Kids, Books, and More Extra

Not so long ago, the post I wrote after Lazarus' birth resurfaced in some people's email, triggering questions as to whether we'd just had a fourth child.  Honestly, I'm not quite sure how that happened.  I WAS digging around on that post that day trying to download a picture, because that day was mathematically significant.  It was the very day that Lazarus was three years and five months, the precise age that Anne was when Lazarus was born.  I am amazed at how old I thought Anne was at that time, and feel sad that I expected more from her maturity-wise than seems reasonable with Lazarus.  I guess that is the curse of being the eldest.  I am trying to revise my expectations for her in general... 

With three kids, though, I do feel like I've entered this odd "secret" club of "big families."  It seems funny to me, because I grew up in a three-kid family, and I NEVER had the sense of being from a big family.  I heard from so many sources that going from two to three kids was MUCH harder than going from one to two.  So frankly, I set my expectations for that transition *really low* and gave us as much grace and time as we could afford.  In my experience, and maybe because of my expectations, but maybe more because of the particular personalities of who we had, it was a much easier transition on the whole.  Sure, it's trickier to get everyone clothed and fed and out the door or to get everyone in bed, but not THAT much harder.  

However... once Laurel got to be about nine or ten months old, it became a whole different story.  She was no longer a cute, time-consuming doll to her siblings, but a real person who was standing up, walking around, getting into their stuff, talking, taking their things, and having obvious opinions.  That's when three got really hard.  We've made progress since then, but I'm not going to lie - it is overwhelming sometimes.  The complexity of relationships has multiplied, and with it the behavior challenges.

We LOVE getting audio books from the library.  In the last few months we have heard: 

• Twenty-Eight, a book about 28 figures from Black history. Yesterday, the pastor started telling a story about Harriet Tubman in the sermon without mentioning her name, and my eldest leaned over and said, I know who that is!
• The Wind in the Willows - a classic I had never read before
• Winnie the Pooh - another classic I had not read before
• The Great Cake Mystery - for those who have fallen in love with Mma Ramotswe and her Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, this is a chapter prequel for children
• Little House on the Prairie - a favorite from my childhood which I barely remembered when I heard it again.
• The Penderwicks.  This is a five-book series, and hands-down Anne's favorite books of all time.  We have heard all but the second.  It is inspired by Little Women and references it on so many levels, but is set in more recent Massachusetts - there are recycling bins, bus stations, day care, cell phones, and computers with the internet.
• Because of Anne's love for the Penderwicks, we just started listening to Little Women, which I had never read, and Anne is loving it, too.
• Also, I read to them Sarah Plain and Tall, which dovetails nicely with Little House.
• And I have been slowly reading to Anne the first five of the Betsy-Tacy books, which I had never heard of, but a friend gave the collection to Anne upon hearing of her love for the Penderwicks, as well.  It is tales based on the author's childhood in Victorian-era Duluth.
• We just finished listening to The Great Trouble, a historical novel about the cholera outbreak in London's Soho in 1854.  Dr. John Snow was instrumental in ending the epidemic, as he rightly theorized that cholera was water-born, rather than caused by "bad air".  The story was told from the perspective of a fictional 13-year-old orphan who did odd jobs for the doctor.  Fascinating!
• I read Michelle Obama's memoire, which my dad gave me for my birthday.  So interesting to see how someone else's life unfolds in a way totally different from mine.  Very personal and relatable, though.
• I am reading The Yellow House by Sarah Broom, another memoire given to me by Jared for Christmas.  The author is only a few months older than me and grew up in the poor part of New Orleans.  It is her family history going back generations, her childhood in the Yellow House, Hurricaine Katrina and its destruction of everything she new in New Orleans, and her life after the Water.  Again, fascinating, and particularly so, since we are the same age.

The More Extra of this week:

Nutmeg had a weird knee injury and a trip to the vet on Thursday morning.  Anne has been helping me give her her pain pills.

Wednesday night our 13-year-old water heater conked out, so while I was at the vet, I was fielding calls from Jared about decisions needing to be made regarding that.  Someone replaced it on Thursday in time to get our little house reorganized for group class.

Also on Thursday, between the vet trip to Kent and the hot water heater replacement, I took Anne to Seattle for her bass lesson.  On the way back, we stopped at the retirement home where we had scheduled our studio recital for March 15th to find out the reservation wasn't going to work after all.  Fortunately I found another retirement home the following day who could host us.  I HATE making phone calls for business stuff, but of course it's part of life....

6

During the April break we spent a week in Oregon.  Laurel reached six months, and the following day Anne reached six years.  Warning:  the rest of this post is pretty much baby spam.

We spent a nice afternoon at the Oregon Museum of Science and Technology.  I had most of the time in this spot...

It rained most of the week, so there was a lot of this:

The cake turned out well enough it was worth making another:

Anne and Grandma spent some time making slippers out of cardboard and an old towl...

Finally, the last day was nice out:

(Cello practice on the stairs:)