The Longest Times

1.  The time between when your husband says he will be home, and when he actually gets home.
2. The ten minutes before your kids' bedtime.
3. Any minutes after your kid's bedtime.
4. After the speaker says, "In conclusion . . .", "Finally . . .",  or "One last thing . . ."
5. Any time after the meeting is supposed to be over and the speaker is still talking.

Amazing

Second day of my renewed commitment to blogging and I totally missed it.  I am amazing.  I my defense, I had reached the end of a very productive day, accomplished with only part of my health, and I was so exhausted I just completely forgot. 

We started our Saturday with many chores, laundry folded and granola bars made.  We headed out the door by 10, stopped at the library to pick up a book I am very excited about, then drove to Fairfield to meet our friends, the Edwards, for a lovely day at Rockville Regional Park.  There were gorgeous views, wildflowers, trees to climb and play hide and seek with, a nature pee, a bathroom pee, and surprisingly little complaining from Addie.

Addie was just so excited to be spending the day with the love of her life, Preston.  She has known him since she was an infant, and talks about him constantly.  In fact, she brought up having a play date with him earlier in the week, and then his mom messaged me about getting together this weekend.  Serendipity!  Also serendipitious?  The fact that three of my daughters have professed their intention to marry boys with redheaded parents.  Gingers unite!

After our healthy hike, we made a decidedly unhealthy visit to the Jelly Belly Factory.  We took the tour, we sampled such special flavors as moldy cheese and pencil shavings, and purchased muchas Belly Flops.  Oh, Belly Flops, how we love thee.  We gorged on beans and visited with our friends, then said goodbye before our children broke the mechanical car they were abusing.  We made a couple more stops for errands on our way home, then got Bracken the burger he'd been craving all day.  Baths and an early bedtime for all, and our productive day was complete.  Except for pictures, because I didn't manage to take any. 

It was largely made possible by me feeling somewhat healthy for the first time in almost a week.  This has been a ridiculous winter for me and my immune system.  I have had a cold every month, and the last two have been particularly nasty.  The January cold firmly planted itself in my chest, causing me to cough and hack through every exercise class I attended.  I finally managed to make it through a class without alarming those around me, and three days later, started to get the sniffles again.  This particular cold took about 4 days to really settle in, and since has been blessing me with a completely crusted over face every morning.  I am so over this whole being sick thing!  The most frustrating part is that since the new year, I have been eating healthier and exercising more, even while sick.  Grrr.

Rosie-Posie

I need to get back in the blogging saddle again.  Our lives are moving so quickly, and my memory just can't hold everything that happens.  So, my goal is to blog every day in March.  I know it's traditional to take that project on in November, but I'm non traditional like that.  And I'm not even going to try to make these posts good.  I'm just going to write them.

I'm sitting on the couch with Maggie, who is playing games on my phone.  Rosie is currently demolishing everything she can reach, which is a lot.  Finally, at 16 months, this little girl is really walking.  Thanks to my third nasty cold in three months, I've been spending a lot of time on the couch the last few days.  I'll look over and see her cute little head bobbing behind the couch, or hear the deliberate slap of her footsteps on the tile.  And she is just so excited and proud of herself with every step.

This Rosie girl is a charmer.  She generally has a smile and a wave and a, "Hi-ah!" for everyone she sees.  She goes out of her way to greet people, racing towards the door as soon as it opens, pausing to wave as she moves.  Just last night she mastered actually puckering her lips for a kiss.  And her kisses tend to last a really long time, and often include a hug with pats on the back.  I tell her all the time that she is a love.  She tells me I love you regularly, her words clear in the inflection if not the articulation.  She enthusiastically nods yes when you ask her a question, or when she wants you to do something.

And Rosie is busy.  Oh, so busy.  I think regularly that I am just too old for this.  But being sick over and over sure doesn't help my perception.  She makes laps through the house, emptying the drawers and cupboards in the bathroom, rummaging through my nightstand for cough drops, crying when I take them away, unshelving all the books, throwing all the clean sippy cups on the floor, wiping her nose with my discarded tissues, shredding tissues into miniscule bits and dropping them all over the house, bringing me packages of dry pasta from the cupboard, every once in a blue moon stopping to actually play with a toy.  There are not enough child locks in the world to slow this one down. 

