby and her teacher verified it with Andrew before congratulating me because she didn't want to offend me.

Everyone must think I'm just putting on a spare tire.

Anyway...Rachel put on the dress that she feels matches my dress and then Miriam picked out a dress with flowers on it, too, so that she could match us. We looked like spring was bursting into the chapel.

When we first brushed out their braids the girls' hair was rather pouffy. Miriam's hair, though, was completely out of control wild, thus the two pig tails—they really helped tame it. Without the piggies it was sticking straight out the sides of her head!

When Grandma got home from church she asked Rachel if anyone had noticed her hair and Rachel said, "Oh, yes! Everyone was like, 'Who is this girl?' and I couldn't really handle that because I like people to know who I am!"

She doesn't quite understand sarcasm yet.

Lots of people did comment on their hair though because it certainly was a lot more voluminous than it has been in the past!

Bedtime sillies

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:12:00 +0000

The girls were certainly on one before bedtime! It took us half an hour to read through five or six verses of scripture—I'm not even kidding. I'm sure my picture-taking falls in the category of encouraging the incorrigible but so often their silliness fell into the cuteness category (as opposed to the super-annoying category) and I couldn't help but run get the camera...a few times.

In case you think I'm kidding (or don't want to sift through a dozen pictures of my children) just look at this picture:

What is that—Blue Steel?! Where in the world did she pick that up?

And now...for a million other pictures without a whole lot of captions because every caption would either say "Rachel being silly" or "Miriam being silly." They didn't leave me a lot of wiggle room. Let's just say they were planking and doing yoga and dancing and casting spells and being adorable. A lot of the pictures feature the teeter-totter Miriam got for Christmas.

To finish up here's another one of my favourite shots from the evening:

February so far

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:21:00 +0000

Last night Andrew and I used the movie tickets my mom gave to Andrew for his birthday (five months ago). We went out to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was a terrible idea because I cried the whole time but a wonderful idea because it was such a great story. It follows the life of a little boy who lost his father in the World Trade Center on 9/11 for about a year or so and was absolutely heart wrenching.

My parents watched the girls for us and they got to watch a movie at home. Rachel's always excited when I leave because she thinks other adults will always "definitely say yes" to a movie. She picked out "the all the birds of a feather movie," which the general public refers to as Rio. After that my mom spoiled the girls by reading a full chapter and a half of Harry Potter. Usually one chapter is my limit for a night.

We have a visitor from North Carolina right now—he's visiting his daughter, who is at BYU, on his way home from a business trip. He arrived last night just as we were sitting down to play a game of Ticket to Ride. We never did get our game in but we did get to listen to Reid and Karen and our visitor reminisce about North Carolina. They speak so fondly of it that it nearly makes me nostalgic and I've never lived there—the closest I've been to North Carolina was a short stay in Atlanta, Georgia, with my dad's cousin.

I don't think I would mind if we ended up heading out to Durham for school.

Yesterday I also had another doctor appointment for the baby. I set the appointment time so that Andrew could come but then a meeting came up at BYU and he ended up rushing to try to make it. The office was so efficient yesterday, though, that I was finished by the time he got there—less than fifteen minutes after the scheduled time for my appointment. The last time I was there I waited in the lobby forever and read two chapters of my book. Yesterday I got through less than two pages before they called me.

Next time Andrew will have to make it for sure because we'll be doing our 20 week ultrasound, at which point we'll likely be revealing the gender of this little baby.

I had suggested to Andrew that we let it be a surprise but he was so totally not on board with that idea. He said, "If you want to let it be a surprise you can have it be a surprise but I will be finding out." So we'll be finding out—I suppose it's a surprise whenever you find out. And it will give us more time to come up with a name, which is something that I've been trying not to stress out about since there are so many other things to worry about before we'll need a name.

Anyway, yesterday's appointment went well. I got to listen to the baby's heartbeat, which is always fun though I always feel awkward when it seems the doctor's looking at me to gauge my reaction. I don't ever respond to things very well but yesterday I was happy and relieved to hear the baby's heartbeat. Sometimes in the early hours of the morning I think I can feel the baby moving but I can't feel it all during the hubbub of the day. The pregnancy doesn't feel entirely "real" yet but at the same time I'm rather stressed out because of it—not that I'm not happy. Because I am. I just also happen to be incredibly stressed out about it.

I have near-constant nightmares. Pregnancy dreams are the worst, but add to that the fact that I spotted on and off for the first twelve weeks of this pregnancy, in addition to the sheer number of friends in the past year who have either miscarried, had their babies far too early and/or had their babies pass away shortly after birth, or wound up in the hospital in a bad way only to end up on bedrest for the duration of their pregnancy, in addition to (SPOILER ALERT:) the lovely miscarriage scenes I recently got to witness on The Help and Downton Abbey...well, it's turned me into a bit of a worry wart.

I can tick a list of people off on my fingers that I don't envy: Sara, Emily, Crystal, Lynette, Karley...I could go on. And that's just within this year. I also have a number of friends—probably a great number more—who've had babies with few complications (minus a few emergency c-sections): Amy, Aubrey, Rebecca, Tracy, Rachel, Amber, Heather, Julia...and a bucket load of others.

But I suppose, as Gabe on The Office so eloquently said, this time in our life is "the perfect blend of love and horror," as "things can go so wrong, or so right."

Besides those nightmares, there's the question of where we'll be when the baby's born. We still haven't decided if it would be better to move before or after the baby is born. Either way we swing it, it will end up being that we'll have to move mere weeks before my due date or just weeks after the baby comes. I can't decide which sounds worse—thoughts?

Hopefully we'll find out where we'll be moving around the same time we find out the gender of this baby. Knowing those two things will help us feel more certain about the future. Maybe.

Today I have a practice for an Indonesian dance I'll be doing with a group from BYU—a bunch of people my mom knows from Gamelan. It's called Saman and according to UNESCO it's an "intangible element of world cultural heritage." The entire dance is done kneeling down and so I though it wouldn't be much of a workout but it is.

I suppose I should stop blabbing and make my kids do things like get dressed and eat lunch so that I'll be ready to head out when I need to...

Un-news

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:58:00 +0000

Back in November, Andrew had his in-person interview for the PMF. They told us they'd let us know by January 24th. At first I wasn't sure how we'd survive until then because waiting is akin to torture. However, with Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year (a little something I like to call 'the holidays' so am in no way offended when people wish me 'Happy Holidays,' just as a side note) we were carried quickly through the rest of November and on through December. By the time January rolled around I had so entirely pushed the idea of the PMF out of my mind that it didn't even bother me. At least not much.

