It's General Conference this weekend! I always look forward to the uplifting, inspiring messages from our prophet, apostles, and general authorities.
Amidst 10 hours of staring at a laptop screen, I find other things to look forward to and wonder about. Such as:
1. Will I know anyone mentioned in the stories? I've been finding more and more that I recognize some of the names in General Conference. I've seen them in the news, on blogs, or on Facebook. Of course, there are also those whose names aren't mentioned because they aren't necessarily the hero of the story, such as the woman who gave Frances Monson a hard time for sitting in the "special section" of the Tabernacle, or the man who gave a Sunday School lesson that Elder Scott walked out of. Incidentally, I wonder what you would do if you realized you were that particular Sunday School teacher. Would your friends give you a hard time about it? Would your wife tease you about it every time you taught? Would you ever admit it openly?
2. Will we be able to keep our kids happy the whole time? Will Conference bingo work this time? Will the closed captioning work this time or will it be garbled enough that we see some almost-inappropriate words like I did during the General Women's Meeting last week? Will they like the coloring pages from lds.org or get bored within two minutes?
Conference setup last year.
3. Will my cinnamon rolls turn out this time? I actually haven't made cinnamon rolls for a long time because I was so tired of them being meh, but this year I'm finally going to try again. Compared to our gas ovens in Northwood, the oven here seems to be honest in its dealings, so we can trust it better to not burn things. But will the yeast work? Will I put enough cinnamon and sugar in? Will it be worth all the time and work it takes to make them?
4. It's been 5 years since the General Relief Society Presidency was reorganized, so they will probably be released tomorrow (though I would love if they stayed on longer). Right now, looking at Relief Society, Young Women's, and Primary Presidencies, we have two Lindas, two Carols, and two Bonnies. Which new names can we expect tomorrow? Based on the most popular names of 1960, I am thinking we'll get a Susan, Karen, or a Lisa of some kind. (I will also throw in "Anne" because of this.)
5. Will they finally announce a temple in Puebla Mexico?
6. How many key changes will there be between verses 2 and 3 of a given arrangement by Mack Wilberg?
By this time in about 48 hours, most of these questions will be answered. And hopefully much more important questions too! Happy watching!
Joseph and Matthew have been saying some pretty funny things lately, and since it's been a while since I've done a post like this I figured it was time again.
Matthew
(After singing the ABC's to him.) "Super why! Super why!" (because they sing the ABCs on the show Super Why, I guess. That's also his go-to phrase whenever he sees the computer.)
"Careful. Careful. Careful." He says that most often when he is tromping around on my bed not being very careful, but he also says it if I happen to lay him down on the couch. He looks at the edge the whole time and cries, "Careful! Careful! Careful!"
(Each time after jumping off the bathroom stool) "Awesome!"
(Earlier this week and last each time I set him in his crib) "Cuddle! Mommy cuddle! Mommy cuddle!" Talk about tugging at the heartstrings.
(After putting a few Legos together) "Rocketship! Rocketship!"
Me: "I like you."
M: "I like you."
Me: "I love you."
M: "I love Daddy."
"Look, there's Elmo on your shoes!"
"Elmo! Elmo! Elmo! Elmo crackers! Elmo crackers! Animal crackers. Animal crackers!!!!!!!"
(At the store as we pass a Batman logo)
"Na na na na na na na na na!"
(Watching animated Beauty at the Beast, when we first see the beast.)
"Dinosaur!!!"
(At every exhibit of a dinosaur museum.)
"Chicken! Cluck cluck!"
In some ways, he's harder to understand than he was a few months ago because he has tried to say sentences that are pretty much impossible to understand. But as you can see, he still has his one word zingers.
Joseph
"You know why I don't watch Mr. Rogers anymore? Lady. Elaine." He just has this flat, angry expression as he says her name. She really is the worst. (side note: Matthew used to say "Rogers" whenever he saw the computer, but since Joseph's show of choice has changed to Super Why, so has Matthew's.)
