A Study in Sleep Deprivation

For the last few weeks, we've had trouble getting Sophie to wind down to sleep. We suspected that it was because she was so tired that she couldn't settle. The more sleep deprived she is, the harder it is for her to sleep, that's been the way of it since she was tiny. But with early rising for school and sporadic quiet times due to holiday school schedules, we were unsure how to help her.

Last night was Pack Meeting. It always begins at 7pm, which is also the girls' bedtime. By the time we were home, it was after 9pm. Sophie was flying, almost literally. She was zooming around the house on a riding toy, totally oblivious to our calls to put on pajamas and brush teeth. After much wrastling and pleading and commanding, she finally knocked out, but it was late.

Today, well, it was rough. Peter didn't tantrum, but it was tricky business keeping him on-track with homework. The other three? There were several meltdowns that took place, some motivated by refusals to do homework, some because I asked for a chore to be performed, at least one because I watched a child swing (and miss) at another sibling and get called out for it. Sophie was hysterical throughout the day, including first-thing in the morning when I told her she couldn't go outside in freezing temperatures in her thin nightgown and bare feet to take the kids to the bus.

Bryan and I agreed that bedtime needed to come early.

We were reasonable, no one went to sleep before the sun went down. But the girls were both tucked into their beds by 6:45. There was fussing and complaining and a small but active fit took place because I'd asked Sophie to lie in her bed the regular way instead of "like a nest" as she wanted.

But guess what? The girls were solidly asleep by 7pm. It's the first time that's happened in ages. They were so tired from the late night cub scouting and the many nights of troubled sleep, they needed it.

Now we just have to wait and see if they wake up at 5am...

Disaster Avoidance

Tonight, during her very long personal prayers, Sophie included this gem:

"Please help that I'll be a mom. And that I'll have a husband. And that Christmas won't be a disaster."

Yes, those are all good things to ask for.

The First Strike

I think it must have started on Sunday night. We had our monthly family book club meeting that evening; it's when most of the women in my family gather at their computers and we talk about our chosen book, as well as anything else that needs discussing. When asked how we were, three of us reported that we were tired. But I'd had a very full Sunday (leading choir practice, teaching Sunbeams last minute, feeding the missionaries dinner), so I assumed that's why I was dragging.

I had a fair amount of energy yesterday (though I did take a mid-morning nap) until bedtime. That's when I crashed. Bryan got home towards the end of the bedtime routine. About that time of the night I'm usually wrapped in a blanket (pesky low blood pressure) to stay warm, but last night I was still shivering from the perceived cold inside our house. Bryan commented on how warm our room was, which sent up a red flag for me. Then the aching and coughing started. I finally realized I had a fever.

So I slept. First I drifted in and out of sleep while I tried to read. I finally gave up and called it a night. Then, after getting the kids to school this morning, I snuggled with Sophie on the couch and slept some more. I feel much better tonight, so maybe whatever germs hit me decided not to stay? Or maybe they're just lying dormant waiting for a really inopportune time to strike...

Christmas Trees Are Magical

A Day of Thanks With Family

Our Thanksgiving was wonderful! We had a solid breakfast to fuel us up, watched the parade while we cooked and played, then had a late morning snack of fresh veggies, grapes, and cheese and crackers. I stayed home and made a few quick pies while Aunt Melinda, Uncle Jake, and Uncle Paul took Phoebe, Sophie, Sam, Nathan, and Emma to the park. Bryan, Peter, and Cooper joined them a short time later.

No, it wasn't windy, this is the static electricity Sophie gathered while going down the slide. 

Then we gathered back inside for our feast. We enjoyed turkey (courtesy of Bryan and Paul), mashed potatoes and rolls and cottage cheese strawberry Jell-o salad (prepared by Melinda), candied yams (a joint effort by me and Bryan), Martinelli's (provided by Paul), cranberry sauce, stuffing, and steamed mixed vegetables.

We set up folding tables in our entryway and playroom. The kids did an amazing job being tidy, I didn't find any food on the floor after the meal was over. Peter was pretty happy that his seat was at the adult table, not the kids'. Everything was scrumptious. Some of the kids ate just a few bites, then declared they were full and were ready for pie.

We insisted that they wait a few hours before eating dessert. After we ate, some people took naps and some watched Moana. Then we called everyone together for pie.

Cooper helped me make a whopping six pumpkin pies (not pictured here, but some are on the ledge in the above picture of the meal), Peter made his traditional apple pie (this year with a fun star topping), the grocery store provided a lemon meringue and a razzleberry, and we finished off the selection with a banana cream and a chocolate pie. I cut tiny slices and let the kids try as many as they wished.

It was such a lovely day. After the stress of Bryan's injury the night before, I think we were all glad to have such a calm, relaxing Thanksgiving.