I still had that date in the back of my mind, but only in the back.

We were quite surprised, then, when Andrew got an email last Monday telling him that he was one of 628 finalists to have been selected from a pool of 9,100 applicants. Monday was the 23rd—that's a day early!

In reality he got it late at night on the 23rd so I think it was technically the 24th in DC.

Still. For us? It was a day early.

If we decide to go that route he has a year (from January 24th) to find a position. But we don't know if we want to go that route, necessarily. We're still waiting to hear back from grad schools. But this morning we got another exciting email, this time from Duke University. They wanted to have a phone interview with him...today. So at noon, he sought solace behind some dumpsters outside the Tanner building (because he had booked a study room but when he got there it was locked and he didn't have time to hunt down the keys) and interviewed with Duke University. He said they sounded very interested in how he wanted to mix his research in Middle East Studies with research in Public Administration—he had to describe twice what his research focus would be, once as if he was talking to MES people and once as if he was talking to public policy people. They will be making decisions in the next couple of weeks.

Truthfully, we weren't sure we'd hear anything positive back from Duke. Andrew had emailed a couple of professors over there and neither of them had written back to him. Everywhere else he applied the people he contacted returned his emails with advice or encouragement or what have you, but from Duke we got nothing back. We still finished applying even though we thought it was a bit of a long shot.

And, lo, they are the first school to contact us with a bit of cheery news. Even if it is simply to say that they haven't made any decisions yet but are certainly interested in Andrew's research. That's not a no...which is all we got last time.

We're still waiting to hear anything from the University of Indiana, Bloomington; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the American University in DC.

It's been an exciting couple of weeks for us, filled with un-news: Andrew's a PMF finalist, which is kind of a big deal, but he still has to try to secure a position; and Andrew interviewed with Duke University, but they still have yet to make an admissions decision.

It feels good to know that people at least are thinking about wanting us...it feels much better than flat out rejection.

Harry Potter

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:36:00 +0000

Somehow tomorrow is February. I'm not really quite sure how that happened.

We finished reading Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's [The Philosopher's] Stone this evening. While we were reading, Miriam fished the Mr. Potato glasses out of the toy box and said, "Look at me! I'm Harry Potter! Me has Harry Potter glasses!"

Then, because their favourite character in the story is Hermione, the girls had to show me their Hermione faces:

Rachel begged and begged to start Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets but I told her we had to wait until tomorrow. I feel like I spent half the day reading to her. I read two Dr. Seuss books to her (which Grandma keeps in her bedroom, apparently so that when the girls get tired of jumping on her bed they have something else to do so they don't get bored—Rachel told me so) which took like half an hour (because Dr. Seuss was rather prolific in his poetry). Then we had to do some library books. And some short stories from our own collection of books. And Harry Potter.

Besides reading we did a bit of lounging on the couch—we're still recovering from being sick—and watching television. Rachel stayed true to her word and stayed in bed (my bed) with her eyes closed, not talking...until she was sure that I had fallen asleep and then sneaked off downstairs to beg Grandma to put some cartoons on for her.

That sneaky Rach!

Grandma made her lie down to watch cartoons, though, so she was still resting...I suppose.

Andrew's promised Rachel that she can watch the second Harry Potter movie after we finish The Chamber of Secrets. Both sets of our parents feel that they're equally scary.

In the first movie you have trolls, Snape, Wizard Chess, Devil's Snare, unicorn blood, Fluffy, and a man with a face on the back of his head.

In the second movie you have gigantic spiders, blood, petrification, a giant snake...and I can't remember what all else.

I don't know. It seems to me like the second movie is a little bit scarier than the first (where everything scary happens at the end, really, in a big rush and the rest of it is rather tame). I suppose we'll see how she does as we're reading the story. She's a pretty active listener so chances are if something scares her she'll let me know about it...

In sickness and in...more sickness

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:26:00 +0000

We had another sick day at our house today and are planning on having another one tomorrow. Rachel's cough has gotten progressively worse over the last few days instead of getting better. She also developed a rash today...on her face and arms and legs and back and stomach...but not like fifth's disease...and not like scarlet fever...and not like chicken pox... I don't know what it is.

Miriam's still coughing as well.

And they're both getting fevers off and on.

They were both incredibly grumpy today. Miriam's sad and she doesn't know why but I think it's because she's sick but keeps trying to act like she's not because she's been sick for so long and just wants to be better. The other night she was up crying and I said, "Why are you crying, baby?"

"'Cuz I'm really, really sad," she sniffed.

"And why are you really, really sad?" I asked.

"'Cuz I'm crying," she told me.

Both of them had multiple fits today and although Miriam took a nap Rachel refused to even though she, too, really could have used one.

For lunch we had soup. Rachel wanted tomato soup (as always) and Miriam didn't (as always) so I brought up tomato soup and what my girls like to call "Tangled Hair Soup." Ordinary people might call it Ramen or Oriental Noodles or Ichiban, but those people are boring and unimaginative because clearly it isn't noodles at all but Rapunzel's hair turned into soup. Miriam didn't see the package of Tangled Hair Soup, though, and only noticed the can of tomato soup.

"What?!" she said angrily. "Not do I like tomato soup!"

"I know," I said, flashing the package of noodles, "I also brought some Tangled Hair Soup for you. I'll make them separately."

Miriam looked at me suspiciously.

"What's separate?" she asked.

"It means not together," I told her.

"Oh! Hey, Rachie—Mommy's making separate soup! We're going to have separate soup! She's making it separately!"

She was so excited she even did a "separate soup" dance, right on the spot. We enjoyed our soup (which I laced heavily with garlic) but wanted a little more for lunch. We've been eating a lot of grapefruit recently and the last one was sitting on the counter and, as Grandpa would say, it was lonely, so I suggested to the girls that we share it because grapefruit is full of good vitamins that help people get better when they're sick.

"Not is a grapefruit a vitamin," said Miriam.

"No, but they have vitamins in them!"

"How do they make vitamins then?" Rachel asked. She sat and thought about that for a moment and then said, "You know, I think they probably must take the grapefruit and squish it down really well and then carve a dinosaur out of it and that's how we get vitamins."

