So . . . Ever's Frozen obsession. It's seriously amazing (concerning?) what addictive personalities we have in our family.
We started printing coloring pages for her. For weeks and weeks, she almost always asked for the one where Anna and Elsa are hugging. Once she told me she wanted the hugging one, but if I couldn't find the hugging one, she'd take the one where they're holding hands. I believe 19 of these 28 pages are the same hugging picture (and not all of the ones she's colored are shown here):
Coco and Dun Dun moved into a new house, and Coco was encouraging a visit. I told Jim I wanted to go. He had been contemplating another marathon, just for motivation to exercise, so he decided to look for one in the D.C. area. The Harper's Ferry marathon on October 10 would have been ideal, but Jim has some big mandatory Scout training that day. We settled on the Baltimore marathon on October 17, and I'm very excited about the trip.
I thought maybe I'd run the half-marathon, so we did a few long Saturday runs together. One day we decided Wren could sit up well enough to ditch the car seat and minimize the stroller weight. Turns out she slumps down quite a bit, although she never seemed to be in danger of sliding all the way out. Maybe that's because Ever leaned forward awkwardly the entire time (about an hour) so she could keep her hand protectively on her sister. It was very sweet:
From the following Saturday, during snack time:
This little one lucked out in the big-sister department:
Since she became a Sunbeam, and even before that, Ever has been dying to give a talk in Primary. She finally got her chance.
Her first talk was about how she shows Christ she loves Him by keeping His commandments. We asked her questions and wrote down her answers to compose this talk:
"I show Jesus Christ love when I keep the commandments. When I keep the commandments, I make Jesus happy. Commandments are rules that teach us what to do and not do so we can be safe and happy. I try to follow Heavenly Father's commandments and no one else's. We're not supposed to tell lies to people, hit or push people, or break stuff on purpose. I help people I don't know like the good Samaritan did. Don't follow robbers. Call the policeman if robbers steal your stuff. I try to listen to my mommy and daddy and do what they ask me to do. I love Jesus so I try to follow Him."
I suggested to Jim that we may want to omit the stuff about robbers, but he wanted to stay true to her words. He also said that her statements were doctrinally sound - we do believe in being law-abiding citizens. And so we left it in for a bit of comic relief.
Here she is delivering it for the camera:
The annual Primary program was not too long after that. To prepare her part, I asked Ever, "How do you know Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you?" She said, "I can only think of bad things." I asked, "Like what?" She answered, "Like how bad people killed Him on the cross." I asked her why Christ let bad people kill him on the cross, and she said, "Because He didn't want us to hurt." I think I then asked if He did anything with our sins, and she said something about how He took our sins. So here's the talk she gave in the Primary program (except she forgot in the video to say her introductory sentence, "My name is Ever"):
As you can see, she had it down pat. I didn't even have to practice much with her. Everyone was very impressed that she had it memorized. She also knew most of the songs they sang in the program better than her peers, although she did spend a lot of the singing time looking behind her on the stand at all the other kids.
I mentioned before that Jim bought a whole set of "value books" that he enjoyed when he was a kid. Each tells about a historical figure, embellished with some stupid story line about a talking star, or a talking animal, or a talking something that acts as an imaginary friend to the protagonist. Each story is supposed to teach about a value - determination, giving, sharing, caring, hard work, etc.
A couple weeks ago, Ever and I read the book about Beethoven (and ostensibly about the value of giving). We learned about his abusive father and difficult childhood, his hearing loss, and his death. Afterward we looked up pictures of him online. We found this coloring page that she could color:
We pulled out our Beethoven CD and started listening to it - all day every day. Ever became obsessed.
Ever took that picture of Beethoven she colored to share in preschool on her second day of school. Her class is divided into two groups; half share on Monday, and half share on Wednesday. We just learned that ideally they should share something that begins with the letter they are studying that week - like a toy airplane during the "A" week, etc. We didn't know that until a couple weeks in, so Ever just shared random things at first. I figured her teacher would think she was a genius when she showed her picture of Beethoven and talked about how he was a composer, how she loves his music, how he went deaf, etc. I thought about writing his name on the picture, but I didn't bother. After class that day, I asked how the sharing went. She said she forgot his name. (I don't know how that's possible, as she had been talking about him incessantly. She must have gotten serious stage fright.) I asked if she told them he wrote music, and she said, "No, I just said that his dad hit him with a stick." I really wish I'd been there to see the reaction to that presentation.
