Eating Glue, and so on

I managed to make it through 36 years of life without ever eating glue. Up until yesterday. Yesterday I was sitting at the table with my kids, cleaning up our lunch dishes at co-op. I moved a lid and felt something wet on my hand. It was a little white smear. They'd eaten go-gurts earlier, so I thought nothing of it and just licked it off.

Not yogurt.

The 6yo had a class project sitting next to our dishes, and the class project had huge globs of wet glue. Which is, of course, what I'd just eaten.

In case you're wondering, it was gross. Not the worst thing I've ever eaten (that would be horseradish), but I'd definitely never eat it on purpose. I had to eat an orange slice and a big bite of cake to try to get rid of the flavor, and even then it felt like it was sticking to my tongue. (Sticking. Har har.)

So, there's that item off my bucket list.


In other news, the 2yo is currently even more crazy about reading than his sisters. Yesterday morning he woke up around 5:30 wailing, "Read a book!" Which was pretty much how he'd fallen asleep the night before too.

Also, we were playing with wiki sticks earlier in the week, and I made the letters for the 6yo's name, so the 2yo wanted me to do it for him too. I did, and I spelled out his name while pointing at the letters. It was fun, and then he started jumbling them around and picking up each letter and saying it was his name. Good golly, 2yos are cute.

The next day while I was showering he toddled in (I have got to start locking that door!) holding a bunch of wiki sticks in his hands and saying, "Letters!" Also ridiculously cute. But you probably had to be there to understand.

On second thought, you shouldn't be there. Because I was showering and all.


Now for a teaser: Soon I hope to regale you with tales of our trip to Londontown and my giddy jumping-up-and-down excitement over getting to use a drop spindle. It was good times!

Also, maybe I'll get around to updates on my teen writing class and our epic anthology!

Idiom Synonyms

Today I was thinking of all the idioms I could that were synonymous with "blow a gasket."

Blow a fuse
Flip out
Go postal
Have a meltdown
Have a cow
Flip your lid

And how about the last straw? This one was tougher. Couldn't really think of any that worked great.
Straw that broke the camel's back
Match in the powder keg
Things reached critical mass

You might assume, correctly, that I was feeling a little cranky today. (Nothing serious, just junk and clutter.)

What's in a Name?

I can still remember the overpowering feeling that came over me when Coriel was born, one of peaceful, but also playful, happiness. This was how I knew that the name Felice was just right for her middle name. It wasn’t me creating that feeling (because, hey, I’d just been through the most painful and emotionally overwhelming experience of my life). It was her, her spirit, who she was.

She was the easiest. I knew her immediately.

Addra took a while longer, but even still we knew over a few days that Bliss was right for her, another joyful name.

Now, of course, we’d sort of started a pattern. When I was pregnant with Koa, we realized we had better at least look carefully at joyful names or else someday the kid was gonna wonder if we didn’t like him.

We wracked our brains. We scoured the internet. I don’t think it was until after he was born that Brice finally discovered the right name, and I’m still not sure how he found it. But “koa” is a word that means “joyful” in Maori, with the extra bonus that it means “warrior” in Hawaiian. And, of course, the fact that it suits him.

It was almost too much to ask that we might find a name for our fourth child that would follow this theme. Because, of course, at this point, we would really be signing up for years of family therapy if the child didn’t get a “happy” name. Again, we had a difficult time. This is partially because boy names are just harder for us, partially because we were seeking a particular meaning (if possible, anyway), and partially because—let’s be honest—a small part of us really wanted an “E” name so that our kids would spell out CAKE.*

I also thought we should look carefully at names that mean “faith,” because more than with any of the other children, taking this leap toward having a baby was an act of faith in God’s plan for us, and it was a terrifying one at that.