(On St. Patrick's Day)
"In Ireland, it's very, very green," I told him.
"Lots of grass and trees?" He asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Good. Then you can breathe and breathe and breathe there!" he said with excitement.
(Joseph wanted to play in the snow a bit on the way to the car because it would support his weight, so while I was getting Matthew in he walked around on top of the snow. Then I called that he needed to get in.)
"I wish Matthew wiggled more when you put him in his car seat. Then I could have played more."
"I wish everyone in the world had their own computer."
"I'm as mad as the Hulk. Ughhhhhhhhh."
"You need to return Alexander Hamilton to the library."
"[His friend]'s dad is pretty playful." Not sure who taught him the word playful.
(When Kevin was out of town.)
Me: "The butter's too hard to spread very well on the bread. Would you like toast?"
J: "No. You're not a good toast maker."
When Kevin came back:
Me: "Do you want a peanut butter sandwich?"
J: "No."
Kevin: "What if I made it?"
J: "Sure."
So Kevin made the peanut butter sandwich exactly how I would, and Joseph ate it. Then he said, "You're a good maker, Daddy."
(Looking at a bag from Chick-Fil-A)
J: "There are too many lines in Chick-Fil-A!"
Me: "What do you mean?"
J: "It's supposed to be Chick-Filet, not Chick-Fil-A." (I could tell what he meant by where he put the consonants.)
Me: "You think it has too many hyphens?"
J: "Yeah! Why did they do it that silly way?"
"I wish all the grown-ups were 9 years old so I didn't have to try any foods."
Me: "What kind of chicken should we make for dinner?"
J: "Beef."
"I just remembered something! I remember when I liked bananas!"
"Why are toast and Cheerios opposites? Because if you leave toast out it gets harder, and if you leave Cheerios out they get soggier."
Me to Kevin: "Should we make p-i-z-z-a?"
J: "Does that spell pizza? I want pizza!" (Then he and Matthew marched around saying "Pizza! Pizza! Pizza!")
(I feel like most of the food quotes are about junk food. We do feed our kids things besides chick-fil-a, pizza, and meat. Like this week we fed them lettuce, avocado, asparagus, peppers, celery, potatoes, quinoa, and carrots. Except Joseph only eats the carrots, so he said this.)
"Matthew is a better tryer than I am."
"Mommy. Some people start counting with their thumb instead of their pointer finger. They're doing it wrong!"
"I think I remember more things than you, Mommy."
"Like what?"
"I don't know."
"How do you remember things from when I was a baby?"
"When I was in your tummy, I was like the Hulk! Punch punch punch!"
(Doing watercolors with him.)
"Mommy, since you're not very good at painting you better do something easy."
(After Kevin spent 40 minutes scraping snow and ice off the car, and Joseph helped him a little bit)
"I wish the snow was back on our car so we could do it again. Or that we had two cars."
This afternoon while Joseph was watching Super Why and Matthew was pretending to nap (worked for me), I sat reading the last few chapters of Alexander Hamilton with tears streaming down my
cheeks. Who would have guessed that I would be so devastated about the death of someone who died more than two hundred years ago, who drove me crazy for several hundred pages of his biography?
And yet, there I was, absolutely brokenhearted about the untimely death of Alexander Hamilton and amazed by Eliza Hamilton's subsequent decades of widowhood which she spent doing good and protecting his name.
If I don't publish this tonight, I likely won't ever do it (after all, I planned blog posts about Middlemarch, New Seeds of Contemplation, and David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism that never got published), so here's just a (long) smattering of thoughts I had while reading Ron Chernow's biography.
(Oh! I should add this. If you don't know too much about him, he was a Founding Father who emigrated from the West Indies as a teenager, fought in the Revolution [most notably in the Battle of Yorktown], became Washington's right hand man, developed the financial system that made America solvent after the war, served as Secretary of Treasury under Washington, and then kind of went downhill politically after John Adams became president. Aaron Burr killed him in a duel.)