When I say we started listening to Beethoven non-stop, I am not exaggerating. Ever wants to turn it on first thing in the morning, and then she doesn't want to leave the room when it's on. If we leave the house, she wants to take the CD in the car. She wants to pause it if she goes to the bathroom, and if it's nap time or bed time, she makes me promise that I'll stop it and then, when she gets up, start it right where it was so she doesn't miss a second.
Ella invited her over a day or two after we read the book, and she said, "I don't really want to go because there's really pretty music playing." She disappeared for a while. I thought she was upstairs getting dressed. She returned with the Beethoven book. She said the music reminded her of the book, and she wanted to look at it while listening to the music. I finally convinced her to get ready for Ella's by telling her we could take the CD and listen to it in the car.
Another day I was getting her out of the pool at the end of her swim lesson, and she said, "Can we go and listen to Beethoven?"
One morning Jim left for work, and I was upstairs with Wren. I couldn't hear Ever at all. I thought other kids would probably be getting into trouble, but I never really worry about Ever. When I went downstairs, she was dancing around and conducting the Beethoven music. Shortly after that, I left her downstairs on the couch listening to the CD while I went upstairs to vacuum. When I came back down a full half hour later, she had not moved from the couch. She was just sitting there, perfectly still, listening:
I asked if she were ready to get her swimsuit on for her swim lesson. She said, "No. I want to listen 'til it stops. There's only a little more." (It was, indeed, well into the last piece on the CD.)
Talila Thompson babysat for the first time last month. Her little sister, Lelei, is about Ever's age. When I drove Talila home afterward, she said, "Ever is so smart compared to Lelei. She was telling me all about Beethoven."
One day I said to Ever, "I love you." Ever responded, "I love Beethoven." Then she added, "Beethoven had a hard time. I wish we were his family."
I called Jim as I was leaving the train station the other night after work. Jim said, "Don't worry, but Beethoven is here, and he and Ever are sleeping together. I think it's innocent, though." Ever had decided she wanted to do a sleepover with Beethoven. She also decided to invite him and his mom to go to Mammoth with us - just not his mean dad. Beethoven may be replacing her imaginary sister, Mary, as her favorite fake friend.
The youth at church did a fundraiser in April. We were out of town with the Karners at the time. Gary Oddou called Derrick Karner from the auction to ask whether Mel and Derrick wanted to buy ten swimming lessons that were being auctioned by Tracy Zundel. Mel and Derrick were interested, but Jim swooped in and bought them (through Gary). I am so glad we did.
Right about when we were starting the lessons, JoAnn's daughter stumbled upon a Frozen swimsuit, which she was excited to bequeath to Ever. Ever had been begging for a Frozen swimsuit since seeing Betsy in one some time ago, so it made all her dreams come true:
On day 1 of the swimming lessons, Ever didn't want to get out of the car. Then she didn't want to get in the water, and she certainly didn't want to put her head under water. Tracy is amazing, though. She's been teaching for 18 years, and she does a great job. The biggest challenge is her three kids under the age of four. They are wild (especially the youngest boy), and they are the most tactile kids I've ever seen. They are ALL over Wren and me as we hang out by the pool. Either that or they are in the pool climbing all over Tracy while she's trying to teach. Despite that obstacle, Ever was swimming short distances (like across the hot tub) by lesson 3. After several lessons, her progress stalled, and she started treading water and doggy paddling more than swimming with her head down. Tracy thinks she picked that up from Ella Rondo, whom we brought to one of her lessons. At this point, she needs to spend more fun time in the water to build her confidence, but she's pretty water-safe now - at least in the Zundels' pool. (We took her to Nanny and Papa's the weekend before last and she was kind of panicky in their pool and didn't swim much.) She even got adventurous and wanted to jump off the little bridge that goes over the Zundels' pool. I was so proud.
