The Weekend Report: Massacre Sites, 90 Years, and Trees

In the last post, I noted that sometime soon we planned on heading south for my Grandpa's big 90th birthday party.  That sometime soon was last Saturday, which I intentionally didn't mention because God only knows who's reading this and we don't want any unplanned visitors relieving us of all our belongings because I blabbed GUESS WHO'S LEAVING THEIR HOUSE UNATTENDED?

So last Saturday the kids and I drove the five hours to my grandparents' house, which felt short because our southward travels are normally seven hours, to my mom's house.  Who knew that just two fewer hours would make a drive feel so short, so manageable? 

We still stopped four times within that five hours, none of which I can blame on the children.  I was the one feeling simultaneously achy and jitter-buggy, needing frequent stops to stretch my restless limbs. We stopped at my favorite Iowa rest stop, which borders and provides access to a county park complete with a body of water and wooded trails, which I have run before on a solo trip south and which freaked Derek out because a single runner on isolated trails right next to a rest/truck stop is apparently not the safest idea? 

Our other superfluous stop was made because I'm a sucker for historical markers.  I've seen the sign for the Marais de Cygnes Massacre site many times before, but this time we finally got off the highway, followed the increasingly narrow and windy gravel road, and drove into what ended up being a secluded but picturesque national historic site.

The above is an interesting contraption that you wind up by following the instruction to "turn briskly for sixty seconds," which charged it, I guess; then we pressed play and listened to a dramatic reading of the newspaper article from the 1860's which detailed the events of the massacre, where pro-slavery Missourians crossed the border and shot a bunch of Kansas free-staters (this is all Civil War era, Bleeding Kansas stuff, if you're trying to figure out why on earth any of this ever would have happened).  This was looking over the ravine where the victims were forced to stand and then fell dead into.  I appreciated looking over all of the information available and walking around the area; the boys' favorite part seems to have been the wild turkey sighting.  If you push this stuff in their faces enough something is bound to rub off, right?  Maybe?  Hopefully?


We did eventually make it to our destination, where we got to see nieces and grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and other relatives whose connection to myself I can only guess at.  And even though we forgot our customary bribes (frozen snack-size Kit Kats), we still forced all the children into group photos, which I somehow did not end up with a picture of on my phone, but I do have this nice one of my mom, her sisters, and their parents. 

I also got this rare sighting of a group of von Soostens.  

What do think a group of von Soostens would be, anyway?  A herd?  A peck?  Whatever the German word for a pack is?  Whatever, they are all now or at some point were von Soostens, and I think at this point the birthday boy was just ready for his cake.

If at all possible, I would highly recommend having a cousin with a bakery.  It makes every family gathering better.

This weekend allowed me to make a big old checkmark on my list of things to do and people to see before we move.  That made it all bittersweet, because hurray, I got to see so many people I love!  But oh, no, when will I see them again?

Loved ones like my sisters who aren't afraid to hug not-a-hugger Adelaide.  She will tolerate this kind of behavior from very few people.  Her aunts are two of them.  (No Adelaides were harmed in the making of this photo; just made to feel momentarily uncomfortable BUT NO DOUBT LOVED, DAUGHTER.)

Sunday before we left we got in plenty of tree climbing, because although she is not a people hugger, she most certainly is a tree hugger.

There most definitely is a Daughter in that Ash.  Click to embiggen and see if you can spot her.  Hint:  look for the serial killer face lurking amongst the leaves.

She also conquered the Sycamore, which was decidedly more difficult, not having a handy fork a few feet off the ground.

Yep, she's in that picture, too.  I'm also happy to report that years of calmly reciting, "You got yourself up there, you can get yourself down," often in the face of twenty feet high hysterics, has resulted in her being able to monkey herself up and down with ease.  

The boys were more excited about the afternoon's entertainment, which I'll post about tomorrow.  It was larger and a little more ostentatious than a morning of peaceful tree climbing, but also involved fewer ticks, for which I think Adelaide has an increasing sense of appreciation.

Selling the House

It would appear I have left out some teeny, tiny details surrounding this move.  Things like why we're moving, when, etc.

So!  Once upon a time, a young lad met a young lass.  Said young lad graduated from their shared institute of higher learning (in Kansas) and found work at a magical place called ESPN (in Connecticut).  Said lass finished her education at the previously mentioned institute, married the lad, and went to join him in Connecticut.  A few years and one baby later they left Connecticut, lived in Kansas for a year (enter baby #2) then decided they wanted those brutal winters back and went to live in Iowa, where the lad grew up.  They lived in Iowa for ten years (baby #3 added somewhere in there) before the lad and ESPN decided they must be reunited, so the now-five of them will all be embarking on a grand adventure this summer.

I left a bunch of stuff out of that, including much of anything about me in that space of time, which I'm finding annoying as I read it over again, but not annoying enough to go back and change it.  Onward!

Yes, we will be venturing out to Connecticut because Derek was once again offered a job at the big ol' sports tv place, as I call it in my head.  But before we do that, we needed to sell our house.

The last time we sold property was when we previously moved from CT, in 2008, when we hired a realtor, she took a bunch of poorly lit pictures of our 600- square foot condo and got around saying the place was miniscule by using words like "cozy" and "homey" in the online description.  Still, it sold within a few weeks and the whole procedure was relatively painless.

Let me tell you, things have changed.

