storm fever

 

You might notice that in all of these pictures the lights are on. It was a hurricane miracle! We never lost power, and bid adieu to a mere tree branch or two. Our neighbors were not so lucky; an enormous pine tree in their front yard came down, crashing into their upstairs guest room window.

So we are feeling immensely grateful for the relative ease with which we slid through this storm. The challenge really amounted to entertaining two children who were stuck indoors for roughly 48 hours. On Monday we played-per the kids' request-Home School. (Home schoolers out there might enjoy the exotic novelty it held for my kids, and the fact that it wiped me out, completely).

First assignment: map making. Real or imagined countries welcomed. Per Frances's suggestion, I recreated a map of Europe. "Maybe it will help you with geography, Mama." I am pathetic in that regard, but at least for today, I can tell you exactly where Belarus is.

What else? Math problems, lots of stories, yoga, crafting galore, Jack o' Lantern Carving 101, indoor gym class led by Mr. Papa, and Frances took the opportunity to master headstands. She spent about 30% of her waking hours over the past two days on her head. I joked that with all the blood flow going to her brain, her thinking should be at peak levels. She then proceeded to solve a number of practical problems we presented to her (how can we get you to eat a healthy lunch at school? how can I find more time to exercise?). So Frances is working on becoming a licensed headstand counselor and will be putting out a shingle shortly. Either that or writing the book on headstanding for better living.

We also made slates (one is a prop for a Laura Ingalls Wilder Halloween costume) by slathering wood pieces with chalkboard paint. They proved enormously entertaining! Frances convinced me to teach her cursive letters and I am certain this will backfire once she starts flaunting it at school.

So, all things considered, Sandy was kind to us. But oh my, am I ready for all of us to get back to our routines! The bickering is driving me batty and the kids miss School at School. Mike misses his students, I have work to catch up on, and we all are in need of some serious fresh air.

Hopefully trick or treating tomorrow will restore us. Happy Halloween, friends!

bug boy's mama (re)learns a lesson

Gabriel wants to be a superhero named Bug Boy this year for Halloween. His superpowers are those of an insect: he can float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. No wait, that's someone else. Well, in any case, he can fly, jump, sting, and buzz, and he might also wield a sword on occasion, if the situation called for it. 

My son has been conceiving the costume for weeks now, and long ago he told me that Bug Boy's symbol is an enormous stag beetle which should boldly emblazon his four year old chest. Hmm. All these details were making me nervous and the more I put off realizing them, the worse it got. Finally after school yesterday I announced we would work on his costume.

I brought the laptop to the kitchen table, hunched over it, and started scouring the internet for images of stag beetles that could be easily translated with felt and hot glue into a costume centerpiece. Things were not looking good as I clicked away, and my optimism flagged. Meanwhile my little boy was sitting next to me drawing a whole page full of amazing bugs.

After way too long, I noticed what he was doing. And suddenly felt pretty ridiculous.

Gabriel! Do you think that big mean ant could be Bug Boy's special symbol?

He looked up at me and smiled, nodding proudly. Yes. 

There it is. We cut it out and used it as a template for bright blue felt, then hot glued it (the glue is like a bullet that comes out of a gun!) onto an old red turtleneck. Gabriel's ant is far better than any Internet-inspired beetle I could possibly have come up with.

When we first started researching how to make his costume - which also had me staring at a screen, falling down various online crafting holes - Gabriel got frustrated with my inaction. He marched right up to me and said, Mama. We don't need more ideas from the computer. What we need is ... democracy!!

The minute he made this declaration we both nearly fell out of our chairs laughing. Too much exposure to election coverage on NPR, I suppose, because he delivered that line just like Mitt Romney. It was deliriously silly. But now I realize he was right. At least when it comes to art-making, we do need more democracy and less internet around here! The citizenry have plenty of excellent ideas. If only I'd remember to ask them first.

observations

Are you ever in the midst of your day, and you notice a hopeful, happy feeling on the edge of your awareness, and you think to yourself Now what was I happy about again...? What is that thing that gave me this feeling to begin with, that thing that is coloring everything so brightly and that I've somehow momentarily forgotten, though its effect lingers on...? (It also works the opposite way, at least for me: I notice a dragging, depressive cloud is hanging about me, and I have to rack my brain to remember the concrete source of my heaviness).

