Anneliese, 5 1/2, Forever Please

Anneliese is five and a half now; she is rainbows and awkward giggles and big feelings and learning to read and sweaty snuggles and tangled hair and love notes and art projects and sillies and earnestness and questions and green peppers and sparkles and sad tears and sleepovers and constant singing and baking and capital letters written backwards. She is... everything.

"When I drink Sprite and then burp with my mouth closed, it sort of makes my nose feel sparkly inside!"

"If I had a dog, I would name it Silent."

"Did you choose my birthday to be in October because of all the pretty colored leaves?"

"You can't even see the sun because of all the clouds! This is the worst day of my life!"

"I wish there were never such a thing called winter!" (On a day when it was 55 and sunny.)

She is upset on days when she doesn't think she is wearing enough colors. She insists that her favorite fruit is coconuts. In the plural, always. She still towers over the other kids in her class. She sings wrong lyrics to every song on the radio, but consistently, because she memorizes what she thinks she hears insanely fast. She is the free spirit counterpart to balance Nathan's seriousness; they still adore and cling to each other in ways that amaze us, because to be honest we don't understand it. She is a thoughtful and profound little thinker. She approaches the world by assuming that everything is out to delight her, and it usually does. She sits in her feelings well, whether they are high or low. She cries and withdraws when she is sad. She invites everyone in the world in when she is happy. She is wonderful.

My feelings about FIVE FOREVER continue, if you're curious. Five is so great. And halfway through five deserves half a pineapple-coconut pound cake, two flowers planted into a gift bag, and a huge grin.

Alleluia! And Eggs!

We had our nephew Liam for Easter weekend this year, in preparation for taking him with us to Bumgarner beach week - which means we had FOUR kids up and ready before the earliest service, which is a new record for us!

And when I say us, I mean Mark, because... I did nothing. That's not true. I spent a lot of time blow drying my hair and brushing it one hundred times or whatever. Anyway. Mark did it, he gets the credit, he is a rock star, and they all looked adorable.

My kids, being kids of a choir mom, are among the first children at church every week. On Easter, that means getting to put the first flowers on the cross. Basically every year.

We usually have to go back after the later services and Sunday school hour to see it fully flowered, but I sort of like it empty like this, mostly wire, only a few flowers. It seems the most appropriate for the chilly wee hours before everybody gets all He Is Risen excited, yknow?

I also took Nathan and Anneliese to the Easter Vigil last night (a first!) and that was really great.

Nathan got to ring a bell as we all processed from the courtyard into the sanctuary.

(Liam and Charlotte stayed home with Marky, since they - the babies, not Mark - were on the verge of Easter breakdowns. It's a late service for three-year-olds.)

And then we got to the beach and did the traditional egg hunt, except without my sister to make it happen (SAD FACE WE MISSED HER), which means I did, which means Nathan did most of the hiding work, because I'm either really lazy or really smart.

But it was a hit anyway, and now it's time for the beach! Happy Easter! Alleluia!

Things I Am Crabby About

Happy April! I am crabby.

1.) I don't know if it's a cold or allergies or what, but my head is killing me and I am sneezy and this is terrible timing for going to the beach next week.

2.) It is still cold out. It's getting ridiculous. I cannot remember a winter that lingered this long. We are back to life, back to reality, spring break is over, yet it somehow isn't spring yet. Spring, you suck, and you're over a month late, and I'm pissed at you.

3.) This morning in preschool chapel, they celebrated Easter. IN THE MIDDLE OF HOLY WEEK. There are still crushed palms on the floor that have been poignant and achy (appropriately so) for the Lent services all week; I don't want to watch kids doing a choreographed hallelujah cheer in the middle of Holy Week. I mean what? Why not wait until next week? It'll be actual Eastertide then. Today would have been much more appropriate to do a lesson around the Last Supper, or even the Hosanna parade from Palm Sunday (since they were on spring break last week). Not Easter. Not yet. We are doing ourselves and our kids a disservice when we cheapen church for them. TELL THEM THE WHOLE STORY. (Hi I have officially become a curmudgeon.)

4.) Delta changed my schedule home from the Blathering in Seattle in a few weeks (my connection between Salt Lake City and Atlanta is now a misconnect) and that's a normal thing they're totally allowed to do, and they don't owe me any particular connection points, and I certainly didn't pay to stop in SLC for any amount of time, and I had to look on the timetables and then use a million search filters to force the website to offer me that option anyway, because the schedule is terrible, but I WANTED the stop in Salt Lake City (hi I am a worker-of-the-system), because I had an hours-long layover and dinner plans with Liz. And now I don't get that. And it's not the end of the world, but: CRABBY. (Mostly sad.)

5.) The stupid B key on my stupid computer still doesn't work, and that makes it hard to type an all-caps word like CRABBY.

6.) There is a general underlying assumption about my time: that I am around, available, and at everyone's disposal, to schedule (or unschedule) things for me, and even at the last minute it's assumed that's fine. I, uh... I exist outside of what People need me for. I am not a public commodity. And yes this is cryptic because Some Of The People Who Do This are reading here, and I am too chicken sh!t (and exhausted) (and passive aggressive, apparently) to address it directly, I just need to be pissy about it and vent for a second. I feel gross and taken for granted. (If you think you might be Some People -- check yoself. Whether it's about me or any other stay-at-home-parent you know. Our time is not "free time" or "available time" unless you PLAN and ASK. End rant.)

6.) April Fool's Day makes the whole internet annoying. Pranks are annoying to me anyway (#teamRoss) and half of what people post are not even pranks or April Fool's jokes. Saying something that isn't true? Not a prank. Shut up. It's annoying. (And companies who need to make their ads and promos into jokes are even worse than the general population.)

7.) Nathan gifted Anneliese one of the clay boat hulls he had carefully molded for his science project (the project is done now), and she broke it into a million tiny pieces and put it in a ziplock bag. And then looked at me confused when I told her it isn't really nice to break something someone gives you, especially if they made it. She was all, "why? he gave it to me so it's mine." How can kids be so wonderful and have such awful moments? (Not singling out Anneliese, either. Charlotte has been tantruming in the pre-dawn hours every day for the last week, and Nathan took a huge amount of nagging to do said science project in the first place. IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM I DON'T WANT TO MANAGE IT.)

(I got lost in the Wal-Mart parking lot a few weeks ago -- yes really, shut up, it was more complicated than it sounds but I don't care enough about explaining myself to explain myself -- but then I found this bright scarf, and it came in a 2-pack but I threw the other one away immediately, so anyway at least I have a relatively pretty $3 scarf? Whatever.)

Next week will be 75 and we will be at the beach and life will be less annoying right?