First, allow me to say that we like our realtor.  He has done a wonderful job, and we have felt ourselves to be in more than capable hands.  Even without being first-time home sellers, however, we've had a lot to learn.  There was an interior decorator that toured the house with Derek, the latter of whom was instructed to take copious notes.  She had instructed me via email not to pack any decorative items, but instead to set them aside for her to use at will.  When I got home from work that day I found that she had used most of the things I'd pulled out, and in ways I never would have expected, because I do not have the decorator gene.  I can give you book recommendations until you beg for mercy and claim illiteracy, but decorating?  The most help I can be is to say things like, "Um, I really like old stuff.  Especially if it's just a little bit weird."  Which is no help at all and borderline off-topic.

She also pointed out all the places we needed to de-clutter, which was helpful to me because Derek and I had already been purging and deep cleaning for a couple weeks at that point and I felt I was becoming a bit blind to what the house actually looked like.  The rest of her instructions she seemed to sum up in two words: "Think hotel," repeated many times on the tour with Derek.  My version of this order was "Make it look like no human actually lives here," which is basically the same thing, I guess, unless you're Eloise.  No laundry anywhere, no laundry baskets, no trash cans, only the two approved towels hanging in the bathroom, no shampoo, soap, or person-cleaning product of any kind in the shower, etc.

The house looked amazing after I followed her instructions to the letter, although I only finished executing her marching orders maybe four minutes before the professional photographer arrived- another new part of the process to me.  He, too, did an amazing job.  I should add that both these professionals' services were part of the realtor's commission, so we weren't paying extra for this stuff.


Next is one of the crazier parts, at least to me.  Most of the communications surrounding the showings of our house were done via app.  We downloaded the ShowingTime app, and shortly thereafter we started getting requests for showings- local realtors wanting to book times to take their clients through the house.  I had determined early on that I would say yes to any showing, orienting our family schedule around these in order to get as many potential buyers through this place as possible.  I still say this was a good strategy, but it made for a couple of hairy days.

To be more specific:  Friday I was at a library conference all day.  Because there was so much interest in our home (yay!), throughout the day we got notifications on our phones that a showing was requested for x:xx time.  We then had the option of confirming that appointment, denying it, or requesting an alternate time, all via the app.  I confirmed every one, which was hurray, exciting! while I was at the conference, but once I'd picked up four kids from school (we had a spare that day), it got a little interesting, sounding something like, "Okay, kids, we'll be at this park for an hour, then we can go home at 5:00, okay?  Oh, wait, now it's 5:30.  Hang on, there are two more- 6:30, kids, we just gotta get to 6:30 and then we can go home!"

Thankfully it was beautiful out that day, so we turned the afternoon into a tour of our local parks.  And then we did the same thing most of the day Saturday as showings kept ding-dinging my phone; those then ran right into the open house.  Again, all good things!  But I did get tired of driving by the house to see if anyone was there, then dashing in to vacuum all the floors between showings because evidently it is no longer considered rude to track mud through a stranger's house.


All of those things felt as if they had been worth it when we had multiple offers by Saturday afternoon.  Our house is pending!  Another hurdle cleared!  Hurray and huzzah!

I will confess I'm still kind of waiting for the bottom to fall out on this offer, for something to go wrong.  I don't know if this means I'm a determined pessimist, I have a stress hangover from getting the house ready to sell, or what.

A strange/fun detail about all of this:  the buyers are our neighbors.  She stopped Derek outside the day after the sign went up in our yard and told him she wanted to buy our house, that she'd loved it since they moved to the neighborhood a few years ago.  I figured this was just talk, but evidently some people actually do the things they say they're going to do.  Strangely, this gives me hope for our society.  I have a new level of self-consciousness when I'm in our front yard now, though, making sure they can see I'm plucking out every errant weed and not slacking on maintaining the house in our final weeks here.  It was also interesting to open up the back of the van and pull out all the laundry and junk I'd stashed back there because it wasn't allowed in the house for the showings and open house.  If they were watching out their windows, they could absolutely have seen just how much I had to haul out there to fool the world into thinking no one currently lives here.

  

Not the gif I was looking for, I admit, but absolutely the gif I needed.




Sunday's Gratitudinals

1. Biographies and Memoirs.  Recent favorites include Becoming by Michelle Obama (the former first lady describes politics as "nasty" at one point.  How much more relatable can you get?)  Inheritance by Dani Shapiro (la di da, I think I'll do one of those DNA tests you mail off, it will be fun!  Wait, is this right?  Is this test saying one of my beloved parents isn't biologically related to me?  And this means I'm not a full Jew when that's a huge part of my identity?  WHAT?), and of course, the current favorite the world over, Educated by Tara Westover, which absolutely lives up to the hype.

2. Bosu Balls.  Last week I was excited that our gym finally got one, and this week I'm excited because I realized I was using it upside down, so now I'm fixing that, and let me tell you, it is way easier to stand on those things right-side up.  Look, figuring out little things like which way is up is hard sometimes, okay?  And doesn't this just mean I'll be able to say I know Bosu balls backwards and forwards?

3.  Indoor plumbing.  Forever and always.

4.  Friends and needles, especially together, as it turns out.  No, I'm not a recreational drug user.  Someone remind me to post about dry needling sometime this week.

5.  Having a daughter who is borderline obsessed with the periodic table of elements.  If you have a similar loved one, this book (shown below) is a fantastic gift, and will quickly become a comfort book for them.

News of Two Sorts

First off, I feel I should deliver an update on Daughter's performance of Lumiere, given my last post.

Sorry for scribbling out your face, girl over Adelaide's shoulder

She did so well!  She sang, she danced, she spoke in a French accent that was still understandable- a real worry of mine weeks before the performance, when I tried to gently remind her that yes, she was supposed to be French, but the audience still needed to be able to understand the words coming out of her mouth.

