Gymnastics

We just got back from gymnastics.  We have to attend at six o'clock so that all three children have their classes at the same time, since despite how close they are in age, they are each in a separate mixed-age class.

Emerson has gone to gymnastics since he was 14 months old, and I figured since he was climbing everything in sight, I might as well put some climbing equipment under his little feet.  He is full of enthusiasm to be back again.

Buttercup is having her first experience with a real teacher and a real class of her own peers.  Her enthusiasm translates into trying really hard to follow all the directions, and very little physical capability of doing just that.  This could not be more opposite of the last time I parenting through the toddler class!  When she gets to the frog area, she is precise in remembering that she should ribbit, but it is only sheer statistical probability that some of her many, many jumps actually propel her in a forward direction.  The balance beams are accomplished mostly because she's holding my hand, and as soon as she has that anchor she starts looking around the gymnasium to see what her brother and sister are doing!  Today she was supposed to "drive a car" (hold a circle like a steering wheel) which occupied both her hands while she balanced.  She moved exactly one inch with each step, and then she very very carefully matched her color of steering wheel with the color of cone at the end of the balance beam, which it took her several moments to gather her feet together and step off of.  Buttercup is the child who is the bane of every toddler boy, having fun doing all the obstacles at top speed and energy!

Hibiscus has energy.  She has energy, and she has a great deal of strength in her long legs and wiry frame.  She also has flexibility, that makes it look like all her limbs can go in their own directions.  What she lacks, is any kind of planning or mental control.  So basically, she is like a giant rag doll, sprung out from a huge slingshot, and aimed at the trampolines or parallel bars.


Then this was the conversation that ensued on the way home.

I don't remember how the conversation in the back seat got to this point, but Hibiscus laughed that she was going to throw wraps at me when I died.  Emerson replied that that wasn't very funny.  And that when I died, he was going to make a bed with glass sides, so he could go and look at me every day.  And he was going to keep the bed in his house so he could look at me every day because he would miss me so much.  Hibiscus said she would cry if I was dead and she looked at me.  Emerson said he would not ever, ever cut me open and take out my heart and things, and Hibiscus agreed that she wouldn't cut me open either.  Emerson was going to look at me every day.  They agreed that in order to get a skeleton, you have to cut the dead body up and take the bones out, and they weren't going to do that.

Emerson said, in a loving and secretive manner, that if Hibiscus didn't get married, she could come in his house and look at me in the glass box every day too.  Hibiscus said she would cry and cry if she looked at me because she never wanted me to die.  Emerson said he would look in the glass box and see how beautiful I was and how much he loved me.

Hibiscus suggested that possibily she did want to get married.  Emerson said if she married someone else, some other person, someone else, then she couldn't come in his house every day.  Hibiscus started to get annoyed, and replied that when she birthed a baby, she wasn't going to let Emerson come see either.  Emerson said if she married someone else, she could come to his house to see me in the glass box maybe one time.

I suggested that I hoped that when they were grown up, they would still be a loving brother and sister and be welcome in each other's houses.  Just like we went to Gramcy's house sometimes.

Emerson immediately offered that Hibiscus could come and look at me in the glass box every Sunday after church, which coincidentally exactly the same schedule on which we visit Gramcy's house.  Hibiscus said he could see the baby she birthed, too.


And that was our evening at gymnastics!

Poison Control

Today I got to call poison control.  Luckily, the number was right on the toothpaste tube.

Buttercup is in this awful phase where she gets really really tired and grumpy, but half the time she can't (won't?) nap.  She has been so unpleasant for the last day and a half (since she hit nap time yesterday, and didn't take one) that as soon as she started laying on the table ("more snack please now!") and rubbing her eyes, I put her up on my back.  I really thought she would fall asleep.  She didn't.  I kept her there for an hour and a half anyways, hoping that at least getting some rest for her body would help her find some mental equilibrium.

I finally put her down after everyone was home from school, and they were playing in the bedroom.  I poked my head in a couple of times, and it seemed like a normal, happy game of "we're on an airplane."

Then the older two came out, and we were working on something.  I cannot even remember what it was, but it was something that they needed.  And at first I was thinking "good thing Buttercup isn't in the middle of this, because she would want to do it but just get in the way, and I'm glad that I can explain it at bigger-kid level."  Then I started noticing in the back of my head that it had been quiet on the Buttercup-front for a little bit too long.

I found her in the bathroom, standing on the stool with the water running in the sink.  So far, no surprise; I've caught her making a big, happy mess with pouring water in and around the bathroom sink before.  But what has she got in her hand?  A toothbrush.  In fact, to be specific, her brother's toothbrush.  And what is she doing with it?  Rubbing it on the bar of soap.  Yum!

As I took that away from her, I noticed the tube of toothpaste lying next to the sink.  It's Tom's of Maine kid toothpaste, and it has a flip-up top, but the whole top was kind of loosely screwed on in a suspicious manner.

Buttercup told me, "I go-ed sou-sou.  By MY seff.  And I washed. MY hands!  See, I washing dem." (That emphasis and stop at "my" is her usual phrasing.)
"And you brushed your teeth?" I suggested.
"Yes, an I buss.  MY teef!"

This was obviously a fairly incomplete description of the situation.

I tried to get her to describe if she ate the toothpaste straight out of the tube or put it on her toothbrush (or Emerson's toothbrush, as the case may be) over and over.  She just said yes to both, which might have mean she did both, or she might have just felt agreeable.  She was in a pretty good mood, as she was not only having fun but feeling virtuous for completing all these chores without assistance. When I used gestures, she made it perfectly clear that she thought sucking straight from the tube was a great idea, and yes she would have some more now!

Meanwhile, I was testing the tube to see how much was left.  It was still more than half full, I guessed, but it had been a new tube very recently.  The directions on the back said "call poison control if more than the usual amount used for brushing is swallowed," along with a description of the tiny amount that is supposed to be used for brushing.  Pea-sized, I think; I actually use more like a lentil.  I figured that somewhere around half a tube was more than pea-sized.  I didn't really think she was in grave danger, but I figured that I ought to call the number.  If, of course, I could manage to fight off all the children running around my legs and demanding my immediate attention.  And crying, because someone needed a nap, and instead, had had her beautiful soap-scrubber and water attraction removed.

Did you know Tom's of Maine has it's own, personal, poison control number?  Apparently it does, and that is who I reached.  There were a few preliminary questions about names and ages and so forth.

And that is when Hibiscus got the idea that I was "calling the police on Buttercup!"  At first she was frightened, but I told her I wasn't and to go away, and she kind of believed me but by then thought it was a really exciting idea, so she got all whispery and told her younger siblings about her new theory.

By the time I got off the phone, they were all waiting on tenterhooks for the police car to show up and take Buttercup away.  I explained -- perhaps without a good deal of patience left -- that I didn't call the police, and police don't arrest 3-year-olds anyways, but if you eat toothpaste it can make you very, very sick, so don't anyone do that again.

The poison control woman said that it wasn't that much, and at most Buttercup would have an upset stomach.  But I'm sure that if Hibiscus got the idea in her head to eat toothpaste, she would be much more efficient at it, and probably go through about four tubes in the time it usually takes her to pee.  So I wanted to make it very clear that this was a very bad idea, because generally they are all passionate about trying out each other's bad ideas.  As though, "if it was enough fun to make it worth trying for so-and-so, then I better try it too..."  So I sensed a toothpaste-eating explosion on my hands if not dealt with sternly!

Hibiscus quickly made the switch from police to "am-BOO-lance," and started looking out the window for one of those.  Buttercup started to cry.  Hibiscus danced in circles around her, saying "you're going to get SHOTS, you're going to have to get so many SHO-OTS!!" which quickly turned the crying into downright hysteria.

I picked up Buttercup and said that no one is getting any shots, and an ambulance isn't coming, and Buttercup isn't very sick right now, but no one was EVER to eat ANY toothpaste again.  I don't know about Hibiscus, who was probably enjoying creating drama more than actually believing it all herself, but I think the juxtaposition of "eating toothpaste" and "lots of shots" scared the younger two off of playing with the toothpaste for life!

I said that there were no doctors and no shots today, but Buttercup was supposed to drink a glass of milk.


Buttercup drank that milk with a dedication and singularity of purpose that was admirable to see.

Annie's Way in 10 Minutes

I got Annie's Shells and White Cheddar, which is mac and cheese in a box, to help me through the busy nights.  We got back today at only ten minutes until dinner time, which is kind of a disaster for the circadian rhythm of my household.  But luckily, the box promises "Annie's Way in 10 Minutes."  I assume these products are marketed in large part to parents and families, so it is a little confusing that apparently no one at the company has ever actually made mac and cheese and timed the real process.

The ten minutes is the time it takes the pasta to cook, and then make the cheese sauce.  Of course, they don't include the time it takes for the water to boil.  You can try to get around that by putting a pan on to boil while you are still getting children and gear into the house from the car.

The pot starts boiling at some point, and maybe that is the countdown they intended to indicate.  The 10 minutes apparently doesn't include reminding your children to put all their outdoor stuff back in their cubbies, or when they have to get their things from the car but are afraid to go alone, but all the children actually have to go, which should mean mom can be cooking, but somehow the little one is crying about being left behind and mom is helping her put boots on instead of salting the pasta water.  Then they come back, and the water is still boiling, and the 10 minutes do not include the part about the big ones complaining about wet feet, or explaining which chore one child must do, which involves mom being on the other side of the house, and then when you were going to go and actually put the pasta in the water, the little one is crying and getting underfoot, so you might as well wrap her on your back, because you're going to need to do it sooner or later anyways.

