Little Brick Houses for You and Me: Farewell to the Pac (pacifier)

The The week of Easter is upon us. I admit that my Lenten observances have been minimal during the years since I went to college. When I was growing up we regularly went to church twice a week during lent and partook in the Wednesday evening soup dinners before church. Or were they after? I can't remember. What I do remember is the big solid hunks of dough that made the church lady dumplings which I find to be delicious. So delicious that I made some of my own last week.

Don't worry, there was more to the soup than what you see here! Also, Palm Sunday was yesterday which always meant Sunday school kids parading around the church with palm branches. I seem to recall that I was the leader of the processional one long ago year. It was probably in 3rd grade since that was the year the Sunday school was split between primary and secondary. The secondary kids got a reduction in church singing dates since that was about the time we got embarrassed about doing it and also the time when we stopped being cute and people didn't want to look at us anymore. I don't know why...I know I love seeing 6th and 7th graders, especially the boys, singing "Give Me Oil In My Lamp" in front of a church congregation! I read an article about Palm Sunday facts and it said that in the old days of the settlers congregations would not always be able to get palms from their local florists (because they didn't have florists, of course!) so they would use whatever branches they had growing in the area. That would have been cottonwoods or elms for my church and for the really early days I suppose they would have used prairie grasses. I have had the hymn, "All Glory, Laud and Honor" running through my head since yesterday. It is a favorite piano song of mine so I just researched it and learned that it is old. Like OLD as in been around since the year 820 old.

We had a busy weekend because we had our nephews staying with us for the weekend. They are 8 and 11. Although older, they really play well with Ben. They gave him a Paw Patrol Tent for his birthday and he and Blake, the 8 year old, slept it in together in the basement on Saturday night. Five kids...wow...there was a lot of dishes, a lot of snacks eaten and a lot of fighting over the internet and video games. I often look ahead to the years beyond the toddler days because it gets really tiring doing everything for the kids but I do not look forward to the inevitable screen time battles that are a standard part of childhood now. Especially since I am a fiend for the Internet myself. If anyone ever asked me what my favorite obsolete technology was I would say the Ethernet cord from my college days without hesitation. That fast Internet was like a dream come true!

Once the screens were put away the fun started. Dylan even made Ben Paw Patrol Easter eggs out of Playdoh.

I was impressed by this. It really was labor intensive! Playdoh really is fun for all ages. Even age 32! The weather was bad and snowy (of course the weekend before was like summer so we told them we would do all sorts of fun outdoor activities that didn't happen) but we went to the Heritage Center and Justin took them and Ben to a movie.

What else is happening...Milo is in what I consider the prime cuteness months for babies. Nothing can match a six-ish month old for cuteness. They are interactive, they think they can talk and they start being interested in toys.

Whenever Milo is crying because Justin is holding him and not me, Justin talks for him and says, "Mama, why won't you hold me? Don't you think I'm cute enough?" Well, jeez, that will do the trick to get me to hold him!

Big news in Tessa's world...what you see is an image that won't be replicated. We took away her pacifier. She has been chewing holes in them for awhile and we just got sick of it. The first days were hard. At one point I was holding her while she convulsed in my arms screaming, "My PAAAAAAAC!" It's been about two weeks and she still mentions her "pac" every once in awhile or says, out of the blue, "pac's are for babies, I a big girl" so I know she thinks about them which make me sad but she really needed to break the habit, mostly because she was ruining them so quickly and it was getting ridiculous to buy them so often.

Now the problem is getting her to sleep. Napping is a struggle but she still needs one otherwise she falls asleep wherever she sits at around 4 p.m. which makes the rest of the night a disaster. Here is a late afternoon sequence from St. Patrick's Day: