Nathan Levi

Or, as he insisted today, his name is Nothing. He even wrote it on one of his homework pages. I let is pass because, he was happy, and his homework was getting done.

Nathan has been up to:

• He just started first grade. Academically, he's great. Right where he should be. I worry a little about his behavior these first few weeks. But, crack the hammer down, and he'll settle in. That's his mojo.
• His teacher told me he's got the best handwriting in the class. Not what I expected to hear, and it's really not a competition, but yeah. Best in the class. When he does settle in to do his work, he does it. 
• He was disappointed the first week of school when they did not have any science. Hope they get to that soon, since that's really where his heart lies these days. He dallies between wanting to be an entomologist, paleontologist, or astronaut.
• He hates to sit down and read. He doesn't like to do something that requires effort and practice. But when he does sit down and really do it, he does well. We got him to do it the other night because Peter wanted him to read to him. And there's not much you can say to refuse a baby brother.
• Whenever Peter babbles, Nathan asks me what he's saying. So I translate. Usually it's things like, "I want you to read to me" or "I wish you guys would stop fighting." Once in a while, to keep it believable, it will be "I just ate and I feel so happy." And every time I say something, Nathan says, "Is that really what he just said, mom?" Yes. The answer is always yes.
• We didn't do soccer or baseball or even swimming lessons this summer, but somehow he was always busy. Lego, Trios, blanket forts, collecting bugs in a jar, what have you. A few days ago he found a mushroom in the backyard and constructed Mushroom Town as a home for it, using sticks and small rocks from the side of the garage. The next day the mushroom had wilted so it became Rock Town. Rock Town was fun for the whole family, for hours.
• I love to walk home from school with him since it's almost the best time for conversation. We talk about science things, or what he did that day, or some wild hypothetical scenario that he wishes would come true.
• His favorite part about first grade is eating lunch at school and having three recesses.

He lives life deeply and intensely. When life is good, it's really good.

Clara Lois

Clara, my sweet little second mother who loves to boss her siblings around and twirl around the living room. Where to start?

• Clara started ballet this summer and loves it. She dances everywhere she goes. My friend is her teacher which makes it a lot easier for Clara to go and enjoy herself. This fall she's also started a jazz/tumbling class that she's pretty excited about. This is my substitute for a paid preschool and it seems to be a good fit.
• The night before Nathan started school Clara was in tears. "I'm going to miss Nathan and I don't want to play with Alice because she's mean to me! I want to go to a real preschool without you!" But days later she had changed her mind and would miss me too much if she had to be without me.
• We've started a co-op preschool with my sister and her friends. Five little girls, with my two. We started this week and my girls are both loving it. It gets them out and playing with someone else, but without being so overwhelming for my shy girls. 
• I finally made good on my threats: I cut her hair. The daily battles over brushing out the tangles are over, which is wonderful. She loved her short hair. It fits her personality, it was easy to do, it made her look older. But then she started ballet, and her hair is too short to do a ballerina bun. Sad day. She goes back and forth on if she wants it long again.
• Ever since I went with my friend to get a pedicure for her birthday, Clara is pining to go to to a salon. She would love her entire life to be fancy and beautiful.
• She was mad at me one day because I presumed that she would want to wear pants. Not that I had just bought her some pants. No, the mere fact that pants in her size existed, and were somehow in her bedroom, was insulting. She only wants to wear dresses. (She does still wear pants, though.)
• She loves to follow her Nathan around. He comes up with the best games. She misses him when he is gone.
• She's doing the online Upstart preschool and loves it. She asks to do it every day.
• One day, as I cleaned the kitchen during naptime, she decided she would be the maid and would do all the cleaning. She swept the floor, got a dishcloth, and started mopping. I think she's really internalized all that Cinderella glamor. But I did appreciate the help.
• Our family gave talks a couple weeks ago and she did so good. She climbed up on the stool, planted her mouth firmly on the microphone, and repeated everything I whispered to her, clearly enunciated. She would not let me adjust the microphone so it wasn't in her mouth. 

 She's getting ready to fly, that four and a half year old.

Alice Maragaret

 

 

A few things about our Alicey pirate (above), pink Ninja Turtle (below), and all around tough tomboy nurturing mother girl that she has been this summer.

• She is picking up a lot of lingo, mainly by repeating everything anyone says. 
• She's picked up a love of ninja turtles from Nathan, and used Clara's pink scarf to fashion herself a costume one evening.
• She can hold her own in a wrestling match. The other day I watched her get Nathan on the ground, stand on him, and make him scream. Mostly, but not completely, with laughter.
• She loves to play babies with Clara. They fight over the same baby stroller, despite the fact that we have two.
• Alice makes Clara cry on a regular basis.
• She is learning to dress herself. She can put skirts on by herself, as long as you don't look at the back. She still can't manage to pull it up over the diaper in back.
• She is very excited about the toilet and has twice used it successfully in the last couple of weeks.
• She has two special pink blankets: the flowie one (as in flowers) and the uddie one (as in "the other one"). As we are going to bed, she asks, "Where my uddie blankey?
• She can be so mad, screaming, and then pull herself together and say, "Oh. Okay, mama." Not always, but it's so nice when she pulls it back from a full blown tantrum.
• She is not a little kid. Don't try and call her one. She is just as big as the biggest of brothers and sisters, and can do anything they can do.
• She makes full use of her two-year-old privileges; namely, grunting and refusing to look at someone for no good reason. Usually when she, or they, have just arrived.
• She plays independently very well. She'll go to her room, or downstairs, and just find something to do.
• She likes to come into the bathroom and watch me get ready. When I put lotion on, so does she. She likes to have me put deodorant on her. When I do makeup, she wants "Wips, mama."
• When Clara gets ready for ballet class, she has to put on her leotard and dance around the living room.
• She's fearless about most things. This past weekend up at Preston, she was standing on a little log, about 8 inches tall, with her hand on the wall of the outhouse for balance. She fell, rolled on the ground with the log for a few seconds, then stood up and climbed back on, without any complaint. She's learned the phrase, "I tough kid."
• She's terrified of swings. If you push her too high, which is easy to do, you'll hear about it. And so will the rest of the neighborhood.

Fun times with a fun kid.

Peter Milton

Here's Petey, as of the beginning of June. Have I ever posted a picture of him yet? Lots to catch up on.

A few things about Peter:

• He's five months old today! Stop growing up, baby kid.
• I'll have updated height and weight for him next week. Apparently you're supposed to take babies in for a four-month visit? They called yesterday to remind me. Whelp.
• He's still got an impressive bunch of hair. It started out brown, took on a strawberry/red cast to it, and is now growing in blond. He's got a nice hombre fade-in look going on. I've never had such an on-trend baby.
• Now that it's longer, it's not so much, but his hair is spiky. Alice cannot say spiky. One day, she stood over him, exclaiming: "Fikey! Petey fikey!" Which has now become one of his nicknames, Fikey Pete. It sounds a little foreboding. Don't mess with Fikey Pete.
• Peter is apparently a good name for nicknames. Peter, Pete, Petey. Alice for a while called him "peas" but has since settled on Petey. The whole family has followed suit. He has some pajamas with a dinosaur on them that Alice has named Pete's Dragon. (We had just watched that movie.)
• He's only rolled over a couple of times and still hates tummy time. 
• For a while he'd reach up and grab onto his hair. He made himself cry a couple of times, pulling his own hair. And once he pulled out a pretty good handful of it.
• He's stopped pulling it so much, though, because now he's learned to suck on his fingers and toes. They're delectable.
• He's starting to reach out and grab things. Holding him at dinner time has gotten a little more exciting, for both parties.
•  He loves to look at himself in the mirror. Such a friendly friend! Always smiling!
• For a while he slept through the night, then started waking up a lot. Like three times a night. He's starting only getting up once lately, around 4 or 5. Comparatively, it's something I can handle.
• He's a pretty good wiggler and can rotate himself around in a circle.
• Today his hair was pretty wild, sticking out all over. Levi summed it up pretty well when he said he looked like a japanese anime character.

So we are all pretty big Peter fans. It's hard to remember what our family was like without him.

On waking up

I'm back. Or, at least on my way.

You know how it takes you a while to feel like yourself again after you have a baby? You know how it feels when you have four kids in six years and spend the last two of those years as Relief Society president? Things were fine until Peter was born and I was released when he was 7 weeks old. Suddenly everything seemed too hard. Physically, I'm still getting back to where I want to be. But mentally, things are coming into place.

In trying to get my platelet count back up, I've been trying acupuncture. We'll find out this Friday if it's helped (fingers crossed), but it's been really great. For the past few weeks, for a half an hour, I lay in a dark room. No one talks to me. I don't have to do anything. A couple of times I almost fell asleep. I think that alone has made a huge difference in the way I'm feeling.

Also, it's raining today. Is there anything better than rain?

