Haunted Houses

A house that is inhabited by ghosts is known as "haunted".  Our sweet little home here has no ghosts, and is therefore certainly not haunted, and yet our family lives every single day surrounded on all sides by personalities unseen.  There is a whole troupe of these characters and some of them are of indeterminate age and gender.  I will however, endeavor to tell you what I do know about them.**

The main one is a shadowy figure known as Shurter*.  He (sometimes "she") has, by all accounts, done everything, been everywhere (but most particularly New York City) and he has seen it all.  He is at times an infant, and at others he has been as old as the age of 9.  He has a birthday nearly every day.  Sometimes he is potty trained, and sometimes he is still an infant in diapers.

Then we come to Piglet.  Piglet is Shurters sidekick.  He comes along for the ride on many of Shurter's adventures.  Often Piglet needs to be scolded for being naughty.  Hallie is usually in charge of said scolding, but I have caught Hanna at it occasionally as well.  If it is not Shurter's birthday, odds are it is Piglet's birthday. 

The mysterious Waseeth comes next.  He is Shurter's quieter, shyer friend.  He rarely makes an appearance, and strictly when necessary for whatever game is afoot.

Next we come to the real babies of the group.  (I say real babies because sometimes Shurter is a baby, but these kids are, without exception, always infants.)  Baby Rotha is the favorite.  She is Shurter's baby sister, and very consistently so.  She has no teeth and no hair, but I am assured by the local authorities on the subject that she will someday get both.

The other baby is Baby Martha.  She is very similar to Baby Rotha, she shows up when two babies are required or when baby Rotha is sleeping.  She is often crying and needs to be soothed by Cheerios.

This family also has some pets that need to be taken care of throughout the day.  There are 2 main dogs, and 2 main cats, although at any given time you may find yourself introduced, and induced to pet a barrage of others.  The two main dogs are Ruffy, of course, and Wally.  The cats are Aeesh and Oshie Ricie.  These cats sleep a lot, but love to be snuggled and petted whenever someone is willing to do so.

It does feel cramped from time to time living with all of these extra personalities, but inasmuch as they keep my girls well entertained and allow me an amount of peace and quiet I've seen no reason to evict them.  I will admit that my patience now and then runs a trifle thin from hearing ad nauseum about Shurter, he does seem to be a good fellow and so I am trying to learn to love him.

I think this will be a much quieter home when these friends finally decide to leave us.

*I don't know how to spell most of their names, Piglet being the obvious exception.
**Rest assured, my daughters do have real friends.

The Little Things

Sometimes I think about the time, years from now, when my girls are grown and beautiful and I am not involved in every bit of their daily lives.

Sometimes this thought scares me.  Sometimes I wonder how much they would hate me if they knew that I am already planning on camping outside their bedroom door, my ear to the floor pressed against that crack between the door and the carpet when their girlfriends come over, or how I plan on bringing in first popcorn, then soda, then napkins, just to have something to bring me into the room every five minutes when they have a boy over.  Which of course, he will only ever be on the opposite end of the couch in the living room.

And sometimes when Hallie hasn't stopped talking in two hours I think those days might be a relief, but sometimes I love that I know all of the little inner workings of her mind.  And yet, I can already feel her slipping away and becoming her own person independent of me and what I expose her to.

Hallie has recently been singing a song she calls "Pirates to Choose" and the lyrics are as follows: Pirates to choose on earth.  The Lamanite had a bandaid, but the crab came and gave him a sticker.  For computers. On earth."  She likes to sit at the piano, and play a sweet little melody, and she and Hanna and I sing this little song.  Tonight I learned that at church Hallie has been learning a new song, and it has a line in it about the "power to choose" that we have "on earth".  And a light bulb clicked on in my head.  Suddenly this song we'd been singing at home wasn't some random thing that she cooked up in her brain to amuse me with, but it was her attempt at remembering what she had learned at church.  I had no idea.

I was going through the pictures on our camera, and came across this little gem.  I just assumed that Hallie was being silly, and I laughed a little when I showed it to Devin.  He said, "Oh, she's being King Benjamin on the tower."  And I was so sad that I wasn't there, that I didn't know that she knew that story enough to pretend that, and that I didn't recognize it as anything more than just a cute little moment in her life.  Which, of course, it was... but still.

An Honest Look

I've heard some criticism about people who blog that they try too hard to make their lives look shiny and perfect, and of course it isn't.  I have never necessarily gone out of my way to make my life look or sound better than it is, but I certainly have never given you all the gritty details of my life. (Let's be honest, my life isn't that really what anyone would call gritty, but I do spare you the boring mundane parts.)  But today, I'm in a grouchy mood, and there is no good reason for it. And because of that I am going to give you every detail of my mundane and not so gritty life.  Then I dare you to tell me that I try to make my life seem perfect on here.  (None of you have ever said that I do that, but I suppose this post will take away forever any right you ever have to say that.)

