In case you were wondering.

If you've ever wondered whether dumping an entire bottle of shampoo onto the bathroom floor would make the floor really slippery and fun to slide around on, you're in good company.  Because Bella was wondering that same thing.  The answer is:  Yes.  Really, really slippery and really, really fun.

If  you've ever wondered whether kneeling in said shampoo would make your pajamas yucky and bubbly and slimy, you'd also be in good company.  Because Maddie was wondering the same thing, and her answer is:  Yes.  Really slimy, yucky, and bubbly.  The only solution to this problem is to scream loudly and tattle on your sister for spilling the shampoo.

If you'd put yourself squarely in the category of people who are pretty sure that cleaning up shampoo from off the bathroom floor is the last way you'd want to spend your Sunday evening because your hypothesis is that shampoo must be scrubbed again and again and again and again because its very existence depends on its ability to create suds from practically nothing, you are ALSO in good company.  Probably the best company.  Because you are in my company.  And our hypothesis is correct.  More correct than we would have wished.

As a side note, I wish to point out that although the five heads of girl hair in this family require us to purchase shampoo in bulk in Sam's Club, I have the foresight to make my strategy one of refilling our pump bottle only about half full every time I fill it.  For mitigation purposes, in case something like this happens (or in case someone decides to use the shampoo as bubble bath).  I hate to brag, but there it is.  #iamsobrilliant

Haircuts All Around

 We started out the summer (yes, I'm THAT far behind) with haircuts for everyone.  Liv and Mims both decided on a swimming-friendly a-line bob, and they both looked fantastic.

 I am the stylist here, and I should point out that if I were ever to go into business as a beautician, I would have to have an incredibly patient clientele.  Each of these haircuts was perfected over the course of a week. "Come here, Liv.  I found another piece that's too long."  "Mimers, let's buzz that neck."  My girls put up with it because they have to, and I do it because I'm cheap!

Bella got a haircut, too, and it was evidently so inspiring that she felt like she wanted to expand on my artistry.  A couple choppy layers and some blunt bangs later and . . . 

 . . . voila!

Luckily for us, Bella's hair is not only so stick straight that it's completely unforgiving, it's also the slowest growing hair in the family.  She'll be sporting this avant garde coiffure for some months to come.

When one bath just isn't enough. . .

Saturday nights can be a bit hectic.  I never really have a great plan for Saturday dinner, and I'm always trying to simultaneously toss four kids in the bathtub and throw something together in the kitchen.  Olivia and Naomi are both working on their certification* for washing the two younger girls, and last Saturday they had washed Maddie, Bella, and themselves, and gotten out.  I dried and dressed Maddie in her pajamas and went back to the kitchen.  

Then I heard a splash.

 It seems when Mads realized her idolized Bella was not yet out of the tub and into her jammies she decided that she was in the wrong place.  Back into the tub she slipped until they both got out together.

I really should know better by now. 

*Have I discussed John's policy on certification here on the blog?  John determined years ago that in order to qualify to do a task (such as pouring milk, brushing their own teeth, watering the plants), a child must successfully perform the task four times under supervision.  If the child then subsequently makes two mistakes performing the task, they lose their certification and must repeat the process to recertify.  It's genius.  The two older girls, especially, know what they are certified and not certified to do, and they follow the lines pretty obediently.  Bella. . . . . well. . . . Bella knows what she is and isn't supposed to do but does what she wants regardless of whether or not she is certified.

Grapes of Wrath

Most of our furniture has been with us since we got married.  I call the look "med-school chic", and for the most part I am very happy to repaint, refurbish, restyle, and just live with it.  However, when my lovely sister-in-law Lauren informed me that her very stylish sister was selling all her furniture and moving to China (wouldn't that be exciting?), I immediately grabbed the opportunity to update my old living room look with some of her used furniture.  ("It's new to us" is my mantra.)

However, when I purchased the items, we were in John's little Sentra and two hours from Roosevelt.  Considering we are the only people in the Uintah Basin who do not own an enormous truck, I was afraid we'd have to rent a U-Haul to get my newfound furniture finds to my house.  And then I remembered my dad and his trusty pickup, Old Whitey.

