Month: March 2017

Katie

• It was raining as we walked out of church today, and Katie was thrilled. “Thank you, God! Thanks for the rain!” she cheerfully chirped as she skipped through the parking lot alongside me
• This kid really loves kindergarten. We’ve been doing reading exercises every day in The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading, or as we call it, “the big blue book” and as such she’s excelling at reading at school. She’s not a super-precocious reader (I was one of those, and I am skeptical that it benefits children to be reading novels in the K-2 years) but she’s a crackerjack decoder; it’s fun seeing her piece together the phonemic patterns.
• We usually do reading time in the school parking lot in the morning. Eleanor needs to arrive at school early for safety patrol, so we have 15-20 minutes to wait in the car. We do a lesson in the big blue book, and if there’s time I read a picture book to her and William. For a while I went through a phase of reading exclusively Hans Christian Andersen stories. “The Brownie and the Grocer” remains my favorite HCA tale.
• Katie is the only one of my kids who talks about school. The other kids prefer to give a brief anecdote or one-sentence summary of the day, but Katie will happily chatter on about every song, story, game, and friendship power play that happened that day.
• (Which is how I know that she’s growing pumpkin plants in her classroom right now)
• As I write this, Katie is watching Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses movie and dancing along with the characters. It’s the only Barbie movie that isn’t completely terrible.
• The number of stuffies that Katie sleeps with every night is reaching critical mass. She carries a good dozen of them around the house with her, and when she wants to take them up to bed, she asks me to help her bundle them up in her blankie so she can haul them around without dropping any. Ergo, she often sleeps with a giant blankie-covered lump of stuffed animals in her bed. Sometimes the Treasured Stuffie of the Moment gets to rest on top of the blankie blob, like some kind of perverse Princess and the Pea-meets-King of the Mountain

William

• It’s often difficult to get William to open up and talk about his interior life. I think I’ve written about that here before. He will gladly explain every detail of a process — a puzzle he completed, a science experiment at school, the rules of a game he likes to play — but dreams, hopes, feelings? Not so much. (Unless he believes he’s being treated unfairly, in which case he gets in a snit.)
• In fact, during William’s parent-teacher conference, his teacher’s biggest complaint about him is that he doesn’t speak up much in class (that, and his terrible handwriting)
• He still wears one of the two hats he got as Christmas presents almost every day, although not quite as frequently as in January. It’s nice to see his hair from time to time (by the way, he needs a haircut, which he hates).
• He is the most self-sufficient of our children; Frances (our family’s piano teacher) was amazed when I mentioned that I do not help him at all with his daily instrument practice. He loves checklists and goal charts and calendars and faithfully brings me his piano practice log to have me sign off when he’s finished making music
• William loves hugs and snuggles but firmly believes in kiss reciprocity: when I cuddle and kiss him, he keeps count of the number of kisses I give him and returns the exact same number of kisses. If I try to sneak in one or two more he immediately gives the same number back. Leaving things uneven drives him crazy.
• He is still Katie’s #1 playmate, although his patience is tried every time he plays with her. Katie likes to dictate the play scenario, which he can only stand for so long.

Eleanor

• Our girl is turning 12 next month, and she is both excited and sad about leaving Primary. She has two incredibly good buddies in her Primary class (Esther and Audrey) and they get together for playdates as often as I can make it happen. Last night I took them to watch Beauty and the Beast after the Women’s Session of General Conference. They giggled and said silly things all the way to the theater.

