Bill’s!

This morning we loaded 8 people up in our van and went to Bill’s Berry Farm with the cousins for the first time this season. We got there early enough that it was still cool outside. Bonus!

First, the kids climbed some straw mountains:

[Rose is totally posing up there]

That Tate-face!

Jay and Rose are the best. When we started walking over to the playground part of the farm, they saw Jeff and I holding hands and copied us. I adore this.

And on to the tire swing:

 

Last up, a cousin picture:

After this we got a bag of steaming hot fresh apple cinnamon donuts (which, as usual, disappeared too fast for any kind of picture). Then we clambered back into the van and drove home. There’s nothing like a quick Saturday morning family excursion!

Rose and Me

At home together.

We’re still getting used to our time together while Jay is away at school all day.

Sometimes we go out…

Costco pizza is huge.

 

I got my hair cut last week, and Rose sat patiently at the salon, flipping through Good Housekeeping magazine (the only one in the salon’s collection that seemed acceptable for a 3 year old) and drawing with crayons on her “twip-boad” (clipboard).

Mostly we stay home.

We eat plenty of snacks.

Rose cranks out the multi-colored scribbles.

I try to convince her that we can only hang up a few of them on our fancy new pinned-up twine strings in the kitchen. Rose really likes hanging up her artwork.

Rose also rather enjoys taking selfies. Her eyelashes!

We talk about baby Amber and daydream a little. A while ago, the maternity store gave me a gift card for a Carseat Canopy, so I ordered one and it came this week. 

Rose plays. She told me that this is a family: the baby, with her pink Bunny as the mom, Jay’s Monkey-Kid as the dad, orange bunny as the sister, and the little white monkey as the brother.

I do my best to keep up with the dishes and the laundry. This week I even vacuumed the upstairs! It was exhausting. Two days later I still haven’t made it to the basement, although the vacuum is waiting hopefully at the top of the stairs.

Rose reads stacks of books to herself. Sometimes she asks me to read to her, but lots of the time she likes to gather a big stack and look through the entire pile, one book and one page at a time.

We miss Jay. The other day I realized that we can actually SEE his school from our house. This is the view from our back porch, fully zoomed out, half zoomed in, and all the way zoomed in. That white water tower in the middle is a useful point of reference. Jay’s school is the building right behind the bleachers—that tan triangle is the roof. For some reason it’s a comfort to live close to the school.

More armchair selfies. We do plenty of snuggling.

It’s a calm existence. We’re ok with it while it lasts…

[7 more weeks]

A real piano!

For the past 6 years, we’ve had a 66-key electric keyboard. I never played it because 1. keyboards are wimpy and wobbly and don’t sound as good as real pianos and 2. all of the fun music requires more than 66 keys to play—something I didn’t know until I tried playing it on the keyboard. So it’s been a while since I’ve played the piano regularly. I was never very good at playing. I learned the requisite 10 or 15 hymns for my Mom as a teenager and didn’t really play much after that (unless you count the creaking, grudging opening hymn for seminary class).

It all started 6 or 7 months ago, when our friends the Peters got a new piano. They offered to give their old one to us for free, and of COURSE! I said yes right away. Then I became deathly pregnantly ill and stopped caring about anything except my next hurl. Jeff was completely occupied taking care of our life without my help. So the piano plan was left hanging.

Then a few weeks ago, the patient Peters family offered us the piano again because they were really ready to get rid of it. Can you believe they kept two pianos in their house all that time, waiting for us?? They are so nice! With some clever over-the-phone measuring, we discovered that the piano would fit in our van. Jeff set off with his father one Saturday afternoon, and they came back an hour or so later, drenched in sweat, hauling a piano. In our minivan. I chose not to watch them lift/slide/whatever it out of the van because that kind of thing totally stresses me out, especially when I am incapable of helping in any way (or even doing a nervous dance). Somehow they maneuvered the piano into our basement to its spot behind the couch. And just like that, we had a piano.

It’s not a fancy piano or a recognizable brand, and it probably should be tuned sometime soon, but it IS a real piano. I was slowly saving up for my dream beautiful Baldwin piano (like the one we had when I was growing up), but we were still a solid 3-4 years from having enough $$ for one of those. Now that we have this little piano, I’m kind of tempted to reallocate what little had accumulated in the piano fund elsewhere, like to have our current piano tuned. Because when you’re no expert, a piano is a piano. As long as it’s in tune.

Having a real piano in my own private home has inspired me to play the piano often. Since we got the piano, I have been playing it 5 or 6 times per week! Laaa!  What’s really surprising is how much fun I’m having with it. I must be an adult. I never really enjoyed playing piano when I was younger. It was just something I had to survive. But now I’m finding such satisfaction from playing our “new” piano. The nice thing about never excelling in my past piano playing is that I am at about the same skill level now as I was 10 years ago, ha ha. The only way to go is up!

I have a very modest music library including a hymnbook, a mini Primary songbook (hard to read those teeny notes), The Man from Snowy River book, and a book of simple kid songs (love that one). To supplement this slim library, I ordered the Piano Guys’ new songbook as well as a Les Miserables piano book from trusty Amazon.com last week. The latter is a comfortable challenge and the former is WAY out of my league, but still fun to attempt. When I sit down to play, I just pick up whatever music I’m in the mood for and go with it. I’m not actually practicing much, just playing and stumbling along for fun. It’s bound to help some eventually, right? Rose loves to sit and listen to my hesitant plunking. She says “Mommy, this song is bootiful,” even to a messy rendition of The Wheels on the Bus.

I’m still working on the decor for that giant wall. [Any ideas?] 

