Traveling with two

As Bobby mentioned in his Sunday Summary, our family traveled to St. Louis this last weekend. It's funny to watch how slowly, but surely, Alice and Robert's lives become more entwined as they learn to play with each other and enjoy activities together. Here they are standing on side-by-side chairs brushing their teeth (please excuse the awkward picture-of-a-mirror-image thing going on...I'll take a photography course one of these days and learn better strategies for awkward spaces and terrible lighting):

Then later, when all the playing was done and we were finally heading home, they were both exhausted. Robert literally couldn't keep his eyes open. He blew weaker and weaker notes until his head drooped and the harmonica slowly slipped from his hands. Sweet, sweet sleep.

Alice wasn't far behind him. She stayed awake long enough to enjoy some of our traditional temple-trip-gas-station-slushie drink, but soon she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, too. She took a couple more bites of cheesy popcorn with her eyes closed, then let one cheese-coated hand fall to the side while the other rested comfortably in the popcorn bowl.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Well, this week has been some what normal. About the only thing that was out of the ordinary is that we went to the temple on Saturday. Driving for 3 hours with the kids is never a lot of fun, but Alice and Robert seemed to have a good time. We stayed in a hotel friday night, something that Alice always loves. Because she and Robert share a room when we stay in a hotel, and Alice does not want the light off and Robert cannot have it on we let Alice stay up a little and watch TV while Robert falls asleep. She mentioned the following to us on Saturday "I watched TV yesterday and I watched TV today. We could buy a TV and then have one at our house." Its not like the girl doesn't watch a lot of stuff. It is just all on the computer.

On a side note the raspberries are ready.

YUM!!!!

Swimsuit (and pink balloon)

I did it! With the generous guidance (and expert serger tools) of Marianne, I fashioned a snazzy new swimsuit for Alice in a matter of hours. An hour to cut (I'm paranoid, okay?), three hours to sew. Lots of new skills gained. Here it is!

 

You may be wondering about the thing on her head. Well, that was Alice's idea. She saw the extra swimsuit fabric lying there and thought it would make lovely "swimming hair." She showed me where to sew it so she could have two long ponytail-like strips running down her back, draped over her shoulders, or flying in the breeze however she likes.When she discovered the headband could also be used to make an enormous, wavy poof in the front, she was hooked. She wore it off and on the rest of the day...including 3 hours in the car on our way to St. Louis and right up to the hotel front desk. The woman behind us in line commented on Alice's outfit and asked about the "scarf". Alice politely informed her it was hair for swimming. The woman smiled and nodded, unsure how to respond.

Anyway, Alice likes it as an outfit. Will she swim in it? That has yet to be tested. The shirt is a little too short (I should have predicted that!), so I'll be fashioning a little ruffle to go along the bottom. Alice likes the ruffle idea and asked about adding ruffles to the pants to make them more beautiful, too. Um.

Harmonica Playin' Fool

Remember when I told you Robert likes to work on things until he gets it right? Well, I brought him a harmonica from my trip to North Carolina a couple weeks ago. He still experiences a lot of frustration trying to put the harmonica into its box and shutting the lid (in and out, in and out), but he finally figured out how to play it! One day, he just breathed out a few wispy notes and surprised himself silly. Big, open-mouthed grin. No stopping him since. He's grown louder and more varied, sometimes belting out surprisingly bluesy chords. That's the surprising benefit of a harmonica: no matter how you make the notes, they're roughly harmonic and almost musical. Not nearly as jarring or tinny as the xylophone we gave him for Christmas.

Anyway, he waddles around the living room holding the harmonica to his mouth with one hand while breathing chords in and out, in and out, in and out. The noise doesn't bother me because it's almost musical and he's just so darn cute playing it. I took a video. Alice and Bobby are playing with a bubble house in the background. Remember making bubble houses during our childhood summers? They rock, even for noise-averse wind-haters like my kids :)

Neighborhood Barbeque

Our neighbors and friends host a little neighborhood BBQ every summer. We attended it this weekend and let a couple of preschoolers (Alice and Spencer) man the camera for a while. I think they captured the spirit of this casual, friendly, and fun gathering quite nicely, even if they didn't exactly document the attendees or the sequence of events...or even a pleasant expression on my face (to be fair, it took Alice a million years to take that photo!):

Father's Day

Alice remembered this morning that she would be "performing" in church for Father's Day. All the Primary kids had prepared a song to sing during Sacrament Meeting. If we hadn't been so rushed to get out the door in time, I would have taken a picture of her. She decided on her purple dress which isn't very fancy, but I distinctly remember her saying, "Now I need jewelry. Lots of jewelry," as she dug through her dress-up box. She settled on classic white gloves and a simple bracelet. Then she was ready for a hairdo: three braids sticking out so she could see them herself in the mirror. She selected two red bows and one white bow to accent the braids, slipped on her fancy black Sunday shoes (without tights...too hot!) and declared herself ready.

