lots of photo catch-up

 I'm sitting here waiting for my students to finish posting their huge research paper drafts so that I can respond to them, and I've responded to everything posted, so...waiting.  And Neil is at work, so I am lonely and bored, but since my mom mailed my camera (what a wonderful lady!) super fast, I have pictures to upload and blogging to do.

First of all, I am sitting here grading instead of going to bed because I'm afraid of the morrow.  Neil's birthday was last week, and we were away for Thanksgiving, so it was a little rushed, you know?  So one of his friends so kindly offered to put together a morning of target shooting tomorrow, and I'm excited for him to have some fun that's all about him (except the kids and I are all nice and sick, and I don't want to have to respond to papers when I am foggy and the kids are crying, so...staying up now to do it instead).  And Neil is at work on a Friday night (which he generally takes off) because I was a total wreck this morning and he stayed home until lunchtime so that I could go back to bed and sleep off some of the fever hallucinations.  Then he left for work after I stopped falling over things and convinced him to give me the treadmill key back after promising I wouldn't do anything stupid (because who doesn't like to run when they're feverish?  Actually, I felt about 100x better after I pounded out my graceless four miles.  I wouldn't have trusted myself to run in a straight line outside, but the treadmill and I were good friends today). Then he went to the grocery store after work and came home early and made dinner.  He is so awesome.

This is the current collection of antibiotics--any bets on how big it will get later in the week when Neil and I finally break down and go in to the doctor? (Sadly, my dear husband grabbed the wrong kind of Mucinex so I can only stare at it longingly and remember the days when I was neither pregnant nor nursing and I could swallow whatever decongestants I liked.)

 Right before Thanksgiving, Juliet's class did a cute little play:

and we went to watch it.  Isaac is really picky about his hair, and Jules kept trying to put her hat on him, and he would not allow it because he didn't want his "porky-pine hair" to get smashed.

Since I had my camera, when I went to pick Abigail up post-play I snapped a few pictures of some of her schoolwork hanging up in the hallway.  This is the report she did on the Empire State Building; she told me the addition of the birds around the top was her idea.  :-)



On an Abigail note, the two of us went on a mommy-daughter date tonight, and she casually mentioned something that just about broke my heart--she was telling me about her group for the current project, and how so-and-so in her group is one of the most popular kids in class because he's so good at sports.  So we were talking about what makes people popular, and how people often have different roles in the class (she'd started talking about who was the funniest, who was the nicest, etc.) and when I asked her what she was in her class, she said, "Mom, I'm like mist.  Nobody even notices that I'm there."

What do you say to that?  I didn't know.  I don't even remember what I said--something about how did she feel about that, and did she still play with so-and-so.  I think it bothered me a lot more than it bothered her, but...it's really bothering me.  A lot.  And it bothers me that she feels invisible in her classroom all day, and then she gets home and it's kind of a crazy land with parents who are saying, do your homework, it's time for dinner, practice piano, get ready for bed, why didn't you put your coat away when I asked you the first three times, etc.  I feel like I am SO far from being a perfect, patient, loving mother, and it is so hard for me to make those moments in the limited time that I have with Abigail.  It's much easier with the boys and Juliet, because they are home so much more during the day, but Abigail is only home for a few hours and there is SO much that has to happen in those hours.  This is something that has been really hard for me ever since she started full-day school last year (and is a large part of why I fought to be able to only send Jules to half-day kindergarten) and I just don't know how to do it.  I want my children to know that they are loved and cherished, and I worry that I don't know how to convey that properly.  I love them, and I want them to grow into wonderful, responsible adults, and that's why I remind them to do their homework and to clean up after themselves and to use good manners, but...that's not really something you can perceive as a child, you know?  And it is SO hard to create the time where we are just snuggling and talking, but I am resolving to make that a daily priority with Abigail, because she has always been in need of that, and we haven't transitioned that very well as she's been gone from home the majority of the time.

 On to a less weighty topic--this is what our lawn looked like the other day when it was time for the girls to leave.  School ended up being cancelled because of the heavy fog, which is good, because who wants to walk through this to get to school?

 Luke likes to lick ice cream!

 Over Thanksgiving we visited my parents and were able to meet my youngest sister Rosalind's fiance Chris.  (Isaac adores him beyond all reason.)  Sadly, I didn't snap any pics of them when they were all fancied up for their open house, but I did get this one after dinner.

And then since I had my camera out...

 So happy to be photographed.

 On the other side of the table...

 And at the head/foot/whatever of the table perched Sir Isaac and his dish of ice cream, which was about all he deigned to eat that meal (actually, I exaggerate.  He ate the croutons from the salad, then mixed cranberry sauce with peach jam and ate that delicious slosh).

 Later that night (I think this may have been Thanksgiving) the kids convinced my dad to build a fire in the backyard and then they all went wild playing in this HUGE mound of leaves--the neighbors hadn't raked any of theirs, so, surprise!  Dad raked up a giant pile and the kids took turns jumping off a retaining wall.  I have the most wonderful video (which is not wanting to upload) of Luke stepping out confidently from the wall and then dropping WHAM down into the leaves--I don't think he knew it wasn't solid ground.

 Isaac hiding...they were all so begrimed when they came out!

 

Oh, and right before Thanksgiving, I had a lot of my hair cut off (the picture isn't rotating and I'm not really in the mood to fix it).  So it went from very long to...shorter.

I sort of feel like I should be done with this pregnancy already.  But I'm not even close.

I found this on the counter the other day--Juliet told me she was packing up for quiet time.  Love that kid.

And last but not least, my little Luke, who is convinced that he is seven years old and should do everything like the big kids do it.

Seems like it's time for a post

I left my camera at my parents' house over Thanksgiving, so while I have a lot of photos to upload, there will be none today (sadly, this also means I have not photographed exciting happenings around our home like decorating the Christmas tree, etc.  But it also means that there is no photographic evidence of the fact that I was SO worn out today after the third day home with my miserable sick little boys--they both have croup--that I decided my angelic-looking Luke needed a warning label, so I wrote "El Diablo" across his forehead in marker, and then I gave him a little evil-looking mustache [except I had to make the mustache kind of odd-looking to avoid his dripping nose].  My poor babies.  I hope those antibiotics kick in really, really, really soon.  Isaac is a sweet, docile, snuggly little sick man, but Luke is not!).

Anyway, life goes on.  I am constantly amazed at how slow the mornings are (when the boys both are content to sit in my lap and listen to stories for hours), and how hectic the afternoons and evenings are when we're racing to get everyone's homework done, piano practice in, clean up dinner, pack lunches for the next day, run kiddos through the shower, etc.  I spent probably three hours working on homework with the girls today and then Neil and I both split up after dinner/baths and each took a girl and finished up the homework time.  I can't even imagine how we will do it with older kids, but then again, I'm sure we'll adapt like we've done with each successive year.  Not a very original musing, but that's what I happen to be thinking about today.  I'm so grateful for the amazing teachers that both of my girls have this year--Abigail is just thriving in school this year beyond all of my wildest dreams and expectations, and I feel like we are so, so, so blessed to have the opportunity to have her in the high ability classroom (worth another year in grad school?  I would say so.  Honestly).  After she finished her homework today, she started writing some of it backwards, because she was so fascinated with da Vinci's mirror-writing--we spent dinnertime today talking about some of his more interesting inventions, sculptures, and paintings.  It's just amazing to me that she is studying the Renaissance in second grade (she even has an era-appropriate name given by her teacher, and they're writing with quill pens in class).  I just love it.  And Jules has jumped 3 reading levels in the last two weeks, so she is thriving as well.  (And Isaac, thanks to the fact that I am home-schooling Jules for math since they do that in the afternoon, knows more about math than either of his sisters did until they were 5.  Or 6, since he's actually ahead of Jules in some things.  Craziness.  They are little sponges.)

I have another ultrasound scheduled for next week.  I'm excited to find out the baby's gender (ooh, tiebreaker!!!), but a little nervous to see what else is going on with my body.  Sometimes I like to look back at my previous self (when I was pregnant with the girls) and mentally shake my head at how arrogant I was about how easy pregnancy is, and why are all these women complaining, etc.  Another thing I can't imagine--how some women manage to have 12+ children.  I have so much respect for their endurance, both physical and mental.  I feel like my body is barely holding together and I still have another 21 weeks (and hopefully more babies!) to go.  It's a little scary if I think about it too much--mostly I've just learned to deal with the pain and move on.  Much more denial than I've ever indulged in before in my life.  It's probably not healthy but it's how I'm coping.