• It’s good that E. has buddies at church because she’s having a lonely time at school right now. Most of her school friends graduated into middle school last year, and her other sort-of buddies hang out with cliques that she can’t break into (they contain girls who have literally said “Hey Eleanor, can you step away for a moment because we want to talk about stuff without you around?” BLECH). Recess is lame for her right now, and she can’t figure out what to do with herself. There used to be a preference for kids to play Four-Square (which she loved), but then kickball games started up again (they were banned for a while) and everyone quit playing Four-Square. Kickball for Eleanor usually means getting yelled at by hyper-competitive kids who can’t deal with flaws in other people. (Kids who get yelly during casual pickup games totally deserve all the terrible dysfunctional relationships they are doomed to have as adults. Said Brooke.)
• FORTUNATELY middle school is on the horizon — which would initially seem like a bad thing, but our school goes to great lengths to help kids avoid these kind of lonely experiences: every lunch period has multiple structured activities to participate in, and she’ll be in the same grade as her church buddies, and hopefully will run with her grade-older friends again.
• Eleanor picked out her preferences for middle school classes – -she’s going to take Compression Math (where she’ll learn all of 7th/8th grade math in one year), Honors English, Honors Science, Honors Social Studies, and Spanish. We don’t know what her other elective will be, but she’s hoping for Art, Digital Communications, or Chef School. I love my smart, hard-working girl!
• Today I gave her an early birthday present: a “real” quadruple-combo set of scriptures with her name inscribed on the front. The reason for the earliness is because E. lost her previous set of scriptures (including the bag!) and needs new ones to finish the requirements for her Faith in God Award. We have no idea where the old scriptures went, it’s super annoying.
• This week Eleanor and I watched the BBC miniseries version of Pride & Prejudice, the one with Colin Firth. I had to spend a lot of time “translating” the dialogue for Eleanor, but she was totally into the story and really liked it. I don’t think she was as interested in the romance as much as she found all the socially awkward situations hilarious. Which is what Austen intended.

Jeff

• The YM in our ward had a silent auction a few weeks ago to raise money for Scout Camp. Jeff auctioned off a sushi dinner, which he cooked and delivered last Sunday. The family who bid on his cooking were totally impressed. He made multiple platters of maki rolls (I love the caterpillar the best!), vegetarian nigiri (made with shiitake mushrooms!), inarizushi, and even included a container of miso soup and a bunch of wafer cookies he picked out at the Asian grocery store. Way to go, Chef Jeff! (Although I admit that Brian had a good hand in helping the operation.)

• Jeff sent in his registration materials for high school this week. He’s also going to be taking first-year Spanish, which is fun because he and Eleanor can study together. He also wants to do digital communications or computer programming as his high school “pathway.” We’ll see where he ends up when his schedule arrives.
• We’re a little concerned about Jeff’s participation in Coro Vivo with the Seattle Children’s Chorus. When his voice changed, Jeff lost a lot of his vocal control and has a very difficult time singing on pitch any more. His choir director wants him to get a vocal coach. I’m happy to do this, but I have no idea where we’ll find the time to make this happen. The idea of adding one more extracurricular to our schedule is enough to make my head explode.
• Jeff is a wonderful reader and it makes me happier than anything. He just finished Neal Schustermans’ Scythe and is now reading the latest Steve Sheinkin nonfiction (Undefeated). BUT it seems like Jeff is getting more reserved and I’m not connecting with him as much as I used to.
• A big reason for this is because Jeff is the “assistant stage manager” for the middle school play right now, and he doesn’t come home from school until almost 5:00 p.m., a time that I’m usually spending carpooling other kids around or cooking dinner. I miss having our quiet one-on-one time when he would arrive home 45 minutes before the other kids.
• Being asst. stage manager is a position Jeff created for himself, with permission from the play director. I’m not really sure what it is he does during rehearsals (I ask him but his answers are vague and garbled), but I think it’s great for him to get involved in something with his school community.

Me:

• Nothing special here, I just wanted to mention that I finally got around to making a recipe from the Lemonade cookbook and it was SOOO good. I took the “Roasted Cauliflower, Almond, Golden Raisin, Curry Vinaigrette” to the salad potluck at Women’s Conference and boy, it was tasty. I had a few recipe requests. It was nice to recommend the cookbook to more people!

I have a friend who is a choir teacher in the school district just north of where I live, and she agrees with me that, for some reason, March is the busiest time ever for families with kids who do music.

It’s been this way the last few years, but the crunch seemed extra hard this time around.