"I don't think it works quite like that," I said. "But I do know that there are vitamins in grapefruit that will help you get better so let's eat it!"

The girls were totally on board. They're actually usually on board for eating grapefruit, but only in moderation. Miriam's limit is about three pieces (when you cut the grapefruit in half and then spoon out the segments—so three half segments) and Rachel's limit, while higher than three, is still a limit.

"It's too spicy," they say after a while.

I'm just impressed they'll eat it at all because when I was little I remember thinking grapefruit was basically poison and couldn't imagine how anyone could eat it—it's too spicy! I love grapefruit now though.

"Maybe we could have an apple," Rachel suggested. "Do apples have vitamins in them?"

"They do," I said. "In fact, there's a saying that goes: An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

Rachel washed the apple and then I sliced it. Every time Rachel took a piece she'd say, "May I have another vitamin?"

Miriam, on the other hand, was rather intrigued by the idea of apples keeping doctors away.

"Do apples keep nurses away, too?" she asked. "'Cuz nurses give shots. Not do I like nurses."

I told her that apples keep both doctors and nurses away. She helped herself to another piece of apple.

After lunch came nap time for me and Miriam. Rachel watched television. That child refuses to nap...but at least she was resting, right? Grandma kept her busy with The Berenstain Bears and who knows what all until Miriam and I woke up and then because Rachel was looking like death and Miriam was groggy and feverish we sat and watched a few short shows.

Eventually we had to start making dinner and continuing laundry and doing normal household things like that. We had some BYU kids coming over for dinner—but just a few—so we added a leaf to the table and brought up the girls' princess table set that Auntie Sarah gave them for Christmas. I'm not even sure quite what brought it on (well, Grandpa had just been chasing the girls around the house but he claims that's irrelevant) but Rachel was about to sit down on her chair when she was struck with a tremendous coughing fit.

If you can't guess what happened next then I'm afraid you don't know Rachel very well—she's like the Old Faithful of upchucking.

Yes, she vomited.

All over her princess table, all over the floor.

I was doing the dishes.

"ANDREW!" I yelled.

I rarely yell or use his name so when I yell and use his name he knows to come quickly. He steered Rachel, dripping with vomit, into the bathroom, stripped her down and plopped her in the tub (where she threw up twice more in rapid succession).

Meanwhile, Karen corralled Miriam (I think) and Reid grabbed some towels, disinfectant wipes, and the mop. I wiped up the majority of the throw up and quickly ran down to the washer before I lost my stomach contents myself, Reid mopped and helped clean off the table, Andrew bathed the girls and deposited Rachel's clothes in the washing machine, Karen kept Miriam from having fits and still managed to keep dinner on schedule. Can I just say how wonderful it is to live in a house with four adults? If I had had to do all those things at once I think I would have pulled out my hair.

I'm just glad it happened on a Monday (when both Andrew and Reid were home) instead of a Wednesday (when they'd both not be home)!

The dinner ended up going smoothly in spite of all the chaos that went on minutes (okay, like a half hour) before the "big kids" were due to arrive.

What's funny is that the girls were determined to have a pyjama day today but I told them they had to get dressed because we had company coming over, so reluctantly they got dressed. But after Andrew gave them their bath he put them in pyjamas so when the "big kids" got here the girls were back in the exact thing I asked them not to be in! Not that it's that big of a deal. I just thought it was funny.

Rachel will not be going to school tomorrow but we made her promise that she'd have rest time while lying down with her eyes closed without talking or moving... We told her that she didn't have to sleep if she didn't want to, but that if she did sleep that it would be okay because our bodies heal themselves when we're asleep which is why it's perfectly alright to take a nap when you're sick when ordinarily you'd be much too mature and grown up for such a babyish thing as napping.

Here's hoping tomorrow involves lots of resting and very little vomiting...

Sew much work

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:44:00 +0000

Rachel has been making Valentines like crazy. There are seven of them sitting on my desk—little cards that she folded, and then drew skiwampus (but beautiful) hearts and carefully penned the names of her little friends onto. Today we made a special card for Grandma—and our plan was to add it to the pile on my desk, but Rachel was so proud of it (and Grandma was so available) that Rachel delivered it today.

Inside it says, "You tug at my heart strings!"

Rachel sewed the heart herself even though, in her words, "sewing's not really [her] thing."

She has those little sewing toys—you know, the cards with the holes punched in them that come with shoelaces so that you can practice "sewing?" They frustrate her to no end. She ends up going all over the place and creating huge knots instead of making a nice "seam."

Today I told her that sewing takes a lot of patience and concentration—it's not something you can just do. You actually have to focus.

Once I'd clarified that Hermione Granger enjoyed sewing (elf hats...) Rachel decided she'd give it a try.

We printed off a template and I poked the holes for Rachel and sat her down with a blunt-ended tapestry needle and some embroidery thread and set her to work. It took a while for her to get the pattern down (up and down, up and down, front and back, front and back) and she kept wanting to skip holes when the only rule of making the heart was that she had to choose a spot that was "next door" to the hole she just came through. By the time she was finished with the heart she seemed to actually be getting it.

When she finished, though, and I asked her if she wanted to make another one she said, "Not today. I'm just feeling a little sick is all. I don't really feel like doing a lot of work today and sewing is kind of like working so I think I'll just take a rest."

She won't be going to school tomorrow so perhaps I'll see if she'd like to make another card tomorrow. She needs something to keep her occupied...

British Drama

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:24:00 +0000

Sometimes family history work can be rather confusing. For example, I am a descendent of Charles Layton. The Layton line is well documented and goes back for generation upon generation—the problem is that Charles, at least biologically speaking, shouldn't hold the surname Layton. His mother, Bathsheba Layton, was an unwed mother—she was engaged to a sailor by the name of William Martin, who disappeared before the birth of the baby. Some sources presume he died at sea while Bathsheba was expecting Charles (1810-1831). Other sources say he lived to be a ripe old age (1810-1884).

It's somewhat of a mystery to me.

I suppose it doesn't really matter if he ran away from his responsibilities or if he died an untimely death. Either way, he wasn't in the picture by the time Charles came along.

Bathsheba later married Nathaniel Denton (sometime in the 1830s, according to my family tree on family search).

Charles, meanwhile, it seems was raised by his uncle Christopher, who was the founder of Layton, Utah.

I'm not clear when his uncle adopted him, but he's known on several records (and in most family stories that I've heard) as his "adopted child." Christopher joined the church and went to America and later Charles joined him—I found one account of his conversion story here although I think I would like to find a more detailed history of his life, if one exists. I frankly don't know.

Charles and Bathsheba were both sealed to Nathaniel Denton, though on family search, this wasn't completed until 1933 (Charles died in 1901—any parental figure he had died before him so this work was obviously done vicariously...and in Cardston, no less...one of Charles' sons, Samuel, immigrated to Canada and settled in Alberta. I descend from Timothy, who stayed in Utah. Irony would have it that my dad later moved to Alberta where we were good friends with the Laytons who descended from Samuel).

On my family tree, it lists Nathaniel Denton as Charles' father. However, if Charles was born of William Martin and raised by Christopher Layton, I fail to see why this should be. But I can't exactly add William Martin as a husband for Bathsheba because they were never married...and I'm not sure at all how to list adopted parents...but Nathaniel Denton was an adoptive father to Charles at any rate.

So I don't know what to do and I'm terrible at finding documents, though I have found Charles' name on the passenger lists of a couple of ships sailing from Liverpool to New Orleans as well as on a few surveys and things. He's relatively easy to find, actually. It's his parents that are more difficult to document—though Nathaniel Denton came to America in 1874 so I kind of presume Bathsheba came then, too... Many of their children stayed behind in England.

Anyway...the long and the short of it is that I have no idea which line to follow. What I really want to know is all the mystery and drama surrounding William Martin.

Perhaps I've been watching too much Downton Abbey...

Rain, rain, go away!

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:49:00 +0000

The other night when I went into the girls' room to check on some nighttime problems, I noticed that Rachel's blanket was wet...with droplets of water. She assured me she hadn't wet the bed and I believed her because wetting the bed doesn't usually leave droplets of water on the top of your quilt. Neither of us could think of a good answer, it being the middle of the night and all, so we decided to just ignore it and go back to sleep. Whatever had originally woken Rachel up had been taken care of and the water was a minor wasn't weighing on my mind as much as getting back into bed was.

In the morning, Rachel said, "Mom, I think I know how my blanket got wet last night."

"Oh, really?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "It's a pretty easy answer—it's been raining in my room at night."

"You know that it doesn't rain in the house, right?"

"Well, yes, but I have felt it rain in my room at night and come look at this!"

She took me into her bedroom and showed me some condensation on her windows.

"See? It really has been raining in my room. I know it's weird but it's happening."

"That's just condensation," I told her, "Probably from the humidifier."

"It is raining in my room," she insisted. "Just come and stay in my room all night and that way you'll know right when it starts raining. I don't know how it happens but it does!"

A simple...and altogether terrible...solution. I told her I would get to the bottom of it.

So last night before Andrew and I went to bed I went into the girls' room to see if it had started raining yet. The humidifier had already been running for a few hours so I went to feel Rachel's blankets. They were a little wet.

I climbed onto her bed and touched the ceiling. It was also a little wet. Wet enough that little water droplets were forming and dripping onto her.

So it has been raining in her room.

The condensation seems only to gather where the ceiling's already had some moisture damage—along what Rachel used to call the "ghost line" on her ceiling. The girls have been sick and coughing for so long that I think they still need the humidifier in there but we decided we could turn it off before we went to bed instead of having it run until it shuts off automatically (whenever that is). Hopefully that will lessen the frequency of Rachel's nighttime downpours because she refuses to sleep with her door open so the steam just gets trapped in her room...

Sink bath

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:19:00 +0000

The last record I have of Miriam having a sink bath was just over two years ago—on January 20th—she was three months old. It was much different than the sink bath she had today!

After dinner Rachel asked if they could have a bath and originally I said no because they should have one on Saturday so they'll be clean for Sunday. And then I realized that today is Saturday (darn it all; I thought it was Friday again) so quickly changed my mind and asked the girls to get ready for a bath.

Miriam quickly stripped off her clothes and then ran into the kitchen, laughing, "I'm lake-ed!"

I love how she say lake-ed instead of naked.

Grandpa swooped her up and told her she was going to have a shower in the sink. This is a common little game of theirs—he'll dip her head in the sink and sprinkle her with water. She also enjoys asking him for a "sink-rink!" (or "sink-drink," for those of us who can pronounce all our consonant clusters).

Anyway, because she was so fit for a sink shower she ended up having a full on bath in the kitchen sink.

She thought it was both hilarious and enjoyable.

When she was all squeaky clean and grandpa had toweled her off, she ran off to join Rachel in the bathroom.

"Me want a big bath now!" she said.

I have a feeling that this was one of the last sink baths Miriam will be taking...unless we get a bigger kitchen sink.

Also, I was mistaken about both children being asleep before 9:00—Miriam is most definitely still awake and now she's out in the living room entertaining some "big kids" who came to visit with Grandpa.

Saturday is a special day

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:01:00 +0000

Another weekend's come and gone and we have very little to show for it, though I did spend the morning going through toys and clothes (we ended up ditching two garbage bags full) and Andrew spent three hours working on a single statistics problem (which incidentally ended up being unassigned—bummer...now he still has to do his homework after spending all that time on that tricky problem).

The girls had Emily over to play and got along nicely, for the most part. Grandma got a package in the mail yesterday and gave the girls the box. It was kind of funny, actually.

Grandma regularly donates blood at the Red Cross and she earns points throughout the year for doing so. At the end of the year she can cash her points in for a prize and this year she chose a Red Cross camping chair, which they said would ship in 8–12 weeks. Grandma gave blood on Thursday and yesterday was showing the girls the rectangle the phlebotomist drew on her arm so that he'd remember where to poke her after sterilizing the area and then Grandma said, "I wonder when my camping chairs going to get here..."

And the doorbell rang.

Rachel ran to answer it and there, instead of a person, stood a tall cardboard box.

It was from the Red Cross and inside was a camping chair.

The timing was impecable.

And the girls have really been enjoying that box. They coloured it with Emily today and were all sitting in it so cute so I ran to get the camera but by the time I came back, something tragic had happened and instead of capturing a beautiful moment I captured Rachel screaming, "YOU RUIN EVERYTHING!" at Emily. Fun times...

And then I made Rachel come upstairs to cool down and Emily came upstairs, too, for some reason (maybe Emily really does ruin everything—she managed to even ruin time out! ...just kidding...) leaving Miriam in the box alone. A few minutes later we heard, "Grandma! Grandma! Help me! I'm in a box...and I can't get out!"

It was pitiful.

Grandma helped her out and then we had lunch—bean burritos, bananas, oranges, and string cheese. Miriam just had a quesadilla because she doesn't like beans in her burritos. She opened it up to check and said, "What the hiccup!?"

This threw Rachel into a fit of giggles.

"She meant to say 'What the heck!'" Rachel laughed, "But instead she said 'What the hiccup!'"

It's actually rather hilarious, barring the fact that my two-year-old was trying to say 'What the heck?' I know it's a Utah phrase but I don't think it's one that I use all that often, so what the heck's going on here?

After lunch, Miriam went down for a nap and Rachel and Emily went to play at Emily's house. Then we ran a bunch of errands, including a stop at the library. The girls had a blast picking out books—Rachel would grab one and say, "Oh, this one looks good!" And then Miriam would grab one and say, "Oh, this one looks good!" And then Rachel would grab one and say, "How about this one?" And then Miriam would grab one and say, "How about this one?"

Miriam's quite the little parrot. I think that's why she talks so well already.

By the time we got home, Auntie Katharine, Uncle Todd, and Kayl were over to make a birthday dinner for Grandma—her birthday is on February 14th, so it's a little bit early but who says no to a meal they don't have to cook?

The girls were thrilled to have Kayl over and taught him the charming game of running around the house like wild animals.

Shortly after this picture was taken Rachel and Kayl lost their balance and face planted on the floor.

It ended up being a pretty fun day, I suppose. And the kids were so exhausted that they were asleep before 9:00 so I'm not complaining!

I think I broke it in my sleep

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 17:15:00 +0000

A couple of nights ago just as we were turning off the light to go to bed, a child called out in their sleep.

"MOM!"

I sucked in some air and held my breath. Neither Andrew nor I moved until we were sure the moaner was really asleep and not actually calling out to me.

"I think they're asleep," Andrew whispered eventually.

"How come whenever they call out it sounds like they're saying mom?" I wondered.

"Because that is what they're saying," Andrew correctly told me.

Sometimes it's hard to have demands be thrown at you all day—and all night—long and sometimes I wish someone else could take a turn. Living in a house with three other adults does allow me more undemanded time than I would get otherwise—for example, the girls are downstairs "helping" Grandma do her morning exercises—but still.

Last night at about four o'clock in the morning I woke up to someone screaming.

"DAD!"

Did they just say...

"DAD!"

Awesome. I was under no obligation to rush into the bedroom, banish the monsters, cuddle the child, soothe the sore throat, clean up the throw up, or do whatever it was that needed doing. I could stay in my nice, warm bed.

For once.

*poke*poke*poke*

I poked Andrew but waking him is like waking the dead. He didn't even roll over.

"DAD!"

The screaming was getting desperate—and very high pitched.

I went into the girls' room and found Rachel sitting up in bed—and Miriam wide awake, sucking her thumb and pulling her ear—and holding her foot, which, she told me, "hurts so bad I think I broke it in my sleep! I need Daddy to fix it!"

"Oh, I don't think you broke your foot. I think you probably just slept on it funny and it fell asleep—that just means it didn't get enough blood and now it probably feels a little bit prickly, doesn't it?"

She nodded. I rubbed her foot a little bit and then she asked for a cold cloth (which is the Balm of Gilead for almost any pain Rachel has had in her short little life). By this time Miriam was well awake so I invited her to come with me to go potty—may as well...we were already up. Rachel decided that she'd better go potty, too, and limped slowly to the bathroom after us, complaining that I never carry her and that Miriam should be walking because Miriam didn't have a broken foot. Never mind the fact that Rachel weighs twice as much and has been walking for twice as long as Miriam...

I got the kids back in bed but then Miriam had a terrible coughing fit and asked for a cough drop. Fortunately her coughing fit was terrible enough that it woke up her daddy, who I sent in to fix Rachel's foot because she was in bed insisting that she still needed her daddy to cure her foot.

I cuddled Miriam while she sucked on her cough drop—it makes me nervous to put her to bed with a cough drop in her mouth. A few days ago I caught her chewing up and swallowing her cough drop and told her that we're not supposed to "crunch it up." We're just supposed to suck on it so that the medicine can slowly go down our throat—it doesn't do our throat any good to have the medicine in our tummies! So she stopped crunching them up. Yesterday morning she was sucking on one and then accidentally swallowed it. She came up to me and said, "Mommy—my cough drop is gone. But not did I just crunch it up. Just did I choke on it. Okay?" And that's why putting her to bed with a cough drop in her mouth makes me nervous. Have you ever accidentally swallowed a cough drop? I have. And there have been times when I thought choking on a cough drop would be listed as my cause of death.

Anyway, so I cuddled with Miriam while she sucked on her cough drop and Andrew magically convinced Rachel that if she would just go back to sleep all would be right in the morning and then he came and took Miriam from me and she screamed the whole way to her room about wanting her mommy and then he magically got her settled back into her own bed, too.

He did it all within five minutes of getting out of bed, too!

Of course, I had already massaged, rocked, pottied, and soothed the children for several minutes prior to him getting up. But still—that has got to be a new record for getting sick children back in bed.

Now if only I could get him to react to hearing his name being called in the middle of the night like I do for mine—I always sit bolt upright in a state of panic when I hear my children shriek like that. He just sleeps through it. What gives?

Also, how can their middle-of-the-night wakings not affect their morning wake up time at all? Because when I wake up in the morning after being up in the middle of the night I usually feel like I got hit in the head with something...

Snowy days

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:37:00 +0000

It's finally started snowing, which is really alright with me because it's also still fairly warm. Walking home from school, though, is now a half hour venture. We have to stop every few feet to fall in the snow or jump in a puddle or pack a snowball or...

The girls have fun doing it, though.

Miriam is a very gentle snowball fighter. She'll come right up to you and say, "You ready? I'm going to throw this at you now. You ready?" And then she'll only throw it after you say yes.

Rachel is less gentle and her aim is killer. Today I didn't dodge one fast enough and she pegged the side of my face.

She got Miriam multiple times because Miriam doesn't know to take cover when Rachel calls her name. Sometimes she's lucky—like in the picture below, she just "caught" Rachel's snowball in her elbow.

