Standardized Testing

Sometimes I wonder how I would do if I retook the ACT again right now. For some reason, I feel confident that I would nail it, doing even better this time than when I was 15.

To be honest, though, I may have misplaced my confidence given how I do on the Mom version of the ACT.

English

1. When composing an email to a friend, how often should you use words that end in -ing

A. Not too often. Rephrase your sentence.

B. All the time! Fill the sentence with as many gerunds as you can squish in!

I keep choosing B.

2. When asking a question in an email, what is the proper punctuation?

A. (?)
B. (.)

I chose B and felt very silly about it.

3. Your or you're

A. Whichever is grammatically correct.

B. Whichever your phone chooses for you.

I really try to do A. But sometimes B. happens when I'm not paying attention.

Math

1. When loading the dishwasher, what is the most efficient way to do it?

A. Put things in an orderly fashion.

B. Put things wherever there is room at a given moment.

C. Look at the disorganized dishwasher and ask your husband to play dishwasher tetris while you wash pots and pans.

Of course I chose C. Kevin said, "It's better if you put the spatulas in the utensil part instead of the bowl part." I never was good at geometry.

Reading

What kind of chocolate syrup should you buy when you're planning to make a dessert?

A. Regular.

B. Sugar free.

I chose B. In my defense, the words "sugar free" were light gray so I didn't notice them with all the other words touting the natural chocolate and vitamins and minerals. It was actually pretty nasty, and Matthew was the only one who actually liked it. (But he did get 10% of his daily biotin and niacin from it, so that's something.)

Which kind of container has strawberry cream cheese in it?

A. The one that says strawberry cream cheese on it.

B. The one that doesn't.

I chose B. We're fine, except my ego.

Science

1. If you fill a test subject with 5 oz of human breastmilk and wait a few minutes, the test subject will expel 1 oz of the breastmilk onto his shirt or your pants. How many times should you repeat this experiment?

A. 0. I think you understand the trend.

B. 3000. Spit up is so fun.

I've chosen B. Although, come to think of it, I'm not really sure I've had a choice in the matter . . .

2. A scientist tracks the productivity of a mom compared with her bedtime the night before. He sees an inverse relationship with the time she goes to bed and the amount she gets done. What should we conclude?

A. Go to bed when you're tired.

B. Stay awake.

I maybe choose B sometimes.

Regardless of how I'd do on the ACT today or regardless of how I do on the MOM ACT most days, at least I can name several DC and Marvel comic characters, so I've got the vocab portion of the MOM SAT down.

Details and Rituals

I feel this urgency to remember all the details of life right now. This is reflected in the pages upon pages of journaling I've done for the past 6 months, in the Instagram posts I share but never as Stories (because I can't handle the idea of it being gone after 24 hours), and in the letters I write to my brother. I want to capture what life is like with 3 little kids. I want to capture the life of 3 little kids.

I feel like their lives and personalities right now are described less in events and more in rituals. How Joseph and Matthew hide under Joseph's blanket in Joseph's bed whenever it's time for a vitamin. How loud the static is and how flat their hair is after I pull the blanket off. How Matthew always insists on a red one. How I am trying to change this ritual so that he doesn't melt down if I give him the vitamin while he is hiding on Joseph's bed.

Then there's the cinnamon. Every morning they want cinnamon on their Cheerios. We are out of cinnamon yet again because Matthew just wants to dump and dump so much on every morning. Sometimes he eats it, sometimes he doesn't.

Then there are the clothes. All Matthew ever wants to wear is a Superman shirt or a blue striped shirt he calls Captain America shirt (because Joseph did). Sometimes I can convince him to try a different shirt in his drawer, but he is usually sad a while first. Joseph still has his pattern of superhero clothes he wears day in and day out. Today he added Bruce Banner to the mix, but he still wanted "Hulk" underwear so that meant he had to dig through the clean clothes that we put into the dryer last night.

There are the ways they get upset over both the predictable and unpredictable. There are the ways they magically stop being upset, and for a few moments they almost seem euphoric, as if they had been weighed down by a bad mood and are now lighter than air. Kevin and I laugh about how Matthew can cry and cry for a long time, and then after he's done his share of crying can suddenly remark, "I am happy now." On Tuesday Joseph got angry at me so I had him write a sentence 3 times about being calm. He wrote the sentence the first time in all caps, with the letters close together. Then each subsequent iteration used better and better handwriting, and as he wrote his mood also got better and better.