Here’s the rundown:

• Piano adjudications, which meant extra mini-lessons to check on the kids’ pieces and be sure they were memorized and ready to perform
• Seattle Children’s Chorus spring performance immediately after adjudications, with crazy-early call times for Jeff
• Eleanor was asked to perform as part of a children’s choir with the Sno-King Community Chorale’s performance of Cantata Memoria–For the Children, which meant lots of evening rehearsals up at Edmonds Community College
• The kids’ piano teacher hosted a recital to include all the kids who didn’t do adjudications (like Katie)

• Eleanor was also picked to be in the 6th grade Honor Band, with extra rehearsals for that, then a Wednesday night performance and an all-day Thursday tour of schools on the west side of town
• Meanwhile, I was also preparing Bach’s Sinfonia No. 15 for piano juries (it had to be memorized! And I forgot how Bach shows off all your flaws! Well . . . the performance was an acceptable level of okayness)

The performance of Cantata Memoria was last night. It’s the most beautiful piece of music about the saddest thing ever. We’ve been listening to her practice CD in the car, so I’ve basically been driving around town for the last three weeks with tears coursing down my cheeks.

This piece was commissioned and premiered last year for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster — an event that is still strong in the cultural memory of the UK, but relatively unknown here — when a hillside of slurry from a coal mine collapsed and buried the local elementary school, killing 116 children and 26 adults. The coal mine operators had been warned about the collapse beforehand, but since environmental law and industry regulation didn’t exist in 1966 the way it does now, the mine ignored the warnings, and tragedy struck. (The parents insisted that their children’s death certificates listed the cause of death as “Buried alive by National Coal Board.”)

Brian and I were especially impressed with how composer Karl Jenkins chose to musically depict the landslide — the chorus sings the Welsh pitran patran in increasing intensity to show the storms that created the hillside collapse, counterpointed with the children’s voices singing “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” with its lyrics about running rivers and waters rushing by. When the “landslide” struck, the children’s choir turned its back to the audience, and the baritone soloist sang “Nothing . . . nothing . . .” while the children sang a Welsh bedtime lullaby. It was all very affecting. There was a video presentation that accompanied the performance, and it included archival news footage of the children’s funerals. Let’s just say that we’re lucky Brian didn’t have to escort a bawling Brooke out of the performance hall.

But just like that — I had another great reminder of why I put up with all the insane carpools, early morning lessons, dinners eaten in cars, and harp harp harping on practicing.

“But if to be alive is to belong

Then we must

Keep

Still

This song.

Sing it until the end of the night,

Sing it, sing it, for our children loved light,

my child loved light.”

Mwa ha ha. Brian and I are so sneaky. Back in fall, we made arrangements to take our kids to California over Midwinter Break to visit our cousins in Los Angeles and also to take a spin through Disneyland. But we decided not to tell our kids about it up until the moment we got in the car to leave — to surprise them. I threw a so many red herrings at them (“you want to go to the cat cafe? Sure, maybe during midwinter break”) that I was slightly worried that they’d be upset at the news.

Seriously, they came home from school, asked why their bags were in the back of the car, and then this happened:

(Jeff was majorly concerned when he saw those packed bags — he thought I was divorcing Brian and taking all the kids away! My poor lil’ anxious guy.)

Katie looks happy in this video, but to tell the truth, the news was all a little overwhelming for her, and five minutes after I turned off the camera she was bawling. “I won’t get to hug all my stuffiieeeeees,” she wailed. “And I’ll miss the sunset in Seattle every day!” 

Fortunately, she cheered up by the time we got to the airport (although . . . she pretty much cried all the way there) and was perky and happy all the way through security, even when I got picked by the TSA to have a pat-down (blergh).

I’m not going to bother posting about every single moment of our trip — that’s better suited for a photobook — and besides, I took well over a thousand pictures over the week. Here’s the highlight reel:

Visiting Grauman’s Chinese Theater with the cousins! Sarah and the boys were very excited to match palms with the cast of Harry Potter.

Eleanor, on the other hand, was over the moon at finding the cast members from West Side Story.

Meanwhile, I was baffled to explain who some of the other celebrities were. “Whoopi Goldberg? Um . . . she’s the voice of one of the hyenas in The Lion King?”

Cousin-pile-up! You can see the “Hollywood” sign on the mountains in the background.

We had a bit of a jolly time visiting the merry-go-round in Griffith Park (it is so old-school that the horses’ tails are made from horses’ tails and it goes super-fast. Feels like a real gallop, I loved it!)

