5 Little Monkeys

Here's a preschool gem of a song sung by one of the cutest, smartest 4 year olds that I know:

Bowling in Blanding

Who knew that Blanding had a bowling alley?!  Apparently they do now, inside one of the gas stations.  That sounds really weird, but it's nice, and when we were in Blanding in February Granna and Grandad treated us to a game.  None of our kids had ever bowled before other than during primary singing time during church, so they were pretty excited.

Valentine Daddy Daughter Dance

Kate brought a flier home from preschool advertising a daddy-daughter valentines dance being held at the high school, and Kerry and I decided that Kate would have a blast.  She looked forward to it all week leading up to it, and was super excited to pick out which dress she wanted to wear and get all ready.  

By the time Kerry and Kate were ready to leave the house, she was bubbly and positively beaming.  Kerry said that the dance was packed with little girls and their dads (it was a fundraiser for the high school cheerleaders, best idea ever).  Kate is quite the dancer in general, but even Kerry was amazed at her enthusiasm.  She danced nonstop for almost 2 hours before Kerry could convince her to take a break and get a cookie and some water.  Fortunately, Kerry was in his element, and was more than happy to check any self-consciousness at the door and crazily dance the night away with Kate.  

The report I got from Kate was that "Daddy and I danced a lot, and we did the 'What Does the Fox Say', and I twirled a lot, and we ate cookies, and the music was loud, and there were lots of lights".   When they came home that evening Kate wanted to tell me all about it, and was already looking forward to next year when they can go again.

Growing Plants and Kids

We've done a garden in our backyard during the past few summers, but this winter/early spring is the first time I've been anticipating it.  It feels a bit like an emotional investment, or emotional outlet, or something like that, in a way that it never has before, and in a way that I need with our current family life.

 My anticipation for the gardening season has led me to not only list out the type and number of plants that I want in the garden this year, but I've also measured the exact square footage of the backyard, plotted out where I want the garden to be this year, and even used hand-drawn graph paper to start mapping out exactly how much will fit where.  Well, I actually did two versions of this, just in case we haven't made progress with leveling the yard like we're hoping to.

I think part of this near-obsession stems from my life feeling a bit claustrophobic right now.  I think that we're in large part past the most intense adjustment period with the boys, but even though we're able to get out as a family and participate in life in fairly normal ways, the fog that has been the last year of our family's life has left me not knowing really what I like to do by myself.  Doing anything by myself or for myself beyond exercising hasn't been much of an option up till now.  And when faced with pinpointing things that I love to do and would like to start doing again, I feel kind of panicky when I realize that I no longer know what I like to do.  And then I panic because I really do want to have personal interests and hobbies, and if I can't think of any,  perhaps being a mother of three with a hard year behind me has leached out my individuality and replaced it with someone who is less "me" and more of "someone's mom".

Another probable cause is that a garden is a whole lot simpler to take care of than children are, and the results are a whole lot more immediate.  Plant, water, weed, let it do it's thing, and in a few months you have the desired results.  As tedious as I always thought a garden was, plants mostly do their thing by themselves, and compared to the timeline of raising kids, a garden is practically a cakewalk.  Last summer I could count on the garden to be reliable when not much else in our lives were, and I would just pray as I watered the garden that we were somehow making as much progress in attachment and all the adjustment that was going on in our family as I was in keeping the plants growing.

Now, a few months later, I can see that there really has been progress, but there's still so much to do.  We're tired.  And the progress we hope we're making each day usually isn't visible for quite a while.  Instead of being able to see the immediate results of yanking a weed so that plants can grow, the weeds are deeply rooted in our children and can't be so easily pulled.  Instead, we have to try to give them the love and attention they need so that they can move past the challenges they are currently dealing with.

And so I'm looking forward to planting a garden, where I can have a place to put a little of my energy toward something that can show immediate results to help balance out the longer-term emotional investments I'm putting into my kids.

Holidays Grim

You know the telephone game where something is said from one person to another and the end result is unintelligible?  That's exactly what happened when Tam learned Christmas songs at school for the kindergarten holiday program, then came home and taught them to Kate and Yeb.  

It was fun to go to the kindergarten program and hear was all the songs actually say.  The actual version of this song says (I think) Holiday Christmas, or maybe Holiday Traditions, or something like that.  Who knows?  We only sing "Holidays Grim" at our house.  

Tam Turned 6!

Tam looked forward to his birthday for months.  He waited patiently (for the most part) through the other two kids' birthdays, so he was pretty hyped up to FINALLY celebrate his own.  We decided to keep it as low key as possible, because the last thing Tam needed on a really exciting day was even more excitement he didn't know how to deal with.  As it was, it was a very rough morning, but he had a great afternoon, enjoyed all the attention at kindergarten, and was pumped to have his little party that evening.  

Tam got a birthday crown from school, and Kate decided to make one for everyone else.

He chose macaroni and cheese for his birthday dinner, and then Grandma and Grandpa came over for cake, ice cream and presents.  It was really fun for him to be the center of attention and to enjoy all the birthday festivities.  The next morning he wanted me to explain in detail exactly when his next birthday would happen.

His new favorite line to use when explaining why he can/is allowed to do something is now "Because I six."

First Swim

We went to Kerry's sister and brother-in-law's house in Huntington to celebrate New Years, and while we were there Tom's parents invited us to come swim in their pool.  Even though the boys came home last spring with plenty of pool season to enjoy, we spent the whole summer ridding them of giardia.  I'm guessing that all the chemicals in pools would have probably taken care of any danger of it spreading to other people, but....ick.  So the boys still hadn't been in a pool.  Come to think of it, they've only been in a bathtub twice, both times at Tom and Nancy's house, because we only have showers at our house. 

End result: they now think of Tom and Nancy's as the coolest place ever, and they still had the awesome kid confidence that since they knew what swimming was, they would surely be master swimmers.

We headed over to the pool, got the kids and Kerry all in swim suits, and had to keep a VERY close eye on the boys because they had no concept of the danger the pool could be.  They were seriously trying to just jump in.  After getting life jackets and floaties on everyone and going over basic safety, they were ready to try it out!

This shows a little of the excitement Yeb had.  And me at the end yelling for Kerry to grab a kid?  That also happened repeatedly. :)

It was absolutely hilarious.  Seriously.  I think that it made up for about a month's worth of tantrums to see them swim for the first time.  Yeb just flailed around, yelled in excitement and was continually thrilled by the water splashing on his face, Tam had the initial flail and then started watching the older kids to copy, and Kate calmly paddled around all the mayhem.  

 After swimming for a bit, Kate was still paddling calmly, Yeb had retired to the steps to play with some water toys, and Tam had swallowed enough water to make himself throw up, which ended the pool play date.

I'm excited to take our whole family swimming this summer, and to get Tam and Kate in swim lessons!