crazy babies :-)

We went to the park today. The boys had to bring their star wars light sabers (of course). Soon they were off playing on the equipment and building sand castles and the light sabers ended up on the picnic table bench next to me. A little girl, maybe 14-16 months old or so, wandered over and picked up one of the light sabers and started toddling around with it. Mosey saw her and came running over. "Mom, that baby has Joseph's light saber! Tell that baby to give it back!" I told him it was ok for her to play with it and I would keep an eye on her. Moses wasn't convinced, and followed her around for the next few minutes, obviously suspicious.
I glanced over a couple of minutes later and saw him knelt down in front of her, in earnest conversation about the light saber. It was so funny! He has so little experience with babies, I don't think he realized that she can't talk, and most likely didn't understand a word he was saying. :-)
Something about the way he was calling her "that baby" made me laugh. To him she wasn't a boy or a girl, or maybe not even human, just this strange species called "baby." It was like he was pointing out "that dog" or "that squirrel." She was "that baby" who was going to abscond with our light saber!
I snapped a picture of him in conversation with "that baby." When I pulled out my camera, Joseph raced over to try to prevent the picture being taken, and distracted Moses from his interaction, but it is still funny.

Tonight we went to see the bats (again). I picked up Ben from work and we headed downtown. When we got down to the bridge and parked about a block away, Ben got out of the van to get the wheelchair out of the back of the van. Oops, no wheelchair. So he carried me piggyback all the way to the viewing area! He is strong. I was embarrassed.
Ben doesn't understand why I care. I tried to explain what it is like always being conspicuous everywhere I go. Unless I am in my car, everywhere I go in public, I'm conspicuous and people look at me. It doesn't necessarily bother me, I would look, too. It's just weird because I'm not an attention-seeking person and it feels strange to have people looking at and wondering about me all the time.
But my only other option was to stay in the van by myself and I didn't want to do that either.
Ben bought the boys a plastic light sword (like we need another light saber). The boys (mostly Mosey) had fun whirling it around in the dark. I hope they had fun, anyway, because it had already broken before we even left the park... Oh well.
Joseph let me take one picture of him with the light saber, only because the light cast an eerie blue cast on his face.

soccer!

Today was the boys' first soccer games.
Last night we went to Academy for new soccer cleats and shin guards and socks and soccer shorts. Mosey is playing this year! He was very excited and it was so cute to see him trying on his cleats and go running down the aisles of the store to make sure they fit.
We decided to go with YMCA soccer this year, even though registration closed like a month ago. I called the director and was able to get my boys on some teams (even better, the big boys' team practices at Spicewood Elementary, 2 minutes from our house! How lucky is that?). Their first game (last Saturday) was rained out, so they didn't miss anything.
NYS was great last year, but it sure was hard figuring out scheduling for Ben coaching, and the NYS organization left much to be desired. Not to mention the games were far away.
YMCA looks good to us so far. It's pretty laid back. The big boys' team has a great coach and they had a great time at their game (they won 2-0 and I can tell Brigham's going to be their best player). Mosey's team is a 4-6 yr old team, for kids who have never played before. Their practices are 30 minutes Saturday morning, followed by a "game." They don't really keep score. The purpose seems to be to let the kids get used to kicking the ball and having a good time. Fine by me! I'm glad that Mosey is getting to do something on his own. I sometimes worry about him defining himself as a "little brother." He needs his own things. So even though Joseph and Brigham are also playing, he's on his own team and that is good. And we got him his own cleats and shorts and shin guards even though he could have used hand-me-downs from last year.
I took the big boys to their game this morning and Ben took Mosey to his (1 of only 2 games that will conflict this season-- they are held at different schools so there's no way to be at both!). It was really hard getting there. It's a pretty long walk down a gravel pathway to get to the field. I tried using the wheelchair, but the gravel made it really hard, so I mostly used my crutches. I had to go back to the car halfway through the game to get something, and so getting back to the car after the game (my 4th time down that gravel path) was pretty torturous.
I'm pretty used to my daily life with my physical limitations, but when something new or unexpected comes up like this, I get pretty annoyed. I really wish I could walk.
So, our Saturday's are all planned out for us for the next couple of months! :-)

Roofer recommendations?

For any Austinite who might be reading this blog (if you haven't given up on me because of my recent boring and picture-less posts), I need some recommendations for roofers. We had one company that we almost went with last spring before we realized they were trying to rip us off. And since then we've heard a few horror stories from people whose roofers have either ripped them off or did a really shoddy job. Anyone have any great experiences with roofers? Honest roofers? Didn't cut corners? Does such a company exist? Let me know!