 This truck has nearly 300,000 miles on it.  The make and model are listed, officially, in the Consumer Reports Auto Buying Guide as a "Do Not Buy."  However, my dad and Old Whitey are determined to prove Consumer Reports wrong.

 Can you imagine the looks my dad was getting, as he drove through Provo Canyon and over the passes of Wasatch and Duchesne county with an eight-foot sofa, a large club chair, a big Expedit bookcase, and eight baskets (plus two boxes of fabric from my mom) in the bed of this little truck?  I don't think you can tell, but he had to buckle the spare tire into the front passenger seat so everything could fit.

He, my sister, and Kathryn loaded everything by themselves*, and when I called to see how it had gone, he asked me, "Have you ever seen The Grapes of Wrath?  That's what it looks like."

I agree.  It's awesome.

*The original plan involved my dad and I loading the furniture--I didn't plan to shirk my furniture-lifting duty--but then the schedule changed and it worked out this way.  Awesome and easy, but a little guilt-ridden, for me.

What I woke up to:

This morning, I heard from the kitchen, in Bella's most threatening tone:
"Mom, if you give me a cup of Gookinaid,* I will make your life easy.  If you don't I will make your life hard."  I was dying laughing, but when I entered the kitchen, it seemed for Emilee it was business as usual.  When I asked how she responded to the little mob boss she simply said she told her demanding a cup of Gookinaid was making her life hard.  Three thoughts came to mind:
  1.  What must every day be like if this wasn't abnormal enough to get a response from my sweet wife?
  2.  I can only imagine Bella learning this phrase and how to apply it from her older sisters.
  3.  A cup of Gookinaid is a small price to pay for the easy life.
*Gookinaid is the re-hydration drink that my dad used for his wilderness rehab program.  It used to be called Gookinaid but is now called Vitalyte.  Bella was after grape and would endorse it as the drink of choice for 3 year old tough guys.



A few moments after the above transpired Madeline Jamal got her mothers pajama string and was shaking it up and down saying yah, yah (I missed the yah on the video).  Maybe this is why a demand for Gookinaid was rather minor.

We might as well be a fan site.

Do any of you remember that post I did about Maddie and Billy Joe Armstrong?  Well, after examining my Google Stats, it turns out that, because of that post, the search terms "billy joe", "billy joe armstrong", and "billy joe armstrong hair" have led people to my blog more than any of the other search terms combined.  Awesome.

Late Easter

Here is the post I wrote for my Easter last week.  


I hope you all have souls full of the blessings of the Resurrection and the Atonement.  I intend to contemplate these wonderful gifts at some point in my life, but here's how my Easter Sunday went.

1)  Olivia refused to wear the flower hairclip that I made for her and also had a mutiny over the sleeves of her Easter dress.  "Too itchy."  Every single one of her sisters is in the same Easter dress uncomplainingly.  I'm sure you know that I handled that really well.
2)  Mimi and Liv fought ALL STINKIN' MORNING.  They were banished to separate rooms three times before we left for church.
3) Bella bounce-bounce-bounced on the pew through two baby blessings and the sacrament prayer.  Maddie, in full stranger-danger mode, refused to go to any of the well-meaning members of the congregation who were trying to help.
4) My new Easter dress, which I made for myself, is impossible to nurse in.  I'm obviously a genius.  So, taking Bella with me, I tried to nurse Maddie in the bathroom stall, sitting on the toilet and feeling like a pervert.  Bella opened the door on me twice, exposing me to the ladies out washing their hands.  Did I resort to threats?  Absolutely.
5) Did they work?  No.  She did stop opening the door, but she crawled underneath the door and started looking under the doors of the other stalls, asking questions like, "What you doing, huh?"  "You look like you pooping.  Are you pooping, huh?"  Awesome.  Should one apologize in this situation, or should one simply pretend that one is unrelated to the misbehaving child?
6)  After kids went to Primary and nursery, I took Maddie to Sunday School, where she looked darling in her Easter dress but screamed--SCREAMED--if anyone but me tried to touch her.  Again--awesome.  I sat her on the floor with all her little rubber toys, and she played happily for about 4 minutes.  Then I hear a choking sound and looked down to see Maddie's face all red and her eyes big.  I smacked her on the back to get her breathing again and she vomited.  First a gum wrapper (WHERE did she get a gum wrapper?), then her entire breakfast of sweet potatoes and all the milk she had consumed in our little pervert session in the bathroom stall.  Luckily for the church carpet, I caught most of the vomit in my church bag, where it promptly ruined all the visual aids for my lesson on the Atonement I was teaching in Young Women.  Again, awesome.
7) There was more, but I'm stopping here, since it's still too soon for this to be more funny than horrifying.  Suffice it to say, we are celebrating Easter next Sunday when John is back from Idaho.  Maybe I can feel the Spirit just one week late.


We did.  Church today, with John, was relatively soothing, spiritual, and peaceful.  We cooked a delicious dinner (most of prepared early, so I just made rolls while John made my grandma's famous raspberry ice cream), and celebrated Easter with some friends later this evening.  It was wonderful.  I love the opportunity to ponder the blessings given to us by our Savior and recommit to living my life as He would have me do.  As always, I'm just a little bit late.

Evidence

Evidence that even the most reasonable members of my family are not so reasonable at 10:30 p.m.

This is why Olivia couldn't sleep in her *pink* room last night and had to sleep on the couch.

You know, Liv, if pink really makes you so sad, your life in this family is going to be pretty pathetic.

Our Favorite YouTube Video

We love all the "Walk on the Wild Side" YouTube videos.  LOVE them.  But we have one particular favorite, which we not only replay on the computer, but also re-enact at the dinner table, in the living room on family night, and all over the yard.

Watch the video.  And look for this face at 1:01. . .

. . . and this one at 1:32.

Because Mom needs the house to stay clean

This one was sick.  . . 

And we were having a showing of our house in the evening (honest quote from me:  "If you guys mess anything up, I'm either going to kill you or myself."  I'm such a good mom.), so these two played together outside all afternoon, without their usual Mimi buffer.

This was their house, under the big pine trees in the backyard.

 Someone was the queen and someone was the servant.  From the snatches of conversation I overheard, I couldn't be quite sure who was who.  I'm not sure that they knew who was who.

 Pinecones were the food.

 And a wagon and a kiddie pool are fantastic beds for sleeping outside.  Bella was looking for a pillow, so Liv found that incredibly comfortable soccer ball.  :)

The World, According to Bella

John:  Bella, are you a crazy little sucker?

Bella:  No, I NOT a crazy little sucker.

 J:  I think you are a crazy little sucker, Bella.
B:  I not, I NOT.  See here, on this tog [tag].  It says, 'Bella not a crazy sucker.'  I NOT.

J:  I defer to the wisdom of the tag.

The Best Part of my Day

 2:43 p.m. Every school day.
I love this face.

 And this face.  (I can't aim my camera)

 And this crazy fashion sense.*

 I had big plans.  We were going to happily work on a fun spring project.  (One of these.)  The house would smell of cookies and sunlight and I would bustle about my perfectly clean house in a smile and a fantastic apron.

My girls would smile and laugh and helpfully help each other and Maddie would play quietly on the floor next to us and Bella would never even dream of cutting her shirt with the scissors or touching buttons on the Cricut or having meltdowns every three minutes or poking herself with the pins or demanding more cheese sticks.  

Well, at least the wreath got done.  And I never actually yelled.  Success!  It's still my favorite time of the day.

*Sidenote:  Olivia's teacher asked me, as I was volunteering at the book sale, if I was "responsible for Olivia's unique sense of style."  (You can tell she thought that question through for a while before she decided on the least offensive wording.)  I told her that Olivia was entirely at the helm of her own fashion boat, and I just tried to make sure the clothes were clean when they left my house in the morning.  The fantastic combinations of elements are pure Liv.  