Other times she's not so lucky—like today when Rachel smacked her in the face with a snowball that was easily as big as her head. Miriam developed a bit of a bloody nose after that...

Before we went inside for lunch we made a snowman in the backyard. The first one of the season.

Rachel was a big help this year—last year she wasn't quite able to roll snowballs by herself. This year she was a pro.

Miriam was a little less helpful...but she did what she could.

Our snowman ended up being more than three balls high because rolling snowballs ended up being much more enjoyable than I had originally thought. For some of us anyway. I was alright with quitting. Rachel and Miriam kept on going.

We had to make the head more than once because we accidentally knocked it off a couple of times...

We ended up with a grand, if not a little melty and mushy, snowman.

Quoting one of our storybooks, Rachel gave him a hug and said, "He's my favourite winter friend."

And then I went inside and made lunch and the girls stayed outside and continued to play in the snow. I love it when they play on their own!

Tuesdays and Thursdays

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:17:00 +0000

This semester the Tuesday thru Thursday stretch is a little bit taxing. Andrew comes home after dinner but just in time for bedtime on Tuesday. On Wednesdays he's gone before anyone wakes up and comes home after the girls are (hopefully) asleep. On Thursdays he comes home just in time for dinner. If it wasn't for Tuesday and Thursday mornings I'd probably have gone crazy already.

Andrew doesn't have class until noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester so I convinced him that it should be his job to take Rachel to preschool since those are the days he goes. He seemed reluctant at first—parking is difficult unless you get to school super early so he likes to be there by 8:00 everyday so that he can park in the Tanner building parking garage. Otherwise he has to walk a ways.

I totally get this. It's cold outside.

But, uh, how exactly do I get Rachel to school? I walk her there. In the cold. Yup.

I'd rather not have to get up and get ready and get Miriam ready and get Rachel ready and leave the house with enough time to walk in the cold to get Rachel to school on time, especially when I'm pregnant. Getting up is getting easier now that I'm out of the first trimester but still...it's cold in the morning! By noon, when I pick her up from school, it's usually warm.

We went to the Lewises' house for FHE a couple of weeks ago (our friends from Egypt who live here now) and I was talking with Sara (no h) about being pregnant because she was also recently pregnant (but sadly ended up with an angel baby—she is my hero in more than one way: she has handled this so well and she's also overall amazing) and she was assuring Andrew that my energy drain was no joke. Then she told a story about how once when Kevan was doing his master's degree he didn't have class until later in the day and she was pregnant so he let her sleep in every morning while he got all the kids up and ready for the day and off to school.

Andrew hasn't complained about taking Rachel to preschool since that visit.

Not that he complained a lot about it before; he didn't. But I think his attitude changed after talking with Sara. Now he's just planning on getting up with the girls on Tuesday and Thursday mornings so that I can sleep for an extra hour before he leaves for the day. It's nice for me and it's nice for them and it's nice for him—we don't have evenings together during the week so we may as well use the mornings for Daddy-time.

Anyway, Miriam and I had the morning to ourselves today, like we usually do. We spent some time looking at Miriam's baby pictures on the blog, which she loves doing.

Then we returned the bumble-bee-teddy-bear shepherd to its post at the nativity in the girls' room. They refuse to dissemble it and when Miriam found that the bumble-bee-teddy-bear shepherd wasn't in the right spot she just about died. I love so much about this nativity: that the holy family is made of pine cones, a snail (sitting on top of the lamp) plays the part of the angel, and that the admirers of the baby Jesus are a couple of carrots, a camel, a duckling, turtle, and a bumble-bee-teddy-bear.

Miriam is always leaving toys on the toilet paper roll. It's a very inconvenient shelf for everyone but her.

And she asked if she could get something from my nightstand. I thought she said water bottle (budda-bodda) so I said yes but it turns out she said thermometer (buma-budda). When I heard the beeping I asked her to put it away. She jammed it in the case upside down and got it stuck. When I pulled it out part of the thermometer stayed wedged in the case. That was fun to fix.

It wasn't a bad morning. And I think it won't be a bad semester, either—not with Andrew getting Rachel ready for school in the mornings!

Rewards of Motherhood

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:30:00 +0000

Yesterday morning the girls crawled into bed and cuddled with me, completely ignoring their dad until I pointed out that he might be a little jealous.

"You're the bestest, bestest, bestest mommy ever, ever, ever!" they crooned, stroking my hair and patting my cheeks. I think Rachel said it first and Miriam parroted it.

So far that day I had done nothing to deserve the compliment considering we were all still in bed. Why turn down a compliment though, right?

When I told them they should give some love to their daddy, too, Miriam simply said, "Me jump on you!"

And then she pounced on him.

Tonight I was cuddling Miriam while she was sucking on a cough drop (when she should have been in bed...but she's sick so she wasn't).

"Sweetie Mommy," she said, patting my cheek. "You're the bestest, bestest, bestest mommy ever!"

Sometimes being the mom has it's rewards.

And hearing that is one of them.

Unbecoming the baby

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:22:00 +0000

I'm not sure Miriam's ready to give up being the baby but that's alright because she has a few months left of it. My mom asked her once what she was going to do once her mommy had a new baby—at the time, Miriam was cuddled in my arms (as she often is).

"Oh, just keep it in my Mommy's tummy," she said.

A few days later my mom asked her the same question. This time she had a better answer (in my opinion).

"Me share with it!" she said happily.

Miriam's so tiny and cuddly that it's going to be hard giving her up as my baby, but there are a few habits we've been changing and that've been helping her to grow up. One of her most annoying habits (that we've been working on breaking) is her desire to cuddle...cleavage. Her fascination started after I weaned her in...July? August? I can't remember when we finally ended it but once she understood that it was over she decided that just because she no longer got milk it didn't mean that she shouldn't get access.

She'd cuddle on my lap, suck her thumb, and stick her hand down my shirt.

I'd pull her hand out.

She'd stick her hand down.

I'd pull her hand out.

She'd stick her hand down.

It was a constant battle and she had many excuses about why she should be allowed to do it.

"But me sad!"

"Not my ear is working!"

"Not me feel good!"

Anything to get me to cave.

It was a very annoying problem. I tried to convince her to seek comfort in other ways—she could hold my neck (that's what my mom eventually trained my little brother to do) or stroke my cheek or...whatever...just...come on!