We tried things out. We joked about various silly ideas, like “Agapito Roughty” (a combination of two names we’d heard while doing work in the temple). We vetoed quite a number of options. We came down to about five that we thought we might like, and we tried them all out on the giant belly. Then we tried them again. Then we started combining them. Only one of our options, “Asher” (we’d call him Ash), had a meaning related to “joy.” But I have to confess it was slightly too popular for me to be perfectly happy about it.**

Then, a few weeks before the babe was born, Brice was reading the story of Ammon in the Book of Mormon. If you’re unfamiliar with it, or need a refresher, here’s the salient part: Ammon and his brothers, and their friend Alma, had been very wicked people, but through miraculous intervention, they had changed, repented, and become great missionaries, spreading the joy of the gospel all through the land, especially to people who had traditionally been hateful toward their people and the gospel. After a time, they came back together to share in their excitement over their successes. Ammon especially was vocal about his joy, and his brothers told him he was being kind of braggy. This was his response: “I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom; but behold, my joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God” (Alma 26:11).

And there it was, the joy we were looking for. We didn’t officially settle on the name until a couple of days after his birth, but it became the top contender a week or two before. So though his name doesn’t literally mean “joy” or “happy,”*** it still comes from a place of joy, and that seems right to us.****

As I think about it, each of our children’s “happy” names holds a different nuance, and each represents something I hope they will have in their lives.

~ Coriel’s is the deep, inward peace and joy that comes from within.

~ Addra’s is the full-bodied joy of sheer existence.

~ Koa’s is the joy of being strong in a meaningful, righteous cause.

~ Ammon’s is the joy of knowing that God has a plan and a wonderful place for you in it.

So that’s how Ammon got his name, and we think it suits him very well. We have been blessed in all of our children to have such joyful spirits, and I’m grateful for that. I sincerely hope and pray that I can help them to keep those joys even when life is hard or when circumstances try to make them despair. Also, I hope that I will never make the mistake of making them think they should be happy at any cost. I don’t believe happiness is the final goal; I think it’s just a natural outgrowth of being a good, loving, compassionate person.

Finally, a note on pronunciation: The first time I was asked how to pronounce “Ammon,” I went into this huge, long spiel that may or may not have trotted out my love of the schwa. Then I realized I could just say that it rhymes with “ham ‘n’ cheese” (minus the cheese, of course). And then, finally, Brice pointed out that it also rhymes with “salmon.” So there you go, an actually simple and sensible pronunciation guide at last. It rhymes with “salmon.”

And now you know more than you ever wanted to about the children’s names.

Ha, look! Now he looks disarmed too!
Har har har.

* Now, instead, the spell out “CAKA,” which admittedly sounds suspiciously like how a small child says “yucky,” but that’s just too bad.

** No, this is not a blog post analyzing my personal hang-ups about ridiculous things.

*** Actually, it apparently literally means “a people.”

**** Also, if you are thinking about a joke about how Ammon is “disarming,” just know that we’ve already gotten it several times. :) *****

***** Again, if you’re not familiar with the Book of Mormon, there’s a part where Ammon is serving the king of the people he’s a missionary to, and he saves the king’s sheep—and the servants—from a band of robbers. He does this by chopping off the robbers’ arms. Hence “disarming.” Har har har.

Random Sillies

In case you haven’t been catching the random cuteness that is my children on Facebook lately, here are a few random items from the last couple weeks that have been quite enjoyable.

*

Coriel is enjoying lately how words are put together, and she likes to try out new things. Here’s an example: One night she was trying to lie on Brice (mostly by smooshing him) and saying, “Let me see if you are lie-able.”

*

Addra told me one day, “I am going to eat your head. Then you would have no head.” Then she paused, as if really considering the issues with having no head. “But that would be bad because you would have to go to the doctor.”

*

Similarly, she told Brice that she was going to eat him: “I am going to eat your head on a sandwich with jellies.”

Brice: And what else?

Addra: Grapes and oranges and eyeballs. And lots of jellies. (Then she pretended to pluck out all our eyes and put them on her sandwich.)