Lazy or overbearing?

Things have been going pretty normally here the last few days. Busy with school. Trying to figure out how to keep my kids on track without becoming an overbearing mother. I worry about this. I know I have some controlling tendencies. But then I also know I have some lazy tendencies. I used to have a lot of insecurity about being a lazy mother. I let my kids watch too many cartoons (I found it way easier just to get rid of the TV altogether than disciplining myself to discipline my boys' watching...). But now I'm worried about being overbearing. Do I require my boys to do their schoolwork *just so?* How can I teach them to pay attention to detail, to take pride in work well done, without being too controlling and demanding? So I don't want to be a lazy mother, but also not an overbearing mother. Where's the balance?
I'm worried about piano practicing with Joseph. He sometimes resists me being right there telling him what to do, but on the other hand he doesn't really know "how" to practice yet, and he needs me there to point out when he makes a mistake or misses something in the music. Soon he'll be able to practice on his own, but he's not there yet. But I don't want to drive him crazy and drive him away from enjoying the piano. He says practicing is boring. Yes, I agree, practicing *is* boring. I always thought so as a kid. But if he would learn to practice efficiently, it wouldn't take so long, and it wouldn't be so boring!!! (And now I really remind myself of my mother, I remember many "discussions" growing up involving my "efficiency" or lack thereof).
He really likes his teacher, and so I think I'll let him totally direct his own practicing this week, and only help him when he asks for it. Then if lessons don't go so well next week, maybe he'll be more willing to accept my help. We'll see if I can let go control to that extent. :-)
What else has been going on?
We did a cool biology experiment the other day and looked at my boys' cheek cells under our microscope. I bought methylene blue from this science supply store to stain the cells. It was cool. The boys thought it was cool. That made me happy. I didn't want to make 3 slides, so I took cheek swabs from all 3 boys and put them on the same slide. We need to be egalitarian around here!
Brigham's been working on a way to make homemade icees, one of my boys' favorite treats. Today he froze some diet cherry 7-up and then dumped it into a mixing bowl and went outside to smash it up with a hammer. I'm not sure how that worked out for him. :-)
Joseph and Mosey printed out maps of the world and played a long and involved game involving rolling the dice and taking over parts of the world which they carefully colored in with colored pencil. I couldn't quite figure out the rules, but it was inspired by the game of Risk they've been playing against each other online.
Mosey made a "gull whacker" which he's been carrying around and playing with for the last week or so. We just finished the 4th Redwall book (Mariel of Redwall) in which the main character (Mariel) made ferocious use of a piece of knotted rope she called her "gull whacker" (since it was first used to whack some gulls that were trying to eat her). Mosey says he wants to dress up as Mariel of Redwall for Halloween. I love that! Why not let him dress up as a female warrior mouse?! So what if no one else has a clue what he is dressed up as. :-)
I fixed the poster than Mosey tore up. It took a long time. I hope he never does that again. I think I'll make him one so he can appreciate how special the ones I made for Brigham and Joseph are to them.
I don't have anything else much to report. I'm keeping up with the essentials, but feel like I'll never catch up on the other less-essential things that need to get done. Like getting estimates for our roof (which we *still* haven't got replaced, but really need to, since we actually had rain this past week for the first time in months), estimates for getting our fence replaced, a bunch of thank you cards that have been sitting on my desk and need to be mailed out as soon as I locate my stamps, etc., etc. But it's past 11 PM now, and I have to go to bed, so I guess I'm not going to be making much progress on those things tonight. Maybe tomorrow. :-)

Joseph's nightmare

Joseph's least favorite school subject is math. I'm not sure why, because he is good at it, and when I can actually get him to sit and concentrate for any length of time, he is pretty fast and seems to enjoy it.
Last year we would spend sometimes hours each day, with me trying to get him to do his math, having to sit with him and work through every single problem because if I turned away for even a second, he would sit there and stare into space and do nothing.
This year I compromised with him and told him if he would concentrate and have a good attitude and not waste time, he could wait and do math after dinner. He's been pretty good with this arrangement! Sometimes I still get a few grumbles, but overall, it is way better than it was last year.
Last week I was working on math with him on Tuesday night. It got kind of late, and he didn't get in bed until after 10:00. I was up finishing chores when I heard him come down the stairs. I went out to tell him to go back to bed, but he told me he had a nightmare, and asked if he could please sleep in my room. I told him to go ahead, and continued with my chores. A few minutes later, he came out of my room, almost in tears, telling me he keeps having the same nightmare and he can't get out of it. I went in to comfort him and gave him a stuffed tiger to protect him (I love that he still feels protected from bad dreams by a stuffed tiger!). He slept the rest of the night and I forgot about it.
Then a couple of days ago he reminded me of the bad dream and told me what it was. He was on a big soccer field and a giant number 3 and giant number 7 came running at him from either side, with a scary "Thum, thum, thum, thum, thum!" noise in the background. Just before they collided with him, he woke up. But when he closed his eyes again, he was back on the soccer field with the giant letters running him down.
Isn't that funny? I used to have nightmares when I had been up too late studying. I remember one vivid dream where I found myself amidst a giant organic chemistry model set, watching reactions taking place all around me. This dream scared Joseph a lot, though. I better not let him stay up too late doing math anymore!

