Movers and Shakers

When I was looking for pictures of Peter's birthday I found this series that Bryan took during Peter's birthday lunch. He took these very quickly, notice how I don't move at all? Now look at how much Cooper and Phoebe DO move.

Seven

We have a seven-year-old at our house! 

Peter's birthday lasted almost a whole week. The day before we went for a birthday lunch to In-N-Out. I think the main reason we did it the day before is that we were out running errands during lunchtime and happened to be near In-N-Out, and we justified going by calling it a birthday lunch. Maybe I shouldn't admit that...

Oh well. He enjoyed it anyway.

In past years I've worked hard to have all the Christmas decorations put away before his birthday arrived, so there would be a clear delineation between Christmas and birthday. When I mentioned this to Peter he told me he actually liked the Christmas decorations. Huh. So this year I compromised. I put away most of the decorations, but left up the tree. I present to you The Birthday Tree!

This picture has two treats (besides The Birthday Tree): you get to see Peter open a present (The Hobbitt, which Bryan got when he turned seven), and you get to see Cooper jumping. I think it's nice that Bryan was able to capture Cooper in his natural state.

Here are a few more of Peter enjoying his birthday treasures. He had been begging for a watch for some time. Bryan found one with Perry the Platypus on it. He spent the next week informing us of the time every few minutes.

I picked out an art set for him, which he put to use almost immediately.

Peter requested a Spider-Man cake complete with tall buildings and The Web-Slinger himself in mid-flight. I actually spent time trying to figure out how to do that until I remembered that I stink at cake decorating. I baked the cake, made the frosting, and applied massive amounts of the sugary red stuff. Then I turned it over to Bryan. He added the cool stuff.

We had planned on going to the dinosaur museum and miniature golfing on his birthday, but Cooper and Phoebe were both feeling lousy, so we postponed. We went to the museum a few days after and had friends that met us there, so that made it extra fun. Then a few days after that Peter and Bryan went miniature golfing, just the two of them. Even though we had to spread out the celebrating, I think he enjoyed the festivities.

I'm going to steal an idea from my friend Beth's blog because I think it's so marvelous (thanks Beth!). She conducts a birthday interview and types up her kids' answers. Here are Peter's favorite things, as of his seventh birthday:

FAVORITE FOOD: Candy (I told him candy didn't count as food.) Fruit. (I asked for a specific fruit.) All fruit. Okay, um... soup.

FAVORITE ANIMAL: Elephant

FAVORITE BOOK: Avengers and Spiderwick

FAVORITE COLOR: Red

FAVORITE SHOW: Phineas and Ferb

FAVORITE MOVIE: Cars 2
FAVORITE SONG: Rockabye Baby (my version)
FAVORITE BOARD GAME: Uno
FAVORITE VIDEO GAME: Wild Kratts, Prankster Planet, and Minecraft
FAVORITE THING TO DO: Watch TV and play video games
FAVORITE MEMORY FROM BEING 6: Riding the Zippin' Pippin' (a big wooden roller coaster at Bay Beach Park in Green Bay, WI)
FAVORITE PLACE: School
FAVORITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL: Math

FRIENDS: BT, Will, Reed, Luka, Dallin, Cooper, Phoebe, Mommy, Daddy, Brielle, Cat, Kylie, Anna

Happy birthday Peter!

Welcome to the Arctic

Good news folks, it has warmed to 6 degrees outside. That's up from the -5 degrees that greeted me when I woke this morning. I just checked weather.com and the next time we're supposed to see temperatures above freezing is more than a week away.

This is insane.

The Most

Tonight as I snuggled Peter at bedtime, he turned to me and said, "Mom, out of all the things I have, I love you more than all of them." Then he paused and thought, "More than most of them." Another pensive moment, "More than some of them." He took a deep breath, making up his mind, "I really, really love all my stuff. But I love you the most."

I Love to Laugh

Peter and I had a sweet moment that I want to make sure I remember. He finally went back to school today, only to call halfway through saying his cough was getting worse and could he come home. I gathered up Cooper and Phoebe and we retrieved Peter from school.

When he called I asked him to tell his teacher he was leaving (he had left from PE, I think the running they were doing exacerbated his cough) and to get the homework he had missed from the rest of the week. He spent the better part of the afternoon with homework in front of him. I spent the better part of the afternoon telling him to actually DO the work and not just hold it in his hand.

We were still working on it after the others went to sleep for the night. One of his assignments included a job for me. Peter was to write what I consider his first paper, including a topic sentence, and I needed to instruct him on the requirements, then proofread and have him make needed spelling, capitalization, and punctuation corrections. He came home with the first sentence written. It took an hour for him to do it. The first thirty minutes included several reminders from me to stop talking and write, repeated requests from Peter that I just "tell me what to write and I'll write it," which were followed closely by "No"s from me. I'm one of those parents that won't do my child's homework for them, even though it would often make life more pleasant.

I said we had a sweet moment, are you wondering when it will come?