Right around Christmas we took a turn for the worse when she figured out that ALL FEMALES HAVE THEM!

Karen's sister Linda came over to stay right around finals week. She picked Miriam up, Miriam's hand shot down the front of her shirt.

We went to Reid and Karen's BYU ward Christmas dinner and Miriam went around busily sticking her hand down the shirt of every girl who dared to hold her!

The world was her oyster. And it was beginning to be a very serious and embarrassing problem.

We've worked on it and worked on it and worked on it and we're finally able to control it a bit better. Now instead of putting her hand down the front of my shirt she puts her hand up my shirtsleeves—anything to get at some unexposed and "off limits" skin. Going up my shirtsleeves is much better than plunging down my neckline, though, I think.

Shortly after my grandpa's funeral in December, Miriam was rubbing my legs (up my pantlegs) when she announced in a hushed tone, "Know what, Mom? Once 'pon a time...I touched a dead body."

I was a little shocked to hear that come out of my two-year-old's mouth and I, frankly, have no idea if it's true or not. I was not always the one toting her around at the viewing and it's possible...that if she went up with some cousins...I don't know. But it was still a little shocking...and kind of creepy...especially since she thought to tell me that as she was stroking my legs.

One of the side effects of our no-cleavage training has been that Miriam has started sucking both of her thumbs. She still favours the left but will switch sides in order to minimize chapping and to better facilitate ear pulling. She used to do this funny cross-over thing where she'd stick her right arm under her left arm (the thumb of which was in her mouth) so that she could pull her left ear when her right ear would "stop working." Now, though, she'll suddenly stop sucking and pulling and will switch, so she'll be sucking the opposite thumb and pulling the opposite ear. Right, left, right, left. It's kind of funny.

Hopefully it's a habit she'll give up without a fight but after working so hard to eliminate some of her other bad habits, I'm not so sure she will give it up willingly. We've joked about cutting off her thumbs a bit at a time until there's nothing left to suck on (you know, like they do with soothers...or binkies (if you're from Utah)). You should have seen her panic!

Mind you, we were only joking about that method.

I'm not too worried about it yet but once we start thinking about kindergarten for her she'll have to quit. Fortunately for her that's years off.

Sometimes I Facebook Instead of Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:53:00 +0000

Even with twenty posts under my belt so far this year, I feel like I have been slacking in the blogging department. My girls say so many funny things and I usually jot them down on Facebook simply because it's fast and easy and everyone tells me how great it is (while I usually get no comments here). But I feel like this is where the real record is kept—this is where I someday plan to pull material from for our family annals (not that we've ever succeeded in making a book but we certainly do intend to one day). Without further ado, here are a bunch of random funny things my kids have said that I have failed to blog about because I most often choose napping to fill my spare time over anything else (eventually I'll quit that, I hope)...

January 17th:

On Sunday we gave one of our (three) gingerbread houses away. This morning Miriam said, "Hey! One of our houses is missing!" I'm pleased she can do subtraction but am amused it took her so long to notice.

Andrew stopped by the store on his way home from school today. Miriam unpacked for him—toothpaste for the girls, razors for me, shaving cream for Andrew.

"Is it like Christmas!" Miriam exclaimed, passing out toiletries and hugs.

Andrew's been wanting to try a new recipe for quite some time—he sent it to me months ago. You just wrap a piece of pepperoni and some cheese (or whatever pizza toppings you'd prefer) in a bit dough (pizza dough or biscuit dough or whatever) and roll it into a ball and throw it into a bunt pan. It ends up like "pull aparts" or "monkey bread" or whatever you'd like to call it, only dinner instead of dessert. You dip it in marinara sauce. It's not too complicated but it is time consuming to stuff all the little dough balls.

"I'm going to start making dinner," I said.

Andrew knew what I was going to make and thought the girls would have fun helping so invited them to do so.

"What are we having?" Rachel asked.

"Pizza Monkey Bread!"Andrew said all excitedly.

"Ew," Rachel said, wrinkling her nose. "Does it have monkeys in it?"

My little helpers opted not to help and I spent a good half hour rolling silly little balls before Andrew made the mistake of wandering through the kitchen. I roped him into helping me finish.

January 18:

We've been playing with play-doh quite a bit lately. Miriam finally can make a snake and a ball, which means she can do way more than just rip the play-doh into shreds. Rachel's entered the world of butterflies and pottery and many complex things. Miriam's talent is obviously a bit more limited.

I remember opening the box of play-doh on Christmas Eve so we could put it in the girls' stockings. There was a warning on the box that I thought was hilarious: Moulded results may vary depending on the age and skill level of the children involved.

Or something like that.

I snickered about the sad state our world is in that a company actually has to warn caregivers that their children might not be wonderful at something in order to save themselves from lawsuits. It's certainly true, though. Rachel is much more creative and skilled than Miriam at this point.

Miriam was rolling ball after ball after ball. I asked her what she was making (because we had rolled a bunch of balls earlier and turned them into a snowman since there is no snow to be found on the ground). I thought perhaps she had some creative idea in mind.

"This is a ball," she said, holding up a marble-sized ball. "And this," she said, holding up a ball about half the size of the first, "Is a giant, giant, giant, giant booger!"

Creative idea, indeed.

Rachel is still as obsessed with Harry Potter as ever. She recently had a duel with some of the BYU kids when they were over for FHE or something a couple of weeks ago. She only knows innocuous spells such as "Lumos!" and "Alohamora!" and "Wingardium Leviosa!" but will occasionally throw in a "Swish and Flick!" or two even though we've told her time and again that isn't actually a spell. Not that any of them are.

Miriam has picked up on Rachel's passion. Her favourite spells are "Alohamora!" and "Harry gaurd 'em! Let me rose ha!" Rachel is always very quick to correct Miriam's pronunciation.

The other day she decided she'd taunt Miriam by telling her she was in Slytherin House.

"You're in Slytherin," she said.

"No! Not I am dressed up in green!" Miriam pointed out. And this was true; she had asked me to help her into her red flamenco dress minutes before so that she could be in Gryffindor.

"Well, you're still in Slytherin, so there!"

Miriam ran to me, crying. "Mom! Tell Rachie—not I am in Slytherin!"

"Rachel," I chided lazily, "Quit telling your sister she's in Slytherin."

"But, Mom!" Rachel whined, "That's where all the bad kids are!"

"But Miriam's not bad," I pointed out.