Here is a compilation of the videos I took. All the first footage is from lesson 3. It features Luc Oddou, who took lessons earlier in the summer and came to swim for fun during a couple of Ever's lessons.
Ever started Little Bugs Preschool with Miss Paula this month. She goes Mondays and Wednesdays from 9:00 to noon. A bunch of kids from our ward are in her class - Ella Ronda, Jace Alo, Liam Foulger, and Parker Moffat (formerly in our ward). The son of Jim's friend Dave (Padre) Watkins comes up from Carlsbad, too, so we know more than half her classmates. One oddity about her class: four of the ten kids are girls with very similar, short E names - Ellis, Ella, Emma, and Ever. There's only one girl in her class (Khloe) who doesn't fit the E mold. Weird. Another interesting thing was that when I met another one of the moms on the first day and told her Ever's name, she said she has a five-month-old niece named Ever. I told her I'd never met another real-life Ever, and she said she hadn't, either.
In our front yard before the first day of school:
I brought Wren into Miss Paula's in her car seat when I dropped Ever off on the first day. I set the car seat down by the wall in the living room. Then Ever clung to me, and I had to try to rip her off me and get her to stay. Finally I got away, and I left all ecstatic about how preschool is going to change my life and give me these two great windows of time to get things done (like finally clean the house). As I was driving away through the neighborhood, I realized I had left Wren sitting in her car seat in the living room. I am that mom.
After the first day of school, in front of the sign at Miss Paula's:
Class photo on the first day:
Ever is very tight-lipped about what they do in preschool, which drives me crazy. Miss Paula keeps a blog of their daily activities, though. I learned from the blog that they are learning a new letter each week and making "ABC" books as they go along:
At Kristi Rondo's suggestion, she and I are switching off doing preschool pickup on Mondays. I pick up Ella and Ever one week and keep Ella until 3:00 P.M.; the next week Kristi takes Ever home with them and keeps her until 3:00 P.M. It's a delightful arrangement, and it significantly lengthens the get-things-done window every other week. Kristi sent me this picture one Monday when Ever was at their place:
Thank heavens we got the minivan just in time for carpooling.
Jim's beloved 1996 Ford Explorer, Bessie, had spark plug issues for some time. One spark plug regularly went out and had to be replaced. Then one day Jim took Bessie into the mechanic, thinking it was the spark plug again. Something more serious was going on, and the mechanic told Jim that Bessie had to be put down; she could last a year, or she could just stop at any moment. The only fix would be a new engine. Since Bessie's "check engine" light is always on, we were only hoping to squeeze one more year out of her, anyway, as we knew she couldn't pass the next smog check (at least not without the fancy maneuvering we did the last couple times to get her to pass).
We weren't excited about the prospect of her shutting down while we were driving her, so we hurriedly set about purchasing a replacement vehicle. Both Bessie and the Duchess (my Corolla) were way too small for us now, with two car seats. It was awful when Mamo and Pod were visiting and I had to make Mamo climb over Wren's car seat, squeeze between the girls, and get buckled in by Pod because her seat belt buckle was nearly inaccessible under/behind one of the car seats. Bessie was even tighter, and the two-door thing was ridiculous. Neither of our cars could carry even one extra car seat, so carpooling was out of the question. We researched crossover SUVs and minivans and ultimately went with a minivan because in addition to providing extra space, they get better gas mileage.
One afternoon, JoAnn kept the girls while we wasted a couple hours going to two dealerships in Poway (where Jim and an annoyingly pushy salesman got into a beef after the salesman kept trying to talk us into leasing or buying new) and then drove up to Costa Mesa. We ended up arriving at a Honda dealership just after 8:00 P.M., less than an hour before closing time. We had wanted to check out some Toyota Siennas, but the private dealership that had good options was already closed. So without further adieu, we bought a 2010 Odyssey with 66k+ miles on it. Jim was very anti paying extra for the fixings (including the power doors), but we were pretty excited by the bells and whistles on this one - power everything (including the trunk door), sun roof, rear camera, TV/DVD player. It's got leather seats and fancy air conditioning; you can set a temperature for the driver, a temperature for the passenger, and a temperature for the rear. There was a silver 2011 Odyssey available that didn't have all the extras, but we went with the dorky blue, pimped-out 2010. We bought it without ever seeing it in the light because we had to get 'er done that night. We couldn't leave JoAnn with the girls until after midnight and come home empty-handed!