I wanted to set the stage that this writing business was getting tense. We were both frustrated. He finally started writing (though he never did stop talking) and my turn came. I pointed out spelling errors and had him read through the paper again himself until he found each of them. One was the word chocolate, which he had spelled "choclet." I wrote out the word and, because I knew that he had learned a song in Spanish about chocolate in his music class, said it in Spanish so he could hear each sound.

This prompted him to sing the song. I don't know it myself, but what Peter sang went:

Uno, dos, tres, Cho!
Uno, dos, tres, La!
Uno, dos, tres, Co!
Uno, dos, tres, La!
Uno, dos, tres, Te!

I caught the mistake as soon as he sang it, but didn't say anything. He was almost done with the song when he stopped, looked at me, and asked, "What did I just say?" We both busted up laughing. It wasn't that I was laughing at him, or that he was laughing out of embarrassment, we were just laughing because at that moment the thought of "Cholacolate" was hilarious.

Those few minutes of laughter carried me through. Peter finally finished his homework and fell into his bed at 10 PM. That's a whole two and a half hours past his bedtime. I usually would have been stressed out by that point, in need of my own quiet time. But tonight? Tonight, after sharing that laughter with Peter, I was content to sit near him and wait. I was happy to tuck him in, even with the required reminders to "stop talking" and "stop wiggling."

I'm still feeling the sweetness of it.

My Internal Calendar Is Broken

I was at a meeting last night when I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to return a key that I had borrowed. The key was due by 10 AM Monday morning. "I can't believe I forgot that!" I thought. Which was followed closely by "I'll return it tomorrow morning and at least it will only be a day late."

And then I realized it was Tuesday night, not Monday night.

Peter and Phoebe have had croup for the last five days. Prior to my meeting the last time I had left my house was when Cooper and I went to church (while Bryan stayed home and took care of sick children). Wow, I knew the days had run together, but that's a whole new level of mommy brain.

I returned the key this morning. The receptionist was very nice about the whole thing, especially when I mentioned having sick kids and not knowing what day it was.

The kids are feeling well enough that I plan on sending Peter to school tomorrow. Which is Thursday. Right?

Posing

Sometimes I take pictures of the creations the boys make out of blocks. Like this one.

Phoebe has seen me do this, and she likes to see the results on my screen. So it wasn't surprising when I walked in to the boys' room to see what Phoebe was up to and she asked me to take her picture. She showed me her block creation and I pulled out my phone. I'm not sure she actually made this, in fact I'm pretty sure that Cooper made it. But I took the picture anyway.

And I'm adding this one because you can't see her face in the other one, and that face is important.

An End and a Beginning

Today Bryan had his first day of his last semester of classes for the MBA program. This is only the fourth semester, which is much shorter than the time we spent as undergrads, but in some ways it feels like this has lasted so much longer.

I think this semester should be smoother than previous semesters though. Bryan went on six different job-search-related trips last semester. His traveling should go down significantly. The reason? Bryan has been offered, and has accepted, a job. A job! That was one of the scariest things going into this whole MBA adventure. Did it make sense to voluntarily leave a job when so many people were out of work? Would he find another job when it was all over?

Thankfully, he did. The job comes with new forms of excitement. The job is part of a rotational leadership training program and there's a strong possibility that we will move every year for the next three years. I'm focusing on the adventure that will come with the opportunity to live in new-to-us areas of the country. I'm trying not to think about changing schools and wards and homes so much. But you know, after living in Wisconsin for the summer, I think we can live anywhere.

So now we need to get through this last semester and then we can prepare for the next leg of our adventure.

Star Light, Star Bright

I've been working for a few months on Phoebe's name song. It would have fit into the rhythm of Cooper's song, but I wanted them to each have their own ditty for remembering how to spell their names. Then one day I started to sing "I Am Like a Star" to Phoebe and Cooper. I told Phoebe that her name means bright and shining, just like a star. Then I replaced the "I am" in the first line with Phoebe, and lightening struck my brain.

Today during lunch I finalized the words.

Phoebe is a star shining brightly,
Spell it P-H-O-E-B-E.
Phoebe is my friend,
Spell it once again,
Yes spell it P-H-O-E-B-E.

The song is simple and her name isn't spelled as many times as Cooper's or Peter's, but it fits nicely, and I love the reference to the meaning.

Come, Follow Me

A few weeks ago I was called to be the Mia Maid Adviser in my ward and I'm going to teach my first lesson this week. The manual that I used when I taught the Laurels over the summer was the same book that I was taught out of when I was in the Young Women program, which means it was time for new material. While we were in Wisconsin I heard that the Church was prepping new lesson plans for the Youth, and they recently rolled them out.

Have you seen the Church's new curriculum for the Youth? It's fantastic. No more point-by-point lessons full of case studies to be read and discussed. Now the lessons are taken from the scriptures and from talks by General Authorities. The Young Women (and Young Men in their classes) are encouraged to share their insights. The teacher is not a lecturer, but rather a facilitator.

Guess what? This is how I've always approached teaching in the church. I'm thrilled with the new curriculum. I think it's terribly exciting. Even if you don't have any kids between the ages of 12 and 18, or a calling to work with them, I encourage you to go poke around the site and see the lessons. They would make great Family Home Evening and scripture study material as well.