He asks good questions. He asked yesterday if we had to go to school after we are resurrected. He told us the story of Adam and Eve. He reads along in the Book of Mormon with us and gets most of the words, even ones like "exceedingly." He cannot watch any kids' shows right now with any degree of conflict or suspense because he understands it so much better than he used to. I am not ready for him to grow up.

And there's Jacob. Sweet Jacob who last week had to be held all the time and this week scoots around everywhere. He can't scoot forward yet, but he can rotate and scoot backwards and that gets him most everywhere he wants anyway. Sometimes he just sings loudly and you know it's because a burp is coming. He spent most of 6 months not caring about pacifiers and can now pick one up and put it in his mouth. He is more interested in the tags on a toy than the toy itself unless it goes in his mouth. He smiles so easily.

People sometimes like to say "You'll miss this stage." There is a lot I won't miss, but there is a lot that I absolutely love. And those parts that I absolutely love, I find myself missing even as I'm living them.

But at least I can try to remember them.

Acadia Day 3

The next morning we went back to the pool for a bit and then headed back to the park. Kevin had noticed that Cadillac Mountain looked like a fun place to climb around so we headed back there.

I feel like we're both just twisted funny. But the view is great!

My mountain goat.

In contrast to the chilly weather the night before, it was a sunny morning and we actually got hot and thirsty climbing around. It was still fun though.

I was so excited for a family picture here, but it didn't turn out how I hoped because of the lighting.

Same with this lighting.

We got back in the car and started driving down the mountain, and when we saw a good scenic spot we hopped out to take more pictures.

Next, we decided to drive through Bar Harbor a bit. We didn't stop in any stores or even get the famous ice cream, but we really loved the Bar Harbor Shoreline Trail. Matthew napped in the stroller and I had Jacob in the carrier while Kevin and Joseph clambered around on the rocks for a while.

We ate some lunch at a picnic spot on Thompson Island where the information center is, and then we headed home! We stopped at our friends' house again to return a baby carrier and then got home late.

Overall, I was happy with the places we visited. There were a few other mountains that would have been fun to hike, a few other lakes and forests that would have been nice to see, and so much more we could have done with the ocean, but it was a good trip. Sometimes I go on trips and feel glad later that I went, but while I'm there I'm not happy because I'm traveling and it's stressful. On this trip, I felt like that a little the second day when it was overcast and we didn't find the climbing rocks I wanted, but for the rest of the time we were happy. I would love to go back someday!

What happens to me when I cross the Piscataqua and plunge rapidly into Maine at a cost of seventy-five cents in tolls? I cannot describe it. I do not ordinarily spy a partridge in a pear tree, or three French hens, but I do have the sensation of having received a gift from a true love. - E. B. White

Acadia, Day 2

We spent the morning at the hotel pool. Since New Haven doesn't really have any good outdoor swimming pools (it has rocky beaches and splash pads in their stead) we were excited to go in a real pool. After grabbing some lunch food at Walmart, we headed back to Acadia. We found a picnic area and ate lunch. Our boys were of course happy to find some rocks to climb on.

We then drove to Schooner Point to see the waves. It was a gray day and the water was really choppy.

It was pretty mesmerizing watching the water crash against the rocks, but my favorite part might have been watching the ducks in the water.

We then headed to Sand Beach. I stayed in the car feeding Jacob while Kevin went down with the boys.

Joseph really liked getting close to the water:

Meanwhile, I was nursing Jacob when I heard them coming. I saw Joseph walk calmly up completely covered in sand.

"He took a bit of a tumble," Kevin explained. We got to work brushing sand off his face, out of his hair, and off his clothes. We didn't really have extra clothes right then so we turned the heater on and dried off everything that had gotten soaked.

His hair never really recovered from his fall. Just imagine this cute face covered with sand.

Another cute face.

I took a quick look at the beach and then headed onward. We had considered walking along the Sand Beach Trail but decided to drive to our next destination. If there was one thing I remembered about visiting Acadia when I was 11, it was that there were nice big rocks to climb on, and I wanted to find them.

Thunder Hole

Our first family picture since the hospital, I think.

We kept stopping in little parking lots by Otter Point and Otter Cliff to find a good place for the boys to climb around, but everything just seemed too big and rugged with steep dropoffs, so we didn't want them playing there.

Then we decided to stop near Otter Creek.