09-09-09

I forgot to mark 09-09-09! And now it's after midnight, so it's 09-10-09. Oh well. I did think about it, but not at 09:09:09 on 09/09/09. What a silly thing!
Oh, I'm getting sooooo behind with my photos! I haven't processed a single one for more than a month, and there have been several big events (trip to CA, the boys' birthday and baptism, Benjamin's visit, my birthday, and this last weekend with family in town). When will I have time?! Maybe I'll have to go back to how I used to do things and share (gasp!) *unedited* photos. Can I do it? Um, maybe not quite yet.
But since I am resolved to document my life a little better, photographs or no, here goes.
Last Friday some friends in my ward threw me a birthday party. It was so fun, and the first time I've had a party like that since I was a little kid. I got some nice presents and enjoyed feeling special for the night. There are lots of really good people here.
The past few days have been busy! My two brothers-in-law (Tyler and Ted, Ben's brothers) and my oldest nephew (9 months older than Brigham and Joseph) came for the weekend. We packed in the fun!
Saturday morning we left bright and early for San Antonio. We first went to the Wildlife Safari park just north of San Antonio, which was great fun. You drive in your car through this park that has wild animals roaming around. We saw giraffes, zebras, rhinoceroses, ostriches, a whole bunch of different kinds of antelope-type animals, buffalo, etc. You get bags of food when you go into the park to feed the animals, so the animals are trained to come right up to the car. It was really cool to see the animals up so close, and even more fun watching the boys interact with them. Joseph was the most fearless. Max (the boys' cousin) was a little more timid, and kept saying that Joseph was "Either really brave or really stupid!" :-) The scariest and most aggressive of the animals was this Emu (I think it was an emu, it looked like a brown ostrich). It was SO aggressive. We rolled up the windows and it kept pecking at the window-- hard! He would have stuck his whole head and neck in the car if he could have! At one point Ben used Mosey's paper airplane (which he had me make for him and then carefully decorated himself and had been playing with it for the last few days) to put some food in and reach out the window to feed the emu. When Ben tried to bring his hand back in the car, he dropped the plane. And there was NO way we were going to open the door to get it, not with that crazy emu right there! So there were many tears. Finally the emu went away and we were going to back up to retrieve the plane, and just then, a park ranger came by in his golf cart, and picked it up. Oh dear! More tears. At the end we got out of the car to go into a little petting zoo filled with miniature goats. The goats were obsessed with my wheelchair. It was pretty cute. They kept coming up and rubbing their horns on the wheels, and hiding underneath. The boys tried to feed them the rest of their bags of food, but the goats seemed more interested in the paper bags than the food... Anyway, while we were there, Ben saw the ranger that picked up Mosey's plane, and after talking to him, he managed to track down where it had been deposited and gave it back to Mosey! So all was well. I'm telling you, one of the most difficult things for me to deal with as a parent is my child's disappointment. I feel compelled to do nearly anything to assuage those feelings. I know it's not good, every child *needs* to experience disappointment, and especially how to work through it when things can't be fixed. But it is so painful for me. There's enough inevitable disappointment in life, isn't there? Isn't it ok to fix what I can?
After the safari, we went to the San Antonio River Walk (which is not particularly wheelchair accessible!), and to the Alamo. It had been a couple of years since we had been there before, which is a long time for these little kids, so it was pretty fun to go again. Then we went to the Tower of the Americas (San Antonio's space needle-- actually taller than the one in Seattle) where the boys scared me to death by leaning on the elevator doors while waiting for the ride back down. The elevator door opens up to the outside (it is an outside-facing elevator) about 60 stories up! Yikes! I'm sure it was safe, but still, creepy to think about.
On the way home Ben kept checking the stats on the BYU game with his Blackberry, and when we got back home we found the game online and he and his brothers watched the last half of the game which, as we know, was extremely exciting for everyone.
Sunday after church we had dinner (I made Texas sheet cake for the first time-- yum!) and then toured around Austin a little (went to the lake--what's left of it anyway, and drove through Steiner Ranch), climbed Mt. Bonnel and then to see the bats. The bats didn't come out until after 8:00, and it was nearly dark, so we didn't stay too long, but Max still said it was "the coolest thing he ever saw," so mission accomplished!
Monday we went to the Texas State History Museum, which is a small natural history museum on the UT campus. It was perfect for the amount of time we had, and it was free. The boys all liked the dinosaurs and the dinosaur footprints. We dropped Ty and Max off at the airport and then headed back home to clean up after the weekend.
The playroom was a giant mess, and I had to really urge the boys on to get it organized again. Mosey was so funny, he kept finding toys he liked and saying, "I'm going to put this one in a special place so that if any crazy babies come to our house, they won't find it!" He kept going on and on about the "crazy babies." What crazy babies?! I sure wish I would have been able to give him a baby sister or brother to drive him crazy for real!
And speaking of crazy babies, Mosey was a very bad boy on Sunday night. He was wound up and didn't want to go to sleep, so he kept kicking Joseph and Brigham and turning off the light and basically causing havoc upstairs. So I told Joseph and Brigham to go sleep in another room and lock it so Mosey couldn't go in. They did this and Mosey went back to sleep in the other room. Well, the next day Brigham discovered the poster I had made for him when he was student of the week all torn up. :-( It's not totally unsalvageable, the pictures are not torn up, just torn off the poster. But it will require some hours to get it put back together. I was extremely sad and upset about that. Where is this attitude coming from my mellow Mosey?
The rest of the week we have attempted to get some lessons done. I have my next Enrichment activity tomorrow night (well, tonight), so that has occupied some of my time. Tomorrow we probably won't get too much schoolwork done.
Mosey has really gotten into the Magic Treehouse books the past couple of days. He's read parts of them before, but between yesterday and today, he has read 3 in a row! He's been such a good reader for a long time, but still hasn't been *that* into reading, at least not for long periods of time. I guess his attention span is now long enough to hold him to a book for 30-40 minutes at a time. It was fun to see him on the couch today, totally absorbed.
OK, time for bed. Way too late (as usual).