Ever was very excited about getting a van with magic doors like the Karners'. Here she is during her first ride in Big Blue (as Susan Oddou named it):
This isn't Big Blue, but this is what she looks like from the outside:
Jim donated Bessie to KPBS. At 19 years old and over 220,000 miles (nobody knows how far she's gone because the odometer stopped working a while ago), Bessie served us well. She took us to Canada in the beginning of our courtship:
Thirteen years and two kids later, we bid her farewell. Ever posed for one last picture before Bessie was hauled away:
We had Ella Rondo over for a play date. They wanted to get in our tiny pool, and they wanted it placed at the base of the big slide so they could slide into it. As that portion of the yard is pure dirt, the result was quite the mud bath:
Ella brought popcorn for a snack. Ever ate the leftovers later. That little one can put away a lot of popcorn. We had to use a cushion to block the afternoon sun:
Wrenzo's hair is coming back in. It's really fuzzy, sort of like a baby chick. It looks almost as bad in these pictures as it did before we shaved it, but it's better in real life:
Our neighbor, Marlene Shadel, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer back in May. A neighbor across the street told me about it a couple weeks after the diagnosis. Every time I went in and out of the house I glanced over and thought about how I needed to go over there. It took me a long time, but I finally went. Her daughter, Malinda, answered the door and seemed inclined to turn me away. She checked with Marlene, though, and came back and said Marlene was excited to see me. I had a good, tearful visit with Marlene and then with Malinda. Malinda had been there non-stop since the diagnosis and was physically and emotionally exhausted. I talked with both about faith in an after-life. Malinda said visitors had stopped coming. They were very grateful to see me. I set up a standing date to go over once a week. The idea was for me to sit with Marlene while Malinda got an hour break. It didn't really end up happening that way, but I did get over there a handful of times before Marlene passed away last week. The week before she passed, I spent a couple of hours with Marlene while she slept so that Malinda and her husband could go out to dinner with friends. I was so glad I made those visits and was able to show some support and love to both Marlene and Malinda.
On my second visit, I took a card from Ever. She decorated the front of the the envelope like this (can you spot her name?):
On the back, she wrote Marlene's name:
Marlene loved the card and had it displayed on a little table by her bed until the end.
I've been trying to get to the gym regularly, as has Jim. One Monday we met there after Jim finished work. I took some pictures of Wren as I waited for Jim to finish, trying to capture her Gerber baby-ness:
One night, as I was getting out of bed to feed Wren at 2:20 A.M., Jim said casually, "Yeah, he was focused on trying not to kill her, and she was focused on trying not to die. So it all worked out because they had the same goal." He says some pretty funny things while he's asleep.
Jim left for his surf trip the week after the family left. He went to work on Thursday, August 13, and then spent that night in Orange County at Sam and Tatum's so they could head to LAX early Friday morning to catch their flight to Mexico.
That Thursday morning, Ever was in the bathroom totally naked, and she heard the garbage truck. She tried to run outside immediately. I said she at least had to put on her undies, so she ended up outside like this:
I hope the driver wasn't offended by the nudity.
I took Wren to her four-month appointment that day. She weighed in at 13 lbs, 10 oz and was in about the 75th percentile for height and head circumference and around the 50th percentile for weight. (We didn't have her four-month appointment until she was nearly five months old, so she did have a couple extra weeks of growth.) I didn't do tummy time with her like I was supposed to because she hated it and was terrible at it. At her doctor's appointment, though, she really covered for me. When Dr. Villar put her on her tummy to check her out, Wren pushed her arms nearly straight and held herself way up, looking around and showing off. It was very impressive. She was sick with a sinus infection (which we just cleared up, many weeks later, with the help of an antibiotic) but was able nonetheless to get all her four-month shots.
I fed Wrenzo rice cereal a few times before her doctor's appointment:
Dr. Villar advised us at her appointment to do fruits and vegetables twice a day (instead of rice cereal), so we've been working on that. So far there's nothing that she totally rejects.