Putting the pasta in the water starts the 10 minutes, I believe.  One can add frozen peas and bits of cooked chicken from another night, which makes a more interesting and nutritious meal without actually adding to the 10 minutes, because you can do it while the pasta is cooking.  And with one child on mom's back, one child peacefully putting laundry away in his room (or something, but he was quiet and the laundry vanished), and the other child keeping up a running monologue as she folds paper bags, the pasta can cook in peace.  It is supposed to cook for 8-10 minutes.

By then, the children have finished their chores and are supposed to set the table.  If your pasta took 8 minutes, now you can spend two more minutes melting butter and milk and adding the cheese powder.  It does not include telling your daughter to stop playing with a yoyo and put out the plates, or your son to stop flapping his arms like a bird.  The table didn't need wiping, but the daughter insists on wiping it because she usually does, which means she needs to yell at her brother for trying to put something on the table, because now he's decided to stop flapping his wings and set the table.  The cheese sauce doesn't take very long, but by now the pasta is getting cold, so you put it all in the pan on low heat.  The 10 minutes apparently doesn't include telling the mid-table-wipe child four more times to stop playing with the yoyo.  Or unwrapping the small child to take her to the potty, which you can't do quickly because she yells "I'm not done!  I'm POOO-oooping!"  So you have to go back out, tell the children to put the yoyo down, stop playing, and possibly some of these instructions are delivered in a louder-than-average voice.  And stir the pasta which is sitting on the stove.  The argument about who is supposed to put the plates on the table does not actually take any of the cook's time, although possibly her energy.  The time it takes to wipe a poopy bottom is not included in the 10 minutes, except by now one of the children has become dedicated to the task at hand and has followed you into the bathroom saying "but what do I dooo-ooo! how do I set the taaaa-ble! what do I doo-ooo!" and you keep telling him to do what he does every night.  And when you go to pull up the little one's pants, it turns out she wasn't really standing up, and the sudden change in waistband elevation pulls her flat over onto her nose, and she starts screaming.

The 10 minutes does not include checking for bloody noses, while trying to answer "what do I dooo-ooo!" and tell someone else to put the yoyo down.  The yoyo-ing child's usual jobs are all things that are waiting on the yoyo-er, while the dedicated-to-working-or-yelling child has to wait for something else to happen (like: setting out cups; serving everyone water), so the cook has to spend her time telling the yoyo-er that she is forfeiting the chance to do her job if she doesn't actually do it, which she doesn't, so her brother eagerly dives at the plates with great earnestness, and the smugness that comes from being the one who is being better behaved at that moment.  The cook needs to stir the pasta again, but she can't serve it because she's still comforting the non-bloody nose, and hoping that being buckled in her booster seat will get the cryer thinking about something besides her nose.  The 10 minutes do not include the amount of time for a post-yoyo-ing child to throw a giant fit because she did not get to put the plates out, and the warming pasta needs stirring again.

The 10 minutes do not include the time necessary to locate everyone cups and lids, which invariably fall under everything else.  And the middle-of-the-table-setter is now really busy doing all his sister's jobs as fast as possible while she sulks, so it takes a while to get a coaster for the pasta pot, which is pretty hot by now.

I am not sure whether the 10 minutes are supposed to include the time while the cook slowly serves out pasta, and tries to keep it away from the littlest one, while the two older ones elbow each other out of the way to do the remaining chores as fast as possible, which includes delays like one child opening the silverware drawer, running off to something else, and the other child banging it shut again.  And debates whether it is meant to be a personal insult to be given the less attractive fork.

And in this secular country, they probably did not include the singing of grace as part of the 10 minutes, although it keeps food out of the children's bellies for a little while longer.



Come to think of it, maybe boxed mac and cheese is supposed to be marketed to college students.

In Non-Tropical Weather, I am a Very Mean Mama

The kids were playing crazily inside all morning, so after lunch I sent them outside instead of straight to quiet time.  By the time Buttercup got her outdoor gear on, the other two were ready to come in.  I told them that sorry, it was still outside time.  I put the visual timer in the window so they could see the rest of their half hour.

With ten minutes left, Hibiscus came in the door.  She had been well dressed for the cold, mostly because she got a new snow suit for her birthday, so she was wearing it.

"It's raining," she complained.
"Then put your hood up," I replied.
She came in the door and started to take her coat off, which is kind of the opposite of preparing for the rain.
"Hibiscus, your outside time is not over yet," I warned her.
"I know, but it's raining!" she exclaimed.
"I heard you the first time.  And did I answer, 'go ahead and come in,' or did I say 'then put your hood up'?"

She has experimented approximately every day about coming inside because she has taken off appropriate outdoor clothes, and discovered that I don't actually let her in.  Yesterday I found her sitting in the patio doorway, which was open around her.  We discussed outdoor time being over, which it wasn't, so I told her to go back outside so I could close the door.  She didn't.  She wanted to comb her doll's hair.  I told her to do it outside.  She still waited.  I told her I needed to shut the door.
"So say that thing that you say, and I'll do it," she said.
"Please sit outside to comb your doll's hair," I repeated.
"No, when you say, go in or go out, so I can shut the door," she suggested.  "Then I'll do that."

Yeah, nice try, kiddo, but that's one more choice than I'm prepared to offer!

So today she guessed that more arguing about coming inside might not get her very far, and she slinked outside again.  Immediately afterword, Emerson came up to the door, not dressed very properly for the weather.  I tell them to put on the right clothes, and I insist that they take the clothes with them, but I don't choose to make a fight about whether they actually put them on their bodies.  They can choose to be cold if they really want to.
"It's still outdoor time, so please go back outside," I warned him as he came in.
"It's raining," he announced sulkily.
"So put your hood up, and you'll be fine," I advised.
"But I'm too cold!" he wailed.
"Then put your coat on," I suggested.  Not exactly for the first time.
"It's too cold even WITH the coat!" he yelled.
Which is a little difficult to ascertain, given that he had not tried that method yet.
"I KNOW I'm going to be cold if I put my coat on," he sulked.  Which is possibly true, since he hadn't been wearing a coat for the last half hour or so already.
"Well, you're going to be less cold with your coat on than with your coat off," I reasoned.
"But I'm coming IN!!!" he yelled.  As he kicked off his boots and snowpants.
"No, you're not," I announced.  And I put him and his boots and his snowpants outside.  And his coat.

Last I saw, he was wearing them all.  And do you know what?  All the kids were having fun, too.

Re-entry: Five Minutes a Week Later

Remember my five-minutes story, with Hibiscus's upsidedown kidney bean mouth because I was walking out the door?  I can describe her someone-is-leaving tantrum very distinctly, because it happened any time any one needed to go out the door, for any reason.  And apparently when her mouth is opened to its widest and saddest shape, combined with the highest possible amount of noise, it becomes a giant upsidedown kidney bean.  To go along with the wide-open mouth, there are flailing arms, diving towards the object of her affection, falling on the ground or bumping into objects, and screams of "don't go!" and "me too I'm going wiv you!", devolving into guttural wails.  The person in question can only walk out the door because the other person is physically holding her back.  After the departing person has departed, the hysteria gradually wanes, but the dramatic mouth shape and associated wails continue for up to half an hour.

I don't know whether she believed that once our family was re-united in magical America, we would all be together all the time, or if simply her deep fears of abandonment and separation were re-ignited by our move across the globe.  Meanwhile, Mama has to go to an appointment?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Mama gets back, but Daddy has to go to work for a couple hours?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Mama is taking a walk without children?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Daddy has to go to a meeting at work? Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Daddy has to shovel the driveway or Mama goes to get something from the barn?  Kidney-bean mouth hysteria.  Generally, she understood much better when she has to go to school, and thus is the one doing the leaving, and was apprehensive but calm.  But she has to go to school but Emerson stays home?  Total kidney-bean mouth hysteria, every time she thinks about it.


So I need to describe Daddy's departure for work this morning.

The kids were all playing in the living room.  Daddy came by and announced cheerfully that he was leaving.  (Side note: we have never, ever snuck away from the children, no matter how much easier it might be.)
"Aw, don't go to work!" Hibiscus cried, obviously disappointed.
"I have to go to work, but I'll see you at dinner time," Daddy replied, and kissed them each.
"Daddy has to go to work so our family has money," Hibiscus repeated the familiar line.  Then she thought a little more.  "Don't go to work today.  I think we have enough money already!"  I can certainly see why it seems that way to her!
"I have to go to work," Daddy answered, getting his coat and hat.
"Come home at lunch time, then," Hibiscus ordered.
"I have a meeting at lunch.  I have to have lunch with someone special," Daddy explained, realizing they might not understand what a meeting was.
"Then bring the special person home and have lunch with us!" Hibiscus suggested.  This made me laugh, the idea of Daddy conducting any kind of business meeting with my three little monkeys swinging off his arms and spilling their yogurt on his lap, all with the greatest amount of affection and enthusiasm.  My children really love guests.  My laughter made the children start to laugh, too, and then Hibiscus asked what was funny.
"I can't come home for lunch, but I'll see you at dinner.  I love you all!  Bye-bye!"  And Daddy walked out the door.

And the children kept playing.  And that is the end of the story.

Snow Snow Snow!!!

Snow days!!  Hibiscus couldn't wait to see snow, and has been praying about longing to go skiing for several months now.  ("Dear God, I want to get to America to see Daddy and Gramma and go skiing.")  We didn't expect that her wish would be granted so quickly!  Yesterday morning Emerson burst into our bedroom saying, "Daddy, I peeked out my window, and I saw the bush, and after the bush it was white!"  At first Daddy thought he was exaggerating, but a confirmation glance indeed found a dusting of snow.  The excitement reverberated off the walls.  Literally.  Mark keeps finding all the pictures askew!