Bad dog!

Well, I'm going to pound another nail into the "We'll never have a dog" coffin of any of my dogless friends and family who read these updates.
Mister was in the doghouse (boy, do I ever know where that phrase comes from) bigtime today.
I woke up and came out into the kitchen to see last night's pizza box on the floor, the 2 remaining pieces of pizza noticeably missing. And then I saw the Papa Johns garlic butter sauce splattered all over the floor. Then I noticed the plate of peanut butter brownies I had made mysteriously missing from the countertop.
I regretfully told the boys they were not having cold pizza for breakfast (always one of the pleasures of ordering pizza around here, and a nice excuse for not making breakfast), mopped the floor, and tried to tell myself it was a good thing the brownies were gone because I was the only one who was really eating them anyway.
But the stupid dog kept following me around like, well, a dog all morning and he was just irritating me. I emailed Ben and told him that Mister probably wouldn't be following me like a shadow if he knew I was having to restrain myself from kicking him every time he crossed my path...
Then tonight I made pizza (yes, I know, pizza 2 nights in a row). I just made a biscuit crust so the pizzas were in 2 pyrex pans. One of them got eaten up, and then the boys had to go to Cub Scouts (their first meeting!!!), and I had to go to a visiting teaching interview, and I didn't have time to clean up the kitchen, so I put one of the pyrex pans over the other that had the leftover pizza in it. OK, not the best move in hindsight. But still.
I had only been gone for 20 minutes. I came home to find shards of glass covering the kitchen floor. Mister tried to get at the leftover pizza again, somehow got the top pan off (and this was in the middle of our kitchen table, I can't imagine how he reached it), and in the process knocked it off the table where it shattered on our tile floor (I love tile, but EVERYTHING BREAKS). At least he didn't get the leftover pizza this time. The shattering pan must have scared him off. Although I'd rather have my pyrex back than the leftover pizza. But there's at least a tiny bit of satisfaction that Mister didn't get what he was obviously aiming for.
And THEN I saw he had been in the trash can (presumably before he attempted to steal the pizza), and the lid was on the floor and half the contents strewn all around.
Oooh, I was very, very, very, very mad. Ben came home and I said, "This just might be the last straw with this dog. I do not want to have a dog anymore."
Brigham got very worried and said, "But I love Mister!" And launched into all the reasons he loves him.
Sigh... We won't get rid of Mister. We've had him for 10 years and we'll take care of him until he dies. But I'm also pretty positive we won't get another dog. Between the hair and the escaping (oh, have I told you how many friends we've made around the neighborhood because of our stupid dog always escaping? I haven't? Oh, right. That's because we haven't made a single one) and the stolen food (I'm still not over him stealing the lunchmeat from last year), the scratched up doors and ruined carpet, I think I'm just not a dog person anymore.
The problem with our bad dog is that I have no proper way of venting my anger when he misbehaves. I can't yell at him after-the-fact because he won't have a clue what I'm angry about. I can't lecture him endlessly like I might if he were my child because he's a dumb dog. I can't even hope that at least this time maybe he's learned his lesson, because I know he hasn't. I can only get mad at myself. And that's no fun at all.
It is ironic that he follows me around everywhere I go in the house. Where ever I am, there he is. I say "Move, Mister" about 5,000 times a day, because whenever I turn around, there he is, right in my way. He is loyal, he's got that going for him. But he is loyal to the wroooong person. I am the one who likes this dog least in our household, but I'm the one he insists on following around.
Anyway. I guess I'm feeling a little better letting it all out.

