Silly Days

When Lazarus and I came home from the hospital on the third day after his birth, we had to shake up the bedtime routine.  We'd been prepping Anne for it all along, but the shift couldn't happen in full force until we actually had a baby in hand.  Changes for Anne included: She would have to sleep completely in her bed, not in our bed.  She could not be guaranteed her night-time mama milk as the last event before going to sleep.  And, Daddy would be the one sleeping next to her, not Mama.

So in those early days, we wound up evolving a new bed time routine, partly by design, and partly by inspiration and needfulness, which has stuck.  She gets a Silly Day, a Normal Day, a Song, and a Prayer, in that specific order.  Daddy is usually the dispenser of these things, although Anne is often quite collaborative in their composition.  The Song and Prayer are pretty self-explanatory.  The Normal Day is just a recap of what she did during the day.  The Silly Day is where the magic happens.

One of the early Silly Days involved Anne waking up one morning to find the entire apartment filled with baby pacis, such that it was very difficult to find anyone or anything, and her friend Kayla coming down from upstairs to experience the paci madness.  Her brother liked it, because he always had a new paci falling into his mouth after he had inadvertently spit one out.  In another related Silly Day, Anne herself was a paci, and was subject to the abuses her brother could heap on such objects as a newborn.

She often requests a specific Silly Day theme.  "Dada, can I be a frog?  No a turtle."  "Dada, how about I am a shower."  "Can I be a snake?"

Two Silly Days have stood out as extraordinarily memorable.

The first happened during our Christmas vacation in Texas.  It is just possible that Anne was driving us all a little batty with her barrage of "why" questions, as well as the fact that she was still having a lot of trouble sharing her mama milk with her brother and letting him have first priority in that department....  In said Silly Day, she woke up one morning with two heads.  The two heads spent the day arguing with each other.  They argued about which head got mama milk first.  Then they argued about their breakfast.  They spent the day talking to each other nonstop, and asking each other "why" about absolutely everything.  Anne and Jared and I were in stitches as this story was composed, and when we shared it with my mom the following morning, she found it to be quite uproarious.

The second has come up just in the last week.  It has been subtitled Backwards Day.  It is Anne's full day of activities in reverse.  Such reverse, in fact, that it defies laws of physics.  For example Daddy picked up little tiny white things and using little nail clippers, glued the white things onto the end of Anne's fingers.  Also, the eating of food in reverse is quite popular to describe.  Anne sits down in front of an empty bowl with a spoon, puts the spoon into her mouth, takes applesauce out of her mouth, dumps the applesauce into the bowl, and when the bowl is full, goes and puts the applesauce into a jar in the fridge.  The grossest part of the Backwards Day is the cleaning of cat boxes in reverse.  Daddy pushes up on the lever on the toilet, and cat poo comes up the pipes into the bowl.  Daddy reaches in and scoops it out, dumping it into the cat boxes, and returning the now-dirty cat boxes to their rightful places.  Gross, but also so funny, that the whole family is crying by the time it is over.  Backwards Days are super popular, but also have to be rationed to every other night, or every three nights.

Three Seasons in Three Days...

We tried, at least.

Friday, I unexpectedly ended up with  no teaching, so I took a long walk and played with the kids on the playground (along with doing some cleaning I'd put off.)  It was almost 70 and sunny, so we'll just call that Summer.  Oh, and I ate a popsicle.

The hat was for sun protection on the playground.

Saturday after church, we went up the Mowich Lake road at Mt. Rainier in search of snow shoeing.  We came to the road-closed gate before we reached anything remotely snow shoe-able, so we went for a hike from that location which we'd never taken before.  It was lovely.  Sort of.  The adults got some excellent visual nature therapy... to the sound track of screaming, whining, crying, and incessant requests.  I think we only had 5 minutes of pleasantness from children at a time, sometimes only 30 seconds.  In their defense, it was raining/snowing/schnerschting quite a bit and it was in the 40s and they were tired (but at least well fed).  "Take your family out on a nature walk," they said.  "It'll be a Sabbath blessing," they said.  Ha.  The sort of hike that makes you never want to set foot outside with children again.  But we'll just call it a win.  The parents got to view beautiful things.  No one died.  We made it back to the car before dark.  We didn't wreck our car in the Mexican-style pot holes.  And we tromped through snow banks down in a valley by a little rushing river, and the snow was coming down hard in huge, melty flakes just as we made it back to the parking lot.  Winter found.  Mission accomplished.

Little hiker boy riding with Mama

Riding on Daddy's back

The snow was coming down hard and fast.

Sunday after the kids and I dropped off the recycling at our secret drop-off location (the new management got rid of the recycling bins on the property - boo!) we dropped over to the Rhododendron Species Garden in Federal Way, where we are now members.  Did you know that said flowers originated in China and spread across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and North America?  This place is home to THE group in the world which collects native, rare, and endangered rhodys from around the world and grows them on a 24-acre tract for people to come see.  It's lush and wonderful.  As it was raining today, we spent our time mostly in the conservatory where they grow the warmer climate specimens.  More nature therapy, but minus Jared (sadly!) and minus the wailing of small children (they loved being warm and dry!)  It felt delicious to go off and do something so fun and "irresponsible" on a Sunday right before a busy work week.  We'll call that outing Spring.

Largest fern I have seen in my life.  Look at the size of the fiddlehead!