As for those candlesticks:  she made around 80% of them herself.  Did the hot glue drippings, the painting, glued toilet paper tubes inside so she'd have something to grip- nearly everything.  The only thing I helped with were creating the papier mache flames.  That and tailoring that blasted men's suit jacket from Goodwill.  It hung on her like a garbage bag when we first got it, and silly me thought it would be a relatively straightforward matter to extract the oversize shoulder pads, amend the lines of the opening and way it hangs, add gold filigree, and so on, and so on.  

After copious seam ripping and repeated plunges into the bowels of the jacket, however, I realized that men evidently require a lot of padding in their clothing.  Then I got mad thinking about how you would never find this in women's clothing; our fabric instead trends toward the uncomfortably sheer.

One of many fistfuls of shoulder padding

As for the musical itself, well, we listened to Adelaide wail about how poorly practices were going and about how this person kept storming off stage and how that person couldn't even be bothered to show up for the (hours long) practices- etc, etc.  Our expectations for the outcome of the show lowered accordingly each time she uttered such a critique, so said expectations were subterranean by the time we arrived at opening night.  But somehow, through seventh grade magic or possibly just lots and lots of hard work, those kids pulled it off.  It was so entertaining.  Adelaide and her friends acquitted themselves admirably, and we were so proud.

Also of note:  my sister Kelli and her family braved predictions of a winter storm, car problems, and the reality of sticking three tiny children in a car for hours and hours to make the drive up and surprise Adelaide that weekend.  I got almost no pictures while they were here, possibly because I'm a terrible sister/aunt, but mostly because I was trying to soak up every second of their presence. 

That is our giant daughter carrying all the toys Kate felt she needed from the second floor down to the first while also making sure she made it safely downstairs.  Please also see that the shirt Kate is wearing is one that Adelaide wore when she was that little.  Which was forever ago, but simultaneously three seconds ago.

Just two other details pertinent to the story of that weekend:  

One: people approached me after both performances multiple times to tell me that they didn't at first believe that Adelaide was a girl.  She was so convincing as a boy, they claimed, from the sound of her voice as she sang to her mannerisms as Lumiere!  My response to this the first couple times was to laugh, but after that I wasn't sure what the appropriate response was.  "No, please, you're too kind"?  "I bet you get that all the time, too"?  

Two:  Adelaide's dear friends got friendship necklaces, which they presented to her that weekend.  They look like matching puzzle pieces that, when fitted together, read "Always together, never apart, maybe in distance, but never in heart."  (Commas added by yours truly because why on earth wouldn't I?)  The girls gave her this because she's been struggling with the fact that our family is moving.

To Connecticut.

More on this tomorrow.

I'm Sure It'll Turn Out Fine

The roads are slick but my coffee is warm and today's high temp is several degrees above zero- no small thing this time of year. 

Let's just get this out of the way:  middle school.  I hated it the first time, and I'm not exactly pleased with it the second.  Not that I have to traverse its halls every day; no, that falls to Daughter now.  All we have to do is deal with the emotional fallout every evening, which is super.  Basically it's a continuation of elementary school:  learning how to get along with a set of diverse human beings markedly different from yourself, but now, with hormones! 

One of the good things we're finding about middle school is that there are increased extracurricular opportunities for our less than athletically- inclined eldest child.  When they're younger, around here kids can do sports, or they can do 4-H, or they can do sports.  Now Adelaide is venturing out into the wilds of jazz band and choir, the latter of which includes a school musical this spring.  This is proving to be a learning experience for us all.

These wee seventh graders are undertaking a production of Beauty and the Beast, Jr.  What makes it a "Junior" version, you ask?  Not a clue.  No kissing at the end?  Gaston doesn't swallow a bunch of whole eggs?  All of the participants freak out about having to touch each other, even while playing a part in a stage production?  I mean, pick one.  Adelaide auditioned for several roles, but we all breathed a sigh of relief when she got her part of choice- that of Lumiere- because she had gone to great pains to reassure us that her life would be OVER if she was cast as pretty much anything else.  A teeny, tiny, masochistic part of me hoped that she would get a different part as all this kind of talk was communicating to me that she has much to learn about being a gracious loser and making the best out of less than ideal conditions.  Honestly, though, that lesson has been hammered home in other parts of her life (field day every single spring, and P.E. several days per week), so mostly I was happy for her and the peace of our family's life when she got the part. 

What I didn't consider upon first hearing her joyous news, however, was the costume.

Here are five facts:  We are providing Adelaide's costume.  We do not want to pay a million dollars for it.  We do not want to pay a hundred dollars for it.  As a matter of fact, we want to pay a small percentage of that hundred.  We also do not want to dedicate every spare minute to creating this costume. 

Those five facts do not coexist in harmony. 

So here's what we have so far:  gold leggings.  A gold bowtie.  A men's suit jacket from Goodwill.  An excess of confidence in my tailoring abilities. 

We still need a bunch of things, but chief and most worrisome among these are her candlesticks. 

Are you now remembering that Lumiere is a candlestick?  Daughter Dearest has to keep her hands up by her head for the bulk of the musical, arms at 90-degree angles, which will surely make for tired shoulders but whatever, okay, that's her problem, and besides, she's twelve, she'll bounce back in right around 20 minutes, no matter how sore she gets. 

On both those hands need to be fake melting candles, with fake flames, big enough to be seen by the audience, oh, and mom, I'd really really like it if they actually lit up! 

Google returned disturbingly few helpful results.  I can either make something that takes one hour and looks like trash, or I can go to a trade school, become a licensed electrician, and only then be able to follow along with the Lumiere costume how-to YouTube videos I found.

The closest thing I found to any kind of middle ground is this:

First of all, I don't plan on making a candle for her hat, because I believe in setting healthy boundaries.  Second of all, I found this via a google image search, but the description on how to make it was cut off, and when I tried to find the original image and website, it was no longer available.  So what I know is that I need oatmeal containers, sour cream containers, small plastic plates, white paint, hot glue (for the wax drippings), and gold tape.  What I can't figure out is how they made that flame!  Papier mache? (Mentally add your own accent marks to that second word, there, I don't have time to copy and paste- I have to turn our twelve year old into a candle!  A french candle!)  Balloons?  A good old-fashioned Catholic miracle?  Who knows?!

I also don't know how she's going to keep those on her hands.  Lumiere does a fair amount of gesticulating, and as comical as it would be to me if one of her candles flew off and hit the Beast in the face, I'm pretty sure she would be mortified, so I need to figure out some kind of internal handhold.  And making them light up?  Do I mount little LED flashlights in there?  Incandescent flashlights so that there's a potential for a real fire?  (Exciting!)  Fairy lights wrapped around that flame I still can't figure out? 

I'm sure we'll finagle some kind of solution, but for now my plan is to craft something absolutely horrendous-looking in the next week, convince her this is the final draft, then let her persuade me into trying again so that whatever we actually end up with will come as a relief and look satisfactory to her eyes.  See also:  my entire parenting philosophy.

Four of Those Scattered Directions

Hello and halloo! We're all still alive, thanks for asking.  I'm posting because every few days I think to myself, "It's time to revive the blog!" Then I do a mental fist pump, but not a physical one because occasionally I am able to tell when I look ridiculous.  I usually have these thoughts of writing revival when I am in a place that is not conducive to blogging, and by the time I return home my thoughts have scattered in a thousand directions.  But I'm going to try, try again, anyway!

• Our boys' room is constantly trashed. This is not awesome (or uncommon, I know), but it often looks the way it does because of what they're creating:  on Caedmon's part, notes to leave outside Adelaide's door,

Reads, "I love you."

while Atticus likes to create things for me based on his worries. This one is a "company robot," and it's designed to keep me company any time he's not around. These are the kinds of gifts extreme extroverts give to extreme introverts:  well-intentioned, missing the mark by a mile, but good golly do I love it.

• Right here is where I would put a more recent photo of Daughter, but I'm scared to because as I scrolled through the photos she looked way too pretty and grown-up.  I could instead put the screenshot I sent to our neighbor of the sex offenders who live in our community, whose names and addresses I have memorized.  This wasn't just me being a weirdo neighbor (this time, anyway); we had a little scare where Adelaide and her friend were walking to school and a certain person could possibly have been following them. They went and spoke to the police last night.  Adelaide somehow made the recounting of this visit amusing, because while she is so bright and so brave in many ways, she still finds basic human interaction to be challenging at times.  

• I bought this tiny... espresso mug?  Earthenware teacup?  Something that holds a fraction of the coffee a normal mug does because I'm trying to cut down on my coffee intake. I'm having a bit of trouble typing right now because my hands are trembling due to a surplus of caffeine in my system; while I have indeed been using this wee little cup, in practice it's gone a little wonky as it turns out I have no problem refilling it six times. 

• When our kids were babies, my favorite photos were the ones of them crying (terrible, I know).  At this age, these are my preferred shots:

Not-So-Cultured

"Hey- just what have you been doing that makes you too busy to blog?"

Oh, you know, same old, same old.  Giving our nine-year-old Pop Rocks candy for the first time and watching him freak out.  Then laughing hysterically rather than comfort him.  

We're also finishing up our spring break, which we celebrated by discovering that the auger won't turn on our snow thrower, making the ten inches of unexpected snow we received early this morning somewhat problematic. Thankfully, there are five of us capable of scooping and shoveling, and a very nice neighbor with a fully-functioning thrower who descended upon us in our hour of need. Never fear, mint chocolate chunk cookies have been baked as payment.

Pretty.  Also wet and heavy, as temperatures were right around freezing.  But pretty.

When we weren't at the library this week, I was trying to expose our children to a little culture via the sculpture park in Des Moines.  They ignored the artwork and repeatedly rolled down the embankment.  It would seem that we just can't help but raise savages. 

Then we went home and they did science experiments, so I guess we're doing something right, however accidental.

I enjoyed the sculpture park, anyway, and will now regale you with tiny tales of my most and least favorite sculptures:  my least was the one of the naked woman, not because there was anything wrong with it, but more because our boys kept veering close to it, giggling madly while Adelaide harrumphed in eleven-year-old girl superiority.  My favorite was this one:

It reminded me of the book The Invisible Man, which in turn gave me the heebee-jeebees because man, what a weird book.

Atticus's favorite was the newest sculpture of a polka-dotted squash, which I found to be both whimsical and depressing, as we are at that time of year when I start to believe I will never see anything growing and alive outside again.  In short, I am a delight to be around.  As usual.

Stories for Two Out of Three

I have yet again had a talking-to with myself and said that I am not to let this little piece of the internet waste away with but a single post a month.  We've been busy little bees-

and speaking of bees, those things stinging our children were not bees but the vile and depraved YELLOW JACKET, and once I took the time to do two seconds of investigating I found that why, yes, there was a hole in the ground with a steady stream of black- and yellow- banded winged insects streaming into it, and if I hung around for more than two seconds that trend would reverse itself and a steady stream of those same insects would begin filing out, heading straight for my own apparently threatening body.  The internet is divided on what to do about this, so thus far I have fallen back on one of my greatest strengths and done nothing.