Comparisons
A lot of information in the biography came from letters. I think biographies written about people now will be able to draw on work emails the way they drew on work letters from back then, but personal letters will be very different because they don't quite exist. I can't imagine poring through gchats, Facebook statuses and comments, and Twitter feeds to try and understand the scope of a person, but maybe that's what will happen. (For the record, I wouldn't mind being in a time where letter writing was a normal part of life, even if I never saw those people again.)
The whole time I was reading, I kept comparing Alexander's personality traits to those of people I know. I know people who walk around talking to themselves about philosophy, people who read and read and read, people who are witty and flirtatious, people with overall dim views of human nature, people who are quick to lambaste those who disagree with them (often with strong language), and people who write and write and write like they're running out of time. By making these comparisons, I was able to see Alexander as a real person I might run into someday, even though I don't know someone who encompasses all of his traits. (And that's okay.)
Although I also compared myself to Alexander, I mostly compared myself to Eliza and Angelica. Eliza was his bright, pleasant, pious, hardworking, forgiving, generous wife. Angelica was Eliza's older sister -- worldly, persuasive, ambitious, clever, and witty. I felt like their relationship was a lot like the relationship I have with my sisters, and I understood why Eliza never minded (and even enjoyed) the flirtatious relationship Angelica and Alexander carried on. (Maybe it's kind of like the time before I met Kevin when my little sister's boyfriend gave me a ring catalog peppered with awkward references to Edward and Bella.) Although my interest in politics is probably more like Angelica, from what I read of Eliza, I want to grow up to be just like her. (And I know plenty of people like her, which is great.)
I made lots of comparisons to our current president as I read. Burr definitely reminded me the most of him, with his flip-flopping and political expediency (e.g. he started a clean water project in NYC with no intent to actually get the clean water to the people, just to sneak in his own money making scheme). His relationship with Theodosia also reminded me of Ivanka (down to some of the wild accusations, hoo boy).
But many of the Founding Fathers reminded me of him too -- Adams was old and paranoid and kept his family as his closest advisers. He also had a pretty bad temper when sufficiently provoked, though that seemed true of most Founding Fathers. Jefferson was a hypocritical populist who rallied rural people in the cause of freedom (except for the rural people that happened to be slaves), kept a folksy persona despite living the cosmopolitan life in Paris, and seemed way too okay with violence (as evidenced by his fervent adoration of the French Revolution, even when heads started to roll). Oh, and poor Sally Hemings. Poor, poor Sally.
As for Alexander Hamilton and similarities to the president, well, let's just say it's probably good Twitter wasn't around back then for his sake. Pen and paper were sufficiently destructive.
Speaking of political climates, whew! Things were pretty wild back then between the Federalists and Democratic Republicans. I actually prefer things now -- we've got enough years under our belt as a country that we're not going to actually disintegrate. In contrast, back then they weren't even sure if the nation would last, or if the Constitution would hold up. Talk about stressful.
And, if you think fake news is bad now, you should have seen the newspapers back then. Lurid, hyperbolic, character assaults were nothing out of the ordinary. I think things are better now. Except, of course, that people still believe fake news nowadays.
Oh, I forgot a few other character comparisons. George Washington reminded me of David O. McKay (possibly because that was the last biography I read). A steady, wise, formidable influence that was universally respected, at least until Jefferson got whiny. Good leaders, both of them.
One last comparison: Alexander Hamilton reminded me of Joseph Smith. Kind of hard to put my finger on -- maybe it was that they were both prolific visionaries, with bigger ideas of what their communities could become. Maybe it was that Alexander died in July 1804 and Joseph Smith was born in December 1805, so it was like the world got about a year break before God decided it was time to put another powerhouse individual like that on earth.
