Meagan's "Wedding Dress"

For quite some time now (maybe a year?), Meagan has been asking me to make her a wedding dress. It mostly started the first time she saw Enchanted. She loves Giselle's big poofy wedding dress. So this year I finally decided to make her one for Christmas. Here it is:

It was a lot of fun to make. I got really tired of having to zip up Meagan's other dress-ups, so there are no zippers or velcro or anything in back. Instead, he bodice is made of swimwear material, so it's stretchy, and she can take it on or off herself.

I put a butterfly on the top of the bodice, because Giselle has one there. :)

There are matching butterflys on the gathers of the lace overskirt. You can see them if you look hard. I made a matching veil out of the same lace. I can't wait to see her face as she opens it. I'm fully expecting her to wear it a good part of Christmas day. She'd probably wear it to church if I let her. Hmmm...maybe I will?

Ahoy, Matey!

For the past couple of weeks, Bethany has been asking me to draw her a picture of a pirate. I really don't know why. I told her that I would, but she'd almost always ask me when we were driving in the car. I'd agree, get home, and promptly forget. Tonight, she finally asked again just as she was going to bed. I promised I'd get right on it as soon as she got in bed. Accordingly, as soon as her lights were off, and I left the room, I got out a piece of paper and a pencil, and got to work. This is the final product:

I clearly need to work on my proportions (and other things), but considering the fact that I haven't really sketched anything since high school--15+ years ago--it's not too bad. In fact, it was kind of fun. I did just the pirate first, in black and white, then decided he needed some color. That sash was just screaming out at me to be colored red. Then he looked like he was just standing in air, so I had to add some other details. It's still a bit plain, but it's better than before.

I'd forgotten how therapeutic sketching can be for me. I can remember working on projects for art class, and getting totally absorbed in them. I love when those creative juices start flowing, and you can see your mental picture taking shape right in front of your eyes. It's very enjoyable. I may have to do this some more. I wonder if Bethany will ask me to draw her another picture?

Absent

Bethay likes to try new things. She particulary wants to try things that she sees the kids at school doing (except for eating what they eat, more's the pity). Her latest obsession was that she wanted to be absent from school. She'd been pestering me for weeks to be absent.

I didn't really get the point. I mean, she's still at the age where school is a lot of fun. She'd get to go to school, and see her classmates and play games, and most importantly, have recess. I tried to tell her that kids who are absent miss class and have extra homework. She'd miss out on whatever was going on that day. None of it made a dent. She still wanted to be absent.

Finally, I gave in and told her that she could be absent on Thursday, October 6th. Her whole face lit up, and she was content. I neglected to tell her that there was no school that day anyway because it was a Teacher Development Day. I figured that she wouldn't know the difference, and she'd be happy because she got to be "absent".

I underestimated my little girl. By the time the Wednesday before had rolled around, she'd figured it out. She became upset again, because all the kids were going to be absent that day, so it didn't really count. She decided that she was going to be absent on the "third Thursday". The Thursday following the teacher prep day was parent/teacher conferences, so she just decided she'd go for the Thursday following that. I tried to tell her that it wasn't going to work that way, but she was set on it.

As it turned out, it was a moot point. Meagan had been getting sick. Nothing serious, just a light cought and some congestion. It wasn't really enough to keep her home, but she and Bethany both had had a rough night, and were pretty tired. I went to get them up the Wednesday after parent/teacher conferences, and they were completely out. I was tired myself, so I decided to just let them sleep, and went back to bed myself. Meagan, Sean and I eventually got up around 8:45, but Bethany just kept sleeping. I'd thought about sending them to school late, after Bethany decided to grace us with her presence, but she didn't roll out of bed until 10:00. By that time, it wasn't really worth it to send Meagan to school, and Bethany was so excited to be "absent" that I just let it go. I decided that if she could sleep that late, then she needed a break. She came down and watched TV with Meagan and Sean, saying things like, "I'm sick. That means I get to be absent and stay home and watch TV." It was kind of cute and funny. The best thing of all, though, was that she got her turn to be absent, and hasn't bothered me about it again.

The Storm that Wasn't

I'd been hearing rumors of a big storm coming our way, but hadn't really paid it much mind. It was Tuesday morning, and I was on my way to the Commissary for my weekly grocery shopping trip. To my surprise (and annoyance), the place was packed. I couldn't figure it out. It wasn't payday, or the beginning of the month, or anything else that I could think of that normally draws large crowds there. I wove my way through the shopping carts and finally got my shopping done.

Later, I mentioned to Nate how busy the place had been. He said it was probably because of the predicted storm. People were stocking up so they wouldn't run out of anything and have to go out (or go without) during the big snowstorm. This peaked my curiosity, so I went to weather.com and the local news webpage to see what the fuss was about. There was a rather large, nasty storm predicted to come our way, starting that night. We were supposed to get 6-8 inches. There were parts of Colorado anticipating one-two feet of snow. Granted, that was up in the mountains, but still, that's a lot to dump all at once. One bad aspect of the storm was that it was pretty warm Tuesday, so it started off with rain that night. Nate was afraid the rain would freeze, then snow would come down on top of it. Not a good combination.

As I was looking at Facebook that night, I saw that many of my friends were making plans for the pretty-much-taken-for-granted snow day the next day. Plans involved sledding, curling up with a good book and hot chocolate. Me, I was looking forward to getting up with my alarm, checking the weather and confirming the snow day, then going right back to bed. Mmmm, bliss.

So imagine my disappointment the next morning when I got up, and there was only a light scattering of snow. The roads were wet, but not in the least bit icy or snowy. That equaled no snow day, not even a delay. Bummer.

Undaunted, many kids were still expecting an early release day, since the storm was predicted to last all day. Nate thought he'd be teaching his morning classes, but by noon all nonessential personnel would be sent home. Well, it did continue to snow all day, but it came down in teeny, tiny little flecks that melted on the roads, and only slowly accumulated on other surfaces. We did get a total of several inches, definitely enough for the kids to play in, which they gleefully did, but it was nothing like what was expected. There was no early release, either. The school kiddos were left disappointed, and I was left wondering what all the brouhaha had been about.

No self esteem problems here

Meagan was quite funny today. She brought home a piece of paper with handprints on it that said, "Hands are not for hitting. They are for....". Obviously, she was supposed to fill in the blank at school, but hadn't. So I asked, "What are your hands for?" She replied, "My hands are for making myself happy."

Later, she was watching Dumbo. We had to turn it off to leave right at the part where the little mouse was trying to convince the ringmaster in his dream that he needed Dumbo to be the climax of his new act. Meagan came up to me and said, "I'm a climax!" Surprised (because I hadn't been paying attention to the movie), I asked, "What?" She repeated, "I'm a climax!" I said, "Do you even know what that means?" She said, "Of course. A climax is something great, and I'm great, so I'm a climax!" I don't think we're going to be having self esteem problems with her.

After dinner, she was downstairs playing with Nate. He said she came up to him and said, "I'm mom, because I cook and bake and sew." What I found funniest is that she didn't mention cleaning anywhere in her list of what Mom does.

The reason we had to turn off the movie early was so we could take Bethany to speech therapy. After her therapy was done, I spoke with the therapist for a bit. She likes to tell me what they covered each time. She told me that she'd tried to get Bethany to talk about her birthday party. She asked if the kids got to take anything home with them. Bethany said, "They just brought things for me, and I got to keep them forever!" This girl knows where her priorities are, I guess.

Here I Go Again...

It's nearly one o'clock in the morning, and all sane people are in bed. I am not. I know that says something about my level of intelligence at this moment, but the truth is that I'm getting ready to go overboard again. Bethany's birthday is four weeks from tomorrow--I mean today. We stopped by Target this evening--I mean last night--I mean about five or six hours ago, and picked up a pinata and various sundries for her party. Now that I have a theme and an invite list (Bethany and I made it up over dinner), I'm getting ramped up for the party. I can feel the excitement building already. For me, this is the funnest part: the planning and dreaming and creating.

Bethany chose a monster pinata this year, so I'm themeing (is that a word?) her party around that. I don't have much in the way of games planned yet, but I'm having a lot of fun looking at pictures of monster cakes online. I'm saving my favorites, and am going to show them to Bethany and see which ones she likes. The beauty of a monster theme is that it's supposed to look weird. So if I screw something up in the decorating process, it won't be hard to make it look like I meant to do it that way. There's so much potential here. I think I need to stop looking at pictures here before I get too carried away.

Fear Factor

I am afraid. Very afraid. We're only on Day 6 of the school year (a Monday), and already I can see that this year is going to be challenging in ways we've never dealt with before.
I started the year out well. My planned morning routine is to get up at 6:30, shower and dress and make Bethany's lunch by 7:00. At that point I'd wake up the girls, and get them going, then start on breakfast and packing snacks. Ideally, we'd start eating at 7:30, so they can be finished and ready to head out the door by 8:00 to catch the bus. Sounds good, doesn't it?

I'm finding that life rarely runs according to plan, though. I did just fine for the first day or so, but by Wednesday, I was definitely dragging. It was much closer to 7:00 before I got up than 6:30, and I'm not even going to talk about the end of the week. By Saturday, I was so exhausted, that I slept a good portion of the afternoon away. I just couldn't make myself move. And that's just me. Just about everyone in the family is showing signs of wear. Everyone is cranky, and hard to get going in the morning. I have to fight to get the kids up and dressed. Today, it took Bethany half an hour to get dressed after she got up. Sean may just go back to having a daily nap. Meagan actually did pass out for an hour at church yesterday.

Poor Bethany is going to have it the roughest. Besides this being her first year of full-day school, she also has a lot going on extracurricularly. I signed all three kids up for gymnastics, starting this Thursday. Sean gets a 30-minute, Mommy & Me class in the morning while the girls are at school (I'm actually looking forward to that one), and the girls are in the same class in the evening, starting at 5:15. Their class goes for an hour. Aside from that, she has an hour-long Occupational Therapy appointment on Mondays, and starting next week, an hour-long Speech Therapy appointment on Tuesdays. The poor kid was going all day long in school, came home and had less than an hour of down time before we headed off to OT. We rushed home from that and she worked on homework while I finished up dinner (that I had actually started in a crock pot before we left). Directly after dinner was Family Home Evening, and then the kids went straight to bed. Except for Bethany, who stayed up a bit to finish up homework, have a snack and a bit of downtime. It was a pretty brutal day, and I don't see Mondays changing any time soon.

With Speech on Tuesdays (5:30-6:30) and gymnastics on Thursdays, I don't see the pattern changing much on those days, either (minus FHE). That at least will give Bethany a bit more of a break, but I honestly don't see how I'm going to manage dinnertime. I can only make so many crock pot meals. Domino's down the street has a great deal on pizzas M-W, but Bethany doesn't eat pizza, and I don't want to eat pizza that often, either. I can hope that Nate will get home early enough on some of those days that he can take Bethany to her therapy while I make dinner (it's too much to hope that he'll make dinner while I go to the appointment), but I'm not counting on it. He told me that he can guarantee to be home early on one day of the week, and the others are on a day-by-day basis.

Maybe I'm just being a pessimist. Maybe it's just my exhaustion talking here, and we'll eventually adjust to the crazy schedule. I sure hope so, because otherwise, this year will really stink.

Ego Boosters

Piles of laundry were everywhere, covering almost all of the available space on the couch. Except, of course, for the spot where I had been sitting.

I'd left the laundry all over while I went up to put Sean down for a nap. When I came back down, Meagan was standing there holding a DVD case, asking me to put it on for her. Since I hadn't been watching anything, and it was a movie I liked, I decided to turn it on while I finished the laundry. I was standing at the TV, getting the movie ready, when I saw Meagan head for my spot on the couch. I told her, "Meagan, that's my space, so I can fold laundry. You can share it with me if you want, but I need to sit there to finish."

She sat there for a minute, while I turned around to finish starting the DVD. After a minute, I heard her plead, "Mom, can I sit on the floor? Your bum is big."

The words were bad enough on their own, but the accompanying tone made them worse. It was the same tone of voice she used when asking if she could get up from a time out, like sitting on the couch with me was something to be avoided at all costs.

Oh, but that wasn't all. A few minutes later, Bethany came wandering in. She watched me hold up a pair of jeans to flatten out and fold. Then she chipped in, "Mommy, your pants are big! They're bigger than Daddy's!"

Maybe I just shouldn't fold laundry around my children anymore.

Sean

It seems that my baby is growing up. It seems too soon, but there have been several incidents around the house lately that have been reinforcing that for me.

The first one is that he no longer sits in a booster seat at the table. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, but he kind of forced the issue. He started rebelling against his seat. When it was time to eat, if his plate was set at the booster seat, he'd move it over to an empty seat and sit there instead. So I gave in and just took the seat down. It seemed silly to have it sitting empty there, and it was such a pain to clean that I don't really miss it....except when I'd like to strap Sean down. He's enjoying his newfound freedom a bit too much. It's really hard to keep him at the table during mealtimes. I don't really know what to do about that, though, except keep working on it.

