Stream of Consciousness Malia Style

A portion of the stream of chatter Malia produced while I was combing her hair this morning:

"I saw a red Dalek. Daleks are made of cans. They put wheels on them. The Wizard of Oz only has a walking can man and a lion. Lions don’t really talk. They make a roaring sound. The lions at the zoo don’t talk. It’s down to my bum. Sister Johnson needs to cut it! Did it snap? These rubber bands are cheap. One, two, three, four, five. There are five heart buttons on my dress. It’s almost empty. We need to get a big one…"

That is only a portion of the wisdom she spewed forth this morning. There was something about ears as well and a bunch of stuff I don’t remember.

Now a couple of tidbits to help you understand where her brain was:

~While we were at the library yesterday, Nathan picked up a “Where’s Doctor Who” book that is made in the style of “Where’s Waldo.”
~Sister Johnson lives across the street from us. She has a salon in her basement and she is the one who cuts our hair.
~ We broke yet another cheap rubber band before I could get it into her hair.
~ I use a small spray bottle to spritz Malia’s hair while I’m combing it.

The part about the cans totally made me laugh. I mean, she’s not wrong. The Tin Man really is a walking can man. And I imagine Daleks would be a lot less intimidating if they had Del Monte stamped on their butts. ;-)

180°

Nathan came home much happier today. He and his locker buddy worked out a plan. Half of his teachers identified him as Daniel’s brother which Nathan is still happy about (he might not be in another four or five years, but for now I think it makes him feel a little less like one of the largely unknown crowd). He has lunch at the same time as Daniel so he didn’t have to sit alone and Daniel’s friends are so nice that they made Nathan feel right at home. He doesn’t need his map to get around the school anymore and he has memorized his locker combination. He is excited to go to school tomorrow.

Looks like his seventh grade jitters are over. I’m so happy. And so is he.

3 of 4

Daniel and Nathan started school today. Nathan had 7th grade orientation yesterday and came home feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. They tossed so much information at him that he felt like he didn’t catch it all. And because of the dumb way our school assigns lockers, he will have to share a locker with a total stranger. At least there aren’t three kids sharing his locker which happened to some of the kids in his 7th period class. Instead of assigning lockers in advance like I’m used to, our school gives each 7th period teacher a certain number of lockers and they have to make it work for the number of kids in the class. Nathan’s 7th period has about 40 kids and only 15 lockers. Seriously dumb. His locker frustration was amplified when he looked down the corridor and realized that other classes had only one person per locker. Like I said, super dumb way to assign lockers.
By last night he had calmed down and while he still wasn’t super excited about some things, he was getting excited about his actual classes again. Two of his good friends, one who lives just down the street and one that has been in the same class as Nathan every year since first grade (except for sixth grade because the boundary realignments that came with the opening of our new elementary school put them in two different schools), are in his first three morning classes. So that is a definite plus. His art teacher believes in teaching the kids what they want to learn, not just what she wants them to learn, so the kids have input into what techniques and skills they work on and that is exciting to Nathan. The school play this year will be “Annie” which doesn’t have hardly any speaking parts for boys, but since there are not many middle school boys who try out for the plays, Nathan is pretty sure he will be able to snag one of those “human scenery” type parts. And next semester will bring choir which Nathan is very much looking forward to.

So I’m hoping today will go better. And I’m hoping that once he feels like he knows how the school works he will be as happy there as Daniel has. And speaking of Daniel, he is a mighty 9th grader this year and he has been super great with Nathan, sharing info and providing support. He has been nothing but excited for school to start, not only because he will have band again, but because he is in a bunch of accelerated classes this year which means he won’t have to spend as much time dealing with the kids who just don’t want to be there. He had some struggles like that last year. Being assigned a group assignment with a bunch of people who don’t care and don’t do their part was totally frustrating for him.

As for me, I’m looking forward to having a few hours a week all to myself. Matthew has been in school for a whole month already, but Malia won’t start until after Labor Day…just as Matthew goes off track. So for now I’ve got 3 of 4 in school and five weeks until I get to 4 of 4. My solitary hours will have to wait for a while longer.

Party Girl

Malia's birthday was today. Since her birthday fell on a Saturday and Kev's mom would be out here for our quilt class, we decided to invite them to stay for lunch and a small birthday celebration. We invited Kev's other siblings and their families as well. Kev's brother wasn't able to make it, but Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Connie, Uncle Arrin, Nick, Zack and Sammi (Nick's wife of two months) joined us. Malia has been super excited (still) and even picked up her room before everyone arrived, a task that usually takes a good deal of coercion to complete. All week she has been telling us that her big Hello Kitty cake was coming. She didn’t ever say her birthday was coming, just her big Hello Kitty cake. She wasn’t wrong, I just think it’s funny.