Though she is generally a ray of sunshine, beware the mad Rosie.  She can yell and writhe with the best of them when she doesn't get her way.  And she is stubborn, very confident in her own decisions and wants.  She furrows her little brow and glares at you.

When Rosie is tired, she pops her left thumb in her mouth.  Her cute little teeth (8 on top, 6 on bottom) are starting to show the pull of that thumb on them, but it seems to early to try to make her stop.  But maybe I'm too attached to keeping this final baby a baby.  We still nurse, morning and night, and she screams if I attempt to change her or take her out of the room before sitting down to nurse.  Though I'm not entirely it's the milk she's most interested in.  Because it's in those quiet moments that she has very serious conversations with me.  She drinks for a moment, then makes eye contact with me and tells me very important things, nodding all the while, then drinks some more. 

Rosie is flexible.  Because of her position as number four child in the family, her naps get interrupted more than any of the other girls' did.  And yet, most of the time, when I pick her up from where she is soundly sleeping, bum high in the air, hoping against hope that she will stay asleep, she immediately awakes with a smile, and a "Hi-ah!" and points the direction to our next adventure. 

Laughing like a child

I just need to rant a little today (I tricked you with that title, didn't I?).

"The average four-year-old laughs 300 times a day, a 40-year-old, only four."

 Whenever I read that statistic, it makes me stop and think.  And usually I think, "Are you kidding me?"  

It's not that I don't like laughing.  Laughter is fantastic.  I just read this article at Psychology Today and I totally agree with all the reasons that we should laugh more.  It is good for us, and good for those around us.  I love to make others laugh, and am thrilled when the status updates I post and blog entries I write elicit a giggle. 

But, and this is a big "but" (not unlike the one I am currently sitting on), there is a glaring omission in this statistic.  One that I am intimately familiar with in my home.  Therefore, I propose an amendment to the statistic, which goes as follows.

"The average four-year-old laughs 300 times a day, a 40-year-old, only four.  But the average four-year-old also cries at least 300 times a day, so if you've cried less than four times today, you're doing alright."

Also, you gain points if none of the times you've laughed in the day were at someone else's pain, which you directly caused, because I'm pretty sure that accounts for at least one third of the laughter of a four-year-old.

Listen, I may not have a fancy degree in brains, or laughter, but what I do have is field experience, 7 1/2 years of immersion in it.  I have study subjects aged seven, five, three and one.  And between 6:30 and 7:30 this morning, every single one of them cried at least once, most of them more than once.

And I may have laughed at more than one of them, even as they cried, and sometimes I was the cause of their tears. But some things are non-negotiable, like Maggie washing her hands after using the bathroom.  Plus, sometimes I laugh just so I don't cry.

And so, in conclusion, may I just congratulate you on the times you have laughed today, encourage you to laugh more, and if you do need to cry, I hope you can do it in your bedroom, by yourself, with the door shut so you don't have to hear your children laughing at you.

The saga of Addie's teeth

I call this picture Carrots, with carrot

 In June 2008, Addie cut her two top teeth.  She was pretty excited about it.  A year later, she still  had them, though she didn't look quite so excited.

Sadly (humorously?), Addie chose this moment to pretend she'd never seen a camera before.

Eighteen months after that, though, her relationship with her teeth took a turn for the worse.

One of the last pictures of her intact smile.  And yes, we always paint her face to match her clothes.

 On New Years Eve, 2011, my brother and his wife were in town.  We look a little trip to Old Sacramento and visited the schoolhouse museum.  Addie sat down at one of the desks in the back of the room, then leaned forward to look more closely at it.  Unfortunately, the seat wasn't bolted to the floor and rocked forward, smashing her upper lip into the wooden desk in front of her.  She screamed and bled.  I comforted her and cleaned her up.  We went home.

 By the time we got home, her top lip had already doubled in size.

 By the next morning, she looked like a character on the Simpsons.

She wasn't sad because her lip hurt.  She just didn't want to be photographed in curlers, or wear them at all for that matter.

 She had a regular check up at the dentist's office within the next couple weeks, and everything looked fine.  But then, a month or so later, I noticed those two front teeth looked rather grey.  I increased her brushing, checked the toothpaste, and finally figured out she must have killed those two teeth when she hit the desk.  Eventually, one lightened back up, but the right front tooth just got darker.