So the shots are where things really went downhill. First, I have to say that I was particularly exhausted before Jim left, as the preceding couple of nights had been bad. Here's some background:
Wren rolled over for the first time on August 9 - front to back. I figured rolling the other way, back to tummy, wouldn't happen immediately, so I still put her to bed in her little bat wing thing. (The bat wings are called "Swaddle Me Up." It's a sleep sack that's fitted on the torso and has pockets to stick her hands in so that her arms are bent with her hands up by her head. It's supposedly a more natural sleeping position.) That night after the first rolling, she woke to eat at 2:00 A.M., and I found her on her belly. For a while thereafter, she seemed to keep rolling onto her belly and getting stuck on top of the arm she was trying to roll over or, if she managed to get that arm out from under her, just getting stuck on her belly. I never saw her roll again from front to back, just from back to front. I was worried about her suffocating, and I began rescuing her through the night.
On top of that, she had a puke problem. Wren has always been a terrible puker. We would feed her, and then she would regurgitate it, often projectile-style. It never seemed to bother her much, but we were not fans. We'd work so hard to feed her, only to see it all immediately regurgitated. And then we'd wonder if we were supposed to start all over again. This was what she spit up after one feeding:
Another time I didn't even notice she had spit up until I got her upstairs and was putting her down on the changing table. I suddenly noticed that my arm was wet and she was wet. When I went back downstairs, I found a trail of spit-up:
(Note: Wren is six months old as I write this. I am pleased to report that she spits up much less these days, and there has been no projectile vomiting for a while. But in the beginning/middle of August, we were still in the throes of this.)
So the two nights before Jim left, I got up to feed Wren, and she promptly puked up everything she'd just taken. Then I had to clean her up, clean me up, clean the floor, etc. One of those nights, I had just finished feeding her and was holding her while I put the bottle in the sink. I noticed that there were two coyotes prowling around our backyard. I watched them for a while. One of them looked up and seemed to hold my gaze for a long time before going back to looking for food in our yard. I was disturbed by their presence. (I knew they roam around in the little canyon behind our house, but hanging out in our yard? Really? I'm super anti their attacking my children in our yard, so I find this disturbing.) As I was having a staring contest with one of the coyotes, Wren puked everywhere, and the clean-up began.
For these reasons, I was sleep-deprived when Jim left. Then Wren's shots resulted in a fever that lasted for about four days. Between the cold/sinus infection, the fever, and the rolling-onto-her-belly-and-not-being-able-to-roll-back, Wren was sleeping TERRIBLY at night. She couldn't go back to sleep when she got up to eat, and she kept getting stuck on her belly. I was up with her every couple hours, either feeding her or rolling her back onto her back. It wasn't until Tuesday, August 18 that I finally got a little sleep. She ate twice in the night (once at midnight and once about 5:30 A.M.) that night, but it was the first normal night we had in days. I was really amazed at how adrenaline got me through those first awful days while Jim was gone. I thought about how I'm going to San Francisco with Courtney in November and how Jim will not survive if he has to experience what I did when he was gone. He's even less of a fan of getting up in the night than I am.
I have to say, Wren is a wonderful baby. She is happy and easy. She laughs and smiles all the time. But I do wish she were sleeping 12 hours at night. That would really improve my life. I know other babies are even worse sleepers, and it's normal for a baby her age to need to eat once or twice at night. I hate it nonetheless.
Anyway, after Wren's fever went away and she started being more normal at night, things improved. Ever brought some humor, including this conversation:
E: "I want our next baby to be a boy."
Me: "That would be nice. I would love to have a boy so Daddy can have a son, but I don't think that's gonna happen. Daddy and I only seem to make girls."
E: "Why do you and Daddy only seem to make girls? Are you not good enough at your job to make a boy?"
On Saturday I was putting Wren to bed for a nap, and my ring caught on her bedding. I thought it was weird, but I didn't notice until later that the diamond had fallen out. That was why my ring had caught - the prongs were just sticking out, super sharp.