Questions
How much was $1000 worth? That was about how much Alexander paid James Reynolds for his stupid, stupid affair. Okay, I checked and it was about $23,000. What??? Why on earth would anyone pay that much to hide something from his wife (who was inclined to be pretty forgiving)? How on earth could he afford to pay that much? (He was never all that rich.)
Was Eliza as straightforwardly good as she was portrayed? She destroyed all of her letters, so we don't really see her, only what family and friends had to say. I know a lot of really, really good people who have their fair share of inner turmoil, but I also know some who really are guileless and faithful and straightforward most of the time. And I feel like people back then had so much physical labor that they were too tired to be all that angsty. Except the Founding Fathers, who all had bad tempers.
I knew as I read that I was getting only one perspective about Hamilton's political enemies such as Adams and Burr, but it certainly wasn't flattering. Did Jefferson do anything good at all as Secretary of State? Would reading a biography of John Adams make me like him better? Would their mistakes be seen as minor indiscretions rather than indicators of their fatal weaknesses, as Hamilton's mistakes were portrayed?
How much was Alexander really a womanizer, before and after marriage? The book convinced me that he wasn't licentious after marriage (with the exception of Maria Reynolds), but what about before? I just don't know what morals were like back then, or if what was scandalous back then was not too terrible by the standards of even religious people now.
Do politicians these days hate each other as much as politicians back then?
David O. McKay said, "No success outside the home can compensate for failure inside the home." But can success inside the home compensate for failure outside the home? By and large, Hamilton was a wonderful husband and father, but he made some pretty big political mistakes there at the end that hurt his career and hurt his chances to make a difference in the nation, especially regarding abolition. How are those mistakes tallied in the eternal scheme of things?
Why could the North abolish slavery but the South couldn't? I know the South was more agricultural, but I feel like they could have at least tried.
Hamilton wanted lots of things centralized, such as manufacturing. What would America have looked like if he had gotten his way with that?
Why, oh why, oh why did he carry on with Maria Reynolds, who didn't compare at all with Eliza? Okay, the answer to that probably comes by watching soap operas, so it's not all that interesting of a question. But oh my goodness why did he do so many dumb things like this? And while we're at it, why didn't he ask Eliza to proofread his most scathing letters and articles before sending them off, just to make sure they didn't destroy his career?
Surprises/Things the musical got wrong
It only takes the musical about 5 words to get things wrong. Alexander was not an orphan, at least not until 1799 when he was about 44 years old. I mean, his father abandoned him, but he still wrote letters and even gave his father money occasionally.
Aaron Burr was not a terrible marksman. He practiced for months before his duel with Hamilton, and he aimed to kill.
Burr was actually a worse person than the musical portrayed him. This wasn't an "off day" where he just happened to kill Hamilton. And he joked about it for years afterwards.
Eliza's mother was pregnant at the age of 47 or so. And Eliza had babies well into her forties. Wow!
Angelica was a confidante of lots of Founding Fathers. It's kind of funny that both Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton respected her opinions so much since they didn't respect each other's opinions at all.
Yellow fever outbreaks were really scary.
We hear a lot about the South wanting to secede, but it was actually New England that brought it up first. They were (appropriately) afraid the Louisiana Purchase would only bring in slave states, and they didn't want to lose any sort of representation. Aaron Burr ran for governor of New York on this premise, and it was Alexander Hamilton's commitment to the union that made him oppose him. (Well, that, and he really didn't like that Burr had no lasting political opinions, right or wrong.)
And speaking of New England, it was fun to read about New Haven. Unfortunate Loyalists were captured and paraded through town during the early days of the Revolution. Also, it was nice to finally know why so much in Connecticut has Trumbull in its name. (John Trumbull was a patriot, and his son was a prolific painter of historical figures.)
Peggy Schuyler (Eliza's younger sister) was brave! I wish the story of her saving her family during the American Revolution could have made it into the musical. When British soldiers stormed the house, the whole family huddled in the bedroom. But she went downstairs to retrieve her baby sister and while down there told the soldiers her father had run off to get help, so off they went. And possibly one of the soldiers threw a tomahawk at her just for good measure.