- so, yes, busy little bees we have been indeed, with both the boys having birthdays and turning different ages, which is helpful for me because all three are now back to their evenly-spaced, stair-step ages, so I don't have to look like a terrible mother when people ask me how old they are, as I stand there and try to remember just what age our own children are right now.

Adelaide seems to be feeling the full eleven-ness of her eleven years, which I will explain with a small story:

There was recently a lock-in at our church for sixth graders.  Adelaide was willing to go and participate, but kept bemoaning the fact that it didn't start until 9 p.m., and didn't those leaders understand that only gives her around two hours of fun?  I tried to explain that the point is to try and stay up all night, to which she responded with a harrumph and more grumbling about needing her sleep and how kids her age need a good 10-12 hours a night and are the youth group leaders responsible adults or not if they don't understand that?

But off she went, towing her sleeping bag and pillow, fully planning on using both to good effect.


I picked her up the following morning at 8 a.m.  She was holding two doughnuts and a full package of Oreos.  The youth group leader told me he was pretty sure she hadn't slept at all.  She confirmed this.

I knew what this meant.

Adelaide is right to put a priority on sleep.  She does and has always needed plenty of sleep, for with proper rest she is her usual delightful self, but without, she regresses in age by around 70%.  And sure enough, halfway home she burst into tears because I laughed too hard at one of her jokes.  Derek suggested she stay home from Atticus's soccer game to sleep, which she did, but then we attempted to rouse her for the afternoon, not wanting throw her sleep schedule off any further.  What we got for our efforts was a vengeful she-beast who wailed every time she was reminded that no, no, she mustn't go back to sleep, she must stay awake for her own good.

Approach with caution.

Eventually self-preservation won out and I did let her lapse back into slumber for the bulk of the afternoon.  By Sunday she was more or less back to normal, so I suppose it all worked out.


Atticus has been running around playing lots of soccer, of which I have zero pictures.  He has scored the majority of goals for his club soccer team, of which I have zero pictures.  Does this mean they revoke my soccer mom card, or did that automatically happen when I told Derek I still don't understand what "offsides" means?  At least it looks like I'm in good company:  a google search of "soccer offsides" gave me a bunch of results, naturally, topped with "How to Understand Offside in Soccer:  11 Steps," "What is the Offside Rule in Soccer? -dummies," and a 4-minute YouTube video of a soccer coach trying to explain this rule.  No wonder!  You're going to lose me in any situation that it takes 11 steps or four minutes or whatever to explain a sports-related rule.

Other than photo-less soccer, Son the Elder has also been harvesting his sunflowers for seed so he can plant more in the spring, because he really does love to grow them.

Note that he wears his shin guards to do so.  This is both practical for gardening and so that he can return immediately to soccer after finishing.  And regarding the knife:  I've found that even my more reluctant gardeners are more likely to join in when I tell them they can use a knife at some point.  This kid merrily sawed away at all our sunflowers, some to dry for seed, some to leave on the table on our back deck to try and draw the birds in closer.


We do still have a third child, and he has been doing things, but darned if I can remember what they are.

Birthdays and Band

Yesterday was Caedmon's birthday.  He is seven, and when asked what he wanted for his birthday dinner, out of all the things in the wide world I could make for him, he requested mac and cheese.  I don't know if this is a subtle commentary on my cooking, or he just has strange tastes.

Speaking of strange tastes, Adelaide recently undertook her first foray into marching band.  She plays percussion, so this is a fun experience for her; this is in stark contrast to my experience of being a flautist in marching band, where you are the musical equivalent to a Puritan-era child:  there to be seen and not heard.  Yes, yes, you can play the piccolo, and while this is fun for the two whole songs that feature piccolos, you must have a high tolerance for extremely high pitched sounds right up against your ear.

Because we knew Adelaide and the rest of the middle school band was going to be playing at last week's high school football game, we carried ourselves off to the field, where Derek watched his high school alma mater absolutely crush our home team throughout the first half, and I chatted with friends and contemplated the merits of getting a shirt that reads, "I'm just here for the marching band."

Half time came, we listened to Adelaide and the sixth graders play, then the upper-grade middle schoolers, then the high school marching band entered the field and strutted their stuff, with the now tiny-looking sixth graders watching in awe.  As we were leaving, Adelaide talked about how excited she was for marching band, and how she couldn't wait to perform in high school, but the thing that she's most looking forward to are "those really cool hats!"

In case you're confused, no, our marching band has not departed from tradition to wear something new and different.  She really does mean those bucket-looking hats with an abnormally large feather protruding from the top.  Remember though that this is also the girl who wore a fuzzy cat ear headband more often than not all last summer and into the first month of school.  Maybe she just likes having unusual things on her head?  Either way I'll take it, as she also just showed me the "warm up" worksheet for this extra-curricular math club she wants to take part in, which she described as "hard but fun," and which I gazed at and had to suppress the urge to rip into tiny pieces.  Anyone else have dormant feelings of rage stir at the mere sight of middle school math?


I guess this is what all Daughter is talking about when she proudly identifies herself as a nerd.  Or is it a geek?  All I can ever remember is that she is profoundly offended when I mix her up and refer to her as the wrong one. 

"If the permutations of the letters in the word SURE are numbered 1 through 24 in alphabetical order, what number is RUSE?" 

The good part of all this nerdiness (or is it geekiness?  I'm sorry, Daughter, I know this is making you very angry) is I can email her band memes and she finds them funny.

