Update on School and Life

Miriam loves to gather data. I never expected her degree of excitement for the whole gathering data/graph making thing.

It helped that the teacher printed up a phone list for all the cousins and Miriam got to dial all by herself. Timothy and I stood in the kitchen and listened to her on the phone--fantastic entertainment. "Hello, is Kiersten there? What's your favorite color? Okay, goodbye."

I practiced with her beforehand. "Hello, this is Miriam. How are you? I'm gathering data for school. What's your favorite color." We practiced, but she wasn't very good at remembering, so I am sure some of her cousins were a bit baffled by the whole thing. Kiersten, at least, was baffled--Megan told me so. Miriam and I wrote down "unknown" on her list of colors for the baby cousins, but all the moms made up favorite colors for the babies. I thought that was pretty funny. Isabel is three months old. Her favorite color is yellow. Apparently.
I loved watching her dial. So much intense concentration in her normally wiggly body.













I asked Emeline to say cheese--this is the result. I'm scared, too. Don't ask about the hair. Emeline cut it herself at the same time Cowen was giving Miriam her haircut. Her hair was already dumb-now it is even dumber. Oh well, it's red!














For math today we made graphs from the data Miriam gathered at the grocery store. Yes, her hair has a lot of natural curl which is why it looks that beautiful on Monday from the pink curlers she wore to bed Saturday night.









The information on Cowen's graph is a little hard to understand. I certainly don't understand it. I do, however, understand that his favorite color is blue and that he likes to do whatever his big sister is doing.

By the by--he is already doing Miriam's kindergarten math with a great deal of proficiency. He's three. Hmm. Homeschooling gets more complicated all the time and he's not even technically in school.



Ah, another homeschool project: Miriam's Thanksgiving tablecloth. I went to Walmart, picked out some Thanksgivingish fabric, and bought a few yards. This picture is Miriam pinning the side. So far she's pinned and sewed three sides. Then we had to quit so I could make dinner.







I'm glad I thought of this because Miriam always begs to use my machine, but I was hesitant to let her. This way, she was just sewing straight lines, it didn't take long, and we can use the completed project right away.

She felt so grown up. I laughed my head off (internally, so I wouldn't hurt her feelings) when she wanted me to bump up the speed from slowest to medium and then she panicked and had me turn it right back down. That was "way too fast." I hear you, girl, I never sew faster than medium speed myself. Some of us weren't born seamstresses.

Cowen was beside himself with jealousy and hurt feelings that he was too little to use the machine. As my dad would say, "Every dog has its day to bark. And today is not your day." I just LOVE saying that to my children. You'd think I would be kinder and not say it as it was used so often on me--and yet, I continue to feel great glee and delight every time I get to say it. I'm not sure what that says about me.


Kami said she didn't feel that sorry for me about the whole hair thing because Miriam looked so cute anyway. She didn't realize that one side of her head is not so "cute," but rather, cut very close to her head. These pictures aren't that great, but they do provide a little better sense of why I was so upset.

Doesn't she look downright mischievious in this picture?







Yes, it is short enough to spike up.

I was going to write more about life in general so I could feel like my "journal" was caught up--but I'm going to bed instead. As dad would say, "I'll pay you five bucks to not tell me."

Once, in Elder's Quorum the menfolk were talking about how to build a relationship with your teenagers and get them to talk to you. My dad raised his hand and said, "I want to know how to get them to stop talking to me." He's like that. That's why my siblings are so weird--DNA.