Celebration of cultural treasures

 For the past five or six weeks, Abigail's class has been doing a unit on foreign countries (Neil went in and spoke one day about his two years in the Philippines; happily, it was a day that Luke and I were also volunteering in the class, so we got to catch the last few minutes of his presentation!)

Each child chose a country and then they've been doing a wide variety of research-based assignments about the country.  The very first assignment was that they choose a name and create a name placard (Abigail's is hung over the top of her Eiffel Tower model in the photo above).  Next, they researched historic and current clothing from the country, then found a recipe that they liked (more about that later) and submitted it as part of a class cookbook.  The capstone assignment was to choose two of six projects that required more hands-on time.  Abigail chose to make an illustrated French-English dictionary and a 3-D model of the Eiffel Tower.

Neil and Abigail spent a couple of Saturdays scaling down the tower, tracing it onto cardboard, then taping and painting (and glittering!).  Abigail wanted it to look like the tower was lit up at night, and she was thrilled with the result:

She also wrote up an explanatory report to accompany her display that read as follows:

The person who designed it was Gustave Eiffel. It was built in 1889 for the World’s Fair. It is in Paris, France. It is 1,050 feet tall without the spike, which is 13 feet tall. You ride the elevator or take the stairs to the 1^st or 2^nd level, climb the staircase, and you’re on the 3^rd level. The public can only go to the 2^nd level, not the 3^rd. There are 1665 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.     

For the dictionary, Abigail and I made a list of 28 words or phrases that she wanted to use.  She translated them all into French using Google Translator (sidenote:  doing things like this always makes me realize how different the world is for my children than it was for me at their age.  I got on Wikipedia to check some facts about the Tower and Abigail was like, "Mom, Ms. X (her teacher) says that Wikipedia isn't always a reputable source.  Maybe you should look somewhere else."  If only my students--who are seniors graduating from college!!!--would go by that same rule!).

Anyway, once we had the list of words, we took photos of Abigail acting them all out (wearing my beret in most of the shots), printed out the photos, and glued them in one of those nifty little hard-backed books.  I was really happy with how the project came together.  Some of my favorites below (I'll spare you all 28).

This one is my absolute favorite.  Oh, their little faces are all so funny!  The kids were SO into this whole photo shoot and had such a blast.

 Another great one...




This evening, all of the parents & siblings were invited to come see all of the projects on display.  We also all made the recipe (from the earlier project), so each country was represented by a native food or two (we, of course, brought baguettes).  Since there are two high-ability classes, it worked out to just short of 50 different foods and 100 awesome projects.  It was so cool to try all of the foods and see all of the awesome things that the kids had created!  I took only one photo of the other projects (most of the time it was super packed; this was at the very end), but it was awesome.  Some of our favorites:  the Great Wall of China, a Berlin cathedral made out of Rice Krispie treats (my kids wanted to eat that one so. much.), Stonehenge, a video of a kid doing an Irish dance (when that came on every single kid in the room went crazy trying to dance along), several models of canyons/enormous rivers, etc.

And last but not least, 32 weeks pregnant!  My favorite thing about this photo is Luke busily splashing away in the sink next to me.  :-)  I have to say that I'm actually feeling a lot better these days than I was during my first or even second trimester.  No more horrible pain from the ovarian cyst, and the baby is so low that weirdly enough it's way more comfortable.  Because of the baby's positioning, I'm running more more slowly than I did at this point in my pregnancy with Luke, but I don't have the grinding horrible back pain that I did with Lukey (plus the prenatal massage that I had earlier this week--Neil's Valentine's Day gift--was amazing and I could totally go for that oh, every day).

pictures I took today

Today we went for a walk in our favorite woods, something which I have been longing to do for weeks, ever since the weather started to act like maybe someday it might be spring again.  This morning was perfect--warm enough to be comfortable but cold enough that it wasn't just a big puddle of slush.  I felt my heart and mind rejoicing as I watched the kids run ahead of us and I told Neil (for probably the thousandth time) that I am never happier with our family than when we are out hiking together.

 

Earlier today before our woods fun, Abigail and I slipped out for a few minutes and went over to join a Relief Society craft activity.  They had a dozen really cool crafts going on this morning for five hours--I only signed up for one because I knew I wouldn't have much time, but we got there right when it started and made a few hand-stamped necklaces like the ones from the Vintage Pearl that I've been craving for years (while Abigail tried to convince me to name the baby TODAY I just couldn't make up my mind, so we'll be adding that one later...plus I have a couple extra charms for future babies).