You know those times when you choose what you think it a great gift only to have it totally tank? That is definitely not what happened this year. Malia loved all her presents. We gave her a new pair of ladybug boots to replace her old ones. She has had the old ones since she was two and when every time something breaks on them, she cries. So she loved that. We also gave her a bunch of stuff for Baby (her baby doll): an assortment of clothes, a new seat for Baby’s stroller to replace a broken one, some baby bottles (We have a bunch of boys, including my two grown up nephews, that had never seen those cool baby bottles that look the contents disappear when you tip them upside down. Malia was not the only one who thought it was way cool!), a spoon and bowl, etc. I made her a diaper bag and filled it with dresses, diapers, bibs, socks and a coat. We had some errands to run later in the day and she put Baby in her coat and packed up the diaper bag to take along. The only item she wasn’t crazy about was the diapers. She told me Baby needs panties instead.

Grandma got Malia a small table and chair, just the perfect size to go alongside her kitchen. And Aunt Connie got her a Hello Kitty bike helmet (I think it is so fun!), some play food, and a play dish drainer filled with dishes. The dish drainer was perfect because a couple of months ago I was trying to convince Malia to pick up her room and she told me she couldn’t put her dishes away because they were dirty and she couldn’t wash them because she didn’t have a dish drainer. The very first thing she did once we got all her stuff moved into her room was wash her dishes. Woohoo! While everyone was still here, she sat and played house with Sammi. When it was time for them to go, Malia tried to convince everyone that Sammi could stay. She is short of female playmates at home and loves when girls come to visit. :-)

We had a great time. It was a super fun way for Malia to celebrate her big day.

Are You Sure It's Only 9:00?

1 lackadaisical teenager + 1 stressed out preteen + 1 overly dramatic preschooler = 1 crabby mom

It's definitely time for school to start.

At least the short fused elementary kid is already back to school. Otherwise things would be even more explosive.

Rise and Shout, the Cougars Are Out!

As I’ve mentioned before, Matthew is our little sports nut and one of his favorites to cheer for is BYU. Although I really don’t care about the sports, I do have a decent amount of school spirit for my alma mater, so I think it is fun that he’s a fan of the Y. My dad is also a BYU alum and he has always held season tickets to basketball and football. Of all my siblings, the only one who really enjoys cheering the athletes of BYU is my sister, Esther. And she didn’t really get to that point until college. So I think having a youngster to enjoy sporting events with is kind of fun for my dad as well as for Kevin.

BYU’s fall athletic season has just gotten underway and last night they had the annual Cougar Kickoff to give fans a chance to mingle with the players and pick up last season’s gear at a discounted price. My dad invited Matthew to go with him and he was soooooo excited! He did two days’ worth of homework and reading on Monday so he wouldn’t have to do any yesterday and when I picked him up from school he made it to the car in record time. As a member of the Cougar Club, my dad was able to get in earlier than the general public (although the lines were enormously long anyway) and Matthew had a great time. He got a poster signed by the BYU football team’s head coach, played some soccer, and came home with an armload of BYU gear.

Pretty much the only bad thing that happened was Matthew getting hit in the face with a soccer ball. But even that wasn’t too bad. Matthew just decided that he would be Scott Sterling for Halloween.

(looking a little red in the face after getting smacked by a soccer ball)

While Matthew was getting a dose of Cougar Spirit, Daniel was off to a ham radio meeting with Kev’s dad. That left us with just Nathan and Malia so we decided to go out to dinner. We ate at Red Robin and just happened to be seated next to a cousin of mine of that I haven’t seen in years. When we were finished eating, our server informed us that my cousin had covered our bill. How cool is that?!

My family is great. Two grandfathers took two grandsons to two events that they all enjoyed. And the rest of us had a fine meal paid for by another relative. It was a good evening for us all.:-)

She Was Super Excited

Malia's birthday is on Friday. This is the first year that she's really understood what was coming and the anticipation has been killing her. Due to our every other week dinner at my folks' house schedule, today was her day to be sung to with the cousins and she knew it. We have choir practice before church and as soon as it was over she asked if it was time to go to Papa's house. Ummmm....no. Big sigh from her. As soon as sacrament meeting was over she asked again. Still no. Another big sigh coupled with a groan. Off to primary we went and as soon as the prayer, scripture and talk were over she popped right out of her seat and announced to everyone that it is her birthday this week. Poor brand new primary counselor. She is yet unseasoned in the ways of sunbeams whom you have to love, even if they belong to you and are the cause of a mid-opening exercises eye roll. Two minutes later is was actually time to sing to her, but of course everyone already knew that. So primary continued and eventually she was off to class. After church, about two minutes after arriving home, again the question about Papa's house. Definitely no...but getting closer. Cheers. Seeing the decorating of the cupcakes seemed to appease her some. And then finally, FINALLY, it was time to go. Big cheers from the birthday girl.

It has been fun to add some girly themed cakes to my repertoire over the last few years. I actually got to buy pink food coloring this year which has never happened before. And none of my boys would have appreciated the Hello Kitty cupcake toppers, but Malia loved them.

And finally the moment arrived: who has a birthday? “Me!”

Malia’s real birthday is on Saturday and we've invited Kev's family to celebrate with us. She's still super excited. She's already asked me if tomorrow is Saturday.

Ten Things Every Girly Girl Innately Knows

Having a daughter after three sons has been an enlightening experience. It’s not that girlish things were new to me. I’m a girly girl myself so I pretty much know what girl stuff is all about. However, what I didn’t realize that it is something that is generally not learned. Instead, some girls just come wired that way. Over the past four years I’ve watched Malia become quite the girly girl all on her own. And I’ve come up with a list of girlish things that I definitely did not teach her but that she has picked up on anyway.

  #1-Superheroes are swoon worthy. One of Malia’s first discernible words (besides Mom, Dad and some of those other super basic ones) was "Ironman.” Seriously. It was awesome.

#2-A serious girly girl should have a fetish for footwear. I did not teach this to Malia. I swear. But I’m a little bit proud.

#3-Anything with bows and/or lace and/or sparkles is awesome. Having all three is like hitting the mother lode. Malia is like a magpie. If it is shiny, it is good.

#4-What constitutes a good hair day. Malia loves that her hair is long because she is like Rapunzel who, lets face it, is always having a good hair day.

#5-Every girl is a princess. ‘Nuff said.

#6-Taking an entourage makes trips to the bathroom more fun. Malia’s best potty training days were when she was with her cousin Kate. In fact, when they are together they still take their potty breaks at the same time.

#7-How to make a scene when you don’t get your way. Two words to describe Malia when she feels like she is getting the short end of the stick: drama queen.

#8-How to make a dramatic exit by gracefully dashing to your room just as tears begin to fall. Yeah…this one is pretty new. But it happens pretty much any time Malia starts to cry for any reason other than hurting herself.

#9-The follow up to #8: the fine art of door slamming. Sigh. I sooooo promise she didn’t learn this from me. But she know how to do it anyway.

#10-Pretty toes are in instant pick me up. I have to admit that I’ve been excited to have Malia get to this point. Recently she has started to notice when other girls have painted toe nails and has been asking about them. She just had to be able to sit still long enough to let the polish dry. She has hit that point (with the help of a quick dry spray) so we picked out some polish and today was the day. And now she is super excited as well.

Malia chose yellow (of course) which is a bit weird looking, but it’s her favorite color so I’m not surprised. She told me she likes red toes as well (probably because that’s what I chose) and she mentioned that we should get lots of colors so we can do “rainbow toes” next time. I’m actually thinking that would be super fun. Yay! Girl time!

Do You Ever Feel Like You Are Getting Financially Lambasted?

Kev’s car is falling apart. We’ve dumped several thousand dollars in repairs into the thing in the last six months. And the repairs have not been minor ones. The last repair, which was last month, was to replace the fuel pump which had cracked and was dumping gas all over. Not cool. And not safe. Due to the decreasing integrity of the vehicle, we’ve made a plan to replace it so that Kev doesn’t blow up on the way to work one day. But it seems that Murphy has a law about financial plans, a law in which every financially prudent plan must immediately be laid to waste.