Thumbs Up

On this Thanksgiving morning, I am thankful for hands that work. I am also thankful for family visiting for the holiday.

I am especially thankful for fingers. It's been a rough week at our house for hands. After my finger cut on Monday (which is healing but will definitely leave a gnarly mark), Bryan joined me in the land of the injured. Last night he was helping Peter make his traditional apple pie by slicing the apples. Bryan was demonstrating proper knife safety when his hand slipped. Instead of going through the apple, the knife went through the pad of his thumb and cut it clean off.

He no longer has a thumbprint on that hand.

I was upstairs doing bedtime with the girls when this happened. Bryan came into the room and said in an urgent voice that he needed to talk to me right away. I was shocked and prepared to drive him to an ER or urgent care. The only reason this was an option was that Bryan's brother Paul and their sister Melinda and her family are all visiting us for Thanksgiving. In other words, there were people at our house to stay with our children.

Paul offered to do the driving while I got the boys to sleep. Melinda (who found the severed thumb tip!) took over helping Peter with the pie. I was able to get kids to sleep and Bryan got the medical care he needed.

No, they didn't sew the tip back on. They couldn't even stitch up the wound. Bryan has some special bandages to dress it with and instructions to keep it dry. We're not sure if he'll have a divot in his thumb from now on or how it will heal.

Bryan told me that if he had been holding the knife differently, he might have sliced off his thumb completely. So losing the tip of his thumb sounds like a much better alternative to totally being without a thumb.

What are you thankful for?

Happy Thanksgiving! And please, be careful with sharp objects.

Baking Party

We plan to do some baking today, how about you?

It Cuts Like Glass

A note of caution: be very careful when sliding your finger along the spout of your glass measuring cup. You may realize, with a shocking jolt of pain, that the glass is broken. This may lead to you canceling your plans for dinner, telling your kids they now get to serve themselves cereal for their evening meal, then sitting with finger wrapped tightly and held above your heart in a slow and frustrating attempt to stop the bleeding.

On the bright side, this may give your oldest child a chance to serve by fetching you bandages and alcohol swabs.

Yes, this is my actual blood. No, the 3/4 inch long diagonal cut along the inside/back of my pinky finger is not visible. The jagged glass can be seen in the background. Peter wrapped the broken edge in electrical tape (totally something Bryan would have done had he been home from work but something that never would have occurred to me), and threw it away.

This is going to leave a funky scar.

Teaching Our Friends

I got a text yesterday morning saying that the talk for Junior Primary had fallen through and asking if Sophie would like to give a talk instead. She happily accepted. I rephrased the assigned topic in the form of a question and asked her, "How can we tell our friends about Jesus?" The talk below holds most of the things she said. She also composed a song on the spot about Jesus being our brother and friend, but I wasn't quick enough to transcribe it. Hopefully she'll sing it again later for me, more slowly.

We Can Teach Our Friends About Jesus and His Church

Sophie’s Primary Talk 11/19/17

We can teach our friends about Jesus by sharing how much we love Him. We can teach that we lived with Jesus in Heaven before we came to earth. We can show them that Jesus loves them too by caring about them and being kind and being loving. We can teach our friends about Jesus and His church by being faithful to His commandments. We can teach our friends about Jesus by singing Primary songs while we play together, because the songs we sing here teach about Jesus. If we live by the words of this Primary song, we can teach our friends about what we believe in our church.

I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I know who I am.

I know God’s plan.

I’ll follow him in faith.

I believe in the Savior, Jesus Christ.

I’ll honor his name.

I’ll do what is right;

I’ll follow his light.

His truth I will proclaim.

I know this is true. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Signature Move

What you see here is an original work by Miss Sophie that she created for Uncle Jordan and soon-to-be Aunt Leah. That's thoughtful and sweet, but it's not the reason I'm sharing this picture. The other important aspect? This is the first time Sophie has seriously tried to write her name.

She wrote the first three letters without much instruction. I said the letters and she worked from her memory of what each one should look like. I modeled h, then i (which took a few tries), and finally e. She was so pleased with herself. I was pretty pleased too.

Juvenile Engineering

On Saturday morning the kids woke up early and wanted to watch a movie. I said no and asked them to find something quiet to do instead. When I came downstairs I discovered what they had done in place of the screen time. Cooper was so pleased with his creation that he asked me to take a picture.

Service Minded

As I prepared lunch today, Sophie began demanding certain items for her meal. That's when the following conversation took place:

Me: You have to change the way you're talking to me. You're treating me like I'm a naughty servant.

Sophie: You're not a naughty servant. You're a good servant.

That's when we had a discussion about what the word servant means and when it should and should not be used.

Restoration

On Saturday we had a family adventure to visit the Priesthood Restoration site near the Pennsylvania/New York border. It was quite a chilly day, so we all bundled in several layers. A sweet pair of Sister missionaries gave us a tour of Issac Hale's home, followed by a tour of Joseph and Emma Smith's early home. 

This statue depicts John the Baptist restoring the Aaronic Priesthood.

And this one shows Peter, James, and John restoring the Melchizedek Priesthood.

The kids stayed warm by running every time we were outside.

It was so fun seeing inside the homes. We did have to repeatedly remind the kids to look with their eyes and not with their hands, but otherwise they were well behaved. And the kids did a great job in answering the gospel questions the missionaries asked them.

After seeing the historic homes, we took a walk through the woods where the Heavenly visitors appeared.

Then we retired to the Visitors Center to warm up and enjoy a short film about the translation of the Book of Mormon and the restoration of the Priesthood.

This has been on my bucket list since it opened last year. I'm glad we finally made time to visit.

Pecan Problems

"I don't like pecans. They're bland. They taste like cardboard, but not in a good way."

-Peter, during a discussion about Thanksgiving dinner.

Phoebe 7.0

A few months ago Miss Phoebe turned 7. She asked that we use as much gold colored fanciness as possible, so I scoured nearby stores for gold wrapping and decor. Thankfully, gold is popular these days.

Phoebe's birthday fell on a weekday, so we didn't do much in the way of celebrating on her actual birthday. She chose to wear a shirt with gold on it and gobbled down her birthday breakfast of Pop-Tarts. She took a box full of gold-filled goody bags (gold colored items, we did not actually include any gold) to school to hand out to her classmates. And we enjoyed a birthday dinner of her choice and a gold papered, gold candled cupcake cake.

The real birthday fun came a few days later. We took the kids to a local drive-in theater, their first experience with such a venue. There were two screens, one showing two horror films, the other showing two family-friendly movies, so there was a diverse group milling about while we waited for the sun to set.

There was a playground setup between the two screens. It was chilly that evening and I was amused to see so many kids playing in their warm pajamas. My kids took advantage of the bounce house obstacle courses.

After we played, we sat in front of our van and ate our fancy dinner of sandwiches.

We met some minions that were hanging out near the playground.

Then we danced to get out wiggles. The first movie of the double feature started an hour after the girls' bedtime, so at this point in the evening they were getting more than a little antsy.

Because it was cold, we lowered the back bench of the van into the floor and the kids and I snuggled under blankets as we watched Despicable Me 3 and Cars 3. Bryan spent much of the night sitting on a cooler just outside the van, but he did climb in to get warm later in the night. The first movie was fun and the second movie was really good, arguably the best of the Cars movies. The only person that didn't stay awake till the end was the birthday girl herself. She slept through the last twenty minutes of Cars 3 and when we woke her up to drive home she was not happy about slumbering for the conclusion of her birthday celebration.

In all, it was a fun birthday for our girl. 

As is our tradition, here is her annual birthday interview. I added a new question this year, based on a conversation I had with Phoebe. I'll give a hint about what it is: Phoebe has some big goals for her life.

FAVORITE FOOD: Lemon Meringue Pie

FAVORITE ANIMALS: Tigers and deer and horses

FAVORITE CANDIES: Bounty and giant Hershey bars

FAVORITE BOOKS: The Harry Potter books, all of them

FAVORITE COLOR: Sea shell green

FAVORITE SHOWS: The Flash and Kong King of the Apes

FAVORITE MOVIES: Some Like It Hot and Harry Potter 1, 2, and 3 (She hasn't seen any of the others yet.)
FAVORITE SONG: Hedwig's Theme
FAVORITE BOARD GAMES: Clue and The Game of Life and Candyland

FAVORITE CARD GAMES: Go Fish and Old Maid and Uno
FAVORITE VIDEO GAMES: Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and the Disney Princess Game
FAVORITE THINGS TO DO: Read, read, and read
FAVORITE MEMORIES FROM BEING 6: The first day of kindergarten and the last day of kindergarten
FAVORITE PLACES: Paris and the Temple and school and home and the park and Utah
FAVORITE SUBJECTS IN SCHOOL: All of them

FRIENDS: Layla, Claire F., Claire H., Cecilia, Eva, Miranda, Ashlyn, Nadia, Phoebe (she's laughing about this), Jolin, Grayson, Eliza, Cat, Amelia, Camilla, Ava, Evva, Peter, Cooper, Daddy, Mommy, ("Best for last.") SOPHIE!

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP: A mother, a fashion designer, a doctor, a scientist, and President of the United States of America

Twirl

Not Quite the Same Thing

The drama club at Peter and Cooper's school meets once a month. We missed the October meeting, so Cooper attended for the first time today. When we picked him up after school I asked how it went. He proceeded to give a detailed description of their activities. This is a portion of that conversation.