I was really happy with how the necklaces turned out (Abigail and I also made one for her and one for Jules) and it was so so so fun to hang out with Abigail.


Isaac still continues to be my darling handsome boy.

 The girls spent most of quiet time today in their room playing with LEGOs.  Isaac collected a handful of tiny yellow pieces to feed his chickens (he built a chicken coop and half a dozen LEGO chickens about a month ago and he is so protective of them!), stashed them in his pocket, and then made a giant nest out of all my bed pillows, which I'd thrown on the floor while I was changing the sheets.  He stayed there the entire time I was running and read stories to his bear--he told me that he was being its daddy and making sure that it was safe and happy.

And speaking of being happily engrossed in a pile of books, here is my Luke after his nap...


The girls started laughing whenever he did this cheesy grin and now he does it all.the.time.  It's the cutest thing ever.



Abigail reading her scriptures just before bedtime...

And really, I was just so in love with Neil tonight when I saw him vacuuming the floor with glitter filling his hair--he had been out in the garage helping Abigail finish up her model of the Eiffel Tower (the glitter was representative of the tower's lights at night and he had no idea that his head was also shining like a beacon).  Love, love, love that man.

the children's hour

My very favorite time of day with my children are the hours after lunch (oh, how we miss our Abigail during the school week!).  Everyone is calm(ish) and fed and happy, and it has so many little moments packed into those few hours that are the ones I really look forward to every day.

Usually as I'm washing the lunch dishes, Juliet is snuggled up with the boys and reading them stories.  The kitchen is shining with cleanliness and the low hum of the dishwasher is a sonorous background when I leave to join them.  When I tell Luke it's time for his nap, he chortles with happiness and runs for his room, stopping to grab his beloved blankie on the way.  The two of us find his pacifier and then cuddle together in his rocking chair (sometimes Isaac joins us, sometimes not).  We read his current favorites and he takes out his pacifier to tell me the order that he'd like them read in today.  (Right now his best-beloveds are Llama Llama Red Pajama, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Night in the Country and The Best Nest.  He actually woke Neil up this morning by climbing onto our bed with Night in the Country and demanding,"Da-yi, night-night sory!")

When Luke and I finish reading our stories together, I sing him his two favorite lullabies, "Tender Shepherd" and Mindy Gledhill's "Hourglass."  I rub his head while I sing and he snuggles contentedly against me and sighs with happiness (sometimes if he's really sleepy, he rubs his own head too).  About half the time, his eyelashes drift downward to brush his cheeks and his body goes limp and heavy as he falls asleep in my arms.  He's the only one of my children to do this on a regular basis, and it is such a gift to have this daily time of perfect happiness with my very busy little boy.

After I tuck Luke into his crib, I go out to read with Juliet and Isaac.  I pick up my knitting and Juliet and I take turns reading aloud (she's started to knit too, so this is also when we do her kntting lessons).   Often the time slips away and I don't notice how long we've been reading, the three of us curled up together in a pile of pillows and lovies and blankies, until my voice gets increasingly hoarse.  Isaac rests his head on my shoulder and Juliet tucks her hand around my arm and my heart overflows with love for my precious babies.

Naming people is hard!

Okay, so I created a poll with some of the names we've been debating (you guys, we have GOT to think of a name, because we start talking about it late at night and the next thing you know it's 1 am and we're arguing over the relative merits of Telemachus vs. Othello.  I'm not kidding; that was a real conversation.  Also Aeneas.  And Ulysses).

Please take the poll--it's in the sidebar!  And if you hate all those names, or you have a better idea, please please tell me in the comments on this post.

Happy Valentine's Day to you too

So I feel like blogging, but I don't really have much of beauty about which to blog.  Can I tell you something?  I really have no idea what I'm doing as a parent and boy, today I realized that over and over and over.