On Sunday nights, Jeff has started his very own sing-along. He stands behind me and sings hymns and kids songs at whatever pathetic or choppy pace I set. Often he sings the same note over and over or holds it long while I fumble around to find the next chord. My favorite so far was his rendition of Skip to My Lou—he pulled out his faux-opera voice for that one and sang it long, warbly, and slow to match my unpracticed tempo. It’s even harder for me to play when I’m LAUGHING MY HEAD OFF! It’s so much fun.

 

We have a real piano!

That’s the story, morning glory.

The Tooth

Jay has had a loose tooth for the past month or more. It came out yesterday! Jay and Rose were in the basement wrestling when it happened. Jay said “all it took was a little wrestling!” Ha, yes it did. Jay has had that little tooth since he was three months old. He’s always been rather speedy in the tooth-growing department—he already has half a big tooth that was growing behind the old one.

We explained the fun Mommy-tooth fairy tradition to Jay when we discovered his loose tooth. He was pretty excited to get a dollar for his tiny tooth. I thought that was a tad steep, but Jeff claimed inflation so we stuck with the full dollar.

Almost exactly five years ago, when the tooth was new.

MAN he was a cute baby.

I die a little every time I see this picture.

There’s the tooth. Jay put it in a baggie and hid it under his pillow last night. Jeff and I put four quarters into another baggie and switched them out while Jay was asleep (he’s a conveniently sound sleeper). This morning around 6am, I heard Jay find the quarters. He was pretty excited.

Kindergarten and a lost tooth—it’s been a big week!

First day

Today was Jay’s first day of kindergarten! He was so excited this morning it was hard for him to wait all the way till the 8:55am start time of his school. I squirted water in his hair to tame the bedhead and helped him pick out coordinating clothing. We packed a lunch in his beloved R2D2 lunchbox. We put his all-about-me paper in his trusty monkey backpack. The boy was ready. [The mom was not!]

Here’s Jay’s excited face. He said: “I love this day! I’m so excited for kindergarten!”

 

We drove the half mile to Harriet Thompson Elementary (since walking still exhausts my pregnant body).

We walked into the school. Rose and I signed in and donned “visitor” stickers and walked into the school with Jay to help him find his classroom.

We said hello to Miss Hollowell and watched her help Jay hang his backpack up. Then she directed Jay to his seat and gave him a nametag. He decided that he wants to be called Joseph at school, even though he can’t write it and he’s never been called that before. It’s so funny to me—I wonder if he’ll keep it up or if he’ll want to go by Jay at school before long. He seems to like the secret-identity feel of his real name at school, because he made it clear that he still wants us to call him Jay at home. Jay immediately showed his loose tooth to his teacher. Then I dashed across the room, took a quick blurry picture, hugged and kissed Jay, and then left with Rose. Without Jay.

I managed to stay on top of the wave of emotion through the school hallway and on the car drive home. When I walked into the house, though, the first thing I saw was Jay’s favorite manky yellow blanket laying on the floor where he had left it. That did it. The tears started flowing. My sweet little JAY! Away at school for six and a half hours! Rose waltzed straight into the playroom when we got home and started playing with Legos. She seemed happy until about half an hour later when she came upstairs and asked “how long till Jay comes home?” Soon after that I pulled myself together, turned on some soothing Piano Guys music, and cleaned the kitchen. It made me feel better. Rose sat at the counter, listened to the music, and watched me clean. She was my little companion for most of the day—I’m not sure she knew what to do without Jay around either! We both took turns saying “I miss Jay!” all day. Our house felt so quiet and empty without Jay’s constant chatter and endless flow of questions. I wonder if Rose will start talking more or if we’ll just be quiet together.

Rose and I, wearing our matching apple visitor stickers from the school, and trying to smile through our Jay-pangs.

Around 3:10pm we got into the van and went to pick up the school boy Jay. The carpool madness is definitely not going to be my favorite part of school. I hope I can start walking at least part of the way soon! Luckily Jeff plans to pick Jay up 3 days a week. Having a teacher for a husband has SO many perks, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before.

Jay was so satisfied with himself for finally Going to School. He told us all about how they went on a hunt for the gingerbread man. That’s how the teacher showed them around the school: she read them a story about the gingerbread man and they went all over the school “looking” for it, while learning the lay of the land in the process.

They stopped at each place and took a picture of the class (there was just half the class there today). Then they made this little project. I have already decided to dedicate a wall to hanging up Jay’s school papers. He’s never done much with paper before now, and Rose colors on the same page for so long that I’ve never really hung up any of their art. Now it will happen! I love kids’ creations!

Jay said he got to play on the playground and he especially pointed out: “and nobody bullied me!” GOOD THING!

We were all so happy to have Jay back home again. As I suspected it would, the afternoon between getting home from school and dinner time felt very short. I made sure to sneak in a few extra Jay hugs and kisses this evening.

And we get to do it all again tomorrow.
[Hopefully minus the tears on my part]

Last day

Today was Jay’s last day home before he starts kindergarten. Ahhh! He seems so old and yet so young all at once. Last week we got to meet his teacher, Miss Hollowell. She’s young and enthusiastic and seems very nice. Jay is so excited about school! I have conflicting emotions about it all. On one hand, I’m glad because Jay is so excited about school. He is rarin' to go out and learn new things. On the other hand, it freaks me out that he will be gone for 6.5 hours every day and I won’t be able to see what he’s doing! It’s going to be hard for me NOT to know exactly what’s going on to influence and teach my Jay. I know he will be fine, but it’s just such a big change for all of us. Rose and I are going to miss Jay during the day.

I mean,

and

and

What will we do with out Jay during the day?

I’m going to miss this phase. It’s the end of such a sweet time of my life as a mom—having ALL of my kids ALL to myself every day. I guess I just have to get used to sharing them with the world. Sniff.

Here we go!