Shirts

We are continuing to make progress on our war against stuff. On Saturday the kids and I folded several loads of laundry. Then, instead of sending them with their own apparel to put away, I sat down with each child and went through every item in their basket and drawers.

Between hand-me-downs, new school clothes, and the fact that most of his shirts still fit from last year, we discovered that Cooper had twenty short-sleeved shirts in his drawer. Twenty! That's not even counting the eight long-sleeved shirts, five undershirts, or two polo shirts. That is too many shirts! We thinned the pack to a slightly more respectable thirteen.

We've also been gathering all of the stuff from other parts of the house that doesn't have an assigned spot yet. The floor next to my side of the bed is a mass of canvas bags, over-flowing magazine holders, and messy flip-top bins. This means the rest of the house is starting to look like a home rather than an episode of Hoarders.

After we finished The Great Clothing Purge on Saturday, we piled into the van for a fun lunch at Ikea. (Sadly, it'll be the last Ikea lunch for a while. They've raised their prices without improving their quality.) As we munched on Swedish meatballs, we discussed whether or not we needed a certain piece of furniture. My heart swelled with maternal pride as Peter uttered the words, "I don't really think we need anymore stuff."

Well said, my boy, well said.

Moniker

Curious about his first full week of school, I decided to ask Cooper a few questions as he was falling asleep tonight. I laid my head on the pillow next to him and began my interview.

Me: Cooper, do you like this school?

Cooper: Yes.

Me: Do you play with kids during recess?

Cooper: Yes.

Me: Do you know any of their names?

Cooper: No.

He has a great memory for places and events, but not for people. Oh well, he should know their names sometime before the end of the school year.

Bling

This morning we walked the boys to school, as has become our custom. We saw each boy to his assigned door, then we walked all the way around the outside of the building to the front office to drop something off with the nurse. At that point we were ready to walk home.

Phoebe had been asking to push Sophie in the stroller, and I had told her she could once we were on our way home. Since it was finally her turn, I took a step back and made room for her. On the walk to school my attention had been split between all the kids and the path, but now my focus landed on Phoebe and Sophie. It was at this moment that I saw something purple near Phoebe's hair.

I leaned over and discovered that Phoebe was wearing a purple, sparkly, clip-on earring. What's more, she was rocking the 80's hairband look by only wearing one earring. When I asked her if she'd been wearing it the whole time (perhaps I thought she'd stowed it in her pocket for when the moment to accessorize felt just right), she smiled and said yes.

And really, if more people wore sparkly, purple, clip-on earrings with their sweatpants and sneakers, we might all be a little happier.

The Littlest Helper

Witching Hour

What is it about bedtime that brings out the crazy in everyone at my house? That end of dinner, not yet asleep time reboots all of my children and transforms them from regular energetic kids to yelling, screeching, reckless speedsters.

More experienced moms have told me that the kids will just run out of steam. But they don't. They just keep winding up and up and up until the walls of my house feel and sound like they're going to come shaking down to the ground, Jericho-style. Tonight the boys were literally running up the walls. They would take a running leap off the end of the bed, then move their feet as fast as they could, traveling in the direction of the ceiling.

Bedtime is not for the faint of heart.

Silver Linings

On Saturday, after running a few errands with Peter and Sophie,  I was at home talking to Bryan. I suddenly realized that my vision was weird, the first sign of a migraine. I quickly took some medicine, but didn't catch it in time. I kept moving doing Saturday chores, but I was in a lot of pain. It finally went away by the late afternoon.

It always takes a day or two to get my eyes and brain back to normal after a migraine, so yesterday was off. I was looking forward to having a good regular day today.

Can you tell where I'm going with this?

Today the girls and I were at Target, returning a few items, picking up a few others, when that familiar weird vision came back. I was looking at a sign with a picture of a person on it and she had a strange glare on her face. Then I looked at a different picture and he had the same glare.

Uh-oh.

I keep magnesium in my bag, but my water was in the car, as were the acetaminophen and ibuprofen. I finished as quickly as I could, but I was too late. It took an hour to have enough vision to drive home. When we got here I staggered up the stairs with Sophie in my arms, deposited her in her bed, then fell into mine. I turned on a movie for Phoebe and tried to sleep it off.

I am still sick. The pain isn't so bad right now while I'm not moving, but typing is triggering the nausea that I thought was under control. The pain was the most intense I've felt, aside from labor, in twelve years. It has been a rough day.