Three Things

• First of all, brace yourself, because this is indeed what passes for excitement in our house:  Caedmon found a quarter lacking a mint mark.  I KNOW, RIGHT?  Our youngest is just a tad obsessive about looking for those marks as soon as a quarter finds its way into his hot little hands, always on the hunt for that elusive "P."  Around here we have way more "D" quarters- that is, quarters from the Denver mint- than P, I assume because we are closer to Denver than Philadelphia, although perhaps Denver also makes more quarters than Philadelphia?  I really don't know.  Anyway, Caedmon was given a quarter that was stamped with the year 1965, but with no mint mark.  A quick google search led Derek to educate us all on how from some year to another year (I don't remember) too many people were collecting coins and something about something else, the result being they stopped putting mint marks on coins for a short time to stop people being so crazy.  *Waves wand* May this be the least intelligible paragraph you read today.

• Adelaide has been losing teeth.  A lot of teeth.  As in, all her molars on the bottom left side have fallen out within days of each other.  Naturally, this leads to me finding teeth in random places throughout the house.

I'm not that worried about the fact that she's lost seven teeth in six months-  none of our kids got their first teeth until well after their first birthday, so they tend to be late losers- but I'm still glad she's due for a visit to the dentist in a month, just so he can assure me that she doesn't have some obscure mouth disease, then turn right around and devastate me with impending orthodontia news.  Dentists are good at that, you know.

• If you've been itching for a good memoir, pick this one up:

If you like to experience the entire gamut of human emotion in one sitting, this is the book for you.  It is so funny, and so entertaining, even while being about cancer and fear and doctors who really need to work on their bedside manner.  Maybe don't read it in a public place, unless crying in front of strangers is your thing, in which case I'll just say stick some extra Kleenex in your pocket.  It's a good one.

They Survived

The children all survived their first wee of school, plus the resulting aftermath of their first week of school.  Post-school interactions these first few days require constant refereeing, and when you think you're done- say, when all your angels are tucked into bed- you'll be drawn back upstairs because one has offended the other by... I don't know, being alive within ten feet of the other?

It can be rough, is what I am saying.

Our church's youth group kicked off the evening of the first day of school, too, proving it is not run by parents.  Parent-run organizations don't begin until the second or third week of school; this one is run by young adults.  The flip side of that coin is that those leaders have all the energy needed to herd a group of middle schoolers through an hour and a half of Bible learnin' fun, and the adolescents adore them.  So we'll take it, even if Adelaide did stagger into the house at 8:30 that night and ask if every day of middle school was going to be this exhausting.

What I imagine middle school ministry is like.  And thanks, giphy, for never letting me down.

It's not all bad that summer break is over, though.  I can finally weed through all the photos on my phone, which include ones of random kids holding circuit boards and bird houses, taken at the library so parents can see what their kids are doing at our programs.  I can also try to figure out why I took certain pictures of our own kids and what on earth we were doing.  A disturbing percentage of them relate to animal death.  Not that our kids are torturing puppies or anything; they just seem to believe that any dead animal they find deserves a proper burial.  This includes bird eggs they find on the ground that fail to ever hatch under their poor if good-intentioned tender loving care.  

A bird egg grave marker.  These things are stinkers to mow around.

I can also delete all those hair-cutting photos.  Adelaide spent a few weeks over the summer begging me to chop more of her hair off than I felt comfortable doing, but she eventually wore me down.  I did first extract two promises, namely that after I had done so she was 1) not allowed to be upset with me, and 2) was not allowed to cry.  She refused to promise to withhold her tears, but I said I'd do it anyway.  Then, just as I was about to start snip-snip-snipping away, she informs me that she also wants bangs.  I mean, bangs!  What could go wrong?  

*Let's all take a moment to appreciate that this gif both conveys "Yikes," AND is from the Great British Baking Show.*

Anyway, it all somehow ended up fine.  Adelaide was pleased with her hair, and I was so relieved that I didn't let my fine hand tremors and lack of overall hair cutting-related knowledge totally botch our daughter's appearance before her first day of middle school.  (Yeah, this could have gone really wrong.)

On to the second week of school.  We are optimistic but tired. 

Crislers v. Bees

Bees.  I am so sick of talking about bees.  Now, I am normally a lover of bees, planting bee-attracting flowers in our beds, trying to increase the number of native plants we have, etc, but last week one of our children came into the house screaming.  Not my-sibling-has-pissed-me-off screaming, but rather I-am-dying-mother-come-tend-to-me-now screaming.  It took a couple minutes, but I got this kid calm enough to explain to me that they had been stung by a bee on the leg.  Sure enough, the affected area began to redden and swell, but said kid was down to sitting on the floor, snuffling and moaning, when suddenly they began to twitch.  Once, twice, then jumping up, saying, "There's... there's something in my pants!  There's- THERE'S A BEE IN MY PANTS!"  

Commence more screaming.

I yanked their pants and underwear down, and sure enough, there was a bee in their underwear, and a second, fresh sting on their backside.  

Long story short, this child stood in the middle of the kitchen for another five minutes screaming and crying and refusing to pull their pants up for fear of another stealthy insect hiding in their clothing, waiting to attack their precious bits and pieces.  This meant the other two kept trying to walk into the room, then making a sharp U-turn saying, "Oooookay," because although we're a relatively close little family unit, we're not "hang out half-naked while trembling and panic-breathing" close.  

Aaaaaanyhoo, after that intense little episode, we've been talking a lot about bees.  See, I thought I was being a good parent by showing this kid the tiny corkscrew-shaped stinger still attached to the (dead) bee, but apparently this only served to further traumatize the kid.  

Note to self:  Do not view My Girl during family movie night any time soon.