Addie, after the accident.  Also, incidentally, right after we fixed her first "home" haircut.

Though she never said much about it, I noticed Addie started smiling with her lips closed more and more.  Gradually the right tooth developed a dark line toward the bottom.  Then, in the last couple of weeks she started complaining that her teeth hurt.  I considered taking her to the dentist, but then I checked them, saw that they were wiggly, and assumed she'd just bitten something the wrong way.  The thing is, Addie is prone to histrionics, so I have to take any emotional outbursts with a grain of salt.  This time, though, I feel really badly that I didn't take her more seriously.

Addie this summer, proudly sporting the results of her most recent "home" haircut.

Sunday afternoon, Bracken asked me to come take a look at Addie's mouth.  I looked inside and saw what looked like the swollen gums on a baby who is about to cut her first top tooth.  Except it was squishy.  This time I immediately got in contact with a dentist.

Over the last 21 months since she'd hurt her teeth, I'd had the dentist check them several times.  I'd been told that the nerves were dead, but unless there was an abscess or some other problem, there was no need to pull them or take any other action.  Well, the abscess had finally arrived.  Or abscesses, I should say.  By the time I got her into the dentist the next day, I noticed another blister forming over her other tooth.  She wasn't in any pain, but that was normal since the infection had moved to the front of her mouth.

Addie's last morning in The Dead (teeth) Zone.

  The dentist did an excellent job.  Addie was given nitrous oxide before he started.  I was expecting a spectacular performance from her but apparently her head is already so far in the clouds, it did nothing but calm her down.  The teeth were quickly pulled, with no fanfare whatsoever. 

The tooth fairy came last night, and awarded her three gold coins-- two for teeth and one for bravery.  I am triply thrilled that these teeth are out.  Firstly, because her abscess is looking so much better today, and she feels better, too.  Secondly, because I don't have to look at that lovely smile marred by two grey teeth anymore.  Thirdly, because I won't have to endure the process of her teeth getting wigglier and wigglier and sticking out of her mouth hillbilly style until they finally come out on their own.

And also, I know what she wants for Christmas.

Milking it

 A couple of years ago, I stumbled across this tutorial for making skeletons out of milk cartons.  Since we have a plethora of empty milk jugs around here, I decided I needed to make some. I made a girl and a boy, which used about 3 1/2 milk cartons each.   They have held up very well, and this year I finally made a small modification to the original tutorial.  Glitter!  I took the time to add black glitter to their eyes and mouths and accessories.  I love it.  I also decided that the original 2 were lonely, so during General Conference this year I was super righteous and made a couple more while I listened.

 So now I have two hanging in front of the garage, and two hanging from the trees.

Do you think it worries my neighbors that I have child sized skeletons hanging outside my house?  Do you think they count the number of kids I have with me whenever I leave the house?  Do they find it suspicious that suddenly, after living in this house for over a year, we are parking in the garage and they can't actually see how many children are leaving the house with me?

 After I hung this little boy skeleton this year, I started to think someone was messing with me.  Every time I came outside, his hands were down his "pants."  Then one day I pulled them out, stood outside talking to a friend about this, and in the time it took to tell her about this phenomenon, he managed to get his hands in there again!  Boys!

Hopefully this boy won't get up to similar tricks.

I am really looking forward to this little trick on Halloween, though.  Sticking glow sticks in their heads!  I think this will be the Halloween of glow sticks and glitter for the Mannions.

 I kind of want to make more skeletons.  What else should I put black glitter on?

First and Last

 Recently the girls finished up their school years.  I can't believe how much they've changed.

Here's Addie on her first day, and her last day.

 Here's the dynamic duo of Addie and Maggie on the first and last days.

And here's  that cute little stinker of a Maggie last fall, just a little bit shorter and a little bit rounder than she is now.  She does still like to wear her shoes on the wrong feet.

And my Chloe girl, bravely heading off to her first day at a new school. 

And now she is just so much more grown up. 

 It really does break my heart a little bit.

 Outside her classroom, first and last.

Leaving class, first and last.

 It really blows my mind how quickly this year has gone.