I'm so grateful for my husband and children who pick up the slack for me.  Neil, as always, is an absolute gem who never complains about my inability to do my normal tasks, even though he's exhausted himself--he just does what needs to be done.  And the children have been so great. Jules in particular is apt to help out without ever being asked, or without asking for recognition--I went to collect all the kids' laundry tonight and found that she and Isaac had already done it together.  They saw something that needed to be done, and did it (especially cute because it required one of them boosting the other up to the washer so that they could empty the baskets).  Abigail has gotten really good at packing her own lunch every night and collecting all of her paraphernalia for school the next day so that it's all ready to go.  And she is SO good about practicing piano and doing her homework--she usually has hours of things to do every night, and while I frequently have to remind her to stay on task, she very rarely grumbles about it (and I totally would if I was her age and had other things I wanted to do!!)  And Luke, while he is inventive and mischievous, is still such a little endearing little cherub that I can't help kissing him a hundred times a day. I especially love the way he is prone to falling asleep in my arms when I sing to him before his nap.  None of my other children have done that, and we are so busy that I absolutely cherish the time every day when the two of us sit down together in the rocking chair and he snuggles up and stares at my face until his eyelids flutter shut (like his mother, he goes to sleep almost instantly if you stroke his hair!).

And I'm really, really grateful that the semester is almost over, and the grading that I have left is comparatively painless (key word: comparatively).  Hurray!! Almost a month of leisure before classes start again.

I'm sure that I could ramble on about other things that are only of interest to me, but I've finished cooling off from my run now and so I really should go shower and go to bed (plus my stress-induced eyelid twitching is starting again and I can't see the screen).

Life

 It’s been so busy!  I have lots of disparate photos here that sort of tell a story, but not really.

My kitchen floor really suffers these days because my Lukey is 18 months old, and he loves loves loves to study projectile motion.  He also thinks it’s entertaining when I fence him out of the kitchen so I can mop.  Too bad it doesn’t happen as regularly as the food-throwing does…



16 weeks pregnant last week.  As we all know, I am awful at taking pregnancy photos, but here’s one anyway.  So far I am gaining weight faster with this baby than with any others.  I’ll let you imagine how I feel about that (about as happy as I look in the picture, I guess!)
My sous-chef.  He’s trying to replace Isaac but Isaac will have none of it. 

 Speaking of weight gain, the other night I was hosting book group and I made 2 lemon meringue pies, a pumpkin cheesecake, and an apple-cranberry pie with fennel crumb topping.  Yum yum yum.  Isn't this a lovely-looking pie?  

And then a couple of days later we had 15 kids at our house (our regular date night group of 12, plus three that we were watching while our friends went on an overnight date).  As I was pulling pizza after pizza out of the oven to serve ravenous children who were racing in and out of the house, I thought, “This is what all of my Friday nights will look like in ten years,” and I got excited about my kids being teenagers and filling the house with friends.  



Fortunately my oven decided to wait until AFTER the pizzas to do this:

And then Neil was making these when the heating element exploded and shot sparks through the range burners, so we experimented with cooking them in our roaster oven (okay, but definitely no substitute for the real oven.  "Strangely," although half were doughy and half were crispy, they all still got eaten).

 Lukey and Isaac were doing this funny pop-up dance the other night to the Russian dance from the Nutcracker.  I love that pair. 

 Then they “helped” with dishes (don’t you love Neil’s pants?!  I do!)

 
Making caramel apples…another item crossed off our fall bucket list! (I remembered to use waxed paper; I just forgot about using the waxed side...)

And Neil fixing the oven.  He is my hero.  Really, he is.  I’m just going to copy and paste my Facebook status here:  Tonight my husband came home from work, changed the lightbulb in the rear blinker on my minivan, changed Luke's diaper, helped me finish the final prep for dinner (and then told me about five times how good dinner was and how thankful he was for my effort), washed the dishes while I puttered around the kitchen telling him about my day, taught our FHE lesson, made caramel apples with the kids, and then replaced the heating element in the oven before rounding the munchkins up for bed. I surely do love that man.