• Today Isaac said, "It's time to say the prayer!" and kicked me really hard to get my attention.
• Today I asked Abigail what I'd just told her (we were working on this project for which I had spent the morning driving around town to pick up all the supplies, and I was really stressed about it because it's a big part of her grade) and she said, "Um, use your best handwriting and blah blah blah blah something blah blah something blah blah blah."
• Today Juliet barricaded herself under the couch in tears because she felt sad because I met Neil for lunch and she didn't get to come (she was partying it up at school).
• Today Luke tried to bite me and bit himself instead and then he got even madder so he tried to hit the bookcase but guess what, that hurt too.
• [Not today but Tuesday] Luke stuck his hands in his diaper and painted my bedroom carpet with an extremely thick layer of poop.  Right before bedtime.  When Neil was gone and I was flying solo.
• Today Isaac told me that I'm not his friend because girls can't be buddies.  He then went on to enumerate everyone that he loves more than me.  Totally out of the blue EXCEPT that this is the sixth time he's done this in the last two days (yesterday he came in while I was running and stood next to the treadmill and yelled all the names very loudly so that I would be sure to hear).
• Today Juliet left her backpack, lunchbox, and homework at school.  Or on the bus.  Or who knows where.
• Today Abigail had homework but she couldn't remember what it was.
• Today I couldn't eat dinner because I felt sick to my stomach from being angry and upset at all of the pre-dinner drama.
• Today Neil and I went to lunch with the boys and Isaac refused to eat ANYTHING and sat under the table instead.

I worry that my kids are going to remember their childhood as a mix of Mommy yelling, crying, and occasionally being fun and happy.

I've been starting to grade the first few major projects that are trickling in early.  I'm frustrated at how long it takes me to get a sense of how the students are doing this semester and how I should be scoring the projects.  Then I remembered that the first ones always take longer, and that in a few more hours I'll be (comparatively) whipping through them.

Then I started thinking about how hard it is for me to know how to parent my children, and I thought that maybe if I had like...20...I might be better at it by child number 18 or 19, and that these first ones are my figure-it-out ones, and I really wish that they had a more experienced mother who always knew how to keep her cool and not be hurt and all of those good things.

But.

• Today I did NOT drive to school to punch Juliet's gym teacher in the face (like I wanted to) when she tearfully told me that she cried in gym class because she didn't know the rules of the game, and all he said to her was "We don't cry in gym" rather than explaining what was going on.
• Today my children were safely buckled into their bus seats rather than being whacked on the head by the kids running all around them, because they have a mother who called the transportation director and insisted that the bus driver follow the school's guidelines, rather than letting the kids run wild on the bus punching each other and jumping from seat to seat while the bus is moving (I did not feel the least bit guilty when Abigail reported that "now everyone behaves on the bus and sits in their seats and buckles up because the driver said we have to or she'll get fired because someone's mom called her boss and complained").
• Today I crawled under the couch and told Juliet how much I missed her and how glad I was that she was in half-day kindergarten, because the days are so long and lonely without her there to cheer me up.
• Today I read every single book to Isaac that he asked for, even though it took me 2 solid hours. 
• Today I drove all over town collecting supplies for Abigail's project because I wanted it to turn out the way she had envisioned it.
• Today I patiently worked through each and every one of Abigail's new piano pieces for this week with her so that she knows the correct fingering for each one (her biggest roadblock).
• Today I made everyone dinner even though I couldn't eat it myself.
• [Not today] I cleaned up Luke's mess and I still loved him anyway.
• Today I told Isaac that I love him and I will always love him because he's my little boy.  Even if he doesn't feel the same way about me.
• Today I had a wonderful lunch with Neil and Luke at my favorite restaurant.  And when we came home, Isaac had a carton of raspberry yogurt.

A post brought to you by Lap Luke

29 weeks last week and rounding the corner into 30 as I type this.  This baby simultaneously feels far away (end of semester!) but suddenly close (sleepless nights!)

I'm carrying this baby much lower than any of my previous pregnancies, something which I can probably chalk up to age and loosening muscles.  Kind of a sobering realization, but eh, whatever.  As I noticed when I was pregnant with Luke when he "dropped," it's much more comfortable to run this way (on a relative scale.  Running is still really hard right now, and I am slower than I was with Luke!)

I actually took these pictures right before a run at about 10 pm on Saturday night, which is why I look so tired.

 Last week Neil worked right around 65 hours, not counting his commute time (which actually adds up quite a bit since he comes home for dinner most nights).  I know this probably doesn't sound like much in the grand scheme of things, but it sure felt like a lot between my part-time job, 2 sick kids and one sick me, that whole pregnant-and-exhausted thing, etc.  We're hoping for more hours this week.