The second thing that shows he's growing up is that I converted his crib into a toddler bed yesterday. He's been ready for this for a while; I just haven't been ready for it. My fears proved correct, too. He went down for his nap just fine, and it was nice for him to be able to get himself out of bed when he woke up. I thought it was all going to work out fine. Then came bedtime. He got out of bed at least five times (once accompanied by both girls) before he finally fell asleep. Then he fell out of bed twice during the night and I had to get up and put him back in bed. Most toddler beds have a small rail on the side to help with that, but his doesn't. If he does keep falling out, I may just go get him a toddler bed with a rail, and sell the crib. I'd much rather sleep at night.

I've also been getting indications that he may be ready for potty training soon (shudder!). I hate potty training more than any other aspect of toddlerhood. He's been watching the girls, and sometimes wants his turn when they go potty at night before going to bed. Then a few nights ago, he woke up around 6:00am crying. I assumed that he just needed his diaper changed, so I started to change it. I was surprised that it wasn't really that wet. When I turned around to throw the diaper away, he peed all over the wall, himself and the changing table. It went down the wall and soaked into several blankets that were on the shelf under the table. I was so annoyed. He really hasn't done that very often. The next day, I was changing him again, and in a teasing voice, I said, "Now, no peeing all over yourself!" So what did he do? He let loose all over the table and himself again. If he can go on command, then maybe he really is ready to potty train. I'm not pushing it, but I have let him sit on the toilet a few times. I'm going to take this one really slow.

Sean's first tie.

Sean loves his sunglasses.

Meagan happened here.

Okay, I did this one to his hair.

Playdates

You know, my oldest daughter is six and a half years old, and the whole idea of a playdate still seems kind of silly. When I was a kid, my mom just booted us out the door, and we sometimes wouldn't come home until dinner. She didn't have to keep sharp tabs on us, or watch us as we went to the park or anything. It's such a pain. And my poor, socially-deprived children are suffering for it, because I'm too busy/lazy to set them up.



We had our first-ever arranged playdate (I'm not counting babysitting someone's kids, or getting together with a friend that just happened to have kids, too) just before the Christmas holiday. The two little girls in Bethany's carpool, Megan Hall and Macy Hansen, came home with us. It was actually kind of fun. I'd made sugar cookie dough that morning, and they all gather around the kitchen island on chairs and stools and picked out cookie cutters and made their own cookies. I had enough aprons for all the girls (my Meagan included), but not Sean. It didn't bother him, much, though. He had a blast playing in the flour.



After they'd all cut out about 6-8 cookies each, I put Sean down for a nap, sent the girls to the basement and finished up the baking the cookies. Then I made several colors of frosting and set out most of the various sprinkles and colored sugars we had. They all had fun, I got to do my sugar cookie decorating for the year, and didn't have tons of them left over for me to eat.



Well, ever since then, Bethany has been begging for another playdate. I've kind of waited until it was my turn to drive kids home from school again before arranging much. We're finally going to have another one this Friday with the same girls. Unfortunately, I have now Set the Bar. Bethany wants to do cookies again. I wouldn't do anything as elaborate as last time, of course, but I was thinking of snickerdoodles (they could roll the dough into balls and put them in the cinnamon sugar) or peanut butter cookies (they can roll the dough and them smash them with a fork). If I do this, though, I may just be setting myself up for the expectation that every time we have a Playdate at the Terry's, there will be some kind of activity like this. Part of me thinks that could be fun, and then there's the practical side of me that says I could get tired of it awfully quickly. Especially once Meagan starts kindergarten this fall and wants to start having playdates of her own. Hmmm...decisions, decisions.

I promise to obey

Meagan came home from church with a cute little card she'd colored. On the back it said, "I promise to obey my parents." I was thinking, "That sounds good to me!" I thought I'd reinforce her lesson, and asked her what it meant to obey your parents. In a very confident voice she said, "It means you can pray and read your stories and color in the morning and sleep well." Yeah, so much for that lesson.

Then a few minutes later, she said, "If you get in the water, your dress will get all baptized."

At dinner she offered this nugget of wisdom: "Jesus said we should share our toys, and then someone else will be happy." I notice she didn't say she would be happy.

I guess she's picking a few things up, if not quite right.

Homeschool Preschool

I realized the other day that my baby girl is growing up. It's hard to believe, but I registered her for kindergarten. She starts August 15th. She's so excited to go, and get to ride the bus like her sister.