Wherein I demonstrate my clumsiness. . .

. . . and also my incredible luck.

First the clumsiness.  As we are getting ready to put our house on the market, I have been working like a madwoman.  Last week, it was the basement's turn to be painted.  As I was moving a task light into place, it slipped a bit in my fingers and sliced my pinkie.  Not enough to be a problem, but enough to cause blood to pool in my palm.  Pool.  In my palm.  I don't do blood.  Well, not with grace.  I was feeling light-headed, so I talked myself up the stairs and over to the phone where I decided I needed to call Bonnie, just in case I passed out, you know.  So she'd know and come check on me in case I'd fainted on the kitchen floor and gotten a concussion.  (And really, people, that's not as far-fetched as it sounds.  I've done it before.)  But then I decided that if I could summon up enough willpower to stay conscious long enough to call Bonnie, I could summon up the sheer will to remain conscious indefinitely and not call Bonnie, thus avoiding embarrassment and teasing.  Whew!  Three band-aids later, I was back in business, painting the basement and determinedly not thinking about blood.

At craft group a few days later, my story-telling self decided this was a tale worth telling, embarrassing or not.  So I told it, a little dramatically, of course.  And I laughed about the ridiculousness of it all.  And my craft group buddies laughed with me.

Cut to Saturday:  The basement proper was completely painted, and in preparation for painting the guest bedroom in the basement, I created this deathtrap with a bedframe and a staircase.

The setup

Beautiful, right?  We were heading out for a Saturday expedition to Shipshewana, and I needed to grab something from the laundry room, so I dashed from the upstairs to the main floor, past my mom and kids (who were all ready to go), and turned the corner to head to the basement.  I was trying to put my arms into my cardigan and run down the stairs at the same time.  Why on earth did I think I was capable of that level of multi-tasking?  I'm not.  The toe of my boot caught the lip at the top of the stairs, and I launched down the 12 steps to the basement.

I experienced the fall in slow-motion, but I'm a little hazy about the details, since I can't quite figure out how I ended up head-down, but face-up, and dangling from my favorite boot which was caught on that bedframe corner.  The top of my head was only inches from that very hard wall at the bottom of the stairs.

My favorite boot now has a serious warwound.  Jake, do you think you could stitch it up as well?

My mom and girls heard the yelp, the crash, and the silence and ran to my rescue.  (Thank you, ladies!)  I was still assessing the possible damage when they arrived, so that must have been some scary anticipation. (Sorry, ladies.)  I was okay until I saw that my hand was covered in blood.

Here's where the luck comes in:
1) My mom was there.  Yay!  I didn't even have to pretend to summon my incredible will.  One look at the blood was all I got before she had paper towels and pressure and everything under control.
2)  Residency life comes with the perks of knowing the telephone number of 80 gazillion incredibly helpful doctors.
3) The doctor I called was not only willing to look at my hand to see if I did need stitches, he actually had a suture kit right there in his kitchen.  (Thanks, Jake!  Thanks SOOO much.)  That saved a billion dollars and 37 hours at the urgent care with 17 kids in tow.  (I'm only slightly exaggerating.)

4) I fell down an entire flight of steps and walked away with only three stitches, along with a dozen scrapes, quite a few bruises, and a big helping of lost dignity.  How's that for lucky?  

Haircuts all around.

Maddie got her first haircut today.  Normally, I wait a little longer, reveling in the glory that is old-man-hair-on-a-tiny-baby, but when I had to comb the tangles out of her back hair in the morning, I decided that I fight that battle enough already in my life (with four other heads of hair to brush), and we were going to remedy the situation STAT.

Here she is, with both bouffant top and mullet bottom.  Is that a winning combination or what?

Mullet bottom mostly gone.  I piled the hair on her back so I could have a record of how much I cut off.

Haircut complete.  She looks older now, unfortunately.  And I loved playing with all that mullet hair when I was holding her in church.  *sniff*  My baby's growing up.  :)

And you know, I really ought to retitle this blog to be either "137 Reasons to Closely Supervise Your Toddler" or "My Incompetence as a Mother."  Because this is Bella's most recent haircut.