Alexander Hamilton was never really all that wealthy. And he probably wasn't all that aristocratic. I mean, the same Jefferson who lobbed those accusations at him also rode around as president in wrinkled clothes and slippers, so who's he to talk about fashion?
Alexander and Eliza always had a happy home life, and they adopted several children too. I imagine lots of that was because Eliza was wonderful, but he certainly didn't say no to opening their home and hearts. They even arranged for Eliza and her friends to go to debtors' prison to get their portraits painted by someone stuck there to help him pay his way out.
Painted by Ralph Earl while literally in debtor's prison. (link.)
Well, this is long enough that I think I will be unlike Alexander Hamilton and stop writing. I could go on and on about his politics and financial ideas and views on human nature, but instead I will leave you with some of his last words that made me so weepy today.
"Hamilton kept intoning the one refrain he knew would soothe her troubled spirit above all others: 'Remember, my Eliza, you are a Christian.'"
"I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ."
"It has for some time past been the wish of my heart and it was my intention to take an early opportunity of uniting myself to the church by the reception of that holy ordinance."
"I have no ill will against Col. Burr. I met him with a fixed resolution to do him no harm. I forgive all that happened." (And that's when the bishop finally gave him communion.)
"If they break this union, they will break my heart."
I think you broke plenty of hearts yourself, Alexander.
Today, I visited the school Joseph is mostly likely going to go to if the odds work out in our favor. I felt pretty reassured by my visit -- it seems like a cute place with reasonable policies (a whole half hour for recess after a half hour lunch, for example). As we saw the halls filled with 100th day of school pictures and Dr. Seuss birthday decorations and Valentines and shamrocks, I got really, really excited about him going there. (If the lottery works out :D)
This whole process has given me lots of flashbacks from my kindergarten days. As far as I can remember, it was just 180 days of nonstop fun with my energetic teacher, Mrs. Cooley. As I recall snippets about Thanksgiving plays and Valentine teas and chicks in incubators, I think, "Oh, I hope my kids get to do this fun stuff too!"
My kindergarten picture. Still not sure where it falls on the spectrum between darling and creepy doll.
Although I can't remember all the specifics (I couldn't say, for example, if we did 90 minutes of literacy and 60 minutes of math, like these kids will), I have definitely held onto the most important elements of what we did in kindergarten all day. For example:
1. Talk. We all sat at tables and chatted with each other as we worked on our assignments from Mrs. Cooley. There was one boy that was a little mean so I was a little scared of him, but he was also a fountain of knowledge.
"If your brain stopped working, you would just freeze in place. Like this!" And he would demonstrate. The argument commenced about whether you would die or just freeze, and I really didn't know the answer. (Apparently you die.)
He also taught us the cool way to count to 100. "One, two, skip a few, 99, 100." I kind of liked the real way better, the way with all the numbers on the chart with all the great patterns. But he did seem really cool when he counted like that.
So I wanted to be cool back. One time he and a few other boys were talking about football because somehow even 5 year olds can be fairly knowledgeable about the NFL. I decided to interject.
"My uncle plays football. Maybe you've heard of him." I knew that my mom had mentioned that he played football in high school, so maybe he was kind of famous.
"What's his name?"
"Erik Rytting."
The boy paused for a moment, looked thoughtful, and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. I think I have heard of him!" I felt a glow of pride to be related to someone so famous.
I learned lots from other kids too. One boy started always saying, "I don't like you. I love you," to me and everyone else all the time. Then he explained. "Since we are all children of Heavenly Father, that means we're all brothers and sisters. So we all love each other! That's why I love you.
I thought that was a pretty good explanation, and I also felt flattered that he loved me. Maybe it meant we would get married someday.
