Stream of Consciousness Vs. Homework

Homework.  I know all the rules.  Have a snack first , designate a certain place and time to do it, make sure there are no interruptions. Yeah, right.  Here's homework time with Freestone:

"Free, come here and bring me your folder."
.
"But I can't!  I can't reach it!  (It is inches from his face.)

"Seriously, bring it and let's get started.  When you're finished with your worksheet, I'll check it."

"But how am I going to get to you?  The wood floor is lava!  I can't walk on it!  I'll have to go to Iceland to cool off my feet!  I know what to do!  I'll travel by blanket!"

He then spends the next ten minutes traversing the wood floor by laboriously dragging a blanket under his feet. Nobody else can concentrate on their homework because of all the grunting.  It's Freestone's way or no way, because there are only certain methods of getting across lava fields, and moms don't know them.  When moms interrupt, you have to start over.  And then there's practicing.

"Free, now is a good time for me to practice with you.  Go get your violin."

"Mom.  What if a fly was in flying lessons to learn how not to be scared of flying and all his teacher did was yell at him the whole time?"

Is there a message in there somewhere for me?  So I say in my nicest voice, "I'm so excited to hear you play!  Let's get started!"

"Mom.  If I had a meeel-yun dollars, I would buy a private jet with a big pot of honey in it.  And a big pot of Nutella."

(If I had a million dollars, I would hire someone to do homework and practicing with Freestone.)

Freestone's ultimate dream is to fly to outer space.  I don't think that's necessary.  He's already there.

Gingerbread House Built for Eight

Being a parent of six is intense.  It's like being inside a life-size gingerbread house with very thick walls and having the task of chewing your way out.  You like gingerbread.  Love it, even!  You always wanted to live in a gingerbread house where the walls are soft and fragrant and decorated with creamy frosting and multiple kinds of candy.  It was your dream to feast on gingerbread every day.  Now that the gingerbread house has been built, though, it's turned out a lot bigger than you planned.  It's a big-a** house.  But chewing your way out is satisfying and delicious, and life is beautiful in a jewel-toned gumdrop kind of way.

It's just that sometimes, you get full and want to take a rest from eating gingerbread.  Well, taking a break wasn't part of the plan.  Your job was to eat those walls.  That was the plan.  People look at you and say, "Well, you chose to live there.  You built that house.  What's your problem?"  Oh, I don't know.  Have you ever TRIED to eat a life-size, metaphorical gingerbread house?  As jobs go, it's a sweet one, but it's sortof a Herculean task.

We had the fun idea tonight of the whole family visiting each child's room and listening to them play a song on their instrument before bedtime.  Yum!  Pass the gingerbread!  A half hour later and envisioning myself knee-deep in nauseatingly sweet frosting, I was pounding on the gingerbread door.  Let me out!!  Kids were jumping on beds, dogs were barking, instruments were being tossed around precariously, and videos were being made of all the chaos.

I thought:  "Quality family time blows!"

Now all the kids are tucked into their ginger-beds.  As much as I wanted to vomit up a pile of icing icicles while the kids were awake, now I feel almost like I could eat a sugar windowpane or two.  Life in this gingerbread house is intense.  It's love and loathing, joy and despair, fatigue and elation, gratitude and fear, and it's all mixed into one giant cocktail that you hope will wash down the mouthfuls of gingerbread that have become your existence.  Learning how to love and enjoy massive, relentless amounts of gingerbread is both far more wonderful and far more challenging than you ever imagined, and it takes patience, acceptance and dedication that you didn't even know you had and still aren't sure you possess.

Even when you've had enough, you keep at those walls because someday, when you've eaten up your gingerbread house, you'll move into a nice, sensible house where the walls aren't painfully delicious and exquisitely beautiful.  The walls will be bare and the house will be empty.

And you'll be hungry.

Garden Guitar Recital

While the boys were at Freestone's first soccer game of the season this morning, the girls attended a delightful garden guitar recital where Ruby and other celebrities performed, accompanied by a strong autumn breeze.  From the first note to the last piece of delicious quiche and mini macaroon, the recital was wonderful.  

Ruby went to a lot of work to prepare.  Here's THE PRACTICING and THE PERFORMANCE.  And the best part of any story, the bloopers!  Take One and Take Two.