*

When asked what her yellow rice tasted like, Addra replied with something that sounded a lot like, “Starlight.”

*

Okay, now for just a little bit of bragfest: Coriel is totally jetting on reading. Earlier this week she came to me and told me she was almost finished reading Sky the Blue Fairy (it’s a maybe first/second grade chapter book). I didn’t even know she’d started it. She’d just been sitting on her own, quietly doing whatever she wanted for the last hour or so—and that was apparently what she’d been doing! It’s so much fun to watch her be so into reading.

*

I had to share the picture of me and my big sister M somewhere, because I think this is such a cute picture of us. Plus, when I look at Addra I occasionally catch this major glimpse of similarity between the two of us. Here is a place where I think that shows.

*

I discovered a new eight-letter, each finger word: BIPLANES! Hoorah!

*

The picture of the girls on this post is one my friend Meghan took for us one day just for fun (I can’t decide if I like the color or b&w better, so I posted both). It’s what happens when they get going on the dress-ups. Coriel dresses up as a pirate ninja, and Addra dresses as a fairy queen. It should be noted that there is something so perfect about these choices for their personalities at present. Coriel is all about feisty and heroic; Addra is much more about refinement and power. (Also, I believe that Addra’s expression here is her “fancy” face.) Give Coriel a crown, and she’ll become a princess—probably one who will dress up very fancy and then have to defeat a dragon. Give Addra a crown, and she will be a queen—and we will all become her servants and have to bow to her every whim. (This princess/queen dichotomy has actually happened with them on numerous occasions; I joke that Coriel knows which person gets to accessorize, and Addra just knows who rules the kingdom.)

*

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

Another Blog!

As if you didn't already have too many places to try to keep up with my random writings, here's another! I have joined another blog, called Mormon Mommy Writers. I will be posting there every fortnight (I love that word) on Thursdays, and today is my first one. So go check it out. And, you know, you could just decide to officially follow their blog, or mine (this one), or my other one. Because, it turns out, sometimes writers like to feel like someone's reading them. :)

And now I will bite the bullet and inform you all in one mass sweep that the two agents who I was most likely to get a response from have now officially rejected my manuscript. So, onward and upward, I suppose. [Insert rueful smile here, but not an emoticon, because that would just annoy me here for some reason, although apparently it doesn't annoy me in the previous paragraph.]

Also, in the event that you haven't read the said rejected manuscript and are still somehow dying to, I have the latest "final" version in actual regular kindle format. Well, it's not fancy, and the chapters are currently listed in the table of contents as "unknown." But still, I learned to convert to kindle, and that was just plain fun. And wow, let me just clarify that just because I said I liked being read doesn't mean you have to read my whole book. Blog posts are nice, though.

Okay, now I think I'll go crawl under a rock and pretend I don't sound pathetic, weird, and scatter-brained at the moment. And you can pretend too!

Assortment

Here! Enjoy some random updates!

Coriel:

Today we were working on wrapping presents for a secret Santa gift, and Coriel was being very helpful with the wrapping. When we got done, she went into her room and came back out with her savings jar. She wanted to open it and give her savings to the person we were wrapping presents for. Both Brice and I teared up a little to watch her divvy out all the quarters in the jar (they added up to about four dollars), leaving herself just a dime and a few pennies—all so the person she gave them to “can have enough food and so they can buy a house.” She is such a generous example to us, always wanting to give gifts to others and share the things we have.

During dinner this week, Brice and I were talking about rescheduling something. Coriel was eating a piece of pizza at the time and said in a sassy tone (it’s hard to explain, and it’s just not going to translate well onto paper), “My mouth just rescheduled that pizza.” Trust me, it was pretty funny.