There were a few silver-linings though. Sophie took a three-hour nap while she usually only sleeps for two. Phoebe was so sweet and helpful. My neighbor got the boys from school and walked them home. And, perhaps the best of all, Bryan took an early train and traveled for two hours to come take care of me and the kids.

And now, I need to sleep in the hopes that I can function tomorrow.

Chew Chew Train

We have a family email address that we use for school and bills. When he set up the account, Bryan was prompted to add a birthday. Instead of using his own, he used our wedding anniversary. That means on Tuesday he got a Google notification for our family's birthday. I told the kids and they thought "family's birthday" sounded way cooler than "anniversary." Instead of baking cakes and decorating the entire house (Phoebe's suggestions), we decided to go out for a family birthday dinner celebration.

Someone in the ward told me about a local diner that caters not only to kids, but to kids with peanut and tree nut allergies. Peter felt an unfamiliar yet welcome sense of ease at being in a restaurant that was safe for him. And the whole place was decked out in train paraphernalia, so all the kids were happily engaged throughout the meal.

Ignore the goofy look on my face (but do notice my favorite shirt) and focus instead on Cooper's face. That's a look of joy right there.

Notice the two tracks? One is on the wall and runs the perimeter of the room. A train traveled continuously on that track, a train which Sophie watched with great fascination. Every time it disappeared into the birthday party room Sophie would shrug her shoulder, raise one hand, palm up fingers out, and say "Dair di di doe?" That's Sophie-speak for "Where did it go?"

Now for track number two. This train delivered our food. See those baskets? They drove by each time someone's food was ready. Cupcakes and ice cream (cleverly) rode by several times. The kids thought it was awesome. And they all wanted cupcakes ($2.99) and ice cream ($2.99) afterward. We told them we would enjoy watching the train, then have our own ice cream party at home.

This was a very fun experience. The food was pretty good, but, other than the guarantee of being nut-free, was not really the focus of the diner. Rather, the atmosphere and decor were the big attractions here. This train table sits in the front window of the restaurant. While we waited for our food, the three big kids stood, rapt, watching the trains run.

As much as I would have enjoyed a quiet dinner with Bryan, I kind of loved turning our anniversary celebration into a family event. I think I'd like to make this a new tradition and celebrate our family's birthday every year.

All In One Day

In honor of a new school year starting, I'm going to finally clean out Cooper's backpack from last year. It's full of art projects and I haven't wanted to throw them away, so I've left the backpack alone as I've dealt with other items on my to-do list.

One of the many gems contained in the bag was a book of Cooper's writing. I assume these are responses to prompts they were given. I asked Cooper which was his favorite and he selected the following. I'm going to leave his spelling as he wrote it, because it's almost all correct, and those words that are incorrect are awesome.

May 6, 2015

I wish I knew how to drive a plane. I would ride that plane out of America all the way to China and Japan and London and Paris and Englend and Afganistan and Brisile the aaaall the way back to New Jersey then to my ant's house unde the chire and stay there for two hool howers all in one day.

Back to the Grind

Today was the beginning of the new school year. For those of you keeping track, we had nine weeks of summer vacation rather than the twelve weeks we would have had if we'd stayed in New Jersey. The boys were ready to start the new year so they could make friends, but I'm still not ready to go back to the school routine.

But I'm not the one going to school, so I guess I can deal.

We walked to school with our neighbor. She was outside and ready to go at the appointed time as I came flying out of the house, handing signs to boys, telling them to stand still and smile, apologizing for delaying the journey. She was patient, but I called it after only a few pictures and hoped for the best.

Well, here's what I got.

Pictures aside, the boys both had a great first day.

And while they were off organizing school supplies and learning a new schedule, the girls and I were getting to know some of the neighborhood moms. As I dropped Peter's Epi-Pen off at the nurse's office I struck up a conversation with another mom. It turns out that she has a daughter, also with a peanut allergy, in Peter's class. She invited us to a get-together for several moms she was hosting so we spent a few hours meeting people.

Overall, it was a full first day for everyone.

Fourteen!

Today is our fourteenth wedding anniversary! In preparing for this post, I discovered that it's been awhile since Bryan and I took a picture together, just the two of us. When he heard that, Bryan suggested we take a selfie. We found a blank wall, grabbed my camera, and started smiling. It only took 119 tries to get this picture. Seriously. But don't worry, we were laughing a lot, even during the pictures that didn't make the cut.

Happy Anniversary Bryan!

The War on Stuff

I know that I complained last week that we have too much stuff. Really, I was just feeling overwhelmed with unpacking and murmuring a bit. But today it hit me: we really have too much stuff. An excessive amount of my time is spent taking care of stuff or making sure the kids take care of stuff or shopping for stuff or deciding who needs new stuff.