There wasn't very much, so I thought it was a nice compromise: Hibiscus got to see her first snow, but school wouldn't be cancelled and I could have my regularly scheduled day.  Before I got up, Mark checked the school's status, and indeed, school was still scheduled.  Like any child, Hibiscus complained about this, but not much because she was too busy running outside and tasting the snow!

Emerson was right along with me hoping for school to be in session.  Hibiscus is in first grade all the mornings in the week (Waldorf first-graders don't have afternoon school), but Emerson is still enrolled in only three mornings of kindergarten.  We are planning on doing homeschool on the other two mornings, and this was the first Thursday and thus the first day of homeschool.  Emerson was super duper excited about starting homeschool, and was all ready to sit down at a desk and do some lessons.  Except we don't have a desk for him, so I was trying to convince him that he could do homeschool at the kitchen table, and he had finally agreed that he would get a desk for first grade.

While I was getting ready in the bathroom, Hibiscus was nearby, and in the distance we heard Daddy answer the phone.  I was asking why she wouldn't want to go to school, because then she got to see her friends, which did pique my little extravert's attention: but snow still won out.  Then Daddy came in to tell us that that was the phone tree, and school had actually been cancelled.

"Yay!" cried Hibiscus, jumping up and down with great delight.  "I'm glad there's no school, 'cause it's really important that I stay home all day so I can see the snow all day long, and see what it does."
"There's snow at school, too," I pointed out.  My little girl froze in shock, and then her little face fell.
"I wanna go to SCHOO-OOOL!" she wailed.  Snow AND friends was apparently an unbeatable combination!


It's been a snowy winter by Willamette Valley standards.  We usually get a dusting of snow a few times in a winter, but they had a big snow in December (which we missed while our Ugandan cold spell involved not kicking off the blanket at night), and then we have just had more snow.  Yesterday the dusting turned into flurries and accumulated some real snow, and it stayed all night and then kept snowing all day today.  By the end of the day we had about eight inches of powder, which definitely makes it into the top two or three snows I've seen in my ten years in Oregon!

This might be the time to point out that I grew up in Alaska.  I spent Halloweens with a snowsuit under my costume, and months with skis on my feet.  Oregonians love to complain about the cold weather, snow, and icy roads, but I just plain love it.  I love seasons, and I love anything that seems like genuine winter.  Whenever people mentioned that I was missing all the cold weather being over in Uganda, I think they thought that I had the lucky side, but as far as I was concerned, it was just rubbing salt in the wound!  The pictures of the December snowstorm made me at least as crazy with longing as they did for Hibiscus!


The first day of snow was just plain chaotic.  Hibiscus was so excited she didn't know what to do with herself, which has a way of making everyone else not know what to do with themselves, either.  We had a playdate scheduled, and my friend and her young children came over, which meant that eventually we had FIVE little awkward snowsuited bodies tumbling around and crying when they fell down.  That was kind of the way the whole day went.  The kids had a wonderful amount of fun as soon as they went out in the snow, and then everything turned horrible before we parents could even blink, and everyone was back inside again.

Part of the problem is that certain children have not yet figured out that warm clothes keep them warm.  This is not limited to snow, but it is exacerbated by it.  The day before, Emerson and Hibiscus had dived out the door into "outdoor play time," past my offers of rain pants and mittens.  "It's not very cold any more, Mama!" they yelled as they streaked by.  It was indeed warmer than it had been that morning, so I let them go.  Minutes later they were back inside and complaining that they were frozen, which had nothing to do with refusing to put their layers on!

Hibiscus apparently found that certain articles of clothing inhibited her pure enjoyment of the snow, so the morning play-time was taken up by trips to the back door to announce that she was shivering.
"Where is your hat?" I would ask.
"I don't know," she'd reply.  (Turns out it was frozen to a concrete block in the back yard.)
"Where are your mittens?" I would ask.
"Over dere, on da table."
"Why is your coat unzipped?"
Surprised look down at her coat, which was waving open in the breeze.
"Go get your mittens, shake them out and put them on, put on this hat, and --- here, your coat in zipped and --- here, your hood is up.  Now you won't be cold any more.  Go and play."

I think we had three outings into the backyard, none of which lasted more than twenty minutes at the most.  I happen to believe that children need to spend a decent portion of their lives outside, and nature (and a big backyard!) was one of the things I missed the most in Uganda.  It snows for months in Alaska, so we wear boots and snowsuits.  It rains for months in Oregon, so we wear slightly different boots and rain gear.  Five-minute playtimes because you don't dress properly do not fly very well with this mama!



I personally did not find that a very impressive way to spend one of the few days of snow in the entire year, but luckily we did better today.  Mark had finally finished getting chains on the van to try and drive through up the driveway and off to work, when he heard that there was so VERY much snow that everyone who had made it to work was heading home again.  In my mind, a snow day for the whole family is a whole different kettle of fish than one that just means that mama has extra children for more hours!

The children talked about skiing yesterday, and by the end of the day there was enough that little skis could probably have something to slide on in the field.  Big puffy flakes kept coming down all day, and by afternoon there was enough for a genuine ski outing.  I think this is the first time I have ever been able to go for a proper ski out my back door!


Mark pulled everyone's skis out of the garage.  Unfortunately, that meant "everyone who already had skis," since we had only arrived from an equatorial country eight days earlier and had not yet had a chance to go ski shopping.  Or even snowsuit shopping, for that matter, although rain pants had been at the top of the priority list, so everyone had some outdoor pants, and friends have sent plenty of warm jackets.  Emerson still fits into what he wore last year, since he has been growing at the rate of a crocodile.  (Did you know that crocodiles grow extremely slowly, since they have a very slow metabolism?  That's why they sit around sunning themselves all the time, too.  These are the things you learn while living in a non-skiing kind of climate.)  Buttercup can wear the things that Emerson used a couple years ago, and of course Mark and I have our own things.  This leave Hibiscus off by her lonely self with no exciting snow gear.  Of course she was very upset about that, but she kept very busy and happy in the snow anyways.

Getting everyone dressed took the first half of the afternoon.  I figured that if children kept taking off their outer warm bits of clothing, at least we could make them wear more things on the inside, which they couldn't access to remove and leave here and there across the field.  So we found non-cotton undershirts and long johns for everyone, and chased them up and down the house while they found other interesting things to do and declared that they weren't cold and didn't need them.  Well of course you don't; the heater is set to 68 degrees, because this is INSIDE the house.

By the time we got outside, I figured that we had better go somewhere, so that going right back in the door was not a viable option.  We headed out across our fields, through the neighbor's field, and onto the roads going to the nearby school, which has a playground, which I thought would make a good destination.  There was so much snow and so little traffic that the roads were like smooth-but-lightly-fluffy groomed ski trails.  I can't ever remember seeing the roads covered with snow in the afternoon!



I was so proud of my two little skiers!  We have made a point of taking Emerson skiing several times a winter since he was a toddler, believing that cross-country skiing is one of those skills best learned when you are too young to realize you are learning anything.  Every year he has been assimilating the feelings a little bit more, and even after the whole year passing, he soon found his cross-country legs again.  He got frustrated trying to get through the fields, with the puffy snow and the little slopes and tussocks of grass, but went much more quickly and happily on the road.  The way up was a gradual slope, and we went back down together.  I held his hand and kept him moving, and he kept his balance right along with me, even when the downhill got more distinct.  When we got back to the flatter part, he skied on his own again.  He had had so much fun going quickly that he tried to keep doing it, and managed to get some slide-and-glide into his steps.  If you have ever been an experienced skier along with little children, you know that they tend to just plod along on those potentially magical instruments, so a little bit of slide-and-glide was a wonderful development as far as I was concerned!


Buttercup was on skis for the first time, and in snow for the first time, and in a snow suit for the second time, and had only been in America for nine days altogether.  And she took it all in stride, and decided to learn to ski.  Buttercup has this amazing intent concentration that is just wonderful to watch.  (Especially after watching her older sister bounce from one thing to another for two days without cease!)  It took a very long time to get the first fifty yards or so, also involving problems with mittens and bindings, but then she started to figure out what was going on.  I kept reminding her to keep her toes going straight, or looking right at Daddy, or in the tracks, and she would intently try to find her ski-tips and put them somewhere.  Other than that, I tried to just let her figure out how her body worked in this new way.  For a while she was trying to pick up her feet and walk, but then she figured out how to push her feet along instead.  All plod and no glide, of course, but she was skiing!  She didn't want me to hold her hand or help her, but she wanted me to stay close, so I oozed along behind her through the fields.

She looked so tiny and so determined!  She seems so much smaller in the wide open, white expanse, than she had in Uganda.  Even in her puffy clothes.  That coat is only an 18-month size; she's just such a little bitty bit of a girl!  But so full of self-determination.  Emerson had certainly never skied for so long or so well when he was that age, a few toddlers would make it through the first rash of falls and snow down the coat, and decide to keep going.

At first, every time she would fall or something would happen, she would just wail and wail.  I would pick her up and brush her off and try to fix whatever might be bothering her, and try to convince her to use some words to tell me exactly what the problem was.  About the third time through, she told me "finger! finger cold!" and I immediately addressed the problem with her mitten.  And remarkably enough, she took the lesson completely to heart and switched to using words instead of crying.  As she got more tired, she would start to forget, but with a reminder she tried really hard to find the words, and barely needed to cry any more.  I was impressed, and I could see the amount of self-control it took to try and contain her sobs long enough to describe a problem in this new world she doesn't even understand yet.