Hallie woke up at 3:00 and climbed into our bed.  I said, "Hallie go back to bed."  Devin is sick right now with the cold we all had last week, but for some reason he was feeling charitable so he said she could stay for two minutes and then he would help her go back to bed. I rolled over and ignored the whole thing.  I found out later he was up for the next two hours uncomfortable from his cold and that she had woken him out of his deep sleep cycle.  She woke up again at 6:30, and on weekdays that's fine because he is awake then too.  But today he didn't want to get up that early.  He's sick, remember?  He came downstairs with her, put in an episode of Curious George, and came back to bed until 7 when he went to turn it off and start making breakfast.  I woke up at 7:07, and Hanna woke up at 7:17.


We all congregate in the kitchen to eat breakfast.  I offer to make the pancakes and let Devin go back to bed.  He won't do it.  I tell Hallie to go wake up GramB and ask if she wants breakfast.  They come back downstairs. We all eat, except Devin who isn't feeling well, but he has to leave to go help clean the church so he heads outside to shovel the driveway.  It snowed all night and so far all day today, too.  I try at first to talk him out of going, he's sick, remember? and then to talk him out of letting the girls go outside to "help" him shovel, but he won't listen to me.  I lay down on the floor with Hanna's sweater as a pillow.  I am still like that when they come back in from shoveling the driveway.  Devin kisses us all goodbye and tries to leave.  He can't even drive down our street far enough to get past our house, so he somehow gets the car back in the garage and calls to say he can't make it.


He comes inside, I am now sitting on the couch, my enormous belly propped up with various pillows and blankets underneath which I am sweating, but without which Heather hurts me.  He begins cleaning all the bathrooms.  My mom does my dishes and cleans my kitchen.  The girls play with toys, and get in random fights over things like the pieces of the YAHTZEE game.  I try to break up the fights, but I don't have much energy and mostly just don't want to listen to the yelling.  My entire body hurts every time I move.


Devin finishes cleaning the bathrooms and begins doing the week's laundry.  He collects it all, sorts it all, sprays stain remover on the girls' shirts that I really care about, and begins a load.  Then he cleans up the laundry room from all the accumulated clutter from the week.  Most of this is usually my Saturday chores, but I'm not doing anything today.  I'm now sitting at the table reading articles from the Ensign.  Good stuff in there this month.  The girls are now pretending to be panda bears at the zoo.

Devin was finally feeling "well enough" to go running, so he went downstairs to go on the treadmill.  The girls desperately wanted to make cookies, so I told them to talk GramB into it.  It wasn't a terribly hard sell I don't think.  I help get some of the ingredients for the cookies, and then, my strength sapped, I collect the first load from the drier and begin to fold it.  Devin finishes his run, takes a shower, and we all sit down to eat lunch, the smell of fresh cookies teasing us from the counter.  I eat two scoops of leftover chicken broccoli and rice and that's all Heather will allow me to put in my stomach.  She is generous in making room for a couple cookies though, and for that I was truly grateful.


The laundry is all washed and dried and Devin folds it all (except for my one small load, of course) and then he puts it all away.  He works for a while on a lesson he has to teach at church tomorrow, and then to the delight of the small people in this household he takes them outside to build snowmen.  At this point I am asleep on the couch, and literally even in my dream Heather is pushing on my ribs so hard I'm sure they are bruised, and my hips ache and it isn't a really very restful sleep because it feels too much like actual life.  Although in my dream Reed McGrew came over with his family and a cheeseball, and he and his wife and adopted four sweet girls who kept wanting to rub my belly.  How's that for random?

And I've just woken up and written this angry blog post and now the girls are coming in through the garage all snowy and wet with cheeks pink and full of stories about what fun they had outside with Daddy in the winter wonderland we've finally gotten to have a taste of this year.

So, there's my life.  And I'm not really angry or even all that grouchy, but the selfish immediate part of me wishes that Devin would just lay down on the couch and be miserable with me instead of being Mr. Grade A Wonderful because then I wouldn't feel so bad about the absolute nothing of my day.  I'll repent now. Please forgive me. 

How's that for honesty?

In Case I Forget, Again.

I believe it is a common thing after the new year to have trouble remembering to write the date correctly, spending the last twelve months writing one number and then suddenly a ball drops and we have to start writing a new number.

How long is it acceptable to keep making this mistake into the New Year?

And just out of curiosity, how bad does it look if you write the year from two years ago?

About a week ago I was filling out a bunch of forms that I had to sign and date, and I kept writing 2010.  Embarrassing.

I post this as a reminder to myself.  The New Year is here. It is on its way to not being the "new year" anymore, but just the standard year that we all live in (until the next new year rolls around).  You celebrated this "new year".  Remember?  You and Devin and the girls made party hats?  And you marched around the house yelling "Happy New Year!" while banging on pots and skillets with wooden spoons?  REMEMBER?

Ok, so stay with me, here's the important part.  It is now the year 2012.  Not 2011. And most CERTAINLY not 2010. So don't write that. Ever again.

New Year's Resolution for 2012: Don't Take Any More Sideways Videos

Let's Guess

When do YOU think Heather will come?

For your consideration, Hallie was born on her "due date" and Hanna was born exactly a week early.

Also, if you are going to guess late you should be grateful this poll is anonymous... I'm just saying.