Rocks, Bars, Non-sleeping Babies

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What have we been up to lately? I'm glad you asked. Let's start right off with a gallery of Ziggy's latest hats. One is a bag. One is accompanied by little oven mitts (which he calls his "cwebs," by which he means "gloves"). Honestly, the most normal one is the hat and ear-warmer around the neck. 

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We've had some smoky skies and red sunsets, from wildfires near and far. One day the smoke made the funniest wrinkly clouds! They didn't look like clouds. Just like folds in the sky.

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If you think this baby looks scary, you're right. He IS. Where is the sweet little brown-haired baby I once knew? Where is the tiny little waif with gummy smile? It's enough to make one believe in changelings. THIS baby is a toothy shark, who sits at a whacking station with his whacking stick, and stands up in his crib and yells because he can't figure out how to sit down again.

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• We have a "People in Boxes" theme for this line, it appears.

• Also, Daisy's Nursery lesson on the Title of Liberty. Wave those banners, Freemen!

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Some outdoor fun. Rolling down a hill, looking at tiny squeaking baby quail (they were so cute!), and watching Sebastian's cross-country race.

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Gussie is getting pretty good at sitting. But not perfect.

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Here we are out in the backyard having our Scripture Reading time. It doesn't look like it, you say? No, I don't suppose it does. There's something fitting about it, though—Sam reading aloud from his phone, little boys running around in circles semi-silently, Nutmeg hopping back and forth, girls doing airplane rides with Gus, big boys pacing and checking their watches. It's how we get it done, these days.

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Daisy and Junie have been wanting to go running with me recently, and since I usually go myself at a truly ungodly hour, I've been just staying in running clothes and doing a loop or two around the neighborhood with them once the sun comes up. They're so cute and talkative. Daisy was SO excited to do a special sunrise run on her birthday! It was a really beautiful morning.

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Ziggy came to me with a little paper-and-tape-wrapped package saying "It's wore present. Open it." [He says his y's as w's, you will recall.] It was a rock. Thank you, Zig.

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Daisy got two twin baby-dolls for her birthday and it's been a very baby-intensive few weeks. You could say it's been a baby-intensive eighteen years, really, but for sheer numbers of babies in one room we are setting new records. Baby Gus is jumbled in among them, as often as not. Usually he doesn't mind…

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• …but occasionally he DOES!

• This is how Ziggy goes downstairs every morning. "Can I wide on wore back, Daddy?"

• Teddy, earning his keep by cooking tortillas for dinner.

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Porch swing readers. This continues to happen daily and continues to make me happy whenever I see it out the window. How will we bear it when the cold weather comes? 

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A catalog of our beautiful, beautiful polished agates! These are the ones we collected in Brian Head when we were on our trip there recently. On the top two rows you can see the progression of the same rocks in the same order, from before being polished in our rock tumbler, to mid-way through, to their final polished state. (We tumbled these for about five weeks total.) It's amazing to me to watch that transformation (and I always think of Joseph Smith…"I am like a rough stone rolling…"). I am in love with every single rock! Just look at how deep and glowing their colors have become! Some of them are translucent. Some have layers of crystal only hinted at beneath the surface. Some are layered and striped. I love looking at them!

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Zekey, sweetly holding Gus. You can see the evolution of his choke-hold and Gus's gradual acceptance of it.

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What on earth is going here? Goldie has some sort of growth on her chest. It's very strange.

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Some of the girls' recent crocheting projects: a sloth Daisy made for her friend, a yellow penguin Daisy made for me, and a pink penguin Junie made Daisy for her birthday.

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A little bit of out-and-about-ing! 

• Walking to church (we have it once a month these days)

• Gussie's first time in a shopping cart seat (I never take him to the store if I can help it, and that pre-dates COVID-19—who would choose to shop with babies when they have older kids at home to watch the little ones?)—we were at Home Depot performing the thrilling task of buying a new lawnmower after our other one gave out.

• Three little boys in a fort!

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I had to bring dessert to one of Sebastian's cross-country team dinners, and he wanted me to make s'mores bars, and since it was his birthday, I couldn't refuse. I took the opportunity (as I was making five batches) to try several variations I'd been wondering about, such as, do they work if you use mini-marshmallows instead of marshmallow fluff? Can you melt down old marshmallows, add a bit of corn syrup, and make your own marshmallow fluff? The answer to both of those questions is yes, I found. My favorite way is still the original way, but I would for sure use up leftover marshmallows if I had them. I also quite liked the method where I rolled out the graham cracker cookie dough into a solid sheet to put on top of the marshmallow, rather than crumbling it. The bars look really pretty that way (middle picture).

It did take me a good deal of time to make all these, but it also satisfied my desire to make huge platters of things, so it was fine. There were lots of leftovers, to my surprise—what's the matter with kids these days? In my day the cross-country team would have happily eaten twice this many.

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Daisy's little siblings made her SO many birthday presents this year, and it was so cute as she opened them, because she'd say "Oh, thank you!" and hug the gift-giver—and then Ziggy would say "Oh, THANK you!" and hug them too! It was a real hug-fest. Daisy was babysitting for another family on her actual birthday (her choice; she loves babysitting) but we had her dinner (Navajo tacos) and cake (flourless chocolate cake) the next day. Yum.

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Are these the faces of people who are sleeping, or planning to sleep anytime in the next few hours? There is so much giggling emerging from that bedroom every night, I don't know WHAT is going on. But it's not sleeping. That's for sure. Still, I don't have the heart to stop it! They're so cute, and how long can this last, anyway? I wish they'd be able to snuggle in together forever.