"Fine," Rachel huffed. "You're not in Slytherin."

Miriam has a secret weapon to get back at Rachel, though, and that is using Voldemort's name. Sometimes she'll whisper it at night and Rachel will freak out about it and I'll have to go in and ask Miriam to please instead say "He who must not be named" or "You-know-who." I think she does it to terrify Rachel on purpose. And I can't say Rachel doesn't deserve it.

January 19:

The girls have had colds for a while (as you probably noticed and I like to think that's why I haven't been doing as much blogging because when they caught these colds they gave me a new cold and I was just getting over my old one, too). They've been upset about having to blow their noses so often—they're getting chapped and sore.

"I have a scratchy nose," Miriam told me today. "Can you just put a bandaid on it or something 'cuz it hurts!"

It took a long while to convince her that I can't just put a bandaid on her nose...right over her nostrils (because that's where she wanted it).

January 20:

The girls seemed to be getting better so I let them go over to the neighbour's to play. Miriam stayed until nap time and Rachel stayed the whole live-long day. It was warm outside so they played and played and played. Finally I guess the neighbours had enough of Rachel and they sent her home. You can see our house from theirs so we just let her walk by herself. She had a bit of trouble, though, and explained it to me when she got home.

"Did you know I saw a robin on my walk home today? But then I hit that jingly music thing [the chime] in Grandma's tree to make it fly away so it wouldn't distract me anymore because it was singing and stuff and I was like, 'Ah! I can't remember to walk home when you're singing at me!'"

Distract-o Girl could be one of her nicknames, I suppose. You can tack an -o onto just about anything and it makes a good nickname. Destruct-o Baby is one we use when the small people in our home ruthlessly destroy something.

Miriam's play date actually ended when the cat, Wellington, decided to investigate the children. Her cries could be heard all the way up at our house so...she came home.

"Me did go outside and a cat did popped out and me scared of it," she explained.

Friday evening we had dinner in the Tanner Building (for a rockin' MPA party/talent show). The Tanner Building is all decked out in world flags and Rachel was asking which countries the different flags belonged to. We were answering her to the best of our ability. Eventually we got to Romania.

"Romania!?" Rachel squealed, "That's where Ron's brother Charlie works! He studies dragons..."

Once we figured out what she said, our table-mates were thrilled. And thus yet another wonderfully in-depth conversation about Harry Potter was initiated between our four-year-old daughter and college students. Grad students, no less.

At first we couldn't tell what she said because her r's come out as w's and her ch's come out as s/f/th.

"That's where wum...Brudda S/F/Thawlee works!"

We thought she was saying something about Brother...Folley? That's not a last name that is unfamiliar to
her.

The talent show went well. We sang Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam with some other young families in the program and tossed our kids in the air.

There were a lot of funny acts, really, but my favourite was when this one guy marched in with his bagpipes. We were in an auditorium-style classroom so there were stairs leading down to the stage and Miriam, who had gotten tired of sitting, was playing on the stairs.

All of a sudden this 6-foot-something (tall!) guy bursts into the room, Scottish music blaring from a dangerous-looking instrument...

Miriam flipped out.

She couldn't get back in our row because Andrew was filming and his legs are so long that his knees were touching the seat in front of us and the only other place he could put them was in the aisle, but that is where the bagpiper was walking and he didn't want to trip him. I had to lean over Rachel and pull Miriam over Andrew into the safety of my arms where she continued to cry for quite some time.

Luckily bagpipes are so loud that I don't think anyone else heard her. But the look on her face was priceless as she watched this giant of a man marching down the stairs straight at her.

January 22:

Miriam handed me a toy water gun (the only gun (toy or otherwise)) in our house.

"Don't shoot me," she advised. "Shoot Rachie!"

Never were there such devoted sisters...

January 23:

I left a pitcher full of water on the counter—we use it to fill up the humidifier in the girls' bedroom on a nightly basis and I was just finishing up the dishes and figured I'd fill up the pitcher while I had the water going. Very efficient, I know. Because it would have been much more difficult to do it any other time...

"What's that for?" asked Grandpa, who was carrying Miriam around.

"The 'fier in my bedroom," Miriam told him.

He looked a little confused about this. I told him that there was no "fire" in her room but a "humidifier."

Somehow shortening humidifier to "fire" makes things sound a lot more dangerous than they really are, though I suppose a pitcher full of water is useful in both those scenarios.

And that wraps up my neglect of the blog...for now.

The weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Nancy) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 03:48:00 +0000

On Saturday we got our first real snowfall of the season, meaning that it fell and it stuck. It rained all morning and half the afternoon and then suddenly the rain turned into huge, fluffy snowflakes. The girls wanted to go outside to play, even though the snow was mostly slush when they went out.

Neither of them were feeling great so they only stayed out for a few minutes but long enough to soak through their winter things—snow doesn't take long to soak through when it's already halfway melted.

Saturday evening brought a last-minute run to the InstaCare for Rachel, who started to complain about not being able to swallow. I looked in her throat and it looked pretty...nasty...so we began to wonder if it was strep or tonsillitis or something. Turns out it was neither but we got a prescription from the doctor, anyway, since he was worried about her having a fever after being sick for so long (she's been sick for like a week and a half). It was a good thing because that night she spiked a fever and was completely lethargic and too weak even to walk.

We found a substitute for Sunbeams and I planned on just staying home with the girls—Miriam's out with a sniffle, cough, and fever, too. Rachel's fever had broken by Sunday morning and she was feeling much better but we decided what we all needed was a real day of rest, anyway.

Andrew still had to go to church because he's the organist and no one else will play and while he was getting ready to go in the morning he said something about needing to hurry.

"No!" Miriam shrieked. "Not are we going to church today! Are we staying home and watching church movies!"

She was a little bit excited at the prospect of watching movies all day while snuggled under blankets. We watched Legacy. And then I let them watch Angelina Ballerina for a little while, even though it's not a church movie, because Miriam is obsessed with ballerinas lately. She's been wearing a tutu for three days.

Daddy came home from church and helped with lunch and nap time. Surprisingly, I was the only one who napped. Miriam was supposed to—and we thought she would because she's sick—but she didn't. Rachel never does but she had quiet time.

We're still a little sick today but at least we're functional. I think Rachel will be well enough to go to school tomorrow and Miriam certainly had more energy today than she did yesterday so hopefully she'll be feeling better by tomorrow, too.