Where Hip Meets Smart-Sleuthing

Yes, the post you’re reading today in January is my late holiday post.  I think the title covers all the well-wishing, and so, for space issues, I’m going to start right in with the bragging. 

Lina is in the highest math group in her fourth grade advanced learning class.  She is on reading level Y.  (What’s after Z?  Nothing!  Books for adults!  Kafka!) She is currently reading Harry Potter V and will dead to the world for a while.  Her (evil) parents did not allow her to read the final three books until she had finished three Newberry Award winners last fall.  She’s in competition dance, plays the violins, and talks more than you.  Yes, you personally.

Cora’s first grade teacher attends our church and stopped me in the hall to say how much she enjoys Cora and how helpful Cora is.  Such a proud moment for a parent!  (My actual emotion was relief.)  Cora was in soccer this year, getting more confident at going after the ball and making friends with teammates.  She can read chapter books and writes and illustrates stories on stapled papers.  She wants to be a writer when she grows up.  Who can blame her?

Mia and Carter are in home preschool this year (to simplify our schedules).  Actually, let me clarify.  Mia is in home preschool and Carter runs around trying to ruin every activity she picks.  Mia chooses the subjects we read about (the seasons, cars, digestion, how snot is made, etc.).  We have friends over for sandbox time.  We cook.  The first thing we made was homemade macaroni and cheese and all three of our little ones refused to eat it because it had onions.  Ha, ha.  Mia is practicing the long vowels and likes to write stories with kid-spelling just like Cora used to. 

Carter is finally potty-trained for real this time, his Thomas the Train underwear being the ticket.  He only got to wear them if he stayed dry and it was seriously like a switch: Not potty-trained.  Potty-trained.  Recently I went through a phase where I tried to calm Carter’s temper via saying yes to him all the time.  This mostly led to him asking for impossible things.  Like to run to McDonald’s at bedtime, or put his broken banana back together.  The kid is determined to stick to his requests, too, to prove that he’s in charge.  So sometimes he refuses to eat his favorite yogurt, or wears three pairs of underwear at a time, or clutches two cups of milk simultaneously, etc.  

Graham occasionally cries every time he sees me leave him (like walk-across-the-room leave him), but he’s such a sweetie that I do nothing but indulge him.  Plus, he doesn’t eat enough, even the doctor says so, and crying burns calories he just doesn’t have.  I’m thinking of his health when I give into him every second.  A conversation with Graham goes like this:  “Do you want to eat broccoli?”  No!  “Do you love your mom?”  No!  “Do you want cheese or a banana?”  No!  Then he smiles and hides his face and peeks to make sure you’re watching.

Our big vacation recently was a twenty-hour road trip to Texas to visit my sister Laura and her family for Thanksgiving. So awesome!  We watched a cattle-run, met Santa at an outdoor Christmas Village, “sledded” on cardboard boxes down Laura’s driveway when an ice-storm kept us house-bound, married off Princess Mia to Underwear Superhero Carter in an epic ceremony involving French Maid Cora as the officiator, felt an “earthquake” in a Dallas museum, cut down a real live Christmas tree, and basically had Bluebonnet ice cream, hot chocolate, or turkey and cranberry every day until our stomachs hurt.  We miss Laura and family so much!!!

Mike’s big news this year is that he left Domo in May to follow his dream of becoming an entrepreneur in partnership with a few friends.  He works from an office in our basement with a sign on the door that says “Mike Trionfo” and everything, writing code in preparation for the company to enter the micropayment space and hopefully make sales sometime this year.  We love having Mike around a lot more.  Plus, the extra time let him join a CrossFit gym and go to a lab at BYU to track his body fat which has dropped 7%, putting him in the moderately lean category.  Congrats, honey, you deserve it.  J

As for me, I’m busy assembling dressers and painting rooms now that the basement is finished.  My kids are more fun each day, and I still attend my local writing group.  I got to be in sunny California for Christmas with my family and when I got back, I’d missed the coldest days of the season so far.  Perfect timing! I couldn’t be more ready for 2014!

Our family is awesome.  I say this because Halloween was even better this year than last year.  We had a costume party with the kids at Uncle Kenny’s and another one for adults at our house.  We had fake mustaches for everyone and got people to dance on video to our X-Box Just Dance game.  That’s right.  We have footage of a church-acquaintance dressed up like Winnie-the-Pooh and dancing to Kung Fu Fighting (you know who you are).  Linda was Maid Marian.  Kenny was . . . Kenny.  A 1985 version of quarterback Kenny that should never die.  Talia bought a complete Disney Belle costume and had her friend put her hair in an up-do. 