Addra:

She seems to have a very rich imaginative life these days. She spends a lot of time roaming around the house taking care of animals that aren’t there, telling Swiper not to swipe things (Dora the Explorer reference), being a kitty cat, and feeding stuffed animals pretend food (she’s actually started occasionally requesting that we give her “real food,” to differentiate it from the pretend kind). One day while Coriel and I were sitting in the middle of the living room playing with something, she came crawling around the room chattering nonsensically. Then she started naming off animals and roaring like them. So, “Bear,” crawl crawl crawl, lunge and “roar!” Then, “Lion,” crawl crawl, etc. She seemed to be enacting some sort of increasingly elaborate and tense adventure scene because the roars got louder and more concerned, and she became increasingly intense about the whole thing. I have no idea what was going on, but I get the feeling that she was being very protective of the imaginary animals in the room.  (P.S. Yes, Addra does love running and walking and such; the crawling was just so she could be an animal.)

Jeanna:

Panelist! Add it to my word geek list, people! Another word that uses each finger only once when typed on a QWERTY keyboard.

Brice:

A couple weeks ago, Brice ran his own personal triathlon at the gym (interrupted briefly by making a couple calls for his executive secretary calling in the Church). Twelve-mile bike, 800-meter swim, 3-mile run in 1:26 (including the calls). Brice mentions this is “super slow, but not for me; for me, it was happy.” Good work, shiny man!

Harelips!

I have discovered another eight-letter word that uses each finger exactly once when typed on a QWERTY keyboard. Oh happy days.

Frivoling and Whuffing

Today, while my darling husband took Addra and Coriel out for some quality daddy playtime, I had the house to myself. So I took the opportunity to engage in both some frivoling and some whuffing.

Frivoling: Essentially time wasting. This is separate from things like relaxing or having fun. It’s more like filler that qualifies as sort of low-grade amusement. In this case, it was watching the rest of a movie that was only semi-interesting to me while I played computer games and avoided getting to work on cleaning the house. (Frivoling generally occurs in avoidance of some other activity.)

Also, in writing this post, I have discovered something tragic: The word “frivoling” was not of my very own invention (and yes, it is based on the word “frivolity,” but I hadn’t realized that it had already been turned into a verb). It is, in fact, a real word. Darn it, I was feeling creative for a minute there.

Whuffing: Doing productive stuff, sort of. We (Brice and I, not just the royal “we”) started using this word after we read this book in which the future currency is called “whuffy points.” Whuffy points are awarded based on, pretty much, how great people think you are. Hold a door open for someone with their arms full of books? Get some whuffy from them. Cut someone off in traffic? Lose some whuffy. So around our house whuffing is when you do something that the rest of the family will probably appreciate. Like laundry and cleaning and jazz like that.

And there you go! Brice played with the kiddos (which totally earned him whuffy in my book). I whuffed and frivoled (mostly whuffed, though). We watched some movies and relaxed and opened one Christmas eve present (pajamas for the girls, pillows for us), and had an all-round smashy-good Christmas eve.

And now for a completely unrelated picture. I’ll be posting more later, but this is from the family pictures Meghan took for us a couple weeks ago. Awesome!

Poniards!

Update: Since I posted this, I have discovered several more: pralines, panelist, harelips, and biplanes.

In my usual wordgeek fashion, I have spent the last decade or so keeping an internal list of words that, on a QWERTY keyboard, use each finger exactly once (thumbs don’t count).* Please note that asking Google is cheating.

So what are these words, you ask? (Even though you probably didn’t.)

pleasing

placings (don’t quibble with me about whether “placing” can actually be pluralized; in my world, it can)

scalping

elapsing

clasping

jackpots

dystopia

Pontiacs

And now, most recently discovered: poniards! Hooray!

And, while we’re talking about words, here’s a completely different one to celebrate: “unstickinessing,” as in “That baby probably needs some unstickinessing.”**

*Don’t worry; this is not the only thing I’ve done in the last ten years.

**This word happily brought to you by my father, who first applied it to a table, not a baby. In my life, however, it’s probably equally applicable to both.