This afternoon I went on a luxuriously long, solitary walk in the sunshine and though that in and of itself was more than enough to justify my buoyant mood and springy step, when I noticed how happy I felt I just knew there was something else behind it that I was forgetting. As I rounded a corner of the walking trail around the Navy stadium, it hit me: the cape. I had just made Gabriel's Halloween costume cape out of a yard of shiny, satiny red fabric that he picked out at the fabric store last week.

Now, I am a very rudimentary sewer. And my inclination is to sew the way I cook: fast and loose, sloppy with the measuring. I am constitutionally unable to follow a recipe without making at least a few alterations. (Those of you who know how to sew can see how my success rate with sewing projects would be, to put it mildly, unimpressive.) But this cape! It is gorgeous. Even though I made it sloppy-style, sans pins and measuring, in less than an hour. (If you're curious, instructions are here).

It does feel good to make something beautiful all by yourself! But when I considered the cape as a potential source of the all-is-well feeling that carried my feet along, I knew that couldn't possibly account for all of it. This well of happiness was deeper than a superhero cape could dig. What was that good thing on the edge of my mind...?

And then, as I stepped onto the Poplar Trail, it hit me. Of course. We are having a little baby girl! Soon we will have a new person in our family, a new person to nurture, to puzzle over, to want to strangle, to delight in, to tell jokes with, to marvel over and to watch grow. She was the reason that everything was brilliant and beautiful this afternoon. Aha. How satisfying.

Last week we had a little scare: a cyst in the baby's brain turned up on our ultrasound. A very small percentage of babies with this particular cyst turn out to have Trisomy 18, a serious chromosomal disorder, so we were sent for a level two ultrasound to look for other indicators. A few days passed before we were able to have the second ultrasound, during which I tried my best to table my anxiety. The morning finally came, and I kept it light with the genetic counselor who diligently searched for signs of birth defects in either of our families. And then, after a long ultrasound (which I did enjoy, immensely, seeing her little body wriggle around like that), the doctor came in and said there was no cyst. He shrugged, smiled, and told us our baby was perfect.

For a second I felt irritated by a medical establishment that looks so extraordinarily hard for problems in pregnancy and fosters unnecessary anxiety, but mostly I felt relief. Happiness. Our baby is perfect (which I now realize she would be, no matter what the ultrasound turned up - because she is ours).

I still feel worried sometimes, and as ever I harbor a host of emotions about bringing this third baby into our lives. But somehow hearing that doctor say your baby is perfect helped me to fully and completely welcome joy into the mix. Exuberance. I feel those little karate chops and it is no less miraculous than the first time around. A new person is growing inside me! 

getting in the way

After two well-meaning checkers leaned over their registers at the store this afternoon to quiz Gabriel on his plans for Halloween, and he - with a world-class pout on his face, arms crossed, and eyes downcast - mumbled something about being a superhero named Bug Boy, we walked off across the parking lot and I asked him how he felt about talking with grown ups he didn't know.

I don't like it! Grown ups should not talk to me.

Why not?

Then came a moment, as he climbed into the backseat, replete with a weariness that a four year old should not yet know: silence, then a deep, heaving sigh, followed by eye-rolling. With these gestures he basically said must I explain the obvious to you? Again? ...and then resigned himself to the task.

Mama. I only like to talk to kids my own age who are my friends. Younger kids hit and kick because they don't know better. Older kids tease and taunt. And grown ups are just...annoying.

A world run and inhabited by four year olds! Can you imagine it? I sort of can, after a day of apple-picking with Gabriel and his friend Wyatt yesterday. There would be a lot of bathroom humor. I mean, a lot. Playing with sticks would be required for at least 2 or 3 hours a day (consequently half the citizenry would be missing an eye). Most of the time would be spent in make believe, everyone's clothes would be impossibly dirty, and hugs would abound, whether or not both participants were interested in a squeeze just then.