I gave Robert a choice between two ties and a bow tie and he pounced on the bow tie. Bobby and I agreed he kinda looked like a moonshining gangster from prohibition times. The cutest one ever!

Sacrament meeting itself was less than pleasant. Poor Robert was so tired. He's a bit crazy when he gets tired: loud, obstinate, aggressive, reckless. It's hard to keep a hold of him when it's just me in the pew. Alice gets a bit jealous when he's tired, and she clings to me all the more, but she was a real help in the end. I must remember to let her know how much I appreciate her help.

Alice paid tithing for the first time today, filling out the tithing slip herself, sort of.

After church, Robert took a nap and Alice and I had a silly lunch together. She was in such a great mood today. I couldn't believe it. We frantically tidied the house in preparation for someone to come by and see it (6th prospective buyer to come by since the house went on the market two months ago, no offers yet), then took a long stroll in the sculpture gardens at Meadowbrook Park. I have no doubt we'll get an offer tomorrow morning from them. Our raspberry canes are burdened with the biggest crop of raspberries we've grown in 3 years, my garden is flush with ripe peas and chard, and there's the promise of sweet corn, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. How could anyone resist wanting to own that?! (Or maybe I'm just a bit disgruntled to leave it...if we do.)

We came home from the park and made dinner. Bobby had a choice between salmon fillets or tofu sweet potato jambalaya :) Good thing he picked the salmon because Alice could actually help with a lot of that. She's really helpful when she's in a good mood! When she wasn't dipping the fillets or rolling them in seasoned crumbs, she was playing silly games to make Robert laugh. Holy moly, she's a wonder. She does have her bad days, though. Remind me to tell you about the afternoon I heard, "Mommy, I don't know why I'm crying. I want to stop but I just can't."

We played a whole bunch of imaginary role playing games after dinner: cops and robbers, princess at the ball, prison escape, doggies, and doggie sandwich making to name a few. Robert played along or found compatible activities/skills to work on. He decided to work on his walking-in-huge-shoes skills today. He made many frustrating attempts with my sandals before I put him into Alice's sandals. My sandals were too big for him to walk in. He kept stepping out of them and couldn't get back into them. Alice's sandals were much better. Too much better, in Robert's opinion. Walking around in them was too easy. He stopped several times just to take them off and try to put them back on by himself. More frustration. I let him work on it for a while, but before frustration turned into tantrum, I declared, "I'm gonna gitcha!" and he ran off giggling and squealing at the prospect of a chase.

All in all, it was one of those days you want to remember about raising your young family...except for the Sacrament meeting part. That was no fun :)

Buddy Play

Ever since my return from North Carolina, Alice and Robert have been (almost) nonstop fun to play with again. Was it the vacation? Or did something actually click while I was gone. Suddenly, their play is more compatible than competitive and Buddy turned into this little boy. Less baby than ever, he's shedding his babyhood one synapse at a time. I'm watching him again. He's changed enough recently that I've needed to reacquaint myself with who he is and where he's going. Add that to my recent acquisition of NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, and there's a whole lot of thinking goin' on in the parenting section of my brain.

Anyway, I've got my eye on him, and this is what I see as he plays during the last hour of church today:

He polishes off the last of the cheddar crackers. He should have been asleep two hours ago. He wants more crackers, but the little bowl is empty. He puts the lid on, takes it off, puts it on again. Looks at me. Nope, no more crackers, no matter how many times you close the lid, Boo. He signs for me to hold him, I pick him up to put him on my lap, but he arches his back and slides silently over to the empty seat next to me. Was that on purpose? No matter. This, he likes. He sits there on the chair, all smiles, with his short little legs out in front of him. Too short to reach the front edge of the seat. All grown up.

He plops the bowl and lid on his lap and begins a new kind of play I've never seen. He takes the lid off, puts the bowl to his mouth, looks hard inside, and puts the lid back on. Repeats several times. Then, while he's not looking, I slip a miniature stuffed cow into his bowl. The next time he looks, suddenly there's something new to play with. He giggles. Lid off, cow out, bite cow head, return cow to bowl, lid on. Repeat. He accidentally drops the bowl on the floor, slides off the chair to retrieve it, puts the cow in, puts the lid on, then asks for help back onto the chair. Something similar happens when he accidentally drops the cow on the floor. Then he opens the lid, pulls out the cow and says, "Mmmmmmuuuhhh." (Robert's version of 'moo') Giggle, giggle. Another bite to the cow's head, and then he plops the cow back into the bowl.