Last year we replaced our water heater. The year before it was the water softener. Our house is thirteen years old so we are getting to the point where some of these things are just wearing out. And as we've noticed a decline in performance of our appliances, we've been proactive in replacing them so we won't end up with a flooded basement and an emergency installation than will inevitably occur on a Saturday evening which results in a bill twice what it would be on a weekday. We’ve noticed a decrease in air flow over the last few years, so the heat and air conditioning systems were next on the list. We scheduled an AC tune up earlier this week during which we discovered that things are not looking rosy. There are multiple components of our HVAC system for which failure is imminent necessitating a revision of the financial plan making the HVAC system the first priority and bumping the car to second place, all the while hoping it doesn’t blow up resulting in a complete loss of trade in value.

That was Tuesday. Last night I came home and when I pushed the button to open the garage door, it only lifted about a foot which did not bode well. Sure enough, the coil which provides the counterweight to lift the door is broken. If the motor was broken we could disengage the automatic system and open the door by hand. But without the counterweight, the door is way too heavy for me to lift. So repair it we must. The garage door repair guys came out today and knowing that the rest of the garage door opener is just as old as the coil and just as likely to break in the very near future (a fact confirmed by the professionals when they gave it a once over), we had them replace the whole thing. While it was definitely not cheap, it carried a significantly smaller price tag than the HVAC or car will carry. In spite of that, it still hurt…

Hopefully we are done with the circumstantially driven revisions of our financial plan. And if any of you happen to cross paths with Murphy, kick him in the shins for me.

A Throw Away Culture

We live in a world where people are intentionally making products that will fail in a short period of time so that consumers will have to replace things more frequently therefore padding the pockets of the upper management. Basically, we live in a trash world. No wonder the landfills are filling up much faster than expected. Everything we buy is designed to fail. And often quality options are not available or are financially far out of reach for the average American.

Let me give you several examples:

We have a toy tractor and trailer that were given to Kev's dad when he was just a sprout. It is all metal. It has multiple moving parts. You can steer it with the actual steering wheel and the trailer can dump its load by moving a lever. All of these moving parts still function exactly as they should. The thing is in the neighborhood of 65 years old and it has only broken once. And then all it took was a friend to weld it back together and it was good as new. Still is. Except for the paint job, of course. And a missing exhaust pipe. But seriously, one missing part in 65 years is pretty good.

On the flip side, in my years as a parent I've purchased countless toys for my kids which have ended up either being totally stupid because they don't work anywhere remotely close to what we had hoped or ended up breaking far sooner than any of us would have liked. And those crappy toys end up in the trash. And not because they were cheap either! I'm not afraid to spend a bit more on toys that will last (we only buy real brand name Legos over here, no cheap knock offs) but it seems like they are getting harder to find.

And it's not just toys that are going down the crapper. For the first years of my marriage, I made applesauce at my in-laws place using my mother-in-law's super handy all metal Victorio strainer. When I spotted one just like it at IFA a few years back, I was thrilled because I thought for sure they were a thing of the past and purchased it immediately. But when I got it home and opened it up, I discovered that unlike my mother-in-law’s saucer, almost all the parts are plastic. It definitely works just fine, but there is no way it is going to last the forty or fifty years that hers has.

So what brought on this rant about the constantly declining quality of the goods available to us in this modern day and age? Two words: hair elastics.

Even though my hair is nowhere near as long as it was in my youth, I still have long hair which means I use a lot of hair elastics. Over the years, I tried a number of elastics but always came back to the Goody brand elastics. They were the best, holding tight and lasting a long time. Some years back Goody changed their elastics and they weren’t anywhere near as good. So I took to hoarding the remaining elastics in my stock knowing they wouldn’t last forever. Earlier this year I finally reached the end of those beloved elastics. And thus began my hunt for a decent replacement. It took me months and months and much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I bought more packages of elastics than I like to think about. And I ended up tossing most of them. They did not stretch as far or rebound as well which means they did not hold tight. They broke, often the very first time they were stretched. To sum it all up, they were all crap. I did finally find a decent elastic. Although they don’t last anywhere near as long as those old time Goody ones, at least they hold tight and last a month or so.

Unfortunately, those decent elastics are the big ponytail kind which means they don’t work for Malia. Her hair is still much finer and thinner than mine and so she needs much smaller elastics. When she was one I bought a package of Goody brand poly band elastics that worked great for little girl hair. They don’t last as long as other types of elastics, but at least they hold tight and can be used multiple times before they get too stretched out to be helpful. Three years later, we have reached the end of that package. So I picked up another package. They looked exactly the same. They were the same brand. The package was even exactly the same. But when I opened them up it quickly became clear that they were not the same. There has been a very steep decline in quality. I will have three or four break before I can even get one in Malia’s hair. Then they either break before the end of the day, usually tangling in her hair so much that they stay in place anyway but result in a huge tangle when it’s time to take them out, or break into four or five pieces when I try to take them out. They stretch much farther but don’t rebound as well so I can’t even get them in tightly which means they slide out before the end of the day. In short, they are total crap.