He really is the best.  Whenever I get frustrated with him about something, I just remind myself how endlessly patient and giving he is, and how he never criticizes me (although there are many many times when he could offer a well-deserved comment), and how he is always so willing to help.  I'm so thankful for him in my life.

Praying for a miracle

So maybe some of you have wondered why we are still in graduate school, because, hey, it's been SIX AND A HALF YEARS.  (I know I certainly wonder that.)

When we originally applied to graduate schools, we very carefully weighed all our options and decided to apply exclusively for master's programs rather than doctoral programs.  And then when we interviewed at the university here, and Neil was offered full funding and the option to enter into the doctoral program, we prayed about that and felt like it was a wonderful option (I should note that I was really not thrilled about this and I was sobbing in denial when we made that decision).  But we felt like it was the right thing, and so we went for it.

When we decided, we were told by the recruiting committee that he would finish his Ph.D. in four years.  When we arrived here to begin the program a few months later, we were told to plan on at least five.  And then after we were here for a few years, we realized it would be more than that.  The program, in fact, has an eight-year limit.  Another of Neil's good friends finished last year in six years, and he came in with a master's.  Neil, on the other hand, came here straight after his undergraduate degree, so he is doing what's called a direct Ph.D.

Another thing we didn't know when we started here is that Neil's entering class was the first to be offered the direct Ph.D. option.  Nobody in his lab has successfully finished a direct Ph.D.  Understatement: it is not easy.  And Neil's adviser is not one to tell everyone exactly what to do and kick them out the door after a few years--he is very emphatic that his students learn self-directed research and do every step themselves.  He's very supportive and he meets with them every week (which isn't too common around the university, especially since he has several dozen students in his lab), but he wants them to find their own path.  Which is great, and he has learned so many invaluable lessons along the way, but it, um, takes a lot longer.

So.  Things have gotten a lot more stressful as we've seen the years slipping away.  If you've been reading my blog for very long, you've probably noticed that Neil is sick quite frequently (pneumonia is a yearly visitor).  And if you've seen him in person lately, you've probably seen that he is visibly aging--more gray hair, more lines in his face, more pallor.  He looks tired and worn out.  (I love you, honey, but it's true.  And I have far more gray hairs than any woman my age should, so it's not just him.)

Some days I feel like I literally cannot do this one more day.  I love our ward, and I love our town, and I LOVE the kids' schools, but I don't like living on a stipend meant for one person that hasn't changed as prices have ballooned over the last six years.  The house that seemed so spacious when we had an eighteen-month-old toddler now seems bursting at the seams as I think about where to put our fifth baby.  As my children have gotten older and it's become more difficult to schedule in quality time with each of them, the lure of pursuing my own career has utterly lost its luster, but my income ensures that we can continue to support our growing family without worrying about our finances.  In any case, I am ready to move on.  I've loved this chapter in our lives, but I'm ready to leave our student days behind.

Today we had a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful Relief Society lesson.  (Something else I've been struggling with lately has been the fact that I was released from my calling in Young Women's.  I truly love those girls, and it was so hard for me to gracefully say goodbye!)  But today as I was sitting in Relief Society, I realized that I needed to be hearing these lessons and undergoing my own spiritual growth in different ways.

I won't recap all of the lesson, but one comment particularly struck me.  Another woman mentioned the passage in Mark 9 where the father brings his son to the Lord, and tells the Lord that he has faith for his child to be healed, but then adds, "Lord, I believe.  Help thou my unbelief."  She went on to say that often we have so much faith, and we are praying and working for an outcome, but we truly need the Lord to help us achieve the miraculous outcome that is impossible with simply our own faith and efforts.

I walked out of that lesson feeling very strongly that we need to be asking for miracles in our family.  Lately I've gotten out of the habit of having really long, meaningful conversations with the Lord about my problems.  I pray frequently, but I have always been far to prone to try to figure things out on my own and devise solutions and make lists and to try to fix things myself, and then asking the Lord to help me be patient or supportive as I do those things.  It's very hard for me to just turn over control completely.  But today I realized that's what we need to do.  We are working ourselves to death trying to get Neil done with this degree--we have scraped out every hour possible and I have grown so weary of feeling guilty for whatever time he spends with our family.