As for Hibiscus, she didn't have any skis, but she seemed to have as many problems as either of the children who did!  She kept falling down and crying that she couldn't get up.  Now when you have skis stuck to your feet, they do tend to slip out from under you, and then they really get in the way when you try and get up again.  (Ski poles aren't for beginners, and they're not necessary if you know how to ski, so we don't use them.)  However, exactly how Hibiscus managed to keep falling off her feet and not being able to find them again, I am not sure.  But Mark and I stayed plenty busy skiing back and forth and pulling children up off the ground!  Hibiscus also alternated between wailing that she was cold, she was freezing, ah ah ah ah ah cold cold COLD, and then diving onto the ground and doing something like crawling through the snow while throwing large bundles of it up into the air.  So I don't think she was really too cold!  I think it was more that whenever she felt a dot of coldness, say if a mitten started to come off or a snowflake landed on her cheek, it was so surprising it was unbearable.  Actually, given her level of hysteria for those events, I think we kept her really pretty warm!


We didn't make it to the school yet before we decided that we needed to turn around.  We switched some mittens (I only have two pairs of good mittens, which is not sufficient), shook the snow off everyone, and put Buttercup in the wrap.  She didn't want to stop skiing, and she wanted to go "on da swing," but she was the only one who had the patience for skiing another few hundred yards!  In fact, she kept skiing on after we all had stopped, but then started to cry when I wasn't next to her, and turned around.  I had gotten myself a wonderful coming-home present of a coat that unzips and has a pouch for a little head to come out of, so I can wrap Buttercup and keep her under my coat.  That got her warm and toasty right away.  Hibiscus was another story, and she cried most of the way home... and then dived into the snow, and put Buttercup's skis on her hands, and crawled around in circles in the yard until we all got inside.


By the time we got in, the snow was suddenly turning kind of wet, and while we ate dinner it rained.  The moonlight is still glistening white, but I think that might have been the end of our Ugandan girls' first snow adventure!

Buttercup Discusses Our Upcoming Trip

Buttercup has always loved pointing out airplanes.  I think the little kids used to watch for them in the orphanage, and then chant together "air-o-pen! air-o-pen!"  For a while she would look for them and think that Daddy or Gramma was inside, and wave to them.

The other day she and I were eating lunch and she heard her favorite, distant buzz: "Air-o-pen!"  But she knows who is going in an airplane now: "Air-o-pen!" she chirped happily.  "Bye-bye, Bu-cup-y!  Bye-bye, Mama!"  That's right, Buttercup and Mama are going in an airplane next!
***

Last night I broke out one of our going-on-an-airplane books, hoping we could have a good conversation about what to expect on the trip.  I am planning on reading one every night now, so hopefully the girls will have something familiar to look at.  And to discuss expectations, like that there will be a lot of waiting (somehow, that isn't covered very well in the books!) and to not talk with the police or customs officials if they are talking to mama.  And to uncover unexpected expectations.

Like Hibiscus declaring that she wasn't going to wear a seatbelt, she doesn't like seatbelts, and she's just going to sit like "dis."  Emerson replied with shock that she has to wear a seatbelt, it's the rule, and she said she wasn't.  "What will they do if I don't put on my seatbelt?" she kept asking as we went through various scenarios.  We finally got up to the part where the flight attendants would make her go off the plane if she fought with them and wouldn't do what she was told.  "I'll just go off the plane and get on the next one," she said with her usual confidence (and lack of logic).

Buttercup had not participated in the conversation up to this point, and was looking more and more worried.  "Me gonna, me will wear, I's gonna wear seatbelt," she finally told us.  I reassured her that that was a good choice and the flight attendants wouldn't make her go off the plane.  She immediately felt much better.
***

One morning we were trying to get ready for school, and the children were having various conversations in a kind of unconnected manner, as they usually do at that time of day, including our upcoming trip.  I try and get them started and then go downstairs to make them breakfast, which gives them some motivation to actually get finished dressing.  So I announced that I was leaving to go downstairs.

"Me wanna go wiv YOU-OU!!" cried Buttercup, quite worried.  But I wasn't sure what part of the conversation she was thinking of.

"You want to go with me downstairs, or you want to go with me to America?" I asked.

"Me wanna go wiv you A-MER-ica!  To-gedda!!" she cried.


Oh, my sweet girl.  You will go with me.  We will go together.  I have waited so, so, SO long, just exactly so you can go with me.

Together.

Finally.

Christmas Cantata

It is after 10:30 at night, and I am just sitting down to my second meal of oatmeal of the day.  That might be an ambiguous sentence, but it is true either way: it is the second time I've eaten oatmeal for a meal today, and it is the second time I have sat down and eaten a meal.

We have spent the last eleven hours or so attending a "Christmas Cantata," with our friends, the family who runs the American Montessori School (including Hosta).  It was quite something, to say the least.  Also, I am coming to the conclusion that I should take my children and lock all of us in the bedroom, perhaps with some individuals under the bed, and stay there until we have all the proper paperwork to get on the plane. Disasters large and small seem to dog us wherever we go and whatever we do!  Perhaps this entire trip is cursed.  Or Satan is trying to get at us, as Teacher Monica suggested.

I should eat my oatmeal and go to bed, so I will just write a few things and tell the rest of the stories in the morning.  The Cantata was a very Ugandan extravaganza, including the part about waiting for more than two hours in order to get in.  After all, what Christmas would be complete without breakdancing angels?

As for the venue, visualize an American mega-church, with a balcony and stage and everything, and then squash it down Ugandan style.  So the grandeur remains, but take out all the pretty details like carpets and mood lighting, and make it about a half or a third of the size but maintain the same number of people.  There were three different staging areas in order to get the audience into the church!  First of all we all crammed into the space you might ordinarily expect about the average American family with its 2.2 children to sit, as long as neither adult was particularly overweight.  After a while, the ushers came by and asked us to put the children on our laps so we would take up less room.  Since we were two mothers with seven children, we both already had full laps but there were still a lot of small bums leftover.  The usher moved on and was settling people in the aisles, but they had to stand on the side so the performers could go by.  A couple of enterprising ladies came over and announced that they could carry the children on their laps, thus allowing their own bums to be on a pew and the children to spend the entire two plus hours on the lap of a stranger.  Request denied, although it was not so much a request at all.

Then: LIGHTS!!!!  FOG MACHINES!!!!  GIANT CHOIR ON HIGHRISES!!!!  SKITS!!!!  MARY AND JOSEPH!!!!  SINGING VERY DRAMATICALLY!!!!  AMPS TURNED WAY UP!!!!  And so forth.

Oh, and a revival call, or whatever they are called when sinners are invited to stand up and take Jesus into their lives at that very moment.  I personally feel strongly that one's relationship with Jesus is a lifetime of growth, almost all of which happens inside one's own heart and mind and not by standing up when you are told to by a guy with a microphone, but whatever floats your boat.  Who wouldn't want to listen to a nice Christmas music session without being invited to stand up and declare one's sinner-ness?  Well, I'm obliging enough to watch, until you get MY children involved. First of all, Emerson was so exhausted by that point, that when he kept hearing "stand up, stand up," he just kind of automatically stood up.  And since the church floor was flat, it was hard for the children to see and they had kept sitting on the top of the pew, especially Hibiscus (the other kids had been standing more), and the lady behind her had been hissing at her every few minutes "sit down, sit down."  And now she started hissing "stand up, stand up," which got Hibiscus totally confused, and thought maybe she ought to do it.  Maybe it might be a deeply moving religious experience for some people to stand up at a revival call, but I feel strongly that it is not an appropriate time to manipulate 5-ish-year-olds into confessing something that they don't understand in the least.  Actually, I deeply believe (and have witnessed) that children have a deep, intrinsic connection to the Divine, if we give them the space and trust to find it on their own.  Which this could not be more opposite!


And as for the conclusion of the day, unfortunately my bowl of oatmeal is almost finished so I cannot do the story justice.  I will just say, that we gathered up our seven very amped-up, tired, hungry, and wiggly children, navigated the sea of people, then the giant holes in the sidewalk with cars blocking either side in the gradually fading afternoon light, and walked to where we had left the car.  And we said "isn't this where the car was?"  And it had been, and it was not any more.

Chapati Night

Tonight I tried my hand at chapatis. It should be interesting, seeing that my "recipe" from the people who have "showed" me how to make them, goes something like this:

Woman standing by bowl of dough: "You put the flour, and the things in. You just make it like this, the normal way. It's just flour, and the other things."

When Emerson asked our Kenyan neighbor to write down what to do to make them so I could do it at home, she laughed uproariously, and told the story for months.

From observation, it seems to be pretty much a basic yeast dough, and I know how to fry them.  So I made a yeast dough, and I fried them.  The children really like chapatis.  They really, really like them.  I don't know if I made them up the "proper" way, but I made the dough light and the chapatis small and thin, so it wasn't like an entire brick hitting your stomach after you plough your way through the whole thing.  So they probably weren't proper chapatis after all; I have a habit of changing things so I like them better, until they aren't what they even started out to be!

But the children still liked them, apparently enough to explode.  They were served leftover bean soup and a chapati, and they had to finish the soup to get another chapati.  (Another benefit of small, thin, chapatis; you can bribe your children to finish their dinners because they can actually eat two!)

Dinner:
Me: I ate my soup, and then had two chapatis with butter and cinnamon sugar.  I really find chapatis too plain to eat on their own, and too dense for dipping in soup.

Hibiscus: Ate her chapati dipped in soup, tried to take another, re-heard the rule, and gobbled up the rest of the soup.  "My stomach tell me, it really like for eat hot food," she told me happily. Then she had her second chapati, which had happened to puff like a pita bread.  Inspired, she put a piece of broccoli inside.  Then she thought about what I had done, and put cinnamon sugar on the top.  Chapati, broccoli, and sugar?  Oh well; she was happy.