Friday Night Lights

It was a beautiful night to live in a small town and cheer at a high school football game.  Look at that sky! 

Do you like my shirt? No, I'm not preggo. But thanks for wondering.

As awesome as the Davis High football team is, we were really there to see the halftime show:

I think those are the Jr. D'Ette girls, anyway.  The D'Ettes ran a clinic for the girls all this week at 4:00 every afternoon and our talented friend, Libby, invited the girls to participate.  Heatstroke notwithstanding, the clinic was great fun!  Don't you see Araceli and Xanthe out there on the field?  I stuck Xanthe's hair in a ponytail right on top of her head so I could spot her, but I still had a hard time.  I did see Ari do some great moves!

Aren't they adorable dancers?  Ruby was impressed by the real D'Ettes' performance and inspired to work hard and try out someday.  On the way out of the stadium, we ran into Ptolemy's BFF.  Camden tottered right over to Tolly and hugged and kissed him!  Too much cuteness for one football field!

So...the first week of school, despite a few glitches, went out with a smile.  Ain't life grand?

This is Your Big Chance to Be Hypnotized and Contribute to Society at the Same Time!

THIS is a GREAT opportunity to support one of my favorite people in the whole world, my nephew Jackson.  Don't tell me you have plans Saturday night at 10 PM.  Whatever you had planned, this is better.  Hope to see you there!  Even if it weren't a benefit for an amazing new non-profit Jennie is spearheading, it would be a great show by a hypnotist.  When was the last time you were entertained by a hypnotist??  I haven't been hypnotized since my high school graduation party, where I was chosen to go up onstage.  Under the spell of the hypnotist, I acted like I was Scott Dopp, strutting around the stage talking about the tennis team.  The crowd went wild.  Had I been conscious, it might have been one of my most embarrassing moments ever.

By the way, Happy Birthday, Jackson!  We love ya!

The Tooth Bat

Freestone's front tooth only got to attend one day of second grade before it fell out.  Too bad, tooth!  Just as Ptolemy is getting the most adorable front teeth ever, Freestone is losing his!  (Notice the cookie dough in Tolly's mouth.)

Free came to me with his tooth in his hand late last night and we chose a Love Box to put it in under his pillow.  As we were walking back to his room, we saw a bat outside, hovering around the window.  Free thought it was cool and said, "That's my tooth fairy."  A bat?  Yep.  Boys' tooth fairies are bats.  Didn't you know that?  I'm not one to question a Tooth Bat who leaves a dollar under a kid's pillow!  Plus, Free went right back to bed when I told him the Tooth Bat would fly away if he wasn't asleep.  Frankly, The Bat is more on the ball than the fairies who are supposed to leave money for the girls at our house.  Some of those tooth fairies are pretty flaky.  The Bat got the job done the first night, so he definitely has my vote as Best Tooth Fairy Ever.  Here's Freestone's version of the story.

Kinder Monster

And then there's Xanthe.  Thank heavens she had ballet this morning after we waved good-bye to the other kids.  The one excruciating hour between ballet and kindergarten almost put both of us over the edge.  While I worked on a violin, Xanthe managed to watch ten minutes of Curious George, moaning and fretting the whole time and finally turning it off, saying, "I WON'T watch it!  I'm hungry!"  I fixed her some French toast and she screamed for the duration of the 30 seconds it took to microwave it, "It's done!  It's done!  It's done, Mom!  Take it out!  It's done!"  She had a fit trying to open the peanut butter, then another fit when I helped her.  Next item on her agenda:  crying about not being able to spread the peanut better, then trying to wipe it off the French toast when Mom spread it.  I'm not kidding, I was thinking, "What's 18 minus 5?  Thirteen?  Only 13 more years until she leaves home."  That seemed like a big number, so I focused on eleven, the number of minutes until we could leave to walk to the school.  You're probably thinking, "Oh, poor Xanthe, she's just scared about the first day of school and her mean mother has no patience."  Yeah, have you ever actually spent an hour alone with Xanthe?  I literally thought she was going to have a stroke.

