A Tale of Four Kiddies

Updates are in order concerning the four kids living in my house:

Ethan

Ethan's had an eventful few weeks. Big event number one? Finishing up 7th grade. Quite a feat, especially considering he managed to complete the year with a combined total of, hmm, maybe 15 hours of homework done at home, and still didn't get a grade below an A-. (We were worried the homework would sink us both. Little did we know how little we had to worry about. Do you like how I'm referring to his concerns/accomplishments in the plural? Yes, I'm working on the whole parental hovering/identity glomming thing.)

In the last few weeks of school he had a band concert:
His band teacher is really great, and I think Ethan's had a good time with the trumpet this year (even though he reaaaaaallly wanted to do percussion but didn't get in. I keep trying to tell him all the REALLY cool kids, the ones who aren't so obvious about it, play the trumpet instead of the drums.)




I imagine that kid beside him with his hand on Ethan's shoulder saying, "Dude!" The secret password of all things manly. I hear it all the time when boys are together: "Dude!" "Hey, Dude." "Seriously Dude?" but the funny thing is, Ethan never says it unless he's with other guys his age. Kind of like how in my heart I'm not the type to say "kick my trash" and then, somehow, I found myself saying it when I was in the company of a group of cooler and more stylish barely-or-just-past 30 year olds in my ward and it somehow popped out of my mouth. Oh, the pressures of conformity. Conversely, I also remember a cheerleading meeting when I was a junior in high school and a lowly JV cheerleader, and the head varsity cheerleader was berating us in that cooly sweet-yet-evil way only a head varsity cheerleader can and I couldn't take it any more and said, "Don't patronize us," and a whole bunch of varsity cheerleaders got really mad at me for using uppity vocabulary words in an arrogant fashion. I felt unjustly attacked because, after all, "patronize" was the exactly perfect word to describe what she was doing, and why use common but not-quite-right terminology when the precisely perfect word is there for the taking?

But it's true: in adolescence, you've gotta talk the talk.

And I'm digressing.

Ethan also finished up his baseball season. There last game was a lot of fun--Ethan made some good plays at second base, had a nice hit--and the team came from behind in the last inning to tie it. Would have been nice to WIN it, but we were happy with the tie.

Swing!

Although it's kind of nice to have our schedule slow back down some, I think he (and we) will miss the games. They were fun.

And to round out the Ethan section of this post in a dramatic fashion, last Sunday Ethan had a run-in with a can of Nalley's chili:



Forrest and I had stayed behind after church to help clean up the RS room, so the kids (sans Wyatt) walked home without us. As we were crossing the street we see Jonas come running toward us, shoeless and sockless but in his church clothes, yelling, "Ethan cut his finger!!" And cut it he did. If the can itself isn't evidence enough that a really hungry 12 year old shouldn't be left home alone with a can opener and some Nalley's, then the big ol' gash on his finger was enough to convince us that we needed to have a little family meeting about dealing with sharp objects. We took him to the Instacare where they proceeded to give him a bunch of shots inside the wound (fun!!! poor kid) and he got 10 stitches on the tip of his finger. Here's the after shots, one right after he got home from the Dr., and the other the next day when we unwrapped the bandages (and warning--it's gross):




But he's healing nicely, he's done with school, and he's looking forward to a summer of chore doing, video game playing, reading, swimming, hanging with friends, and babysitting Wyatt for me. (Actually, the first and last on that list are things I'm looking forward to more than he is, and his ability to enjoy everything in the middle of the list is dependent on his cheerful accomplishment on the first and last items :-).

Elise

Elise is in the thick of school stuff. (And so, a picture of her, looking scholarly and darling with her pink backpack over her shoulders):



Her teacher this year isn't the most organized--kind of blowsy, scatterbrained, nice enough but planning is not one of her better qualities--anyway, I think she's left about half of the core curriculum requirements to the final weeks of school. We've had months and months of hardly any homework--I wanted Elise to have MORE homework--and now, blamo! This last week they were doing the math standardized testing, which is stressful enough for us (there I go again with the parental glomming), and we had to take all these practice tests on the computer. Which is good. Glad to do it. But on TOP of it, Elise comes home with this geography packet and she has a week to memorize all the states' locations and abbreviations AND the physical features (rivers, mountain ranges, etc.) of North America. They'll let the kids retake the test until they pass it, but the first test was Friday. So it has been a week of homework, that's for sure. She did really well with the memorizing, though. I told her some of my tricks: how "Wisconsin" looks like a toilet (get it? Wis?), how "Kentucky" looks like a drumstick from Kentucky friend chicken, how "Kansas" looks like a "can of sauce" with a little nick in the top to pour the sauce out. (Isn't it amazing what you remember from elementary school?).