2. Recess was a pretty important 15 or so minutes of the day. We cycled through various parts of the playground different days depending on the weather. In the early fall and late spring, the big south-facing metal slide was way too hot to go on, but in the winter it was a coveted piece of real estate to lie down on, basking in the heat it provided. We also used it for some weird game called "crocodile" where I think kids at the bottom were the crocodiles that tried to drag kids down the slide, and other kids at the top would help rescue them. Although I don't remember any dislocated arms or other injuries, the slide was gone by the time I finished elementary school so someone somewhere must have recognized it as a safety hazard.
Except for the one boy who was shorter than me in both kindergarten and first grade, I was probably the smallest kid on the playground, and it was intimidating being out there with all the big kids, especially the 5th graders. One time a bossy 5th grader wouldn't let us go on the twisty slide, and our teacher got mad at her. I was grateful for her intervention, but I was also just in awe that a person could be as old as that 5th grader. Somehow I knew that even when I was a 5th grader I wouldn't be as old as her. It's been almost 22 years, and I'm still not as old as her.
Although I usually stuck close to my friends Rebecca and Brittany (we were dubbed the Three Musketeers), one day they must have been gone and I was playing mostly by myself. Then I looked around and realized I was playing even more by myself than I thought -- I couldn't find any of my classmates! Where had they gone? I frantically ran all around the playground again and again and again. Surely someone was still out there! I saw a neighbor boy in 1st grade playing and ran up to him, eager to see a friendly face. "Maybe they went inside," he said. Then his whistle blew and he said he had to go. "See ya," he said, leaving me alone.
In what felt like a matter of seconds, whistle after whistle blew, and all the kids hurried in. I stood there in horror. I was the last kid on the playground.
I saw the last teacher heading inside, and in a panic I asked her where my class went. She took me to my classroom and found my teacher. The rest of my class had gone to some assembly with a clown, so for the next little while it was just me and my teacher there. I sipped my milk (I was way too late to get the chocolate milk that day) and ate my graham cracker and she just sort of chatted with me. Cleaned up some milk that spilled on the ground. It was sort of a surreal experience being there with a teacher like that. Before too long, the rest of the class was back, and no one seemed to care at all about my traumatizing experience on the playground. But that was okay -- it was less embarrassing that way.
3. There were plenty of other times I was traumatized, come to think of it. We learned a lot about fire safety, especially since it had just been a few years since the school had caught on fire, and I spent days following those lessons wondering when my house was going to catch on fire. And what was I supposed to do? I had just moved down to a bedroom in the basement, and all we learned about was how to leave upper-story bedrooms. My parents reassured me it would be really easy to climb out of my basement, but it was still really troubling to think about.
Worse though was the poison assembly. It wasn't a normal assembly in the gym. Instead it was in a smaller room so we could be up close for the horrors that ensued. They acted out scenario after scenario in which kids made unwise decisions about dangerous chemicals, and then they would freeze. A woman dressed up like Raggedy Ann would press play on the tape recorder and sing, "Some things are No-No's! No-No's! Stop before you do!" or some other melody that seared itself into my hippocampus and left nightmares for weeks afterwards about poisons.
Then, of course, there was the time there was a substitute. I think we had one very occasionally, and most of the time it was really fine. But then one time it was just this strange, strange man named Dr. Cool. He had funny glasses, short golden curly hair, and a bowtie, and he seemed oddly familiar in an unsettling way.
"Who is that?" we whispered to each other. "Maybe it's Mr. Cooley," I suggested. We knew there was something unnatural enough about Dr. Cool to be some kind of joke, but who was playing it?
After recess, we were all relieved to find out Mrs. Cooley was back. And, lo and behold, she had been Dr. Cool all along! Then she promised us to never tell our younger siblings so she could play the same trick on them in a few years.