Emerson: Ate his chapati, worked diligently on his beans for a while.  I agreed that he had eaten enough, and that I had given him too large a serving, and he had a second chapati with cinnamon sugar.

Buttercup: Ate her chapati, with perhaps a bite of soup out of curiosity.  Took a second chapati.  I put it back and told her to eat her soup first.  She waited until I had glanced away, and reached out for the chapati again.  I only sit about eight inches away from her, so I did actually notice.  This repeated about two more times.  Her brother and sister started in on the soup-chapati rule.  "Me no likey eat soup," she said, and pushed her bowl away.  Everyone reminded her that there were no chapatis then.  She sat quietly and did nothing whatsoever for a long time.  Then I got up to get something.  I heard protests from the older children, and came back to find a napkin neatly covering the soup and a chapati on Buttercup's plate, while she sat with round, innocent eyes.  Amazingly enough, the soup still existed, even underneath the napkin.  I removed the chapati.  She told me she was all done soup and was no eat-y soup, and I suggested that I could get her ready for bed then.  That idea went over like a ton of bricks.  We had several more discussions about being all done soup meant being all done dinner ("no, me eat chapati now"), and she finally agreed that she was eating soup.  And didn't.  And didn't, and didn't, and didn't.  Everyone else was finishing, and I got up to run the first bath.  And I came back to find another chapati on Buttercup's plate, but her siblings weren't yelling.  I looked in her bowl and it was amazingly clean.  She said it was all in her tummy, and the other agreed.  Since they are very literal in their interpretation of the rules -- especially since they had followed the rules themselves -- I accepted it as fact.  When push came to shove, it was an amazingly fast devouring of the soup.

End of Dinner:
Me: I finished my chapatis, cleared my plate, put dishes away, helped with buttering and serving, and glanced at my email while the children ate.  And ate and ate and ate.

Hibiscus: Ate her broccoli and sugar chapati with appropriate exactitude and much discussion and compliments.  This child really enjoys her food!  When the meal starts, she eats at about the rate of your average starving Rottweiler, so by the time she is fiddling around I know she is getting full.  She was even talking about being full, but when I looked over I see her about to tuck into a third chapati.  I took it away.  She screeched and screamed like I was starving her to death.  We talked about two chapatis and a giant bowl of soup being enough for a small child, and that we could have more chapatis in the morning, and that she was actually full.  She pointed out her giant taut belly poking out of her shirt as evidence of the last point, but still thought she needed more.  I ended up carrying her to the bath; "you can pry chapatis out of my cold dead hands" seems to be her motto.

During bedtime, she kept complaining about how painfully full her belly was and that she could hardly move.  Then she engaged on a genuine stream of worry that her belly was going to explode in the middle of the night and there would be blood all over.  And THIS is why I DO pry the food out of your hands, my dear child.

Emerson: Finished his chapati with cinnamon sugar.  Asked if he could finish all his beans and then eat another chapati.  I suggested that he was actually full and it was bedtime.  It turns out he was also painfully full, and melted into a pile that could not walk to the potty because its tummy was too full.  At least he only does this on chapati nights.

Buttercup: Barely even ate part of the hard-earned second chapati.  First of all, everyone was leaving the table.  "Mama, go dere.  Go do more computer," she ordered me.  Apparently mama checking email on the other side of the room was an acceptable alternative to being left alone!  That, and she was full.  Sometimes, when Buttercup is full, she actually gets tired of eating food.

Final Argument:
All children this age are concerned with fairness, but Hibiscus takes this to an extreme, and she is always convinced that someone is taking advantage of her.  Tonight, she was fixated on the third chapati, and convinced that I had gotten a third chapati and she wasn't allowed one.  Sometimes I actually do allow myself to eat more food than I serve to her, given that I am about twice her size, although usually we eat about the same amount at meals.  But on this occasion I had also had two chapatis, I had just eaten them in a different order so I had eaten two in a row.  She was willing to argue the point to the death that I had actually had three.  I didn't care, other than I didn't want her to feel hurt and unloved over my taking away her third chapati, which was the way she was tending.  We discussed the order of my chapati-eating several times.  Emerson chimed in that I had eaten exactly two, just like everyone, he remembered.  Hisbiscus's final sally: "Mama, I am sitting right here, and I am right here next to you, and I SEE you eat three, I SEE you, I am right NEXT to you.  I am not lying!"  I observed that I was even closer to myself than she was, but there is no way to convince someone when they won't be convinced.  I just said she was only making her own self sad by worrying about something like that.  Although actually, it makes me kind of sad too.

Encore:
There are chapatis left for breakfast in the morning.  And I tossed the rest of the batter in a loaf pan, and it seems to also make a very reasonable bread.  Which I think I would prefer to eat... and I promise to stop before my stomach explodes and bleeds all over!

Night Shift for Mama

Many parent of young children would probably agree with me that bedtime is about the worst part of the day, but then the end of bedtime, and moments afterwords, are among the best.

Until your children decide to require a night shift.

Last night, I got myself all the way into bed by eleven, which gives me 8 hours of bed-time, and was feeling pretty good about it.  Then, when I was just about asleep, I hear a funny little screech, and then nothing.  Buttercup had fallen out of bed and was sitting on the floor, dazed and stuck.  Our current bed arrangement is that Emerson and I sleep on the bed with a frame, which happens to be a modern style that is too close to the floor to store suitcases under, and has a funny little railing around it... you know, the kind that is really good for banging your shins in the middle of the night, and just takes up extra space in the room.  Which maybe is fine if you are trying to be an elegant furnished apartment, but less good once you move another set of mattresses into the room.  The girls sleep on two mattresses stacked right next to us, and between giving the closet doors enough room to open and the wall, there is just enough room to walk sideways between the same-height beds.

Or for Buttercup to fall and get stuck.  I'm not quite sure why this keeps happening, but I've been jamming a couch cushion in the space, but I forgot last night.  She got really wedged in there.  I really don't know how she does it!

Buttercup and I sleep on the insides of the two mattresses, which I cleverly arranged in the new house because she tends to need me the most in the middle of the night.  And she was not done with me yet.

After calming down from the wedged-under-the-bed problem, I was almost all the way asleep again,  when I suddenly hear desperate little-girl shrieking, and then bigger-girl surprised yells.  Buttercup had dived across the pillows and was sitting on Hibiscus's head, screaming and crying.  Hibiscus got woken up but missed the entire context, and kept repeating half-asleep, and then has mentioned several times today, "Buttercup is sleeping too close on my pillow."  The only one sleeping on Hibiscus's pillow was Hibiscus, it just happened to be in Buttercup's escape route!

It had the feel of a bad dream, but Buttercup was fully awake and staring desperately towards something.  I swooped her right out of bed -- and off Hibiscus's head, so she fell back asleep again.  I wondered if she needed to walk around and wake up more, but she seemed plenty awake, and she calmed down when I was holding her.  She pointed to my bed and said "me sleepy dere now."  I asked if she was worried about a bug, and she said "spider," starting to look upset again.  There are spiders around here and there, but nothing that is particularly invasive or scary.  But I'm not unduly afraid of spiders.  I'm sure Buttercup isn't the only one who wouldn't want to sleep in a bed where she had even dreamed about a spider!

We lay down, but she didn't settle.  She snuggled right up close to me and pressed her head into my chin, and then slowly relaxed, but not into sleep.  Then she suddenly started shrieking again and grabbing herself, and this time managed to yell "in my clothes, in my clothes!"  I brought her into the bathroom and turned on the lights, and we unzipped her pajamas and inspected them very carefully.  Then we inspected some more.  Buttercup is a very careful inspector!  There were no spiders of any kind, but I did cut off the tags in the torso, in case she was feeling that.  She was totally satisfied about the lack of spiders on her person, but thought they were all still hiding in the bed.  We got out a little light and did a thorough inspection of both beds, finding no spiders and no evidence of spiders.

Unfortunately, that woke up Hibiscus.  I wanted Buttercup to feel like we were taking the threat of spiders seriously, but not start Hibiscus worrying that there were actual spiders in the bed.    Hibiscus wakes up like a drunken jack-in-the-box, totally confused but totally active.  In this case, she suddenly started throwing pillows around, and repeating randomly "is dream, is a dreaming spiders, is dream spiders, Buttercup sleeping to close on my pillow."  Then she collapsed on one of the disarranged pillows and was back asleep again.

Buttercup spent the rest of the night in my bed.

Tonight, we had a discussion about the non-existence of spiders in the bed before lights-out, which seemed very comforting.  But no matter; Buttercup had passed the baton to her brother.

We started off the night running a little late, so the kids only washed their feet instead of full baths, and I only read one book.  And Hibiscus put up a little me-vs-the-world struggle, which resulted in all the children hearing a little speech about not bothering the other children when they are doing something particular.  And then they got to hear it again.  And again.  Hibiscus was pretending to ignore me, so I would sweetly say "since you didn't understand, I can explain again."  I forget if we got through four or five repetitions before she gave me a tiny acknowledgement.  When she actually agrees to something, she is usually good about following through, and she was silent while I did her siblings' blessings.

