sour milk, farm days, chores, and Mount Laundry

Life has become really hectic. It's getting harder and harder to get even the basics done. And normal life never seems to happen because there's always something or other to disrupt my plans.

Ann Marie is pulling herself up on things to stand now (as of a few of weeks ago) and will kind of walk if you hold her hands. Army crawling is still her primary way of getting around, but she is transitioning into a regular crawl. I don't think many of her onesies are going to last for another child because she loves exploring the kitchen and inevitably gets stuff all over her front. And the sand park is an even worse culprit. She signs more and food and says more (Mah! Mah!), Dad (dada), and Mom (nanana or mamama). She is starting to figure out how to drink out of a sippy cup. Lately I feel like I can't make food fast enough for her to eat it. The other day I made sweet potato fries and I'm pretty sure she ate an entire sweet potato by herself.

Heidi can't keep her hands off of Ann Marie. Every time I turn around I see her carrying her by the armpits somewhere. I think being a big sister will be more fun once Ann Marie is walking and knows how to play and talk better.

Kevin has been doing a lot better with his reading lately. Sounding out words is not as much of a battle (still hard, but not as bad), and he's learned a lot of sight words, so that helps him to be able to read faster. It sounds like at school they are starting to learn more phonetics. He told me about how super E at the end of words can jump on the vowel in the middle and make it say its name, and he's been learning about some word families like the ones that end in -ay and words that have ee in them. He's been using a website called Raz Kids at school sometimes, and even though we have access to it at home I hadn't really had him do it at home much because I was getting things from the library for him to read. But a few weeks ago we got on there with him and realized he was way behind, and when we looked at the parents page we realized it was because he didn't understand how to take the quizzes and he was repeating the same five books over and over. So Ryan sat down with him one evening and helped Kevin understand it better and got him motivated to try to aim to get from Level B to Level C. In just a couple of days he read forty books and did all the quizzes and had moved on to Level C. He was pretty excited. So now he's working on getting to Level D. The books are even more dumb than the ones he's been bringing home from school, which I didn't realize was possible, but he's motivated by the levels and it does give him some practice with sight words and learning new words. Plus I was just a little embarrassed when I realized how behind he was.

Last week Kevin didn't miss the bus once in the morning. This is a huge accomplishment because we had a couple of months where I don't think he caught the bus once. I finally decided to stop fighting the daily half-hour battle of having him get himself dressed because it's much, much more convenient for me to dress him myself so he can catch the bus. If he misses the bus I end up spending twenty minutes in rush hour traffic both ways getting him to school.

Ryan is really close to having his first paper ready for publication. He keeps having things that need to be edited and tweaked, but he's close. He's also been working a little on his second paper.

A little over a week ago I bought groceries while Heidi was at joy school. I brought them home and was putting them away as quickly as I could so I could go pick up Heidi, when I realized that one of my jugs of milk had a hole in it. It made a puddle on the counter that I had to clean up, then I realized the stroller (which I had used to bring in all the groceries) was sopping wet, and then with a terrible sinking feeling I realized that meant there was probably a puddle of milk in the back of our van. My fears were confirmed when I went out to check. I had to call the mom who was hosting joy school to let her know I was going to be late because of the milk, but since she had to leave right away to go teach a class at a gym, she had to ask one of the other moms to stay with Heidi until I could get there. So I was grateful that I could take some time to try to clean up the milk. The floor of the van wasn't quite as bad as I had feared, but it was wet on one side, so I dried it as well as I could and then scrubbed at it with wet washcloths, then went and picked up Heidi.

The next day the van definitely smelled like milk. It didn't smell like sour milk yet, but it smelled like milk. So I did a more vigorous scrub with Simple Green and water and got more worried. The next day we came out to go to church and the van smelled like rotting milk and I started freaking out that our car was going to be ruined. I didn't feel like scrubbing it myself was doing any good and I just wanted it taken care of. So finally I decided that the best thing would be to get it shampooed. That evening I did a lot of research about various car wash businesses, and I realized that it probably wouldn't cost as much as I had been thinking, so the next morning (Monday) I called and made an appointment. As soon as the worker opened the trunk and got a whiff, he said, "Oh, milk. I've dealt with this before." He shampooed the carpet pretty thoroughly and sprayed it with the same stuff they use to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke. Then I spent as much time outside with the kids as possible so I could open the back of the van and keep an eye on it while it dried. Fortunately Tuesday was a warm sunny day, so it dried pretty quickly once the sun was shining on it. Now our car still smells like the stuff that was sprayed on the carpet, so we're getting a little tired of that smell, but so far the smell of rotten milk hasn't returned, even after a week, so I'm feeling hopeful that the problem is taken care of. I guess in the future I will make sure the milk isn't sitting right on top of the carpet in case something like this happens again. We are very grateful that the milk smell seems to be gone. One of my friends commented that whoever said "Never cry over spilled milk" was a fool.