I didn't hold out much hope for finding my diamond. I vacuumed the entire upstairs and went through all the junk in the vacuum looking for a lump. No luck. I checked the bed. No luck. Then I thought of the shower. I saw something that looked like a little drop of hair gel. It was my diamond. I didn't take a picture of where I found it, but I did take a picture of the drain after the fact:
Note that the drain holes are giant and that the drain cover is broken off, leaving one side totally open. That was the side on which I found this guy:
The most annoying part was that I couldn't get my ring off. The jeweler who made my rings insisted on making them so small that I could barely get them over my knuckle; he didn't want them to be too big when they were down at the base of my finger. It's probably been years since I've removed my rings. I wanted very much to get them cleaned and to get the color of the white gold fixed, but I never did because I couldn't get them off. Of course, if I'd taken them in to get them fixed up, the jeweler would have discovered that the prongs had worn down.
I tried a couple times to get my ring off. I tried to shrink my hand in ice water:
Then I lubed it up with lotion, fetched by my assistant:
I pulled as long as I could bear and only succeeded in swelling up my knuckle and making it hurt:
A diamond ring without a diamond not only looks ridiculous, but it is dangerous. The prongs were so sharp. I accidentally sliced the palm of my right hand with that stupid, unremovable ring. I tried to keep Band-Aids over the prong portion, but they kept sliding off.
I ran into the senior Bunnells (Roy and Karen) at church on Sunday, and Karen inquired about my bandaged finger. I filled them in and told them I planned to go to a jeweler and get the rings cut off on Monday. Roy said he had a tool that could cut them off. Karen said she could get a ring cutter from work. I was anxious for removal. I told them I might come by later.
That night the girls and I had dinner at the Karners'. When I walked in, I told Mel and Derrick that if they couldn't get my engagement ring off, I was going to the Bunnells' on the way home to have them cut it off. Derrick got a bowl of ice water while Mel fetched olive oil. We froze my hand till it hurt. Then Mel began twisting and pulling while Derrick filmed the proceedings. My ring was stuck right on top of my knuckle when Derrick gave Mel a pointer and Mel told Derrick to stop filming and take over. Derrick finally managed to get it off. Mel wanted to go for the wedding band, but I didn't think that my finger could take the pain or that the swollen knuckled could possibly be passable. So now I'm wearing just my band. I may wait until some cold winter weather, when my finger is as small as can be, to try to remove the band.
I took Ever to the activity pool at the YMCA a couple times while Jim was gone. It's a fun, shallow little splash pool. Ever would circle the pool slowly, repeating this pattern: stand tall, take a huge breath, and then fall/jump forward and down into the water, acting as if you're going all the way under but not really usually putting your face in.
We had our first Mommy/Ever movie date. Ever chose Frozen, of course, because she's totally obsessed with that movie. She went to town on the giant bowl of popcorn I made.
I enjoyed our time together. I have to say, though, I'm not sure why Frozen is supposed to be the most amazing movie in the history of the world.
I finally realized that Wren is a belly sleeper, and it was no use trying to keep her on her back. I put her down on her back every time, and she tightens her abs, lifts up her straight legs (often crossed at the ankle), and rolls at least up onto her side and often all the way over. She finally started turning her head, at least, so I could tell she was breathing. Isn't she big?
Jim returned late on Friday, August 21. That day we had Aven Dalton over for a play date. They had fun swinging and singing "Let It Go." Here's the still pic:
And here's some video:
They spent the rest of their play date making "welcome home" signs for Jim with paint, glitter, and stickers. They worked very hard:
We taped them to the garage door so Jim would see them when he drove in:
Needless to say, we were very glad when Daddy came home.
As for Jim, he had a good trip but came back frustrated that he's not as amazing at surfing as he used to be. He is not as good because he never goes. He thinks he should surf, but he'd usually rather stay home with his lovely family (and for that we are very grateful). Surfing gave him his identity in high school and college, so he's confused about losing that. What this all means is that he returned in the midst of a mild mid-life identity crisis. He concluded that we can move away from the ocean, and he became obsessed with the idea of moving to the Pacific Northwest. He spent much time researching various cities in Oregon (Corvallis, anyone?) and looking at weather, rainfall, etc. We won't go anywhere for a while; we'd like to maximize his pension if we can. But we dream of living someplace green, someplace it rains, someplace there's not so much traffic. Someday.