And I don't want to do that anymore.

So, here is my resolve, laid down in writing. I am getting rid of stuff. I've been doing this for months, but I'm not going to be as sparing as I have been in the past. I do not want our belongings to determine how we spend our time.

And now, I'm going to go fill a bag or two for Goodwill.

School Daze

I've been working on enrolling the boys in school for more than a week. The school districts here require visits to the dentist, the eye doctor, and the pediatrician in order to go to school. I've been so focused on that, I didn't realize we also needed a letter signed by our landlord confirming that we actually live where we say we live.

Apparently our school district is so sought after we have to do everything short of providing forensic evidence to prove we live here. I called the district office yesterday to ask if my signed lease was sufficient, but it's not. And then the woman that I talked to said we were so close to school starting (halfway through next week) that even if I signed the boys up soon they might not be able to start on the first day.

What?!

She said it took a few days to process paperwork. I thought, but did not say, "It didn't take that long in the three other states my kids have gone to school in." Instead I thanked her for the information, hung up the phone, and freaked out.

Bryan and I believe in playing to our strengths and supporting each other in our weaknesses. I happen to be terrible at making official, business, non-friends-or-family phone calls. They fill me with dread. I have trouble hearing over the phone under the best circumstances, and there are usually children running and screaming at my house the moment I try to make a phone call, so that exacerbates my poor phone hearing. Bryan picks up the slack and handles most of those exchanges for our family.

But I do most of the kid-related stuff. And Bryan was at work and unable to help. So I did what any clear thinking adult would do: I took my kids to the pool and asked Bryan to deal with it when he got home. That is his strength, after all.

Last night after the kids were in bed, Bryan emailed the document and our landlord responded almost immediately with an e-signature. The only technology our NJ landlords would use was a telephone, so it's lovely to have a landlord that uses email. Bryan and I stayed up last night making sure we had all the needed forms and documents ready.

This morning I gave the wildly false impression to the woman who helped me at the district office that I'm incredibly organized. The application process went smoothly and the boys are not only enrolled for next year, but they also know who their teachers will be.

I made their arrival at the new school official by paying the annual school fees. That's right, in order to attend public school in Illinois you have to pay money. Aside from the dough I plunked down for school supplies and the money I paid for the various doctor visits, today I wrote a check for almost $250 for Peter and Cooper to be in fourth and second grade.

The whole ordeal has made me seriously consider homeschool...

And the Living is Easy

The Highs Are Greater Than the Lows

After we finished a few morning chores (does anyone else have to include putting on daytime clothes in the chores category?), we took the day off from unpacking. Our first stop was a fun, albeit cold, splash pad. The big kids loved it, Sophie wanted nothing to do with it. At one point Peter tried to show her how much fun she could have and led her through a misting double arch. She looked completely betrayed and refused to go near the water after that.

After the water play, we went home for lunch and spent the afternoon playing in the backyard. Well, the kids played while I made a tiny dent in the field of weeds we have back there, but I like weeding, so we can count that as playing. The kids rode bikes and scooters and gathered rocks out of the neglected landscaping.

Then we took a walk to the boys' school and played at the playground. Highlights included seeing a rabbit, meeting one of our neighbors on the walk back, and subsequently being invited to a neighborhood party.

You want to know something funny? Looking at my account of the day, it seems pretty idyllic, doesn't it? But I didn't see it that way as the day was happening. The kids have all had trouble sleeping (new house worries?) and are reaching a new level of cranky and tired. They each show it in different ways. Peter argues more and gets increasingly defiant (which is kind of mind boggling), Cooper screams and hits and whines to the point that you can't really understand what he's saying. Phoebe takes dramatic to new heights and yells ALL THE TIME. Sophie gets silly, which I can deal with.

And I'm tired and feeling stressed that the boys aren't enrolled in school even though it starts next week and that I still haven't finished unpacking and that the kitchen is so small I'm having trouble finding counter space to prepare any food and between work and his commute Bryan has been out of the house for twelve hours each day for the last three days and I'm feeling overworked and underpaid.

However.

At dinner tonight all the kids told Bryan how awesome the day was. Phoebe, ever the employer of hyperbole, said it was, "the best day ever." Dinner was a calm and happy affair, the kids were all bathed without much contention and scripture reading and family prayer both happened without constant calls for reverence.