The other thing I'm sick of discussing is bees, again, of the spelling variety.  Adelaide once again participated in the Iowa State Fair spelling bee, but this time she got 11th place, an abysmal showing, to borrow her words.  Was she the 11th-best speller there?  No.  She was easily one of the top few spellers, but she was not one of the most focused this year, and you need both excellent spelling ability and intense focus to do well in a spelling bee.  She got out on a word she knew perfectly well, rushing the end and missing a letter.  Devastation ensued.  She is eligible to compete one more year; we'll see what she decides.  Congratulations must be showered upon both Derek and I for not saying some hearty I TOLD YOU SOs, as she performed in the bee the way she practiced, and we more or less saw this coming.  May I just say that this whole part of parenting, the part where you want to guide your children, yet also let them make their own mistakes, even when you see disappointment on the horizon as a result- that part?  It sucks.  I so badly wanted to nag Daughter throughout the summer to better prepare for this event, but did not.  And I still don't regret it.  Mostly.

Atticus provided some fun during the ill-fated bee (this ill-fated bee, I mean, not the previous one); sitting still and not talking is tough for our most social child, but he found a way:  he was sitting clear to the side of the stadium-type seating, and his perch overlooked the table where the contestants who had just been eliminated got to choose a free book as a consolation prize.  Atticus rarely wastes an opportunity to interact with other people, so he designated himself the official Book Table Greeter and whispered things down to them like, "What book are you choosing?" and "You're choosing that book?" and "Don't forget your book!"  He's the kid who actually enjoys those paralyzing moments in church when the pastor announces that he hates all introverts and instructs us to say hello to those around us.  Adelaide greets one person (the minimum we have cruelly inflicted upon her), Atticus shakes all the hands and announces to everyone around that his name is Atticus, and Caedmon is the third child and there is only one of me so I'm not exactly sure what he does.  I think he says hello to the overtly friendly people near him.  Sorry, Caedmon.  Maybe Dad has been paying attention.

Bees:  2,    Crislers:  0.

(Or is it Bees:  3, since our kid was stung twice?  Whatever, the point is WE LOST.)

It's a Confusing Time of Year

It is the week before school starts, which means all the things I put off throughout the summer are now demanding to be done.  I mean this quite literally, as our middle son comes to me every day and asks, "Have you sewed the appliqués on my backpack yet?"

Appliqués on the backpack but no bed skirt on the bed, because who am I, Joanna Gaines?  Leave me alone.

First of all, yes, our son does know what the word "appliqué" is and how to use it in a sentence, of which I am duly proud, and second of all, yes, I did offer to sew appliqués onto our children's perfectly fine backpacks, because... I make poor life choices?  I don't know.

Oh, wait, yes I do.  We'd been back to school shopping, which consists of me standing in the middle of a store and sounding increasingly obsessive about school supplies.   "Okay, Atticus, you need 6 dry erase markers, and they must be EXPO brand, and they must be black, but Adelaide, you need 4 dry erase markers, EXPO brand, but they have to be different colors.  Caedmon, you need two, in black.  ...No, dry erase markers, Caedmon.  Dry erase markers.  I am not talking about highlighters right now, that is three further items down the page, so I will not talk about those right now, just dry erase markers.  Atticus, focus, we are only focusing on dry erase markers, not red pens.  I do not care if you need red pens and they're right next to the dry erase markers, that is not the item we are discussing, just dry erase markers.  PUT THE COLORED PENCILS DOWN, ADELAIDE.  DRY ERASE MARKERS ONLY."

Anyway, it had been a day of so many rigid lists and "no"s that I faltered and told them that sure, I'd sew some appliques on their backpacks, and okay, yes, I'd embroider a few words on there, too.  I know why I had no trouble making these insane promises; it was mid-July and the start of the school was still ages away!  I had all kinds of times to make these things happen!  And yes, we do our school supply shopping in the middle of July, because I am a human being capable of learning from the past; in this case, knowing that THOU SHALT NOT:

• Shop for school supplies in August.
• Buy those Ticonderoga pencils the list always specifies, that cost FOUR TIMES AS MUCH as regular #2 pencils.  Junior can make do with 48 pencils cobbled from random drawers and sporting jack'o'lanterns, past politicians running for office, and Spiderman, just like the rest of us peasants.
• Shop for school supplies in the college town, unless you like bare shelves and almost hitting that one college kid who wanders back and forth across the parking lot in such a haphazard fashion you begin to wonder if he perhaps suffers from severe vertigo.  He doesn't, he's just oblivious.  You will see him again in February, when it is -3 degrees outside.  He will be wearing shorts.  

The new THOU SHALT NOT of school supply shopping that we learned last year was "Buy backpacks from Wal-Mart."  Two of our three children had almost completely dismembered their backpacks by the end of last school year; Atticus because he kept swinging his around and around over his head (as a lasso when he pretended to be a cowboy, as rotor blades when he pretended to be a helicopter), Adelaide because she insists on carrying no less than thirty pounds of books with her wherever she goes.  She is actually the one that has the most work to do at the end of each year, as it takes some time to return all the books she's borrowed from three different libraries and five separate teachers.

I'm sure I'll accumulate a whole new list of THOU SHALT NOTs this year, as we break new ground:  Middle school.  Adelaide is going to middle school.  We've already visited once, to get her locker assignment, wage war against the lock (*sing-song* guess who's crazy smart but doesn't know clockwise from counter-clockwise?  our daughter ), and find her new classes, where she insisted on snooping in each room and either glorying in or judging the books they had on their shelves.