Saturday for our nine-year anniversary we went for a hike. It was not a huge success, but I'm considering it an investment for our kids to grow up to be good hikers. We got a later start so it was hot. Clara is an unhappy hot hiker. Midway down the trail, as I started to sing the song she had just requested, she started screaming and running down the trail because she just couldn't take it anymore. It seems funny now. It seemed a little funny then. That night, after the kids went to bed, we got Chinese takeout and watched an episode of Poirot. A low-key anniversary, but isn't that kind of fitting for nine years? Planning something was just too hard.

Today I got a babysitter, went to acupuncture, stopped by the library on my way to meet a friend for a pedicure. It was lovely. This afternoon I sat down and played with my kids, my friend's son, and the neighbor kids. We played outside and watched the storm come in. A good day.

All this to say, I just realized I have one week left until school starts. Nathan is starting first grade; he'll be gone all day. When we get along, he's such a delight, with his curiosity and intelligence and creativity. He's right on the cusp of greater independence, of coming into himself, with the inevitable pulling back of not needing me so much. Glory hallelujah, and holy crap. I'll never get this summer back. And now I have one week to make it count.

Nonsense ahead

It's been far too long since I've posted any nonsense. Isn't it?

I was looking at some old pictures the other day, and Nathan as a toddler was just bursting with energy. Zest.

Then it reminded me of the Zest soap commercials from when I was a kid. There was a catchy song about being Zestfully clean.

So if all my kids could be described as soap...

[I thought of this on a day I was still recovering from my three hours of sleep Saturday night. Just a disclaimer.]

Clara, Irish Spring. It really was just the first soap that popped into my head. I guess after her ballet class is over, we could enroll her in Irish step classes. She'd love it.

Alice, Dove. Every once in a while she is peaceful and sweet, rather like a dove. Although, her usual bellicose toddler-dom would make her seem more hawkish than dovish.

Peter, Lever 2000. And...I got nothing. It was just the last soap I could think of. Sometimes being the youngest bites.

Catching up from our weekend

Whenever I sit down to blog I can't remember all the cute things I've been saving up to write about. I'll just assure you that they've been happening, and then you can imagine them.

Peter's trying to learn to laugh. His hair is growing in blond under the red. I'm a little sad about it.

We got new windows the day Levi left for scout camp. I'm super excited about them. Is that what makes you a grownup? Being excited about boring things? They are going to do a lot better job at keeping the outside temperature from becoming the inside temperature. Thus saving money on energy costs. And they look a lot prettier.

We had to take the blinds down for the install, and then Levi was gone, and we needed to go buy new screws to rehang the brackets since they were getting stripped, and I wanted to clean the blinds before rehanging. So we've been living in a fishbowl for a week. With shiny new windows. No biggie. I've just been changing clothes in the bathroom.

We survived Levi being gone for six days, with help from family and friends. It actually went pretty well. I had low expectations for myself, and they were met. Success.

Clara's going to be starting her online preschool. That should be today.

The older kids had a stomach bug this weekend. We ate at Pizza Pie cafe and the kids didn't eat much. Just as well, since Clara woke me up about 1 saying she felt "a little sick." I thought this was code for "I'm scared of the dark" but she came upstairs a few minutes after I tucked her back in, saying there was "weird stuff" in her bed.

Puke in the bed, a little bit. Puke on the blinds, still sitting on her bedroom floor, a lot. Both the kids moved out to the couch, since their room smelled awful, and I spent quite a while cleaning the blinds. They're really clean now. No more dust...or food.

And that was the rest of the night. I'd not even get back to sleep before she puked again, maybe five times? She'd come upstairs and we'd usually make it to the toilet in time. Then feeding Peter. Then Nathan puked on the carpet before he made it to the toilet. I did get back to sleep, maybe around 6. For an hour.

They spent all day laying around, not eating. They did drink a little bit. Then they fell asleep and refused to eat dinner when we woke them up. Levi woke Nathan up, and he got up and went to the bathroom. He found him a few minutes later, asleep on the bathroom floor with his pants still down. They were out for the night at 5 pm. Poor sick kids.

It kind of felt like playing house, to only have two kids to take care of in the evening. They were pretty adorable.

Everybody was up at 7 this morning. Everybody ate breakfast. Recovery!  Levi told me later that Clara got up as he was leaving for work. "Dad, my legs don't work very well." She was pretty shaky. He gave her a bowl of yogurt and left. I'm pretty glad she didn't come wake me up next.