Gabriel and Wyatt hadn't seen each other in a long time and so the excitement level was high for our orchard adventure. On the way there, the boys talked pee and poop and cracked each other up for nearly an hour, after which point (thank goodness) I successfully introduced a game of 20 questions. That worked for awhile, until they started asked questions like "Is it an animal who...poops on your head?"

Oh man. Funny stuff. I admit, it was hard not to laugh, watching them delight in each other. They sprinted past the Braeburns and Staymans with sticks, pretending to be ninja samurai warriors and occasionally diving under trees to avoid enemies invisible to these old eyes. They spent an hour chasing each other through the straw maze, guffawing like mad. And the only challenge on my end was keeping their impulses towards naughtiness in check.

They seemed to want to push the envelope with me constantly. They'd encourage each other to disobey. At first I was a little baffled. What were they getting out of it? Then at one point Gabriel wandered over and sat down in my lap, clearly needing a break. Wyatt looked at him with horror, as if he'd been betrayed. Gabriel!! Come back here! he called from the lip of their pretend witches' stew pot, bunches of grass in his hands. Come on!!

Then I got it. I was a threat to their twosome. When you want to identify so completely with a friend, parents really get in the way - even if they're not literally in the way. The very fact of a parent's love can cramp your style, even at age 4.

And so it begins. We provide the security, the unconditional safe space in whose confines they can grow and hopefully become the people they are meant to be - yet part of that becoming will inevitably involve a thousand moments of distancing, rejecting, and separating from the love we offer. They come back and go away, over and over, practicing.

I am tickled by Gabriel's capacity for friendship. So much so that I didn't mind being the bad guy yesterday. But oh my, did it ever feel good when he snuggled up next to me for a story at bedtime!

 

say yes

This weekend the weather was fantastic, but the golden light that colored everything and everyone wasn't just about the perfection that is October sunshine. Last Thursday I went to the annual fundraiser for the nonprofit I work with, Seeds 4 Success. Some of you may remember when I wrote about meeting the executive director last November, how we shared so many connections and then later discovered that our parents had been friends in Dallas when we were babies and toddlers, so many years ago.

My family left Dallas when my dad got a job as the associate minister at the Unitarian Universalist church in Providence, RI, which put an end to backyard hang-outs with the Snells. Thirty-two years later, I was heading towards a table full of enticing appetizers at a fundraiser when a man with gray hair and a warm, open face reached out and touched my arm. 

"Meagan?" 

I was feeling inclined to love everyone at this event - all supporters, staff, and volunteers at one of the coolest nonprofits ever - so I figured he must be a friend, albeit one I didn't recognize. Then he told me that before the party, he couldn't quite remember my mother's face, but the minute he saw me he knew just who I was, because I looked so much like her.

And then I knew exactly who he was. My dad's old friend. Jess's dad. Bill. 

Oh! It was a gift, it was extraordinary, to hear him and his wife Laura tell stories about spending time with my parents when they were nearly ten years younger than I am now. How often do we hear first hand about our families before we were old enough to remember? My mom, at home with a toddler, apparently developed a penchant for hot dogs. She told ghost stories. My grandfather invited them to a party at his house and the guests included all three of his wives (two exes and current) who apparently all got along amicably. Bill and Laura were astounded. Who wouldn't be?

It was already as if God had given me an unasked for, unanticipated gift when I met Jess and learned about our family connection. The gift grew and grew on Thursday night, and it gave me a shivery, charged feeling. At a certain point  I realized my mom was coming into town on Friday, and I asked what plans Bill and Laura had for the weekend. 

Not much, they said - just their granddaughter's soccer game on Saturday morning. Which was exactly what my mom had planned on Saturday morning - her grandson's soccer game. Addison and Gabriel's games turned out to be at the same time, on adjacent fields, and my goodness, we were all able to stand around together in the chilly sunshine and talk! The amazing thing is that we did nothing to put this all in motion. We only had to say yes, to agree, to accept the gifts we were being given.

It's strange to think that if Jess and I hadn't connected, all those grandparents would be cheering along the sidelines in another town, another time, thirty years after starting a friendship with babies on their hips, and not recognize one another. But maybe not - after all, Bill recognized me, a perfect stranger. They'd probably have figured it out.