Mike and I were Napoleon Dynamite and a disco dancer, respectively, except I performed the Napoleon Dynamite dance, not him.  Lina was actually embarrassed of me.  That’s how awesome I was.  I’m sorry, but you just don’t get happiness like that Halloween very often.  Carter watches the dancing video on my foot nearly every day and I get happy every time I hear the music even if I’m serving dinner.  (My thoughts on dinner) 

An Awesome Sunset from our Neighborhood

The weather has been so gorgeous that Mike and I made a grave error.  We took our entire family of seven to a BYU game even though the forecast called for snow.  It was as if we’d forgotten what snow was.  Snow is cold.  Snow is wet.   Snow makes babies cry and three-year-old refuse to go potty so that you have to force them onto the toilet so that they pee on their underwear anyway because of Mom-caused aim-issues and then their shoe falls into the toilet while you’re changing their clothes in a 30 degree bathroom while BYU grandmas shiver in the background offering to help because that’s just how BYU is.  Holy cow, no wonder the tickets were free.  Next year we must try a warm game.  Mike, Lina, and Cora stayed the entire time and enjoyed it.  The rest of us went out for hot cocoa and visited with our awesome friend, Heather, who provided Fairy Princess underwear for Carter and pants, too.  (We’re equal-opportunity-underwear people.)

Kid quotes:

Oh my gosh—the word “wonky.”  How have I mentioned wonky to you yet?  Carter is in love with his invented word.  It’s a noun.  It’s a verb.  It’s an adjective.  It is everything you ever dreamed it would be.

“I just wonky this one.”

“I wonky eat it!”

“Yeah, it’s the big, big, wonky underwear.  It’s the only, only big one.  Yeah, I need actually underwear.”

“I need to hello to him.  Wait, what is this wonkies in here?”

“I climb over you for the wonky pillow.”

“That’s a huge, huge wonky.”

“No, go this wonky!”

We try to get Carter to describe what the wonky is, which leads to discussions like the following:

Cora: What is a wonky?

Carter:  It’s not a wonky wonky.

Cora: It’s not  a wonky wonky?

Carter: Yes. 

 

Meanwhile, Mia and Cora have decided to speak just like adults, except that Mia still has a munchkin voice and Cora can’t quite say her r’s.

Mike: Mia, your hair is so thick.

Mia:  Yes.  It has a mind of its own.

 

Cora: I know where Wrachal’s house is.  I think I know.  I’m 70% sure.  (Mike trusted her and alas, the 30% won out.  We just think it’s so funny that she quantifies her certainty.)

 

Mike: My forearms are so sore.

Mia: (Laughing)  You only have two arms!

 

Mia: (while in the car) Who is going faster, us or the trees?

Me: Trees don’t move, silly.   So we’re moving faster.

Mia: No, they are moving.

Me: If you stood by the tress, would it look like the car is moving?

Mia:  Yes.  But we’re in the car so the trees are moving.

Me:  That’s called point of reference.

Mia:  Is big the same as tall?

Me: Big can mean tall or wide or heavy.

Mia:  Oh, that tree is wide, not tall.

Me:  That’s right.

Mia is so logical.  It’s delicious to me.  She’s also the one who reminds me daily of the large reminder on my calendar: HENDRIX IS ALLERGIC TO PEANUT BUTTER.  I have almost killed our four-year-old neighbor twice.  Meaning, I was bribing him to eat peanut butter by coating it with honey because he said he didn’t like it, and it was on his lips twice.  And both times, he’s got it on his mouth and says, really confused, “But I’m allergic to peanut butter.”  And then I freak out and make him wash all over.  We gave him hives one time.  I don’t know what is wrong with me. 

 

Mia: Guys, guys.  I think we need to focus on the mousetraps.

Cora: I love how Mia just said, “focus.”

Me and Talia: (laughing)  Did you just hear them?

We were talking about mousetraps because we had mice.  Talia saw one in the bathroom and ran back in with a bowl to catch it.  It was hilarious.  Needless to say, the mouse won that round.  We never even managed to locate it again.  A trap worked a few days later.

Carter: (distraught)  I broke my naked! 

No amount of talking convinced him that he’d cut the skin of his stomach.  No, he’d broken his naked.  That’s what he gets for running around with no clothes on all the time, often singing:

Carter : (♫) I am a nakey-pants, fooling around.

Recently Carter ran out of sacrament meeting and I followed him (without running, unwisely).  He circled the building, ran back into the chapel from the other side (this time with his pants down because they’d fallen down again), raced past the pulpit, and then settled back in with the family like nothing happened. 

This leads to comments like the one overheard in primary:

First Counselor:  I just love seeing Carter running around; all his boy parts hanging out.

The day I got a call from Melanie, who got a call from Lynette, who got a call from Kaylee that Carter and Melanie’s daughter, Taryn, were running down the middle of the street while I was “babysitting” (sad that I have to put that in quotes), I rushed to save their lives thinking, “At least Carter’s pants are still up.  How surprising.”  Carter escapes the house without me noticing pretty frequently.  Sometimes he goes to friends’ houses.  Sometime he transports all of the bicycles in the garage to a patch of grass four houses down for no apparent reason. 

Graham likes to empty kitchen drawers and the fill them.  I pulled one out and this is what I found underneath:

That’s right, Graham’s private stash includes bottles and medicine droppers.  Make of that what you will.

Okay, that’s it for this post.  Sorry there’s not much about Lina.  She does chores and homework and is generally awesome, too.  She was a gypsy or a disco dancer for Halloween, depending on her mood.  Today she went to her dance class barefoot so as not to mess up her ballet shoes in the rain (Yes, rain!  In November!) and I honestly thought, “I should carry her so her feet don’t get wet.”  Um . . . she’s like forty pounds past those days.  But it doesn’t seem that long ago, I swear!!!