I realized something else, though. She's nowhere near as prepared to start school as Bethany was. Bethany had two years of preschool before kindergarten, since we ended up delaying kindergarten a year for her. We had planned to put Meagan in preschool when we moved here, but with the uncertainty of selling our old house and settling in and everything, it never happened. By the time we were settled enough to do it, many preschools were full. That, and I didn't want to just start her in the middle of the year without knowing what they'd been doing all along. She only knows about a third of the alphabet, she can count to ten, but not beyond, and I'm not sure how many numbers she can recognize. I didn't want to send her to kindergarten like that--even though I'm sure there will be others who will be in the same boat--because I want to smooth out the experience as much as possible for her. So I decided I would teach her myself.

My first attempt was before the holidays. She couldn't even spell (let alone write) her name at that point. I admit I kind of messed up to start with. I tried to do too much at once. I tried to teach her all the letters of her name, how to spell her name and how to write it all at once. I got frustrated and she got frustrated, and I kind of abandoned it for a while.

I wrote to Nate's sister Tabitha for advice, since she used to teach preschool. (That's when I figured out I'd done too much at once). She told me to introduce one letter a week. Oops. So this time around I am more prepared. I found a couple of websites with free worksheets I could print off. I've also set some clear goals for myself. My current plan is to have "preschool" three times a week. We'll have it right after I clean up breakfast and wash dishes. I want her to be able to write her name, know all the letters of the alphabet (upper and lower) and be ablt to use scissors. Each lesson will consist of name writing practice, something about one letter, and some other worksheet/activity. I've got a bunch of worksheets now on scissor use, concepts like big and small, matching, colors, etc. I thought today that doing a puzzle might be a good idea, too. I'm sure I'll come up with more stuff as we go.

We've been at it for about a week now, and so far it's gone well. Meagan is somewhere inbetween loving it and resisting doing things my way. For example, I'll ask her to trace a letter or something, and she wants to color or do something else first. I'm trying to help her understand that she has to follow instructions, and she needs to learn things to get ready for kindergarten. I think she's getting the idea.

She picked up more from my aborted attempts than I'd realized, too. She can already spell and write her name. We're still working on legibility and forming letters properly, but she's already doing very well, almost as well as Bethany does now. I might have to start Bethany on handwriting practice, too. Their school uses a font called D'Nealian, which is almost a blend inbetween normal block letters and cursive. It supposedly makes learning cursive a lot easier. Bethany had to pretty much learn a new way of writing. I decided to just start Meagan off on that right away, and she's doing pretty well so far.

Our biggest remaining obstacle is Sean. He wants to sit down and do whatever it is that we're doing. I've started making a second copy of whatever worksheet we're doing, and giving him one to just scribble on. He learned the word "neatly" today. Meagan was boasting that she was coloring neatly (she wasn't really) and Sean picked it up. I doubt he has any idea what it means, but he kept saying it over and over as he was scribbling. He seems to be a bit jealous of the attention I'm giving Meagan, too. About halfway through our lesson today, he shoved his paper over in front of me, climbed off his chair and came around the table and climbed up in my lap, demanding I color with him instead of looking at Meagan the whole time. It worked okay today, but last time he was a real distraction. I've thought about doing it later in the day while he's sleeping, but there are so many other things I try to do during his naptime that it would never work. Hopefully I can train him to be more patient, and figure out a way to give him more attention.

I never pictured myself doing anything like this, but it's actually been kind of fun so far. I hope it stays that way.

Is she or isn't she?

A friend of mine told me yesterday about a Love and Logic series of seminars at our local library that she was going to attend, starting tonight. I've heard of the Love and Logic books, and I've been curious about them, so I thought I might want to go, too. But when I went to the library website to try and find out a little bit more about it, I found that there was an Asperger's support group meeting tonight at the same time at a different library. That caught my eye because of Bethany. It's been suggested a couple of times before that she has Asperger's, and after her failed kindergarten entrance tests about a year and a half ago, I even brought it up to a pediatrician. They ran her through a basic autism exam, decided she was not autistic, and told me she was probably just a late bloomer. I've not been able to let go of the thought, though. For years now it's plagued me. Not constantly or anything, but every time Bethany does something a little odd, or that just doesn't feel quite right, I start fretting again. Nate says it's just my anxieties, and he really isn't worried at all, but I just can't get past wondering if she is or isn't. I'd already decided about a week ago to pursue having her tested, and then I saw this support group listed online. I felt like I needed to go.