Also, we spent time playing in the abandoned Old Zoo that is in the park. No fewer than two amateur fashion/album art photo shoots going on there during our visit. Oh, L.A.

Yes, we made another trip to Diddy Riese ice cream . . .

. . . and of COURSE I made sure to hit up Lemonade. Ugh, I’m already craving the coconut-apple-kefir-lime drink! (Kathryn, if you are reading this, Lemonade is SO your kind of restaurant. Gourmet veggie salads galore, it’s glorious.)

We took a quick trip to Cabrillo Point in San Diego . . .

. . . collapsed in front of the temple . . .

. . . and toured the Mormon Battalion exhibit with the fam. (Did I not mention that Grandma Suzie & Grandpa Jeff came along with us? It rocked, but somehow I have hardly any pictures with them.)

Also, LEGOLAND WITH COUSINS! How great is that?

 

My favorite part was the Mindstorms workshop. The kids had to program a tiny robot Indiana Jones to retrieve treasure from a tomb.

And then we said goodbye to the cousins and headed off to Disney the next day.

Good grief, I had forgotten how much I love Disneyland. Our kids are seven years older than on our previous trip, and we could really hustle our way across the park.

One thing I did this time was save up all of the $5 Target gift cards that the store gives away for buying multiples of toilet paper and tissues — and then used them to buy Disney gift cards, which can be used in the theme parks. Over the last six months I hoarded enough gift cards to be able to give each of my children a $50 Disney card, which they could spend any way they wanted. This was my strategy to curb any begging on the part of my kids.

“Why can’t I get a soda with lunch?”

“Well, you can use your own gift card for that.”

[crickets chirping]

I was surprised that each of my kids decided to buy a pair of Mickey ears with their cards — the girls chose Minnie ones with big red or purple bows, and the boys found Star Wars themed ears (Jeff’s looks like BB8, Wim’s like R2D2). Then they each had enough left over to buy a toy. The boys chose to get a custom “build your own lightsaber,” Katie after much deliberation chose a stuffed Ewok (she has named it “Chirpa”) and Eleanor picked out one of the glow-in-the-dark Mickey bubble wands that so many kids were carrying around. She blew bubbles all over us while we waited in line for rides, it was great.

We rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad six times. Star Tours seven times. We terrified Katie to tears on the Indiana Jones ride exactly one time and that was enough.

So much fun. There was a lot I hadn’t been able to do during our previous Disney trip seven years ago, like taking time to visit with characters. Eleanor collected autographs from twenty different characters. She liked that it was a nice round number. (Katie collected a few extra while the big kids rode the California Screamin’ roller coaster, but it wasn’t a contest.)

 

Or trying all the many, many Disney treats. (Word up: the pecan brittle is AMAZING. And my kids are all addicted to Dole Whip now.)

The three younger kids were able to sign up for the Jedi Training Academy (Eleanor was juuuust young enough to still participate). William took his lightsaber duel with Darth Vader SO SERIOUSLY.

I think this is also part of why Katie was so talkative during our “visit” with Darth later on. She clammed up during every other character visit, but with Vader she was all, “Nuh-uh, we’ll never join you, Darth Vader!”

I personally found the Cars Land section of Disney California Adventure to be my favorite part of the visit — which I would never have predicted. But this place oozes so much charm. 

And yeah, the kids convinced me to get this Mickey sorcerer’s apprentice hat. It was partially for fun, and partially to make it easy to find me in the crowd. (Whenever I took it off, they insisted I put it back on immediately.)

Okay . . . I could easily spend the next several hours waxing on and on about every anecdote about the trip, but I need to stop now. Almost every day this past week I’ve spent a few minutes looking at the pictures from our trip and sighing, sad that it’s all over. Yesterday morning Eleanor woke up sad because she had had a dream that we were going back to Disneyland but it ended before she got there.

The only thing that kept us from crying as we packed up to go home was the revelation that LAX has a Lemonade. Which meant more kale-kumquat salad and white truffle mac & cheese so I was okay.

My sister will still be in L.A. for the next few years, so we’ll have to make a point of going again before she leaves. I’m already saving up my Target gift cards to get ready!