And now I can look back and see all the good things that happened. The splash pad was fun, even Sophie enjoyed walking the perimeter with me even if she wouldn't touch the water. I joined the kids in the backyard when I was feeling particularly stressed. The vitamin D had a positive effect, as did ripping those weeds out. In order to go on the walk I told the kids they needed to put away all the backyard toys, which meant they actually helped out with the cleaning. And they were worn out from all the outside play, so they fell asleep much faster.

I guess that's the beauty of perspective. I can see past the rough parts of the day and cherish the good.

Hoarders Anonymous

We have too much stuff.

Way too much.

I acknowledge that part of the accumulation problem lies in how many people we have in our family. Six people need a certain number of clothes and dishes to take care of daily needs. And then on top of needs we work hard to foster intelligence and imagination, whuch apparently requires several boxes of Legos (yes, I know the plural is Lego, and I'm ignoring that rule right now) and various and sundry art supplies. And of course we have books; those live in both the want and need category.

But where on earth has all the rest of this stuff come from?

And where can I take it so I don't have to unpack it?

Meeting Prep

Peter makes up new games everyday. One that he invented just before we moved was Business Meeting. The title is pretty descriptive. He gathers his siblings together and conducts a meeting about something, I don't think the topic is the most important aspect. And he has to dress the part. The first time he played he wore a white plastic top hat. He resurrected the game today and put on a suit and tie. He also kept insisting that he needed to make a power point presentation.



That large piece of cardboard behind him? That's his easel, his substitute when I said no to the power point. Cooper and Phoebe went along with the game, with one exception: none of them where talking about the same topics. Peter was trying to write a Minecraft tutorial, Cooper was trying to build a bridge, and Phoebe was drawing pictures and looking fancy. That frustrated our meeting head, but at least he had them all at the table at the same time. I can vouch from experience that that is tricky.

Bonus: in the movie you can see our new dining room. It's even almost unpacked.

Hard Work and Elbow Grease

The kitchen is 90% done. Well, maybe 80%, but it's a vast improvement over what it was when I woke up this morning. I can see counter top! The table is not quite so visible, but the cozy nest of boxes that once encompassed it has dwindled. My big challenge now is figuring out where to put our food since there is no pantry.

Bryan tackled the boxes in the garage today, both literally and figuratively. It's almost tidy enough to park a car in there. And from what people have told me about the winters here, that's something we're definitely going to want to do.

This house doesn't have a play room, so we're creating one. The end of the living room farthest from the front door is now the play space. It's about one-third the size of our last playroom and one-quarter the size of the one before that, but it is a dedicated play space. And I'm thrilled about that, though not as thrilled as Sophie. When she saw her much missed supply of toys so happily gathered into one place, she both signed and called the word play ("pay! Pay! PAY!") many times, each recitation increasing in pitch and volume.

The girls' room is also much closer to being ready for normal use. Their closet has neither a usable floor (it's a slope directly over the stairs) nor a bar on which to hang clothes, and most of the shelves are too high for accessible toy storage. That closet is a conundrum. Actually, if it weren't on the second floor and far from the kitchen, it would make a great pantry.

Cooper Borrowed My Camera Again

So Many Boxes, So Few Drawers

We are on day three of unpacking in the new house. My progress is...slow. The new kitchen is half the size of our NJ kitchen (and only has two drawers) so I've spent lots of time staring at our stuff, then staring at the sparse cupboard space, then giving up for the time being. For those of you familiar with our furniture, we're augmenting our drawer space by using both the chest of drawers that usually lives in our bedroom and the sideboard and placing them both in the adjoining dinging room.

And on that note, I'm going to go unpack. Or I'm going to sleep, I haven't decided yet which.

Good Book Sense

The Temple in the Circle City

We are in Illinois! We rolled out of New Jersey on Friday and spent that night on the border of West Virginia (which I'd never been in before!) and Ohio. The next day, after washing and folding our laundry, we drove to the Indianapolis Temple Open House.

Several circumstances stacked up against us (our laundry didn't dry, we got off the freeway to switch drivers and hit a huge detour, lots of small-people bladders that couldn't hold much) and we totally missed our Open House ticket reservations. We decided to go anyway.

I had all our church clothes gathered and ready to go, but when we got there we saw that only half the attendees were in their Sunday best. In the interest of time we decided not to change. Instead we focused on reverent behavior. The big three did fairly well. Sophie did a lot of singing while we walked through the Temple.

The Temple is beautiful. I especially loved the original artwork throughout. The whole tour was over too fast. We asked the kids what their favorite part of the Temple was. Phoebe loved the bride's room, Peter loved the sealing room, and Cooper loved everything.

After our time in the Temple we got back on the road and arrived in our new town shortly before midnight.