Electromagnetism for dummies

When I started homeschooling the boys, I thought, with supreme confidence, that I could handle all the math and science the boys would need at least through high school. Certainly I had no doubts at all that I could handle elementary-school science. I didn't count on having a son like Brigham.
I created email addresses for all the boys. Joseph and Mosey have already written grandma a couple of emails. Brigham tells me he can't send any emails until he learns how a computer works.
Um, that could take a while.
Tonight, as I was trying to help Joseph slog through his long division, Brigham comes up to me with his "The Way Science Works" book which he has been studying. He wants to know exactly how electricity is related to electromagnetic waves. So I tell him that an electric current creates a magnetic field, and a changing magnetic field creates an electric current. But that's not enough. He wants to know exactly what *is* an electromagnetic wave. So I blithely tell him that it is a stream of photons that have particle and wavelike properties. But that's not enough. He already knows that electricity is the flow of electrons, and that electromagnetic waves are the flow of photons (roughly speaking). But he wants to know how electricity makes electromagnetic radiation and exactly what *is* a magnetic field anyway? What is it made of?
Um, I have a bachelor's degree in chemistry and took several upper-level physical chemistry and physics classes, and I still don't know how to answer these questions.
I'm feeling a little dumb right now. And more than a little worried I'm not going to be equipped to keep up with this boy's scientific curiosity.
And I'm wondering how this same boy cannot remember how to spell "made" even though he's had the word on his spelling list for 4 straight spelling lessons.

mommy time?

Today was a little rough.
It started with me waking to the glorious sound of little boys screaming at each other, then my bedroom door slamming closed and Mosey shouting, tears running down his face, "Joseph threw my soccer ball into the pool FOR NO REASON!!!" (This "for no reason" thing is a favorite addendum to whatever bad action is being tattled about, and bears no relation to whether or not there actually was a reason for said bad action).
Sigh...
So begins another day.
It wasn't so bad, once the argument was settled (Mosey was trying to introduce a 2nd soccer ball into the game the boys were playing, and everyone knows you can't play soccer with 2 balls).
It was just a long day and by late this afternoon my brain was just about on overload. All three boys had to tell me things all day at top volume, and I didn't have a break all day long.
By about 5:30 I was at my breaking point and told the boys, "I need to take some mommy time, so you all go play and let me do my own stuff for a while, ok?" This lasted about 2 minutes after which time Mosey came up to me and said, "You're doing mommy time now, right?" "Yes, Mosey." "OK, then can you come and help me build a road for my kapla block capitol building?" He had been working on this elaborate kapla block creation for most of the day, requiring me to come and look and give the appropriate laudatory remarks at regular intervals.
Well, that wasn't exactly what I meant by "mommy time." But I feel perpetually guilty about not devoting as much attention to Mosey during the day as I do to Brigham and Joseph in their lessons, so I left off what I was doing and went and built a Kapla block road for a while.
I love these boys so much, sometimes to the bursting point. Last night Mosey came and said, "I have one more birthday present for you, mom." Then he came and gave me a huge hug and said, "You can't keep this one, so you'll just have to remember it." That was a good mommy-moment.
But sometimes it's all a little too much. I try to remind myself of how I'll miss these days when all my boys want is my attention and listening ear. Most of the time that works. Other times, like tonight, I feel like my brain is going to shut down.
Tomorrow will be better.