Nate came home a bit early from work so that I would be able to make it. The group was listed as starting at 6:30pm. I got there and the room was dark and empty. I started to wonder if anyone else was going to show up. The Love and Logic seminar started at 7:00, but much further north. I decided to wait until 6:45, and then try to make it to the Love and Logic. A few minutes before my deadline, a few people started showing up. Apparently, the group had reserved the room starting at 6:30, so they'd have time to set up, but the actual meeting didn't start until 7:00. There was quite a turnout, maybe 30 people. Many of them were adults who had Asperger's themselves, and most of the rest had children with Asperger's.

I honestly didn't know that much about Asperger's before the meeting, except that it is a form of autism, but not as severe. When I'd tried to find specific symptoms before, I got frustrated because there is such a wide range, so it's difficult to pin down. I get the feeling that it's still a relatively new thing--at least, people are still learning about it. One mom there said when her son was diagnosed, she realized that she had it herself. The majority of the people there had only recently been diagnosed or were still in the diagnosis process. I was impressed at how relatively normal many of them seemed. Many had gone to college and gotten married. Of course, just the fact that they were there means they were some of the higher functioning ones, though.

When Asperger's was first suggested to me, I admit I had a bit of a meltdown over it. Not where anyone could see, but I pretty much cried the whole afternoon. It's difficult to pin down why, but there was a lot of denial there, the not-my-child attitude. I'd worked a bit with some handicapped children, including a severely autistic child, in high school, and I'd always felt that I would never be able to handle an autistic child. So to have it suggested to me that my precious daughter, my firstborn, was somehow damaged, was pretty traumatic. I didn't do much about it that first time.

But things just didn't seem to add up with Bethany. She wasn't quite like other children her age, even though it's been hard for me to pinpoint, since she is my first and I'm not around many other kids her age, so it's hard for me to compare, or know what is "normal". So when it was suggested to me the second time, I decided to go ahead and bring it up with the doctor. That's when we got the autism test. Asperger's isn't like regular autism, though. It's much more subtle, so I can concievably believe that she could have a negative autism test, but test positive for Asperger's.

Even after attending tonight, I'm not convinced that that's what she has. The things people talked about tonight sounded familiar, but much less intense that what I deal with. For example, many of their kids have a difficult time with new situations and people. They don't transition well. That is kind of true of Bethany, but she's much better at it than she used to be. Last year when she started preschool at a new school, I was extremely worried about her adapting to the new school. This year with kindergarten, I took her to meet her teacher and see her classroom at a back to school night, and I also accompanied her to school the first day (all the parents did), and then I didn't worry anymore. You can't just throw her into a new situation, but with a bit of warning, she's okay. I've been telling her already when kindergarten is going to end, and that in August she'll be at the same school, but in first grade. At first she was resistant to the idea, but now she's getting used to it. It sounded to me tonight like the other parents have a much harder time with that. One mom is homeschooling her son rather than send him to middle school, because she doesn't think he'll be able to handle the constant change of teachers and subjects. I think Bethany will be able to adapt by that age.

I also got a long list of books and websites to look at to get more information. There are a couple of books written by adults with Asperger's and how they've dealt with things over their lives that I want to read. Even if none of it specifically applies to Bethany, I think they'll make interesting reads.

I think the greatest benefit I got out of tonight, though, is the sense that if Bethany actually is diagnosed with Asperger's, that it won't be the sentence of doom that I once felt it would be. She won't automatically be barred from a good life, unable to attend college or hold a job or get married and have a family. I saw so many people who were completely functional, even if they did have difficulties that other adults don't have. And that's okay, because we all have some trials in life. Some just have bigger trials than others.

I also had a very long talk with Nate later after I got home. I found out more of the reasons why he isn't so worried. It's because he sees many of her behaviors in himself, like the inability to sit still, and the lack of desire to talk, for starters, and he turned out just fine. I think some of those things bother me more, because I don't think that way. It was a very good discussion, one that helped me understand him a bit better, too.

So while I still plan to have Bethany tested, just to put the question to rest once and for all, I'm pretty at peace with it now. I'd like to find better ways to help her learn and grow, and deal with life, but I suppose that's true of my other children as well. She may have some more difficulties, but she's a very sweet, loving individual. She's my child and I love her no matter what.

"And I looked..."