Emerson had seemed quite anxious for a while.  First of all, while getting out books, he worriedly asked me how to tell if something was a joke or a lie.  Usually at that point of night, he's more worried about which books he gets to choose and if Hibiscus is going to get more snuggles than he is.  Then when I settled down for his blessings, more concerns came out, with a lot of squirming and wiggling.  After a lot of examples, I told him to follow his heart, and that he could trust his heart to tell him if something was wrong, whether it was himself doing it or someone else.  Squirm squirm, wiggle wiggle.  He said what if something yucky was inside him and needed to get out. I said he could come to Daddy or I and we could help him get the yuckiness out him, and we wouldn't get mad at him.  Any time.  Like now.  He admitted there was a bad word, and it wanted to get out.  I told him he could whisper it to me.  He squirmed and wiggled and wormed.  We went back and forth for quite a while, the girls waiting impatiently for their blessings, and he finally whispered it in my ear.  And I told him to do it again.  He repeated it three times, and then he said it was out.  He told me it was a very, very bad word in Luganda that another child had taught him.  I didn't recognize it, and think it's possible that it wasn't anything particularly bad, but it was certainly bothering him.

But he was still squirmy and wouldn't lay facing me.  I thought something else was wrong, and told him to wait for me to do the girls' blessings and I would come back and we could talk some more.  Needless to say, the girls did their level best to make their blessings go on forever; Buttercup was especially dedicated to the project tonight.

When I came back, Emerson told me his bum was hurting and even swelling up.  We went into the other room to look at it... and lo and behold, there were little bits of poop debris everywhere.  Apparently he had needed to poop at school (which he normally avoids at any distress), and a teacher wiped him but was quick about it.  A half dozen hours in the tropical heat, and his poor unmentionables were pretty unmentionable.

So we went back into the bathroom and I started re-filling the tub again.  While it poured in, I held him close and asked if anything else was bothering him in his heart.  No, apparently it was all in the derriere at that point!

Then Buttercup sauntered in, sucking her water glass and looking all ready to catch the next episode of The Exciting Brother/Sister Show.  Emerson had not planned on airing the owie-bum story live, so he got upset.  I put her back in bed and told her to stay there.  She jumped on the bed and laughed, which got Hibiscus sitting up to scold her.  I had to get something from the main room, and there is the lively little shadow!  After our extensive conversation about not bothering other children, this did not fly.  I put her on a chair, and told her that she was disturbing her brother and sister, and that she needed to stay there until I came to get her, hoping to interrupt the domino effect of excitement.  This is the down-side of having three small children trying to sleep within eight linear feet of each other!

I figured that if Buttercup sat in the living room for a minute or two, she would get bored and sleepy, and Hibiscus had almost been asleep and hopefully would drop off once Buttercup was removed from the bed.  If Hibiscus wasn't alert to immediately respond to her every playfulness, Buttercup would get even more bored and fall asleep.  But when I went back through the bedroom to check on the poop-encrustment-soaking, I heard voices.... Hibiscus was sitting on the toilet, chattering with Emerson.

Hibiscus is firmly and cheerfully of the opinion that sitting on the pot is an iron-clad excuse for not being somewhere else, anywhere else, no matter how recently she has just gone and how firmly she was told to stay put.  In fact, being in the bathroom, and quickly flying her bum in the direction of the potty whenever she hears footsteps, has got to be pretty ironclad as well.  "But I've gotta POO-ooop!" she wails.  And pooping, as we all know, can take any length of time.  Like, the entire duration of a time-out or a quiet time.

This time, I told her to finish up.  And seeing the just-quoted words forming on her lips, I told her that if she needed to poop she could go in the other bathroom (which had fewer interesting people in it!).  I checked Emerson's bathing progress and gave him a one-minute soaping-up warning (because Emerson does better with lots of warning), and went back to check on Buttercup.  She was looking remarkably sleepy and contrite.  At heart, she really loves to be helpful and cooperative, but then she thinks she's got to be JUST like Hibiscus.  When she starts getting the same consequences as Hibiscus, but having to endure them personally and by herself, the charm of being Hibiscus is wearing off pretty quickly.  In this case, she was eager to promise to stay in bed and get some mama-hugs, and we cuddled and laughed off her brief attack of the sads on the way back to her pillow.

And then I went back to my poopy boy, and what do you think I found?  That's right.  Hibiscus was SITLL on the toilet.  And they were giggling even harder.  I told her that she would get in bed NOW, and she miraculously found that her entire bladder and bowels were empty and wiped.  She went scooting off, giving me furtive looks to try and figure out if she would get in worse trouble for not going straight out the door, or not washing her hands.  She made the correct choice of washing her hands.

I think she also knew that I usually separate the children when they're too rowdy, and that Buttercup had just had to sit in the living room after wandering all over the house.  Buttercup didn't really mind being left in the lighted room when she could hear her family, but Hibiscus is actively terrified of being in a room by herself at night.  I think the desire to not repeat Buttercup's fate propelled her straight into her bed.  This is the benefit of having three children in a row!

We got Emerson clean.  We applied two different types of cream and some ibuprofen too.  The bottom itself probably only needed the cream, but I knew the mind was going to get increasingly focused on the pain and discomfort, and hoped that belief in the power of medicine would help comfort it into sleep.

And then they were all asleep.  And now I'm going to go to sleep too. As their current favorite books says "She turned off the light,/ and shut the door,/ That's all there is,/ There isn't any more."  And I'm really hoping that the last line describes the rest of our night!

Hibiscus Drives Us All Crazy

It's the middle of the afternoon, and I said we could have more birthday cake and presents if the kids could clear the table off.  No one started on that project, which seems like actual work, but Hibiscus found a piece of mostly-unused construction paper and made a birthday hat for Buttercup.  First of all she taped it into a cone shape, and when she put it on Buttercup's head the little girl started glowing with her unaccustomed special-ness.  Then she wanted to add a chin band, and Emerson helped her find materials and they all started singing "Happy Birthday" variations happily as they worked on the hat, while Buttercup fairly danced with pride.  Suddenly, Hibiscus decided it "wasn't good" and she ripped it apart and crumpled up the pieces, while the other children watched in shock and disappointment, and Buttercup's joyful little face melted away.

That's our Hibiscus!

Then she spent a while arguing, because I had already said I wasn't giving them any more paper or art supplies until the current mess had been cleaned up, but Hibiscus apparently felt that because she had made the mess even bigger while making all the other children upset, that she deserved an exception to the rule.  Which she didn't get, so she sulked.

Then she started cleaning one thing up, which is generally how it goes.  She wants to be helpful, but as soon as she starts she gets distracted or sees something new to get out.  In this case, she put some cheese from snack in the fridge, as I asked.  For some reason, Emerson was also near the fridge, and he pushed it shut, which Hibiscus thought was too rough, and she started scolding him.  One of our frequent scripts in this house is "who does Hibiscus need to worry about?" and the answer in "Hibiscus."  (In other words, stop bossing your brother and sister around!!!)  Hibiscus ignored me, and opened the fridge again and started fussing around with all the little bottles on the side, putting them in "perfect" order while telling Emerson how bad he was for messing them up.  I agreed that Emerson could have shut the door more gently, but thought there was no reason to stand there rearranging everything in the fridge meanwhile, so I told Hibiscus to get out of the fridge and Emerson to shut the door gently.  Twice.  Maybe three times.  Hibiscus said "I just doing this" and continued to adjust the bottles and then grabbed the door away from Emerson to shut it herself.  That falls under our Just One More criteria for a Sit, so she got one.  And she tried to sneak out of it when I wasn't looking, so she got a longer Sit.

Earlier today, I decided I would do just one little project that would make me feel better, so I had cleared off the couch.  It is the largest horizontal space in our main room, and it was totally heaped up with stuff.  Besides, then I could sit on the couch and do some work on the ipad while being kind of relaxed and drinking a cup of tea.  First of all I got mad at Emerson for climbing right on the newly-folded clothes I was arranging, and then the kids kept passing and dropping the extra parts from their projects on the nice clear couch.  After addressing each incident, I finally told the kids all to look at me, and to not put anything more on the couch today.  Period.

When I told Hibiscus she could come out of her Sit, she went straight over to the windowsill where Buttercup's birthday presents were sitting and picked up her most exciting new game.  I warned her that she better not be playing with her sister's new game without permission, and she said she wasn't.  Then she brought the toy bag over to the couch, and I said she had better not be putting anything on the couch, and she said she wasn't.  Buttercup was watching her lovely toy and her bossy sister with increasing worry.  Hibiscus then proceeded to take the toy that she wasn't playing with and dump the entire thing out on the couch that she wasn't putting things on.        


This is all in about the span of twenty minutes or so, but she is like this ALL.  DAY.  LONG.  She is constantly taking things from her brother and sister, which she is likely to break or just drop randomly in a different place.  She tells them what to do, and grabs things from Buttercup to do it for her and goads Emerson into getting upset, and then "reports" him for using his angry voice.  She ordinarily has a very good relationship with both siblings, although of course they have their little altercations, and they actually have a great deal of patience with her explosiveness.  One morning they were getting ready for school, Emerson and Hibiscus bumped into each other, and Hibiscus rounded on Emerson and screamed "DON'T BUMP ME LIKE DAT!!! DAT'S MY OWIE!!!"  I would have reprimanded her that it was an accident on both sides, and there was no call to scream, but luckily I am a little slow on getting between them.  Emerson turned and immediately apologized and asked to see her owie, and Hibiscus showed him her leg in that special aggrieved manner that young children reserve for small pains, and Emerson knelt down and admired it and sympathized, and then they both went on with their day quite calmly.