This time, however, the lid slips. Instead of sealing the cow safely inside, the lid actually scoops the cow out and flings it onto Robert's lap. Giggle, giggle. Robert plops the cow back into the bowl and starts using the lid as a spoon to feed me the cow. It's a tough trick, so he gives up on the feeding part and just scoops and dumps the cow over and over again. That proves to be difficult, too, especially in Robert's exhausted state, so he eventually squeals in frustration, shoves the bowl and the cow off of his lap and slides off the chair. He grunts and fusses two feet away and collapses on the floor when I offer the bowl or cow again. Tired boy.

Later, the lid becomes a face-smashing window (it's a clear lid) and the bowl spends a brief period of time as rose-colored glasses (it's actually clear purple, but you get the idea). Lots of giggles all around. He's a fun little character when I spend time learning how he plays.

Point of the story: he spent most of an hour exploring ONE toy that wasn't ever intended as a toy. I also learned that he likes to work on skills. If he figures something out (i.e. climbing a step, stabbing food with a fork, wearing huge shoes, pushing a button, moving something heavy, turning a lid into a spoon, etc.) then he wants to do just that one thing over and over and over again. Up the step, down the step, up the step, down the step, even if he's not that good at it. Especially if he's not that good at it! Stab something with the fork, pull it off with fingers, stab it again with the fork, pull it off. I used to get all frustrated that he was restless or playing with his food. I just wanted him to pick ONE thing and stick to it. Turns out, he had decided on one thing. It just wasn't an activity I had even considered remotely important...to me. It's the most important thing in the world to him, though. Now I get it.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been slowly returning to normal. Susan is back from her trip to North Carolina and we are starting to get back into our routine. Yesterday I had a first. A friend of ours had a piano with a cracked soundboard. So the piano would never be in tune and it was more expensive to fix it then the piano was worth. So we loaded it up into their minivan and took it to the dump. It was a bit of an adventure because the first dump we tried, the one in town that they called up yesterday to confirm that they would be open, was closed. So we adjusted last minute and went to a landfill half an hour away, and got there just a few mins before they closed. Alice was happy that she could spend all morning playing with her friends instead of just an hour. Susan was a the Family History Center the entire time so it really didn't impact her.

When you drop a piano into a large dumpster and it shatters it makes the sound I expected it to make.

Back Again

As Bobby mentioned in his Sunday Summary, I've been gallivanting about with a few sisters and my mom through bits of North and South Carolina in search of our family history. We solved some mysteries, discovered a few more, and decided that at least two of us should come back next year to catalog our third cousin's stockpile of Walker/Fisher family history heirlooms. Yeah, baby.

If you want to know the nitty-gritty details, I'll sort through them bit by bit over the next several years on my family history blog: Wiley Walker Family History. Prepare yourself to be blown away by its awesomeness ;)  In the meantime, here's a quick look at our week of research and fun:

Gathering details on scandalous stories, finding kin among the locals:

 

Locking ourselves out of our car:

Touring Asheville (where hippy is hip, man):

Cemeteries, cemeteries, cemeteries:

Eating good southern food

Trying out some family heirlooms:

A little light reading:

And one crazy thunderstorm adventure I'll never forget:

It was a refreshing and exhausting trip all at the same time. My head is whirling with everything we learned and experienced. So many discoveries! So many more questions! So much data to sort through! And then there's all the time I got to spend with my mom and sisters on this adventure...I can't decide which part I liked best. All of it was family history. Some of it still in the making :)

I did miss Bobby and the kids at home. We tried to Skype or call every day at first, but Alice said it made her too sad and she didn't want to be reminded that I was gone. Robert just got frustrated that he could see me but not touch me. So, our communications faded off towards the end. It made my homecoming all the more strange. I literally hadn't seen any of them for days. I had forgotten what Robert looked like and how Alice chatted away constantly. They all seemed so different after only one week. We picked peas from the garden, ate a very special dinner, gave the kids a long bath, and settled back into the family of four routine...except the kids wanted Bobby, not me, to help them with everything. Ha ha ha!