For a long time, we did "scripture reading" with the kids with storybooks about the scriptures, thinking that was a good level for them. Recently, though, I read a talk in the Ensign that said even little children could feel the Spirit through reading the actual words, so we've altered our reading. We're now reading straight from the Book of Mormon. I read a phrase at a time, and the kids repeat it back to me one at a time. They each do about a verse every night. Obviously, progress is slow. We're still in 1 Nephi, not too far past the vision of the Tree of Life. After reading this way for a while, Bethany decided she wanted to take a turn "reading" a verse to us, which we'd repeat back to her. Here's how it went:



"Yea...(they love to say this word)

behold...

and it came to pass...

look!...

and I looked...."



At this point I was feeling pretty good, thinking that she was picking up more of the scriptures than I thought she would. Then she continued:



"and I saw...

a vampire."



Say what??? I'm pretty sure there are no vampires in the Book of Mormon, nor do I think she's talked about them at church. It was so random. I didn't even know she knew the word vampire. I guess we have a little more work to do than I thought.

My dirty little secret

I've been trying to declutter my house over the past couple of days. I wonder sometimes if clutter isn't somehow related to tribbles--it just breeds on its own, and there's no stopping it. While I was wading through yet another mound of papers, I found several documents that made me realize something: tax season is once again upon us. And here's my dirty little secret: I actually like taxes.

Okay, let me clarify. It's not that I like paying taxes, I like preparing tax returns. I discovered this almost ten years ago when we were stationed in Oklahoma. I wasn't too fond of my job at the time, and my squadron was deployed so it was kind of slow at the office. I was looking for valid reasons to get out, so I volunteered for the base tax office. We had about a week of training, and then we went at it. I didn't do anything very complicated the first year--no schedule A's even, mainly 1040EZ's. It was actually a lot of fun, so I volunteered again the next year, and learned more complicated returns. I quit volunteering when I started having kids, but the experience has stayed with me. It's made me wonder if I'd had a similar experience while still in college, if I would've chosen to become an accountant instead of majoring in biology. (As if I didn't have enough trouble making up my mind as it was--I bounced from computer science to linguistics to biology. Accounting would kind of round that out, wouldn't it?)


This year's return will be the most complicated we've had so far, what with three state returns (Nate's NY return, then OH and CO), and our regular federal return, plus rental income and sale of some stock. I'm sure I could figure it all out if I tried, but I'm feeling kind of lazy this year. I may just cheat and get some kind of tax program to do all the math for me. It's the figuring things out that I like, not the computations.

But before I can get to that point, I have to sort through my clutter and collect all those documents and receipts. Hmmm....anyone want to borrow some kids for a week while I manage that?

Don't shunk the baby!

This is a post that I've been wanting to record for a long time. Meagan is our creative little girl, she always has been, and especially lately, she makes up words if she doesn't know a proper one for the situation. For example, several weeks back we were singing Rock-a-bye Baby to her for her goodnight song. Nate was swinging her in his arms as we sang. When it came to the end, where you sing, "and down will come baby", he put her down on the floor. She got up and screamed, "No! You don't shunk the baby!" It took us a while to realize she meant that she didn't want to be put down, she just wanted to be rocked to the end of the song. But now that she's established this word, she's applying it to other situations. Today she was jumping on the mini-trampoline and half-fell off and pulled the power cord out of the TV. The kids came upstairs and told me the TV turned off. I couldn't figure out what was wrong at first, all I could get out of them was that Meagan "shunked" the TV.

She also creates words when describing things that she's unfamiliar with. It's a real chore figuring things out sometimes. The other day I was reading them a story when she described one of the pictures as "pag". You got me. I haven't a clue what that one is supposed to mean.

The only bad thing is that when we do figure out a word, like shunk, it becomes part of her normal vocabulary. I haven't said anything to her about it, because I think it's cute/funny and I want to encourage her creativity. The problems may come when she goes to kindergarten this fall and get frustrated/angry when people don't understand what she saying. I guess we'll see what happens.

I'm baaa-ack!

Okay, okay, it's been a really long time since I've posted here--almost six months. But they've been difficult months for me, getting situated in a new house and area and dealing with multiple health problems. But I'm climbing out of my hole and hoping to get back into the blogging. I have a bunch of photos that I want to backdate post (is that even a phrase?), so in the future it may look like I've been blogging all along. If I delete this post down the road, my posterity won't even know the difference, *evil cackle*.