And here we stayed a while. There were definitely rocks to climb on, though they were much smaller than the ones I had remembered, and we stumbled more than climbed.

Lots of beautiful colors in the rocks.

The rocks were just the right size to throw in the water with a huge splash.

Then, it was time to head to Cadillac Mountain for the sunset. Like E. B. White said, it was great how we could see beaches, forests, and mountains all in the same day.

Once we got up there, we discovered it was cold, cloudy, and windy. This was to be a drive-in sunset experience except for a few brief trips out of the car to take better pictures.

The heavy clouds made it a grayer sunset, but we still liked a bold strip of red peeking through between the clouds and the horizon.

Once again, we traveled back to the hotel in the darkness.

Acadia, Day 1

"The Maine man does not have to penetrate in depth to be excited by his coastal run; its flavor steals into his consciousness with the first ragged glimpse of properly textured woodland, the first whiff of punctually drained cove." - E. B. White

It was kind of last minute, our trip to Maine. We had wanted to do it in the summer, but we never really got a good chance. Then we thought that we would have to wait until the following summer to go. But then when I saw that Joseph got Rosh Hashanah off, a thought began to form in my mind. Soon we were booking a hotel and scouring websites and texting friends who had been to Acadia National Park.

As it turned out, if it had been any more last minute, we might not have gone since Kevin was in crunch time for his paper. He ended up spending every evening in the hotel frantically working to get it submitted soon. (It ended up that it wasn't submitted until January 12th, so the lesson here is carpe diem when it comes to fun stuff because work can be dragged out indefinitely.)

After a futile visit from the exterminator (how many mice we have spotted since then, alas), we hurried out the door and spent the night with our friends who had recently moved to Boston. The next morning, we managed to avoid most of the Boston rush hour and before we knew it we were in Maine. (The border really is just about an hour from Boston.) As Kevin drove, I took over the duty of tossing snacks back to kids. I did best throwing animal crackers one at a time and fruit snacks and worst at string cheese and granola bars. Little newborn Jacob did great for most of the drive, and before too long we were in Trenton, Maine, and then Acadia.

Our first stop that afternoon was the Bubble Rock hike. When we pulled up, Joseph was in deep, deep sleep and it took a lot of work to rouse him. Once he was awake he was a grumpy bear who didn't want to hike or say nice things. Kevin and I looked at each other in panic. He normally loved hiking! How could we do this hike in these conditions? Some fruit snacks changed the night to day, and now that things were no longer dark and dreary he hopped and skipped along, collecting sticks and  superhero poses.

It was a nice, short hike that was just right for small kids and parents carrying littles. But despite its length, we were still rewarded with beautiful views that reminded me of Mt. Naomi in Logan Canyon.

We really are a family of 5, even if you can't see the fifth very well.

After our hike, we had considered hiking around nearby Jordan Lake. But when we got there, our kids were content to throw rocks into the water.

Movie star hair

We then took a beautiful drive to the western part of the island, passing streets with great names like Flat Iron Road and 3 Dog Lane and Pretty Marsh Road (I also like Double Duck Road, Long Pond Fire Road, and Lady Slipper Lane). We stopped at Thurston's for dinner so Kevin could eat his long-anticipated lobster dinner. I had a few bites and liked it pretty well. I was more excited for the rolls, but Matthew threw one on the ground in a moment of passion, so there went that.

After dinner, we headed to Bass Harbor Lighthouse to watch the sunset. If we were to do it differently, we would have gone to the left of the lighthouse and watched it on the rocks. But with little kids, it worked okay to watch it in a fenced in area to the right of the lighthouse. There was a good little crowd there, and one little boy was so excited to have other boys his age to play cars with.

 As far as sunsets go, it was a lovely, pinkish one that took over the whole sky. A few minutes after the clock said the sun had set, we walked back up to the car. We secretly felt a little bad for the people who were showing up right then after the sunset had already finished.

I decided to nurse Jacob before we left. I looked in the side view mirror and noticed the colors becoming even more vibrant.

"We've got to go back!" I said, and we hurried back down to see this:

When we were more confident that the colors were gone, we headed back to the hotel. There was a mosquito in the car which bit Jacob and made it a very sad drive for him, but we all made it and he appeared to suffer no lasting damage from it. Everyone was pretty tired so we went to sleep (except Kevin who had some figures to work on), and we were glad we had decided to make this whirlwind trip.