Anyway, Sundays are like the most blissful thing ever right now.  Neil and I both took a nap (the girls & Isaac were playing LEGOs and didn't want anything to do with us, so YES, naps!) and then we ate an early dinner and spent the evening playing Ticket to Ride with the kids and eating chocolate chip cookies.

Isaac got increasingly bored as the game went on, but the girls were WAY into it!

Luke had a bath afterwards because he thoroughly chocolated himself and draw all over his body with marker.

 I'm realizing that there are a lot of pictures of me looking pretty ragged in this post, but it was a good day, and I loved spending time with everyone all together.  It's all too rare these days and I'm so thankful for the times when it DOES happen!

 And now I'm off to persuade Isaac that since it's 9 am, he really DOES need to change out of his pajamas (not that I'm coming from a position of moral high ground in my old tech shirt and yoga pants).  Today is one of those lovely days where we have nothing scheduled, so we have no plans more elaborate than to spend our morning reading stories, playing with Lincoln Logs & trains, and doing yoga.  Yay!  (The afternoon/evening will be crazier, but the morning will be lovely!)

Outings

 This weekend Neil and I traded some late-night (after the kiddies were asleep) babysitting with another couple.  We decided to go mini-golfing at an indoor glow-in-the-dark place, which was quite entertaining and underscored the fact that I should never ever look at professional putting as a career.
(but look how freaky my teeth are in the black lights!  cool, right?)

My favorite part of the whole experience was when one of the employees was trying to make conversation with us and was like, "So, do you know if you're having a boy or a girl yet?  Is this your first baby?" and I said, "No, actually, it's our fifth," and he just gaped at us and started stuttering and it was funny.

My camera didn't fare very well with the lighting, but I still like this blurry shot of this handsome dude.

I wear running shoes pretty much 24/7.  I've never been much of a shoe person, but I used to make at least a token effort to wear outfit-appropriate shoes, but now that I have a gigantic pile of shoes that are too worn to wear for running (more than 600 miles) but are otherwise pristine-looking, I figure they should be used for something.

After we went mini-golfing, we went to one of those (overpriced) places where you can add all sorts of mix-ins to your yogurt and then pay by the ounce.  Very fun, but I think next time I'll just skip the yogurt and go for the raspberries, pecans, and brownie chunks.

On that note, a week ago I went to see my midwife (for the first time in 8 weeks...) and I had gained WAY more weight than I thought I should based on my other pregnancies, and I was totally freaking out and miserable and hating myself and started being hyper about every morsel of food I ate (which basically meant I was ravenous all the time).  Anyway, she mentioned that she thought their scale needed to be re-calibrated because everyone else she'd seen that morning had been shocked by their weight gain.  So when I took Luke to the pediatrician on Wednesday (because we are sick! again!) I weighed him on our scale when we got home, and it was dead-on with the pediatrician's scale, and then I weighed myself, and HAH!  Ten pounds less than the midwife's scale.

So I didn't really worry about piling in all those brownies and pecans (the M&Ms were a mistake because they got too cold).

Today we went to the elementary school carnival.  Around our house Luke's little backpack is called the "Monkey of Shame."  Its traditional use is for children who are running off in crowds and is kind of a last resort...except where Luke is concerned.  As we were getting into the car about 4 different people asked if we had the Monkey of Shame for Luke.

Jules all set to run the inflatable obstacle course...




So this was pretty cute--I was worried about whether Isaac would be able to do this on his own, and Abigail said she'd take care of him.  When she was up at the top of the climbing wall thingie, she noticed that Isaac hadn't quite figured out how to ascend it, so she dropped back down and gave him a little climbing lesson and waited to make sure he could get up before she went up again.

Sometimes I am really pleasantly surprised with how happy my children are with the smallest things.  We only purchased 25 tickets at the entrance, based on the ticket sellers telling us that most games were only 1-2 tickets, and I didn't bring any extra cash (just a single check, so once that was written, we were done).  The obstacle course took 12 tickets, leaving us with only 13 to spend, and we quickly realized that all of the really fun stuff was 4 tickets each and most of the rest was 2-3 tickets.  We opted to do some of the smaller games that gave out Dum-Dums as prizes, and while the kids spent a looong time debating how to spend their last two tickets, I didn't hear a single complaint or request for more tickets or an attempt to con a sibling out of their tickets.  Everyone was just content with their Dum-Dums and happy to see all of the exciting booths at the carnival without participating in the vast majority of them.  It was a good lesson for me.