Start of Summer Miscellany

Putting Starling to bed last night was going rather slowly. She had very specific ideas about the bed she needed to create for her baby doll. And only she could create it. So, when that was finally finished, and it appeared she now planned to lay out a similarly detailed bed for her stuffed pony ("Wait! I don't have a pillow for pony!"), I quickly assured her, "Oh, that's OK. Horses don't like pillows."

"It's not a horse," she pointed out.

"I know. It's a pony. But ponies are kind of like horses. And they don't really like pillows."

Still, she seemed unsatisfied with the idea of pony's bed being just a blanket swaddled about him, and she cast her eyes about, searchingly. "Do they like books?" she asked, hopefully, as her eyes landed on a small pink notebook near her bed.

"Yes," I conceded. "They like books."

So she tucked pink notebook close to pony and with a satisfied, "Now pony has a book and baby has a feather", she settled onto her own pillow. (And I saw that baby doll did indeed have a chicken feather snuggled in tight for bedtime.)

Sweet little girl--taking such care of her babies and stuffed animals. She even sang a few words of "I am a Child of God" to her baby as she settled it down to bed.

Here she was on a morning last week where she woke up sick.

For quite awhile I was very nervous about her illness. We could not keep her even remotely hydrated (as even the tiniest possible sip of water would cause her to wretch miserably over and over). It was bad enough, and went on long enough, that I was afraid if she continued on that way, we'd need to take her in to get an IV. (And in twenty-two years of mothering sick children I've never considered being at that point.)

Mike wasn't home to give her a blessing, but those of us who were here all gathered to pray over her, and I sent a message to Mike and to my sisters asking them to pray, and literally, within the hour she turned the corner and began regaining color and energy and keeping down the little medicine dropperfuls of water Mette kept offering her.

This was the triumphant picture that Mette took afterwards:

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The other day, after I'd done a lot of sorting and boxing in one of the girls' bedrooms, Abe said cheerfully, "Let's take a minute and thank mom who's pretty much single-handedly packing up our entire house and we're all terrible children." (He said it just like that too. One sentence without so much as a comma-like pause.)

And that is the kind of appreciation and acknowledgment I like to hear.

But, in truth, they aren't so very terrible. In fact, they're rather helpful. Abe helped the boys pack up a ton of their stuff and has been hauling things to a storage unit for me whenever I get a large enough pile of boxes ready to go. Daisy took all of the younger kids with her for several hours the other day (they planted vegetable seeds at their grandparent's) while I went through several cluttered cabinets and drawers in our kitchen; and she's often willing to make dinner (when she's not working). And Goldie spent a good chunk of last Saturday helping haul our chickens and their coop to Mike's parents'; and today she took her younger siblings to the Nature Center while Mike and I worked on the garage. (Packing our garage alone, incidentally, is basically equivalent to packing up an entire house.)

With all that help I don't think we can truthfully place our kids all in the terrible-children category. Though certainly some of them. (Heehee. Just kidding.)

Here are a few pictures of the younger kids being taken places ... not by me.

At the park with Daisy one evening.

Daisy went to help Mette's 2nd grade class make puppets for their puppet show one day. 

Little kids on a hike with Mike and Daisy

At the Treehouse Museum thanks to Dais and Gold.

At the Nature Center with Goldie.

Mike took all the boys up to the cabin one night to check if all our sandbagging had saved us from flooding. (It had! It had!) Here they are eating at Mo' Bettahs. 

And here they are on a stop at The Hobbit Caves. Hans in particular really loved being on a trip just like he was one of the big boys. It made me happy. 

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It's officially summer now. And it has been for ... two weeks? Three weeks? I don't even know! It feels very different from the usual start of summer. Typically we begin with me sort of geared up for ... I don't know what, just ... filling our free months in good ways, I guess. I'll set up little charts and prizes to encourage reading or writing or instruments. I'll print off math pages. I'll think of specific things for us to do. It all fades fairly quickly of course :), but that beginning "Let's start summer with purpose!" feeling ... hasn't even existed this year. It's never even occurred to me. It's just been ... sorting and organizing and packing. (Though I can't say our house looks, outwardly, like anything has changed much.) I occasionally feel a bit badly about summer being such a sidenote on my radar this year. On the other hand ... they still seem to be summering somehow!

They've filled the small pool several times.

And they've made a tidy sum selling soda.

(In the photo above one of our local police officers walked over from the city offices across the street from us and, after paying the kids extra for the sodas he bought, gave them a rousing pep talk.)

And, of course, there's been a great deal of lazing about. (And a great deal of staying up far too late!)

Speaking of lazing about. I have done very little of that these past weeks, but, when I do, I have noticed that there is something about me ever sitting still in one spot for a moment that exerts a magnetic pull of sorts on all small children in my household.

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The other morning we were singing "Popcorn Popping" before scriptures. I couldn't see Starling's face as I sweetly tried to do the actions for her. Luckily Daisy saw it and took a picture. ...

She clearly loved it. Let's take a closer look:

And that's all for now.