Buttercup is even more accustomed to being pushed around and adores every chance to be with her beloved sister, which is a little bit of a problem in itself and I am glad that she is gradually learning to stand up for herself.  Now in the last few weeks, Hibiscus is back to her early behavior in our house, when every time Buttercup says something she repeats it to the rest of the family, and every time Daddy or I address Buttercup, she answers quickly and loudly.  If we ask Buttercup to do something and she doesn't immediately jump into action -- which is pretty much always, because she is either going through a toddler-refusal, or just because she thinks things over carefully before beginning -- Hibiscus repeats it for her in Luganda, ordering her to do the thing in rapid-fire succession which simply confuses Buttercup, and then grabs the things out of her hands and starts to do it for her.

Or then there are times like this:  The morning after her birthday party, Buttercup wanted to look at her new book.  She sat in the middle of the floor to pore over it, and Hibiscus said "you want me to read it to you" and sat down next to her and took the book out of her hands.  Buttercup acquiesced because she likes spending time with her big sister.  But then a minute later I looked over, and Hibiscus is holding the book over Buttercup's head while Buttercup is reaching for it and starting to screech and sob.  Hibiscus saw me ready to interfere and protested "but she WANTS me to hold the book for her, Mama, she is wantin' me to do like dis!!"  Ah, no, my darling, I really think this is a misinterpretation of the situation!   Buttercup is becoming very capable of expressing her feelings about things -- not to mention understanding spoken English -- and yet Hibiscus will announce to the rest of us how Buttercup is feeling.  Which, coincidentally, always seems to be that Buttercup wants what Hibiscus wants, even at Buttercup's own expense.


But that's not the only thing she announces.  She tells me when my phone is ringing, or has the text-message sound.  If I don't come running immediately, she keeps telling me over and over, imitating the text-message sound.  She tells us when a Skype call is ringing.  She tells us when fire engines go by.  In fact, she informs everyone of every sound all day long, which I suppose could make her an excellent assistant if we were all deaf, but as it is she just makes us WISH we were deaf.

One day I asked her if she saw anything poking out of the side of my head, and that they were called ears, and since they were still in their usual place she might assume I could hear things on my own.  I tried to make a joke out of it, but I might have been too irritated to fully succeed.

But that's not all she says.  At the best of times, she is a talkative child, and there's nothing wrong with that.  As Daddy says, she gets a lot of practice in spoken English!  But when she's stressed or tired or excited or generally out of her precarious internal balance, she talks all the time.  And I do mean ALL the time.  One night I started counting to myself, mostly to give myself something to do other than run and scream, and I think the longest she ever went without talking was about three seconds -- and that was the exception.  Most of the time it is more like one or maybe two seconds; just long enough to hear what the next person might be talking about, so then she can tell them what they meant to say, or what she would say on the topic, or that they are wrong, or just because she was in the process of swallowing and was physically incapable of speech for a moment.  Only a moment, though, as she keeps talking through most of the eating process, even when no one can actually understand her because she is also shoveling food in at top speed.

I am a talkative person, as everyone knows.  My son has been a chatterbox since he could string words together, and does indeed have excellent speech for his age with all that practice, so I am used to talkative children.  And I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind some overlap in conversation, and with my good friends we will both be very talkative and sometimes be both talking at once, while also listening and one or the other pauses for a moment and then rejoins the story at an ebb in the other's conversation.  So, "talkative," I can handle.  I have experience.  You will have to trust me that Hibiscus is another category altogether.

So all through dinner, we have either a monologue or, if someone else gets a word in edgewise, she changes course and tells them what they meant to be saying.  We try to discuss conversation rules, but after a while it kind of puts everyone else in an exhausted coma, and no one else can think of anything to say anyways.  Then we get up from dinner, and she narrates what she is doing as she cleans up and gets ready for bed, along with telling everyone else what they should be doing, and of course every major or minor injury to body or soul she feels along the way... which are prolific, since she also is in her manic and awkward stage of the day.  Eventually we get to books.  As in, I read books out loud, and the children listen to them.  Except it goes something like this:

"Hedgie the hedgehog climbed --"
"Oooh, he is climbing, look he climb!!"
"--up to the hayloft ---"
"Mama mama mama, what a hayloft? What is dat one?"
"It's the top of the barn, see, right here.  -- the next morn ---"
"Look, dis one a bird!  Dere a bird in da sky here!"
"-ing to get a ---"
"One, two, tree, FIVE birds, YOU count Buttercup, one, two, no, you doing it WRONG I count da birds---"


I have my masters degree in education.  I know how valuable reading books is to young children, and that a significant part of the value is that it inspires conversations between adults and children.  The children get to explore and learn new vocabulary, and have practice talking about characters and counting objects and so forth, all with lots of interaction with their loving adult.  The conversation is an important part of the reading process.

Nevertheless, this is not what they meant.



I know in my head, that if it's been a hard couple weeks for all of us, it's probably been worst for Hibiscus.  She has by far the least internal regulation (even included Buttercup), so the move with all its change of routine has been the most difficult for her.  She has loved our guests, but they have come with more changes of routine and new personalities to figure out.  In the court room, she is the only one trying to balance complex relationships with both sides of people, and she's picking up all the emotions and understanding none of the logic.  She and Buttercup are more deeply disturbed by loving people having to leave (especially Daddy, but also Diane and it re-awakens how upset she is about Gramma and Bubba being gone), because they have more experience with loving adults leaving than loving adults coming back again.  So I understand.  It's enough to throw anyone off kilter, let alone a little girl who doesn't have much balance to begin with.

But lately, I've been pausing for a while at night to adjust her blankets and say a little prayer over her.  Because it's been easiest to love her when she's asleep.

Another Evening in the Monkey-House

This last week, our dinners have been along the lines of grilled cheese toast (until we ran out of bread), oatmeal, and cereal.  Seriously.  I've tried to throw in some apple or carrot sticks or something, but it's been very far from cooking proper food.  Tonight I was still tired, but thought I could step my mom-game up at least a notch or two.  Our new house has a rice cooker, so I put rice and lentils in that, and then actually went to all the trouble of making a vegetable sauce.  The gate-keeper at these apartments seems to grow a giant garden of mostly Swiss chard, and he generously gave us a large serving.  Hibiscus loves "greens," so I set about making a pot of greens in tomato sauce to serve with our rice.  I know that Emerson won't eat it, but both the girls are very excited about a proper dinner of "food and soup" and looked eagerly into the cooking pot.

While the kids were playing outside after school, Emerson and Hibiscus came running up to me with a branch of something that looked kind of like rosemary, but wasn't, and said that Hibiscus liked to eat it and would I cook it, and you're supposed to take the leaves off it and cook it.  I kind of brushed them off, and reminded them not to pick the plants.  It got dropped on the floor and abandoned for more interesting pursuits.

Then it was time to clean up before dinner.  Oh, what a long and painful process!  As you probably know by now, I do a lot of parenting-by-routine.  Waldorfians call it "rhythm instead of discipline," but I think of discipline as disciple-ship and not necessarily negative.  But I try to set up a strong and absolutely consistent routine, and it helps a lot to contain the internal chaos of my kids.  Any child benefits from consistent expectations, but Emerson and Hibiscus have very little internal regulation, so the external part makes a big difference, and it will eventual teach them self-regulation as well.

Dinnertime chores in a basket.  They took turns drawing them, to make it exactly clear who is supposed to do what, and even in what order.

And do you know what that means?  The last week has been chaos.  The new house does not yet have a routine, and the kids can't figure out how to find themselves in it.  Normally they are like pinballs shooting off the walls by dinnertime, but at least pinballs with an occasional purpose, and they really actually manage to get the table cleared and set almost every night.  But now?  Hibiscus has a vague memory of "clear Mama's stuff," so she picks up my computer keyboard and wanders around the house with it, opening and closing it, for minutes.  I tell her where to put it down, but it's in the kitchen instead of the bedroom like the last house, which she can't articulate to herself but she refuses to put it there and dissolves into wailing when I try and take it from her before she breaks it.  Emerson brings a piece of trash to the bin, but he has to spend time remembering where the trash is, so then on his way back he starts doing a balancing beam act on the broom instead.  And this table looks somehow much more messy than the last table, so both of them feel like the job of clearing it is impossible.

Somewhere in the middle of all the human pinballing, someone found the random herb on the floor and asked me to put it in the food.  I said we weren't going to put it in the food, and reminded them of the correct job.  I'd finished the sauce, which was just simmering, so I stepped into the bedroom to take care of something.  Emerson came running in eagerly, telling me that Hibiscus fixed the plant and now we get to eat it for dinner!  I went back to the stove, with Buttercup peering out of the wrap over my shoulder, and found little rosemary-like leaves all over the top of my simmering sauce.  I did not really feeling like adding a strange bitter herb to my sauce, and picked as many of them out as I could, while trying to direct the wild table-clearing-not-really, but many of the leaves were stuck in the other stuff in the pot.

This is a mess.  Don't step on that.  Don't drop that on the floor.  Please get the spoons.  And then I had a sudden suspicion.

I went over and asked Hibiscus if she actually knew what the plant was, and had eaten it before.  She wouldn't look at me.  I asked her again.  I took her hands.  I made her look at me.  Finally she shook her head; she had no idea what it was.  We had mixed a mysterious ornamental plant into our dinner.

I told her to come over to the stove with me, and she wouldn't.  I reminded her that I had never hurt her, and I wasn't going to now, and I took her hand and led her over.  I picked up the pot with one hand and held her fast with the other, and took her with me while I went outside and dumped the whole soup in the garbage.  I told her we couldn't eat plants when we didn't know what they were, because they could make us very sick, and I thanked her for admitting she didn't know what it was, so now we wouldn't be sick.  But we didn't have sauce.  She was devastated, and crumpled in a corner of the kitchen and wouldn't get up.