Let's start with her new fashionable turkey tail.  That little tuft is right at the crown of her head.  This beautiful feature is highlighted when I pull her hair into her usual style of two pigtails.  We're experimenting with different options when we would rather she didn't look like barnyard fowl.

She also added stylish asymetrical bangs.  They might look fairly mainstream in this photo here, but I assure you, in real life, this look is very avant garde.  

And to show what she was working with before, I add this picture of the great Moses costume she assembled using the towel rack from our recently remodeled bathroom and my Moby wrap.  This is the only picture I could find with her bangs shown full-length, since we normally had them pulled or clipped up.  I had been carefully trimming the rest of her hair so we could grow her bangs all the way out.  Serves me right for doing anything carefully that involves the human disaster.  

Bella's setting up shop in the basement and she's looking for clients who may want to mimic her new style.  Her rates for haircuts are very reasonable (two juice boxes or a ziploc of goldfish crackers), and you'll certainly be original.

At least it's not quite a soccer ball

Is imitation really the sincerest form of flattery?  I'm not entirely sure I'm flattered that this is how my two big girls chose to become like me one Sunday afternoon.

When An Amish Trailer just isn't streamlined enough. . .

Sorry for the quality.  We had to snap this photo quickly as we passed this Amish buggy in our van.  But isn't that trailer awesome?

Do you think this girl likes raspberries?

We picked a total of 18 pounds of red and black raspberries over the past couple weeks, and someone has discovered a new favorite food. She can easily eat a large bowl of berries with (or for) a meal, and we had a couple days there where her hands, her mouth, and her little bum were stained purple with black raspberry juice (and um, processed juice). Doesn't everyone need more fiber in their diet?

Toads, toads, toads.

I have described my abhorrence of frogs and toads before on this blog. So jumpy. So unexpectedly jumpy. Yuck. However, my little Mimi princess girl has turned into a toad QUEEN. She finds at least one toad in my yard every day.

At least one, and usually two or three.

And with someone I love so much finding so much enjoyment in the ugly, hoppy creatures, it's hard for me to continue to loath them. But I still won't touch them.

(And here's the thing, really. As a mom, I want my girls to experience things fearlessly. So I try to pretend that I would really love to hold that toad later, but at the moment, I have some other pressing task. I think Mimi is still fooled, but I'm pretty sure Liv has seen through my little act.)

She's taken toads to preschool.

She has called both her grandmas to talk about her newfound pets.
She's even tested that "Princess and the Frog" fable about kissing a toad. (And I'm not sure whether she'd be more delighted having her little toad turn into a prince, or herself turn into a toad. Both sound equally exciting.)

Naughty Baby

Annabel is darling. However, she's also nearly two. (Did I just say "nearly two?" Can my heart even stand that?) And "nearly two" is a phrase almost synonymous with "busy and naughty." Some evidence:

Bella loves chapstick. (Loves every girly, dressy-uppy thing, actually.) She is occasionally content with the clear version in mommy's purse, but LOVES the bright red version in mommy's makeup box. (And to be honest, it's a great color on her. Don't you agree?)
I think she applied it rather expertly for someone so young.
Exhibit B:

We have discussed MILLIONS of times where crayons (pencils, pens, markers, etc.) can and cannot be used. If she knows I'm watching, Bella always colors on paper, and only paper. I know she's aware of the rules. However, when I am busy cooking dinner (even if only two feet away), and completely occupied, the refrigerator makes a much better canvas.

For permanent marker.

Which took three applications of "Goof-Off" (I'm still high, I think, and so is Cletus) and two scrubbings with a Magic Eraser to remove.

Here's the thing. I'm not sure Annabel has learned her lesson about either markers or lipstick. But me. . . well, I'm starting to think about the lessons I should have learned. Like, "Put your makeup away when you're done," or "Don't leave Sharpies unattended." (Maybe "Don't own either lipstick or Sharpies.") Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?