The other big Elise-related news is she got her hair cut shorter. She's been veeerrrry resistant to the idea of cutting her hair but I finally talked her into it after one too many "I went swimming and then ran around in the wind" hairbrushing/screaming sessions. And she really likes her new look. She's been walking around with a smile on her face all day. Before:



And after:



Don't the roses behind her look pretty? Some of our rose bushes are GAR-geous right now. (And others are way too unwieldy and clumpy and not making me nearly as happy.)

Elise also got student of the week in her class a few weeks back. Oh, and finished up with her Riverton Children's Choir (but unfortunately missed her final performance because we were in St. George.) It's fun singing alto with her in church, though.

Jonas

Jonas has been busy playing stuff: playing with friends, yes, and playing both soccer and baseball. Soccer is almost done. Jonas usually plays goalie and has gotten pretty good at it. He's on a team with a lot of kids from our neighborhood which is fun for him (and us) because having other people you like to hang out with makes all sporting events more enjoyable. Here's some shots of Joe in action (with props going out, once again, to the Nikon D40):

Attacking the ball. (And yes, his shoelace is untied. And he's wearing blue socks. For the life of me I can't find the black socks with white stripes that go with his uniform. They have disappeared in the the laundry maw that exists in an alternate dimension at my house.)

Looking focused (and dashing)

I love this pic. It's Jonas and his four good friends in our neighborhood (Ethan, Cade, Brennan) all in such a symmetrical line!

He also just finished up baseball. It was a good year for him. He didn't really know anybody on his team (they do this drafting thing that makes it hard to get on a team w/ somebody you know unless your dad's the coach) but he made some friends and learned a lot. The best thing about his final game is that his coach let him pitch. His coach this year happened to be the president of Bingham Baseball, and I really appreciated his philosophy. He was competitive, yes, BUT was also really focused on the boys' learning. By the time we got to the final two games, it was clear we weren't in contention for a trophy (only 1st and 2nd place teams in each division get a trophy, and we were like 4th or something) so he decided to give all the kids who wanted to a chance to pitch. Both games we could have probably won, but ended up losing because the final couple innings he let these boys pitch. There's one mom on the team who drove me nearly batty (hey, good pun!) all year long. She's your sterotypical screamy, ultra-competitive, call-out-somebody -else's-kid kind of mom, and she wasn't happy with it at all. Kept saying things like "Well, I guess we're giving it away! Let's just give it away!" She finally shut up when it became clear the coach wasn't going to change his mind. And it was SO FUN to see those kids who were usually in the outfield pitching. Yes, we DID give it away, but it was worth it for sights like this:


Jonas, beaming on the pitcher's mound.

I never really minded much that he played mostly outfield. After all, many of the kids on his team have been playing hard since they were four, not to mention playing on Superleague teams and all that, and Jonas has only been playing since last year. But when he got up to pitch and threw some strikes (and okay, some pretty obvious balls, too) it did my mom-heart good. His hitting also really improved this year. In fact, his coach said Jonas was by far the "most improved" player on the team.


(But yes, his eyes are closed. He swears he was probably just blinking. :-).

Good job, Most Improved Joe!

Wyatt

Wyatt is getting BIG. Physically and mentally. He talks constantly and loves to play. Luckily he's still napping (in his crib! I know! He hasn't tried to climb out even once. Shhhh . . .). He spends the bulk of his day thinking/talking about his favorite things: chocolate milk, "shows," "friends' house," Dad, chips, outside, warm be be (his blanket), dinosaurs, dinosaur books, and dinosaur shows. (If only there was a show starring his dad fighting dinosaurs that he could watch outside while having some chocolate milk and chips. Heaven!)

So I give you Wyatt's favorite things:


Looking like a Bedouin with Warm Be Be wrapped around his head


Being cute "outside" in our back yard.


And being cute outside again, at a soccer game. Outside + Juice Box = Good times.


And this, my friends, is what I have to step over in the family room all day long. I put it away, it reappears in seconds. You know that scene in Potergeist when the put the chairs away then turn around and--shazam!--they're all on top of the table? This is kind of like that. Except Wyatt does it, not ghosts. I've gotten accustomed to his lineup of dinosaurs, though. (They're usually diagonal, and lately facing the television).

And that's about it for the kids. And better be about it for this post. Sorry for the length. I will forgive you if you skimmed :-). (But you didn't skim, did you?)