I’m totally frustrated. I have a child who loves her long hair because it is like Rapunzel. She asks for hairstyles based on how the princesses wear their hair. She doesn’t talk about braids, she talks about Elsa hair or Anna hair. She doesn’t care for headbands, won’t wear them for longer than a few minutes. And she’s still young enough that she needs something to help keep her hair out of her face and her food. All these things mean we need hair elastics. And I can’t find any decent ones. Honestly, there have been almost swear words in the hair care aisles of my nearby stores.

So if any of you happen to have found a brand of hair elastics that won't result in me accidentally teaching my not quite 4 year old that it is appropriate to use the word "crap" six times in a single sentence, please pass along your knowledge. Because I'm fed up. If one more thing in my house breaks due to shoddy workmanship or cheap materials I'm going to...sigh...end up buying another crappy replacement because just like everyone else, I have no choice.

A Scouting We Will Go

Nathan got home yesterday from a week long scout camp. He was filthy and exhausted. When he woke up this morning he was still wearing his glasses. He was so tired that he forgot to take them off when he went to bed last night. Of course, this evening he also informed us that he’d been sleeping with his glasses on all week because he couldn’t find his glasses case. When he got home, he discovered the case in his pillow case which meant that he was sleeping on the glasses case all week. He told us stories about several of the other boys lighting their farts on fire and wondering if the girls do that at their camps. Let me reassure you that girls definitely do not do that at camp….or anywhere. Nor do we belch the alphabet and then cheer. Or attempt to shove our entire fist into our mouth. (I’ve seen this done. Teenage boys are kind of…I’m not exactly sure what teenage boys are but I’d better figure it out because I have a couple.) Or sleep with our glasses on all week because we can’t find the glasses case that is underneath our head. In spite of the eye rolling elements of his camp, Nathan did have a great time. I’ll let him tell you about it:

Monday I left my scoutmaster’s house at 7:15 in the morning. It was drizzling here when we left, so I hoped it wasn’t raining up at camp. The camp we were going to was called camp Steiner. We drove for around an hour to get to camp Steiner. I was told that this camp was the highest scout camp in the U.S. with an elevation of 10,400 feet. When I got there, we set up camp and ate a light lunch. Then, in the pouring rain, I went and started taking the environmental science merit badge. I came back to camp soaked to the bone and ended the day.

Tuesday was better than Monday. The rain stopped and the weather was nice. Went to environmental science in the morning and had nature in the afternoon. In the evening, the camp staff did an honor trail that talked about the scout law. That was really cool.

Wednesday I had classes, but some fun stuff happened. The camp did this thing called chain gang, which was a service project. I was the only one out of my whole troop who went, so the activity director had to put me with somebody else. I got to help prep potatoes for a scoutmaster meal later in the week. As a thanks, I got a 2011 camp Steiner patch. The service was really fun. Wednesday evening I had to go fishing. (That was because I didn’t have any fishing gear and couldn’t be at camp alone.) So, my troop leader was helping a troop member with his pole, so I got to use my leader’s pole. I cast it out and caught a fish! My leader had to put down the other pole, release the fish, take pictures, etc. So I threw the line out again and caught another fish. My leader, after he put down the other pole, helped with the fish again, said: “Dude! Give me my pole so that I can catch some fish!” So I did. I was really happy. :-)

On Friday evening, it rained, then sleeted, then snowed! It was crazy!

The next stuff I will tell I can’t put with a day, so it is probably out of order.

The camp hosted this thing called the Mountain Man Relay. It was just a big race. My troop had three different teams competing in the relay. After the relay, when they called the winners, my troop came in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd! It was really fun to get three awards.

At the trading post at camp, they were selling apple beer. My scout leader took a picture of me with the “beer.”

One of the merit badges I took was archery. I didn’t pass the shooting section the first time, so I had to go back and try again. Went back to try again, it was raining and so cold that my fingers went numb. I didn’t pass. (again):-(

I also took basket weaving merit badge. The basket making was really fun.

Overall I think Nathan had a good time. He was kind of anxious before he went because he'd never been away from home for that long, but he got over that pretty quickly once he was there. Next year will be a breeze!