And so as a family, we are praying for a miracle.  We are praying that the time he can give will be enough, that he will be guided in his research, that he will be able to make the right decisions quickly, that his coding will function with minimal errors, that his equipment will work properly, and that everything will come together miraculously so that he can graduate as quickly as possible.  And rather than just praying for this guidance in our own personal prayers as we've been doing for years, we decided today to do this as a family in every prayer that is said in our home.  And we're asking for a miracle, because that's what we need.

Weekend in Nauvoo

Last weekend we met up with some dear friends from grad school in Nauvoo to attend the temple.  In retrospect, I am SO glad that we were getting together with them, because it was really neat to a) see them and b) go to the temple with Neil, rather than just trading off.  It was a pretty long weekend and I'm glad there were those bright spots!  (Not-so-bright spots:  Luke screamed almost every second that we were in the car--the picture above is one I snapped when we stopped to give everyone a respite from the yelling--and Juliet was carsick.  A lot.)  Also in retrospect, we probably should not have planned a trip the weekend after the half-marathon and the weekend that all of my midterm grading came in, but we had planned it so far in advance that I hadn't really considered those two things.  Oh well.  It was so fun to see friends!

When we very first arrived, Luke was going CRAZY finally being out of the car and just running laps through the Pioneer Living Center.  Then he found this sheep and I seriously thought he was never, ever, ever going to leave it.  He kept hugging it and climbing on it and talking to it and patting it and just standing in front of it and shrieking (very very loudly) in glee, and laughing, and shrieking some more.  I think the senior missionaries were not entirely sad to say goodbye to us.

Since Banshee Luke didn't want to sleep in the car, he and I took a slumber-stroll in the (very wintry!) autumn air while everyone else visited the bakery (one of the wonderful things about Luke is that he will sleep in his stroller quite easily).  I snapped this picture of the temple while we walked back and forth.

 

And this ends the pictures I took on the trip.  Can you believe it?  I didn't get a single picture of the kiddos with their friends.  Oh well...we'll just have to meet up again soon!

 One last shot...the day before we left, Luke was playing in the backyard and fell against the fence.  Poor baby.  Poor poor baby.  I had to pull splinters and raspberry thorns out of his cheek and hands.

Laughter is the best medicine

What it looks like when the working parent  takes a sick day:


What it looks like when the stay-at-home parent takes a sick day: 

We had big plans for Halloween this year.  In September, we decided we wanted to throw a Halloween party.  A few weeks before the actual day, the girls and I made a guest list and "designed" invitations (does it count if we used Evite?).  It was so, so, so fun planning it with the girls, and we had all kinds of grand schemes for games and frying donuts and mulling cider and making delicious treatsies for the dinner.

And then, of course, the stomach flu decided to settle in at our house.  The day before the party, we finally admitted that we weren't going to be better in time.  Such a bummer.  (But this pie that I made while everyone else carved pumpkins helped allay some of my sorrow.)

Fortunately, we still managed to have a pretty fun Halloween evening.  The kids were all better by that point (it was just Neil and I who were feeling miserable, and let me tell you, there's nothing like nausea to help you avoid snitching your kids' candy after they go to bed!)

 We went out really early before it got too cold and hit a few houses with the boys...

 Luke had no clue what was going on but he DID know he did not want candy in his bag, he wanted in his mouth RIGHT NOW NOW and he was not about to move another step until someone complied.

Abigail decided at the last minute that she wanted to be a vampire princess.  She was so excited about the fact that her missing tooth made her look like she had fangs.  I love that kid.

It was pretty chilly, so I had everyone wear a coat with their costumes.  Juliet got stuck trying to pull her costume over her coat and said in this voice of total horror: "I am a marshmallow! No! Don't look at me! Turn away!"  It was so funny that I couldn't stop laughing, and I kept apologizing for my helpless giggles while I tried to straighten her out.  Fortunately she was a good sport about it.

After the boys went home with Neil, the girls totally wore me out--they were little speed demons racing around the neighborhood (by this time I was feeling pretty sick again, but fortunately survived until we got home, where I spent four very miserable hours before finally falling into a blessedly unbroken sleep).  They were so cute and funny that it was so much fun spending time with the two of them.  And then we came home and everyone pooled their candy so happily and shared the ones that they knew someone else particularly liked that it ended up being one of my favorite Halloweens yet.