Cooper: And then the teacher had us all sit in the seats and she taught us about monograms.

Me: (after a beat to register what he said) Monograms? Or monologues?

Cooper: Oh yeah, that was it, monologues.

Safari House Guests

Phoebe was grinning and laughing wildly as she exited the school bus on Friday afternoon. As she ran toward me, she held up an unfamiliar blue bag. I realized what that meant: it was her weekend to take home the coveted class stuffed animals, two zebras named Spunky and Spunky Junior. That meant the pressure was suddenly on to do something fun and picture worthy while she had them in her custody. She was to record their adventures in a notebook that was tucked into the bag with them.

If you read yesterday's post, then you know that a camping trip took a big chunk of our weekend, and unless she wanted to bring the zebras to church, Sunday was pretty much out as an option. While it was low-key, we managed a few things.

First, Phoebe practiced piano with them.

Then they celebrated National Sandwich Day with us.

They got to sleep right next to Phoebe's bed.

The next day, while Bryan and the boys ran errands, the Spunks joined us for an at home spa-day. For us that meant haircuts for the little girls.

And bubble baths, of which there is no photographic evidence. But the Spunks came back into the picture for an "after" shot of the hair.

And then they stuck around for nail painting.

Finally, we ended our fun with a movie and pizza.

I worried that it wouldn't be enough, but Miss Phoebe seemed pleased by our at home adventure.

Darkness Falls

On Friday night Bryan and Peter went on a local campout with the Boy Scouts in our ward. Phoebe had a game night at school, which meant Cooper and Sophie and I would have an adventure of our own.

Shortly after returning home from dropping Phoebe off at school, the power went out. The three of us gathered in our library and talked about what we should do instead of watching a movie, our original plan. That's when Bryan called and asked us to deliver a few items that he had forgotten at home. Well, if we couldn't have fun, at least we could be productive. We slowly walked through the house, gathering the needed supplies, all while staying in the beam of the flashlight on my cell phone. By the time we made our delivery, we had less than an hour until we had to get Phoebe, not enough time to go home and wander in the dark.

The power company estimated that they would have the power back on by 9:30, which would mean that once we were back home with Phoebe, bedtime would be done in the dark. We had eaten a light dinner before dropping Phoebe off, but I figured she might be hungry when she was done. I came up with a new plan for fun.

"Hey guys, what if we go get some food, go get Phoebe, then eat in the van and watch a movie on my phone while we sit in the driveway?"

Cooper and Sophie thought that sounded awesome.

The real aim of my plan was to keep my phone charging in the car as long as I could, hence the suggestion that we hang out in the van so much longer than necessary. We grabbed some fast food and picked up a very worn out Phoebe from her school and told her about our plan for the rest of the evening. That's when she started crying because she was so tired.

As we drove home I brainstormed about how to help Phoebe. Then, something amazing happened. We entered our neighborhood and discovered that the power had come back on early! We didn't need to sit in the car trying to watch a movie on my little phone after all.

In celebration, we ate our fast food picnic-style on a blanket on the living room floor while we watched a short movie. By the time we had all eaten and the kids were tucked into bed, it was 9:30. I snuggled with each child for a bit. At 10, the girls both asleep, I was holding Cooper's hand. My eyes were suddenly too heavy to keep open.

I woke up at nearly 11 at night. My first thought was, "I still need to blog and exercise." My second thought followed quickly, "Nope, I'm going to sleep." Hence no post on Friday.

It ended up being a good choice. Due to a headache and simply being cold, I woke up at 3AM, unable to fall back to sleep until two hours later. I would have really been a zombie if I hadn't gone right to sleep the night before.

On a positive note, Bryan and Peter had a much more successful camping experience than their rain-soaked outing back in May. And despite our late night adventure in the dark, the kids that were with me had a pretty good time too.

Opposition in Order to Recognize the Good

There's a family in our ward that moved out of a rental last week and into a hotel while they wait for the house they're buying to be completed. When I learned this I told them they were welcome to come over and play and bring their laundry, because I know what it's like to live in a hotel. And today, they did.

While she talked about the trials of living in a hotel, I commiserated with her. And as I passed out snacks to her boys and read to them while she worked out details with her husband on the phone, I thought of how thankful I am to have had the experience of living in a hotel and to not be going through that now.

Exhausted Sugar Hangovers

Nobody wanted to get out of bed this morning, not even the parents. After everyone was finally up and dressed, there was a lot of distracted wandering. I had to keep asking the kids things like, "Have you eaten breakfast? Have you made your lunch? Do you have your shoes on? Where is your homework?" Then, even after all the reminders, they still seemed kind of confused about where they were and what they should be doing.

It is definitely the day after Halloween.