"Bob and Sue"

Dear Robert

Dear Robert,

If/When you peruse this blog later on in your life, you may notice a distinct lack of posts specifically about you at this age. Please don't be alarmed. Let me explain a little:

1. You don't like getting your picture taken.
2. You don't tell me about school.
3. You don't tell me about Primary.
4. We routinely spend 44 hours a week (out of 91 waking hours a week) away from each other.
5. You're in a bit of a grouchy phase. I think it has to do with your enormous school class being chaotic and you adjusting to a long-term sub while your teacher is on maternity leave. And it might be related to your sudden dislike of every food on the planet that isn't plain noodles or bananas...you're probably kinda hungry all the time. But these are just guesses, of course. You prefer to keep such things to yourself.
6. The interactions we do share mostly fall into one of these four categories, in order of time spent:

Household business, 20-30 times a day, every day
Piano practice (1-on-1), 20-60 minutes a day, 5-6 days a week
Mom Time (1-on-1), 30 minutes, once a week, reading Harry Potter out loud
Brief bursts of creative, thoughtful pondering and figuring and lively discussion. You tell me about what you're imagining or working on in that moment. You ask questions and we look up answers. You tell me a solution to something that's been bothering you, or me. You give me hug after hug after hug whenever you feel the urge.

I wish I could hold on to those bursts a little longer. Maybe those are what I should be recording on the blog...for me AND you. Yes. I'll do that. Or try to, anyway. So, what bursts happened today?

We practiced the piano before school and you whooshed through some tough bits that had been bothering you. You were so delighted that you couldn't stop smiling.
You told me that your friends had declared all Roberts as "Amazing Bellies" with bellies that could pop off and take any shape they liked. You thought this was a great coincidence because you happen to have the skill of sucking in your gut and sticking it out like a pregnant lady in a very dramatic manner (especially after a large noodle dinner and a lava cake dessert tonight), which makes your belly pretty amazing.
I asked you about your upcoming birthday party (turning 8 is a "big party" year) and you got excited about the possibilities. You really want to go rollerskating at Skateland, which is pretty much my idea of purgatory, but maybe we can find a compromise.
You tried to earn a steak dinner by doing a push-up handstand off the floor. Dad may have to pay out sooner than he anticipated.

Yeah, this burst thing might work out.

You designed and sewed these cape shirts for yourself and your brothers one day. Alice helped you with threading the sewing machine and working out a couple kinks, but you did the whole project on your own. And they're great!

Love,
Mom

Early Nap

The kids love spending time at Erin's house! Last Friday, they went over for dinner and had a sleepover with games and prizes and a movie. Matthew had enjoyed a late nap earlier that afternoon, so he was wide awake until 9:30pm or so. Erin tells me he woke up the next morning about 5am. Ugh. Way before the other kids, but only by 90 minutes. We have early risers. When I picked everyone up at 8:30, Matthew and James already seemed a little droopy. Just 30 minutes later, Matthew was snoring on our couch...

Snnnxxxxxxxxx.

...and James was having a meltdown in the locker room after swim lessons because I put his socks on in the wrong order. Dude. Tired, tired boys. It doesn't bother me much, though, because the sleepover allowed Bobby and me to go to dinner and see Black Panther in the theater...and sleep in Saturday morning...and gather my thoughts before collecting the kids. I had a brief respite before snapping into "Weekend Mom" mode. Such a luxury!

Coupon Boy

I've mentioned before that James obsesses over the weekly ads and coupon booklets that come in the mail, right? Well, a couple months ago, he learned that these coupons have a limited lifespan. Now, instead of cutting them out one by one and secreting them away in his box of treasures, he picked his absolute favorite and asked very nicely with a please if we could possibly use that one...today...with his own money.

We had the time, he had the money, so I obliged. Little did I know that those Buy-1-Get-1-Free M&M milkshakes were the FULL adult size. James didn't seem to mind :)

He ate half before calling it quits.

And Matthew certainly appreciated James' generosity:


The super-long spoon was Matthew's favorite part. He only got 1/3 of the way through.

The server was extremely friendly and gracious and attentive. I ended up tipping her the same amount of money that the coupon had saved us ;)

Happy Hunter

Alice came with me to the Family History Center last week for some one-on-mom time. It turned out to be quite the busy night! We had three patrons AND Alice made a fantastic discovery of her own.

I wrote about it to a friend who had just given a class on beginning family history research to a bunch of 11-year-old girls and their moms:

"She said she was going to follow interesting names [in our family tree] like you had demonstrated. Well, she landed on an ancestor that I had researched a couple years ago. The research trail had gone cold and I had left a couple questions in the Notes section that I wanted to pursue later. Well, we started looking up stuff for one of the questions and Alice stumbled upon an obituary. I had looked for an obituary before, I know it! I had this woman's death certificate in my files, for goodness' sake! Anyway, the obituary was new to me and it was a wealth of information and dates. It named 8 children in birth order, including two little girls who had died as children. I hadn't known anything about the children who died.

I'm pretty sure I screamed. And Alice did, too. We spun around in circles on those spinny chairs. Then we got to work entering all the new information into FamilySearch. In a couple years, Alice will be baptized and confirmed for those girls and we can finally get this family sealed together right. She was totally glowing with excitement for two days. What a rush :)"

Here's how she felt: