Caroline Rides a Bike

Henry is frequently talking about what he wants to be when he grows up.  Typically, he wants to be a professional baseball player and the only changes he makes is which team will draft him.  This week, however, he added "cop" to the list.  It seemed to come out of nowhere, but when he said it, I told him he'd be a good police officer because he likes things to be fair and he tends to be a peacemaker with his siblings.  He replied, "Yeah, and I can run fast."  So apparently he's more into the chasing criminals aspect of the job.

We have had quite the weekend around here.  Friday night the kids had made the plan to all sleep on the bunk beds.  Henry, the most insistent about it, convinced me that he had practiced sleeping in this formation all day.  This is what they practiced: Henry UNDER the mattress, Caroline ON the mattress, and Josiah comfortably resting on top bunk.  After seeing their plan, taking a photo to laugh about later, Todd and I just walked out of the room with a Good Night and Good Luck!  This was a lesson that would (painfully) teach itself.  There was the usual chatter when they went to bed, but after 10 minutes or so, it got quiet.  They didn't really fall asleep, did they?  At 9:00 p.m., I walked upstairs incredulous that they would have been able to fall asleep.  Their fierce determination to stick to the plan had kept them quiet.  When I told them they had made a valiant effort, however it was time to actually go to sleep and that Caroline could sleep on a palate on their floor, a very sweaty and relieved Henry emerged from under the mattress.  He told me that his skin was all prickly.  Right.  That would be the blood coming back into your limbs and fingers.

Saturday morning, Todd took the boys to Costco while Caroline and I were at gymnastics.  Todd went to get some ground beef and Henry walked with him, saying, "I want some meat."
Todd - "I'm getting meat.  I'm getting ground beef."
Henry - "No, I want this meat."  (steaks)
Todd - "I'm getting ground beef."
Henry - "It's only $11.00."
Todd - "A pound.  $11.00 a pound.  It's $53.00 total."
Henry - "How about this one?"  (A $39.00 slab-o-beef.)
Todd - ... 

Saturday evening the kids wanted to ride their bikes after dinner.  I was sitting outside with them when Caroline decided that she wanted to ride her two-wheel bike.  I wasn't exactly keen on running alongside of her to practice the two-wheeler, so I told her to push one pedal down, kick off with her other foot, and just glide.  She could practice balancing.  She did this for a while and was doing a good job gliding along.  Then I looked at her and noticed she had both feet on the pedals.  Then she just started riding her bike down the sidewalk.  And that's how the third child learns to ride a bike.  The most amazing part, however, was that she never crash landed.  It always seems to be the case that braking is another hard skill to learn.  I watched her and she actually eased on the brakes while riding into the grass and then she'd effortlessly hop off.  The girl has skills.  That's my girl.

Sunday afternoon we had our WAM concert.  We've had a lot of WAM this week - three rehearsals and the final show.  The performance went really well.  The show was based off of the movie, The Greatest Showman.  We sang all of the same songs as the movie, but the lyrics were changed so that they were speaking about Jesus.  They were really fun, upbeat songs.  All three of our kids were belting it out for most of them.  After watching the accompanying drama during the rehearsals, Josiah said that next year he wants to be one of the actors.  The kids remembered that we got Tutti Frutti (frozen yogurt) after the concert last May, so they were hopeful that we would have it again.  They are all about traditions, especially those that have to do with dessert.  Todd and I found it amazing that they remembered they had Tutti Frutti 12 months ago, but they can't remember to pick up their dirty clothes from the bathroom floor despite being reminded Every Single Day.  Nevertheless, by the time the WAM concert was over, it was a bit after six in the evening.  We were exhausted.  We had left our house a little over 9 hours earlier and we were hungry for dinner.  We told the kids they could make ice cream sundaes at home and that we'd have to do a different tradition after WAM concerts because the performance days are so long.  Todd told them we could do Tutti Frutti another day sometime soon.  Two children were disappointed, but accepted the ice cream sundae idea.  One child insisted we hated them, we never loved them, and we would never go to Tutti Frutti again.  Ever.  After ignoring the rants of said child, they ate a bit of dinner, raising their blood sugar to "pleasant mood" level and all was right in the world again.

Our amaryllis bloomed this week.  I took a picture of Caroline beside it to get an idea of size.  It is one huge flower.

Caroline's four front teeth have all been coming in over the past few weeks.  We present progression of teeth:
She still has a closed mouth smile, though, and she's self-conscious if people make too much of a big deal about it.  She touches them all the time, though, and she's fascinated by the ridges on the bottom.  We're getting used to seeing her with teeth again.  She looks older!

We are down to four more weeks of school! The end is near!