I served the rice and lentils.  Plain.  I put a little tomato paste in our bowls, hoping it would add at least a few vitamins or something.  I wasn't going to put any in Emerson's, but he insisted that he wanted some -- until he tried it, and then he told me that I had ruined his entire dinner and he was mad at me.  I added some nutritional yeast, but not on Hibiscus's.  I told her that since she had ruined the sauce, she didn't get any new sauce.  Then Buttercup tried hers and asked for cheese, which I didn't think was a bad idea because it was pretty miserably boring.  I didn't give cheese to either Emerson or Hibiscus, because they were both involved in the sauce-ruining, although I'm pretty sure Hibiscus was the ring-leader.  It seemed pretty reasonable to me: you disobey direct instructions to not put something in the sauce, thus ruining the sauce: you don't eat sauce.  Or sauce substitute.

Speaking of which, Hibiscus defended that she'd put the plant in the food because "Emerson told me to."  Emerson has also tried to get out of things because "Hibiscus told me to."  This appears to be a Möbius strip of excuses for doing things that they know are stupid!  And when I told them that it was stupid, they said that they would report me to their teacher for calling them stupid.  I said that I didn't call them stupid, and they were smart children, but sometimes smart people do stupid things.  And this was one of them.  In fact, I think a good criteria for deciding whether or not something is a stupid thing to do, is if you plan on telling your mother that your sibling told you to do it!

Hibiscus sulked in her corner while we all sat down to eat, but she has enough experience with me to know that sulking wasn't going to get her tummy full, so she came over and cleared the things left at her place and sat down with us.  We all sang the blessing, and she refused to sing with us, and said "now I do it myself" and sang quietly by herself after we all were done.  The strange ways that children decide to punish their parents!

By bedtime, and two helping of boring rice-and-lentils later, Hibiscus was in a much better mood, and got herself ready quite well.  She asked to pick out a book.  Normally each child picks a book and we read three (Buttercup's book, then Hibiscus's, then Emerson's), but if it is after 8 o'clock we only have time for one book and I pick it.  I told her she could pick something, and she picked the Madeline compilation.  Emerson had stayed in the kitchen to clear and wipe off the table, which was also admirable, so he was the last one ready.  I noted that it was after 8, and said since they both had been good we could compromise, and Hibiscus had picked the book and Emerson could pick the story.

Oh my goodness, this was so not acceptable!  Total hissy fit that Emerson had any say in what was going on.  Hibiscus refused to even get into bed with us and listen to the book, and then she wouldn't even get into bed for blessings.  She finally crawled into her place as I was leaving the room, I think because she knew that otherwise I was going to plop her there myself (and I would have).  The things kids think of!  As though refusing to listen to the book was going to break my heart and leave her victorious!

At least she didn't scream!  I can see in so many ways that she has come a long way in the last couple of months.  She got herself out of her sulking fit twice, she knew when I said that I was going to do something that I was really going to do it and reacted accordingly, and she didn't scream at the top of her lungs or break things deliberately.  But we have a long way still to go.  First of all, in being able to plan her actions and think before she does something, whether it's putting random stuff in the pot or trying to balance upsidedown on a barstool.  But also because she feels like everything is a personal insult to her, even if it is natural consequences or an accident or just totally random.  That makes little issues a lot more painful than they might otherwise be.  She spent a lot of time punishing her own self tonight.

And I wish I weren't using my frustrated voice so much!  Maybe next time I should just tell them to do the table, and go into my room and shut the door for ten minutes, and then just come out and eat.  I'll let you know how that goes!

Our Afternoon

For the first part of our walk home, Hibiscus and Emerson were quick-marching in a little row, one behind the other, chanting "poom-bah! poom-bah! poom-bah!"  They swerved into each driveway and alley we passed, pretending that they were going to leave me and go down that way, and then swerved back again, one right behind the other.  When we walked along a stone gutter, they marched straight down the middle of the water.  I love watching how connected they are and how joyful their play can be.

Of course, an hour later at home, they couldn't stop sniping at each other.  Lately, Hibiscus has been being unbearably bossy, and also somehow is always holding someone else's toy/food/craft/random bit of fluff that "she didn't kno-ooow" was theirs; and Emerson has started screeching and whining whenever he doesn't get his way; and they both are using pinches and pushes and shoulder butts.  I am trying really hard to not get involved in their little arguments -- until they draw blood, which actually happened yesterday.  Hibiscus pushed Emerson down on a stone ledge, I think because he wanted to help bring in laundry and she didn't want him touching something-or-other, and he got a big scrape on his back.  Once genuine hurt is inflicted, I do take sides, on the no-drawing-blood side (which always happens to be on one -- no, two, since there are three children -- directions).  Whatever happens beforehand doesn't matter; they need to learn to stop themselves before getting that rough.  Ahem.  She needs to stop her self.

So today, they were just bickering, and they wouldn't stop, so I separated them.  Emerson stayed in the living room and Hibiscus in the bedroom, because that's where they each do their "quiet time" (eg. not exactly nap time).  I explained that it wasn't a punishment, I was just giving them some alone time.  Hibiscus howled like a banshee.  Apparently the only thing worse than being around her brother was being away from her brother!

In the late afternoon, our probation officer came and visited.  We have been playing phone tag for a couple weeks now, and I thought as long as I had a chance to see him I would ask his opinion about this new crisis.  He was very thoughtful, and pretty much his advice concurred with the other advice I have gotten.  Then I told him we had decided to apply for guardianship, and oh by the way our court date is Tuesday, and can he please come?  He said he would be there, and is there anything else he can do to help out?  I never would have imagined hearing those words a few months ago!

I wanted a calm conversation, so I tempted the children with playing iPad in the other room.  They were easily bribed!  However, they still kept popping in to ask questions and ask me to fix things, and of course "Buttercup touched my game! she is disTURBing me!"  Still, we managed to have a pretty reasonable conversation.  And Hibiscus told me in the evening that she is in a happy mood, because today she got to play iPad!

By the time he left, we were late for dinner and had no way of cooking anyways.  Our cooking gas ran out at breakfast, and then it turns out the hot water heater in the bathroom isn't turning on either. I managed to find cold things to eat for breakfast and lunch, which isn't as easy as it sounds because most "cupboard" items spoil so quickly here, almost everything goes in the fridge and needs heating back up again, or is totally dried and needs cooking.

So I gathered them up and we went into Ggaba to see what we could find.  So I ended up feeding my kids fried street food for dinner... I'll pretend it was a little adventure, instead of just a mama-fail.  Kind of like going to the fair or something.

So we ate chapatis and chips and kabobs and roasted bananas and popcorn and samosas.  In case you didn't know, samosas (often pronounced sambusa here, which amuses me) are triangles of dough folded around something and deep fried.  Because there is already dough, it is reasonable to contain meat or vegetables or something.  These samosas were filled with.... rice.  Yes, that would be carbs, with carbs, and a good side of pure fat, with a little bit of extra oil.  Welcome to Africa!

The kids loved everything.  Buttercup took on her food with her serious demeanor, although amazingly enough she applied herself most vigorously to the banana and kabob, which are kind of remotely healthy.  Emerson even deigned to eat a samosa, seeing that it had nothing healthy touching it.  And Hibiscus.... Hibiscus ate like a backhoe.  She plowed through her serving.  She inhaled my extra sausage.  She gobbled up seconds.  She asked Buttercup if she could have her uneaten kabob, as her chomping teeth simultaneously came flying towards the meat, and Buttercup screeched at her.  She absorbed thirds just by looking at them, and asked for more.  I suggested she sit quietly and listen to see if her body was full, and she screeched at me.  By then we were leaving the table, and she asked and finished the ends from my sausage, and finally got Buttercup's leftover kabob.  And then all the rest of us were in the next room, and the magnetic force of not-being-alone finally dragged her away from the table.

Cold baths.  They didn't have to wash hair.

Usual bedtime illogic, like Hibiscus jumping out of the bath and standing in the door to the bedroom, and ignoring me several times when I asked her to dry off and put on clothes, but then when Emerson came in she screeched "I don't want you be lookin' at my poochoo-poochoo!  You no be lookin' at my poochoo-poochoo!" as though he were some kind of pervert coming along for the view, and not merely entering his own bedroom.

Can you guess what poochoo-poochoo means?  I hear it about five hundred thousand times a day. Emerson and Hibiscus will just sit there and say "poochoo-poochoo" to each other and giggle hysterically.  Another one came home today, which is "bada-bada" and apparently is an uncouth way to refer to the rear side, behind the poochoo-poochoo, and is best delivered with a name, such as "bada-bada-Abudul-ah."  Then the other child says "ooh, you said bada-bada-Abudul-ah, I'm gonna report you!" and the first child accuses the second child of saying it in that sentence, and so forth.  They are incredibly fun names to say; much better than anything we've managed in English.

And we actually managed to calm down and read books.  Reading books is magical.  And the children told me about something that happened in school.  Esther couldn't read her book properly, even though she is seven years old and thus ought to be able to, so the teacher invited the children to take off her clothes so they could put a diaper on her like a baby.

I was just flabbergasted and horrified, and I told them so.  I think both children had accepted the teacher's logic and instructions at the time, because they are so used to listening to the teacher, but that this time they both felt deep inside like this wasn't very good.  Which is probably why I didn't hear about it until bedtime, because it felt so not-good to them.  Not to mention, Hibiscus is almost seven and can't read a blessed thing either, because no one has taught her how.  Good grief.  I can understand why Hibiscus complains that she doesn't like this teacher to lead her class, she prefers Uncle Derrick.

Luckily we still had prayers and blessings ahead of us to end the evening on a good note.  I even managed to convince Hibiscus to stop talking long enough to actually say the blessings!

I do love my little family.