Like magic, Xanthe was all smiles as soon as she put on her backpack and started up the street.  She was still nervous, though, as evidenced by the barrage of questions.  "Where is my desk?  What does my teacher look like?  What if you're not there when I get out?  What if I get lonely?  Do I need crayons?  Who will be there?"  As soon as Scott and I dropped her off, I bolted home to finish my work, but ended up making chocolate chip cookies instead.  I'm a chocolate chip cookie junkie and I needed a fix!  As soon as I had wolfed down five big spoons of dough and inhaled a dozen cookies, I could almost think clearly.  Clearly enough to look at the clock and calculate that I had to be at the school in 4 minutes to pick up Xanthe.

"I  have a picture in my backpack and my teacher gave me a nametag and that kinnergarten was weally short and I'm weally hungry where's my snack and what should I do now and what are you going to do are you going to watch me have my snack and I want the windows rolled up and I want to listen to the 'cital music and when do the kids get home are they having lunch now where are we going?"  She's baaa-aaack!

Five minutes after we walked in the door, a mom from up the street called wondering if Xanthe could play.  Can she EVER!  I nearly sprained an ankle running for the car, dragging Xanthe by the arm.  We squealed to a halt in front of the friend's house and I shoved Xanthe out the door with a bag of cookies to share.

They say childhood is fleeting.  I'll tell you what's fleeting.  An hour of kindergarten, that's what.

School!!

Ruby won the make-up debate and looked fabulous for her first day as Queen of the School.
There's a Dopp in every grade except 5th.


I feel like I've been caged in a zoo and PETA has just unlocked the front gate and swung it wide open.  YOU ARE FREE TO GO!  My kids probably feel the same way!  They all, except Freestone, were excited about their new teachers and their new outfits and the new year.  Freestone cried, his knee hurt and he claimed he didn't ever get what he wanted and never went school shopping and had mean parents.  He limped into second grade reluctantly, but I'm sure it turned out just fine.

Yep, everything is going to be just fine!

Round One

Golda left for 8th grade with all her supplies neatly organized and hardly any trepidation.  As an eighth grader, she knows the drill.  Work, work, work and don't take a breath 'til Christmas break.  Good luck, G!  Love ya!

Mother Teresa and Robert D. Hales' Tips for a Great School Year

This is what my goal is. (click)

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary.  
What we need is to love without getting tired.

                                                            -Mother Teresa

This is what I'm going to keep in mind with school starting tomorrow.  I wish we could have school during the day, but summer, in all its lazy glory, in the evenings.  Alas, the school year comes with an intensity that plows summer out of the way with homework and endless obligations.  I can do it, with Mother Teresa's quote at the ready for all those moments when, after numerous reading charts, homework assignments and math worksheets have been completed, I just want the little people to GO TO BED!!  That's when I'm going to remember that if I can muster a little more patience, show a little more love, all of us will be that much happier.

Good luck in 2010-2011, friends...

Business Week

Scott goes on trips, business or otherwise, so infrequently that it's a big deal, and very exciting. He spent this past week in Logan for a prosecutor CLE. The kids were sad to see him go, and waved until he was out of sight. Xanthe said, as soon as he turned the corner, "It's no fun without Daddy!" The next morning, Ari woke up and asked me, "What time is it where Daddy is?" I think they pictured him someplace a lot more exotic than a town an hour away. I was glad Scott had the chance to go and take a break from the norm, and I was also a tiny bit thrilled about having all those late nights to myself with nobody to hog the remote or the ice cream! As much as I love my alone time, I did end up spending a fair amount of time texting Scott every night. I guess you could say I missed him!



I was so tempted to send Scott these pictures of the kids and their paint rollers, to give him a hint about what we were up to while he was in his classes, but I resisted. I wanted him to be surprised when he pulled into the garage and some of the ugly drywall was painted white. I didn't have time to do the whole garage, but it looks 100% better already, especially since I KSL'd a lot of stuff. (Yes, it's a new verb.) The garage is bare!


While we were at the pool Friday, Scott arrived home and set out gifts for everybody on the mantel. Scott just might be the best gift-giver in the world, and the kids were absolutely beside themselves when they saw the ring pops, soda cans, hotel amenities and new clothes. As fun as the gifts were, the best present of all was having Daddy back. He had missed us so much, he came to the pool with us and withstood an onslaught of adoring children mauling him like he was a rock star. I'm thankful he didn't drown! At one point, he had 3 or 4 kids on his shoulders and a couple more hanging onto his chest hair to stay afloat. He might think twice about going away for so long next time. Or maybe he'll just think twice about coming home!