I took Heidi to the NCSU Farm Animal Days again this year. I forgot to take the camera, but she had a good time. She still talks about holding the baby chicks from last year, so I knew she would really like to go again. She enjoyed looking at all the animals and trying a few of the tractors, and considering how long we had to wait in line to see the chicks she was pretty patient. I was a little annoyed because as we were getting close to the front of the line, three moms with about eight kids jumped in front of us in line. Apparently one of them had been saving a spot for everyone else so they wouldn't have to wait a long time with all their kids. On the one hand, it made sense, but it was still irritating to have that big group jump in front of us after we had waited so long. I decided not to say anything. Heidi was happy to finally get to hold a chick. When we had seen everything they gave us some free ice cream. Kevin was disappointed that he didn't get to come, but it only lasted until 2:00 every day and I didn't want to take him out of school since he's already missed eight days this year. Maybe next year I'll check him out of school so he can go.

We are trying to establish Saturday chores for the kids. We talked about it in family home evening and told how helping to clean up is part of being a family, so yesterday they asked if we were going to have a chore chart. We had them clean toilets and mirrors with a lot of guidance from me. We are also trying to be more strict about having them pick up the toys themselves and put their own clothes away. Most of the time it seems like a lot more work to get them to clean up after themselves, but I'm trying to remind myself that this is an investment in the future.

Every once in a while I feel like I'm close to being caught up on laundry. When that happens it usually means it's time to start washing all the clothes again. When Kevin was a baby I didn't understand why putting away clothes that are too small or out of season was such an ordeal for other moms, but now I get it. When you have several kids and a dozen bins full of clothes to save, it's a lot more work. I also realized that there were several cute girl outfits I had saved from when Heidi was a baby that are already close to being too small for Ann Marie. Whoops.

Stories From My Childhood: Idaho History Day

When I was in fourth grade we studied Idaho history during social studies. Towards the end of the year we had a special day in which we presented projects, watched a John Wayne movie, and walked around the track dressed like pioneers and pulling covered wagons.

My project was really pathetic. I procrastinated until the night before and ended up making a lame hand-drawn activity book. A fellow classmate had been working very hard on making a good coloring book about Idaho history and I just copied his idea.

We were assigned groups for our walk around the track, and since I was the only one in the group who had a wagon at home I was asked to make the covered wagon for our group. I had no clue how to turn the red wagon into a covered wagon, and my parents didn't really know how to do it either. Finally on the night before I ended up putting a round laundry basket on its side and draped a sheet over it. It sort of looked like a covered wagon and I figured it would work.

When it came time to walk around the track, I looked around at the other covered wagons people had made and realized mine looked pretty pathetic in comparison. I mentioned this to my teacher, Mrs. Morrill, and she said, "Marci, that's a Conestoga wagon." It did kind of look like a Conestoga. But it didn't hold up very well. A quarter of the way around the track the sheet blew off and I didn't realize it until we'd walked another quarter mile. Then I had to run back and get it, and when I picked it up there were several middle schoolers who had stopped on their way to lunch, and I was pretty sure they were laughing at my wagon.

By the time I had brought the sheet back to my wagon my group had abandoned me and I couldn't catch up with them. So for a while I forlornly walked around the track by myself. I gave up on putting the sheet back on the wagon because it kept blowing off, so I was pulling around a little red wagon with a broken clothes basket and an old sheet.

Fortunately, I passed a group who didn't have a wagon at all and I ended up joining their group. They had plenty of awesome snacks, which were much easier to pull in the wagon than to carry in their arms, so after that I had a very fun time.

A few days later Mrs. Morrill took me aside and said, "Marci, how did you feel about your project?" I admitted that I was not proud of it. She told me that she knew I could do a better job and gave me two weeks to do a new project. I took the opportunity very seriously this time and put a lot more thought and work into it. I ended up researching the gold rush and I even tried to show how people went panning for gold by putting dirt and rocks wrapped in foil into a basin of water and swirling scoops of it around in a pie plate. I could tell Mrs. Morrill was really pleased with my project this time and it felt really good to have done a quality project.