We're going back tomorrow to put all her supplies in her locker and work some more with The Lock That Hates Her, where I will get additional practice not saying aloud what is in my head ("HOW DO YOU STILL NOT KNOW WHICH WAY IS CLOCKWISE?" and "It's very strange that you are starting middle school given that just yesterday it was your first birthday and you were shoving your first cupcake so forcefully into your own face that I kept having to wipe frosting off your nostrils so you could breathe.").

Your Word Is "Syni-Kyni-Doty-Chody"

Last week, Adelaide finally received her spelling bee packet.

You may remember that last year, Daughter competed in- and won- her division in the spelling bee at the Iowa State Fair.  It was a wonderful experience.  She wanted to participate again this year.

As it turns out, that is easier said than done.  We heard about the whole thing last year because a kindly former teacher of Adelaide's saw the paperwork at school and thought that would be right up her alley.  This year, Adelaide started bugging me in, oh, probably December, to sign her up for the bee.  

I looked on the (really pretty good) State Fair website.  I made calls.  I left messages.  I sent emails.  And nothing.  

Derek's dad joined the search, calling around, trying to figure out just how the heck do you sign someone up for this thing?  Is there even going to be a bee this year?  What is happening?

Finally, finally, I managed to reach a helpful intern.  You should have heard me on the phone with this poor girl:  "Oh- OH!  A REAL PERSON!  Oh, thank God!  I'd like to sign our daughter up for the spelling bee please don't hang up please please help me I'm so happy to be talking to you right now."

She clearly read the despair in my voice, as she spoke in very soothing tones and said things like, "Okay, I'm emailing you the form right now.  No, I won't hang up until you see you have it.  Now just fill out it out and email it right back to me, and I'll print it out and get her entered right away.  Well, you are welcome."  

That was back in May, though, and Adelaide (and, okay, me too) was getting a bit nervous that her packet hadn't come, confirming she'd made it into the bee, as they do cap the numbers at 70 (although there were closer to 80 kids competing last year, so it would seem they're not as strict about the ONLY 70 CONTESTANTS thing as the application would have you believe).  

A few days ago, though, it came:  the letter of congratulations, exhaustive list of rules, packet of sample words, and ticket to the fair.

This picture has nothing to do with spelling bees.  I just wanted a cute picture of Daughter somewhere in here.  At the above moment, she was thrilled about having finally gotten the timing down for saying "Lumos" as her sparkler sputtered to life, then "Nox" as it died.  She is thrilled about the bee, too.

As we've been going through her packet of possible words, though, we've run into a familiar problem:  she and I both enjoy above-average vocabularies in terms of definitions, spelling, and using the words correctly, but our pronunciation is, ah... not so great.  I've gotten better as I've gotten older and been forced to interact more with actual human beings than books, but Daughter is just not there yet.  She was recently talking to Derek about something or other, and mentioned "waiting in a quay-way."  Astonishingly, he did not know what she was saying.  Eventually he did figure out she was trying to communicate the word queue, but only because he is fluent in Adelaide-ese.  (Adelaide-ese:  A dialect that uses rather advanced words, but pronounced phonetically, with the emphasis nearly always on the wrong syllable, and most mangled when the word is of french origin.  She hates franco-based words.)

Thankfully, we live in the internet age, and it's the work of seconds to pull up canny little videos instructing us on the correct pronunciation of coxswain and wokas and, my new favorite, synecdoche.

Oxford Dictionaries is a great resource for these videos, as is Emma Saying.

Sometimes, however, we need a little levity in the midst of such quizzing.  Pronunciation Manual is there for us.

Do you have any favorite words?  How about words you mispronounced for far too long?

Four Things

• No one coddles our youngest like his big sister.  Derek and I tell him to settle down, or shake it off, or any of the other things you say when your child is crying more for attention's sake than anything else, then along comes Adelaide, who picks him up and gives him the sympathy his cruel parents insist on depriving him of.  Never mind that it's blatantly clear he is getting too big for such things.

• Common Household Mom recently wondered how the Iowa corn crop is doing this year.

From what many native Iowans have insisted upon telling me every year since we moved here, corn should be "knee-high by the fourth of July."  (Note:  Never have I met a people group who enjoy talking about corn as much Iowans.  After writing the following, I must accept that I am now one of them.)  As you can see above- where I pulled the car over on the way to the library to get this picture as photo evidence for CHM- it is significantly above knee-high.  As of about a week ago, the conversations I overheard from area farmers were positive; they were pleased with their corn and soybean crops this year, although they did mention how dry it had been.  It's rained several inches in the past week, so hopefully that has helped.  We've also had a pretty cool summer thus far- Atticus has his arms wrapped around him in the photo above, as sixty degrees was a little chilly for his t-shirt-and-shorts attire.  From a cranky gardener's standpoint (that would be mine, always), my vegetable garden is not producing this year.  My tomato plants are tiny, my pumpkin plants are tiny, my pepper plants are tiny.  The lettuce has done really really well, no doubt due to the cool weather, and I got more strawberries than ever in early June, but that's about it.  

• This is our library's Overdue Fines chair.  

Kidding.  A representative from a local science center gave a presentation at our library, and at the end anyone who had always dreamed of sitting on a chair whose seat is made up of sharp nails- pointy side up, of course- could give it a go.  The point of the whole thing (pun INTENDED) was... um... something about pressure per cubic whatever... or something- and look, I was busy helping other people during the presentation and couldn't really listen, so lay off, okay?  Anyway, it was not the most comfortable chair I've ever rested upon, but it was still better than those restaurant booths that have a weird piece of trim that protrudes from the back and hits you right at the neck (or mid-back for Derek).  

• And now, a gratuitous photo of one of my nieces.