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Well, I don't have a lot to say, or perhaps more appropriately I don't have a lot of time to say anything. This week, since Wednesday, I have been flying solo. Susan is off on a family history pilgrimage that I am sure she will tell you all about when she is back. But for the time being it is just me. All I really have to say is wow, Susan is wonderful. I have gotten some help from family and friends or I don't think I would have been able to do this. But it is almost over, Susan comes home Tuesday night, and we are all still alive.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week has been crazy. Well I should say that Saturday was crazy but fun. Saturday started off with me working in the family history center. About 20 mins after I opened it up Susan showed up and she took over the the FHC while I conducted a baptism for a family in our ward. After the baptism Susan left and I finished working in the family history center. After that I changed my cloths at the church and headed out to a birthday party. It was a fun party. They had a water fight and water baseball. It was fun to see Alice get involved with it too. But the big part of it was a crawfish boil. Susan is not a big shell fish person so she didn't eat it. Alice was not interested in it either and well even though Robert wanted to taste everything we thought he was still a little young for shell fish. After that we went home and I had just enough time to take a shower and turn around to conduct another Baptism at the church. It was a very busy day, but lots of fun.

Goin' Retro

In the 80's they were called UV suits, and they weren't very popular. These days, they're called rash guards and surf suits and I find them the coolest must-have outfit for all outdoor water activities:

 

They're made of swimwear lycra blends that block UV rays, shed water while swimming, and dry quickly (which I guess is the same as shedding water). I love that the torturous sunscreen application process can be shortened to a few smears on face, forearms, and lower legs. Yes, this is the suit I want for all of my children, every year, into eternity. Unfortunately, I don't really want to pay big bucks for them for every child for every year into eternity, and I want a wider variety of color/pattern options than solid, Disney Princess, and Cars 2. So, with the help of my sew savvy friend, Marianne, we found this pattern from the 80s to help us make them ourselves:

 

Unfortunately, it's out of print. Way out of print. There's one copy for sale on eBay, but the seller does not want to ship it outside of Australia. Yes, Australia. We were just about to write a note to Kwik Sew informing them that it might be worth printing this pattern again due to all the hubbub around UV rays and skin cancer and wild speculation that all sunscreen products are poisonous in one way or another, blah blah blah, when I noticed a neat little service that Kwik Sew provides for their "archived" patterns. They'll make you a full-sized copy and get it to you within a week. Seriously?! Sign me up! 

Can't wait to get started...raglan sleeves, Marianne's serger, Kwik Sew pattern...probably 1-2 hours tops for a beginner like me to put it together. Woo hoo!

Housing Needs and Wants

I've been looking at houses and neighborhoods online this week to get a feel for our future home possibilities. I'm stuck. There are plenty of awesome neighborhoods in the area and heaps of beautiful, friendly homes for sale, but our search restrictions are...um...restrictive, and draining my energy :)

Here's the deal-e-o: I can't decide which restrictions are "needs" and which restrictions are "wants."

*hefty sigh*

The eternal dilemma, eh?

The only things we "need" that this house doesn't already provide are 1) a second bathroom and 2) a school meet that makes "adequate yearly progress". Guess what? It's super easy to find houses with 2 bathrooms in better school boundaries! There are dozens currently available within our price range. So, we have to refine our search a little further.

The next limitation is a "need-like want": Urbana ward boundaries. Or is that a "need" after all? Before Bobby's calling to the bishopric, we were open to moving to any of the three excellent wards in our area. I love many of the families in each of them! But now that Bobby is in the leadership, we're kinda thinking we should stay. Within the ward boundaries, there are several okay schools. In fact, there is one neighborhood in particular that seems to be the nearly "ideal" location (i.e. super close to work, church, elementary school, and relatively close to shopping, bus line, and children the ages of our own children). It just makes sense to consider living there. And I've tried. But it's just so...I'm embarrassed to admit that this is an issue for me...cookie cutter.

Those who know me well know I have problems being like most people *sigh* and I'm quite predictable that way. Show me what most people are doing and I'll take three steps to the left of it. Row after row of vinyl siding, concrete, manicured grass, and toothpick trees just doesn't fit my dream for my family over the next 10+ years. Sounds petty of me to say it that way. I can't figure it out. How can I possibly pass up a great location and wonderful neighbors simply because the houses are too similar and too close together? Hm? Is this something I just need to buck up and deal with? Is it simply a matter of pride?

And then consider this: houses/neighborhoods that DO fit my dream for my family over the next 10+ years are right across the street...right across the ward boundary line! They have all the location advantages I like AND the neighborhood style I prefer, but they're just one blasted block outside the ward boundaries.

Will I have to choose between Bobby's calling and a home I adore (not just tolerate)?

It's just a house, right? People are the real difference between a home you adore and a house you tolerate, right? I could learn to love any house if I were in the midst of good people. I'm sure of it.

It's not a question of choosing which ward I like better. I truly love them both. The question is whether to let a calling or a (petty?) personal preference determine where we will live indefinitely. Which one is more of a "need", if either?

*another hefty sigh*

Your thoughts/insights are greatly appreciated.