What wasn't so traumatizing though was her classroom. It was more cool than scary to have a pet tarantula in the class, and once you got used to the mounted deer head on the wall during Christmas time, that was kind of cool too. We learned pretty early on that tarantulas, snakes, and mounted deer were not real threats, but fires and poisons were. So I guess in that sense I learned what I really needed to from kindergarten.
4. Utah turned 100 years old about halfway through kindergarten, so that of course meant lots of celebrations and assemblies.
I was in the black, doing my usual strange smile.
Perhaps the most exciting part was how we got to learn all the songs for the centennial assembly. Of course, only the 5th graders got to sing the best song about iron wheels a-rolling and meeting up at Promontory Point, but we still had the tape so we could sing it at home. And, of course, dance to it.
In addition to the assembly, we had lots of assignments having to do with Utah turning 100 -- birthday cakes, prompts, and pictures to draw. As you can see, I clearly took advantage of everything Utah had to offer.
although, I enjoyed croquet less once I learned about poison
of course I did. there were free samples.
5. Somehow in the midst of all this we found time to learn our letters and numbers. Each week we had an assignment to find a few pictures that started with the letter we were learning about and glue them into our workbook. I recently talked to my mom about this, and this was the first time I found out it was just supposed to be 3 pictures per letter. I had thought we needed to fill the entire two pages. So each week I would come in with all sorts of pictures from all sorts of ads and magazines glued in, often overlapping each other because there wasn't space for all of them. It was hard work, but it sure was satisfying to see that my book could barely close right for all the glue and pictures in it.
We also spent a lot of time coloring, which I really enjoyed. One time though we had an assignment to draw a bus. I looked around and everyone reached for the yellow and black crayons to draw the school bus. I frowned. I didn't ride the bus to school, and I had never even been on one. I knew what they looked like well enough, but that didn't mean I wanted to draw it.
But I still drew a bus. The city bus. Not that I had been on that either, but at least it was not as ugly as a school bus.
Although my defiant streak didn't manifest very often, I guess it showed up when I colored. One time my teacher told me that rainbows and fireworks would never happen at the same time. So when I got home, I decided to draw my own picture that she would never see. It had rainbows, fireworks, and even candy falling from the sky for good measure.
I am pretty sure I kept that picture on my wall for like 6 years.
And that defiance served me well on the last day of school. As Leslie and I walked home, some boys came out with their squirt guns and began to spray us in a last-day-of-school kind of exuberance.
I immediately stuck my hands in the irrigation ditch and waved the droplets at the boys. "We don't need you to spray us! We're already wet, see? SEE?" Leslie dragged me away, telling me that would only encourage them. She didn't understand that I had probably just saved her life, but it was okay. Kindergarten had been a triumphant year of my life, and I had just ended it in victory.
When we got our family pictures back back in October, I loved how they looked. Not all were perfect, but there were lots of good ones.
But as I scrolled through them, my mouth opened in shock. For almost every single picture, Joseph wasn't smiling! Not a real smile, at least.
Then I began to laugh. What on earth had happened to Joseph's smile? I talked to my mom about it and she said, "it's pretty typical. Part of the age."
I had a vague idea of what she meant, but tonight I got a much better idea. I've been working on a post about kindergarten (which will hopefully be done soon . . . maybe tomorrow?) and to help me out my mom sent me some pictures from that age. (She's pretty great.) As I looked through them, I had the same reaction I did back in October to the family pictures.
Part of the age, huh.
I am 100% sure there is a picture of Joseph that looks exactly like this, except with short hair.
Luckily, there are a few other pictures here and there to prove that I had eyes and teeth, but . . . goodness! Do all 4-6 year olds forget how to smile? When do they grow out of it? (Kevin said not until they're 15, but I'm hoping it's sooner. For some men I think it's never.)
Anyway, I guess this is reason #457 why I'm grateful for digital cameras. Better to have surprises like this when you still have thousands of other pictures that show your kid's teeth.
And, honestly, people might be better at smiling if they are taking selfies all the time. One good thing that came out of selfies!