Later during the weekend, when all had settled into more regular routines, I was thinking about our meeting on the soccer field and was visited by a vision of my dad there with us. Loose-limbed, goofy, laughing at the sweet absurdity of four year olds chasing a ball straight off the field, cheering a little too loud for Gabriel, poking ridiculous fun at Frances when she complained of boredom, giving big bear hugs to Bill and Laura. It hurts sometimes when my mind goes there involuntarily - imagining what life would be like today with him in it. It's not hard at all, which is a kind of comfort, because I still know him so well. And thanks to meeting Jess's parents over the weekend, now I know him just a tiny bit better.

Oh dear. Telling you about that has me crying. A bit of lighter news: Frances made pancakes all by herself. She was so very proud! And both kids ran around in bare feet in the warm weather on Sunday, looking sweet and summery while I did yoga on the back deck and stared up in triangle pose at the green boughs moving gracefully in the wind above, and just like Amos the mouse, I felt thoroughly akin to it all. 

nitty gritty

Our kitchen floor - more than any surface in our house - is regularly stomped on, slid across, spilled on, and generally abused in every imaginable way. Yet, mop-averse mama that I am, I rarely pay any attention to it. Like, almost never. It's a sad state. (A certain friend of mine and loyal reader with hard-working German roots would be horrified.)

But we have - in theory - two small laborers who live rent-free upstairs and I decided it was time to give them the job of cleaning the floor. The last few weekends, I've set them up with soapy buckets and, per their request, played "It's a Hardknock Life" at a startlingly high volume, over and over. Then I leave them to it.

It's wild. They get sopping wet, they dance, they slide, they use every dishtowel and rag in the house, and it takes about an hour. Yesterday, things got so out of control at the end that I had to send them upstairs for a five minute time out, during which I hastily pulled out the mop, ran it over their uneven work, and hid it behind the fridge before calling them back downstairs. I didn't want to demoralize them.

Because despite their crazy approach to cleaning, they do take pride in their work. This year is our most scheduled yet with children, and in keeping with that, we have introduced regular chores in a more routinized way. It's a good thing, and they have taken to their new duties relatively well, but...for a sometimes lazy mama, it can be a daunting enterprise, this chore enforcement business.

Because let's face it, when overseeing a four and seven year old, one has to tolerate sloppiness, slowness, incompetence, and dilly-dallying taken to stunning heights. I believe in chores. I believe in shared family responsibility for the work of maintaining a home. I believe in the dignity of domestic endeavors! But lord, it can be tedious to impart these values.

So, can we get down to the nitty gritty? The challenge seems to be finding tasks that are realistically accomplish-able yet require some effort and will impart that real feeling of pride when done with care. I will tell you what our kids do. Then will you tell what your kids do, how you approach it, and if you ever go crazy in the process?

Right now, the kids take turns every morning putting away the silverware from the dishwasher (this works pretty well), set the table most nights, and help clear. Bed-making is nonexistent, but mostly because I can't figure out how to teach them to make their rather challenging beds (Gabriel's is a bunk bed with difficult tucks, and Frances's is a day bed with the same problem - metalwork on three sides. Advice welcome on this one.) On weekends they pick up their rooms (torture) and attempt the above-described floor cleaning.

Please weigh in! I can't be the only one of us interested in reading about the chores other kids are doing, and with what degree of success/family harmony. Our investments of time and energy at this age will - hopefully - pay off later. So...how is it working in your house?

her favorite brother

About a month ago, Gabriel changed his tune. For weeks he'd been praying fervently for a little brother (usually while his sister sat next to him, face screwed up tight, hands clasped, praying just as fervently for a little sister ... which made a charming scene, two miniature duelers silently, furiously competing for God's attention). But then, out of nowhere, he decided he wanted a sister too.

Huh? Mike and I suspected this was yet another case of Gabriel deciding it was best to placate his big sister's passionate desires and minimize conflict. Probably if he prayed for a little sister too it'd be in the bag, and then his Didi would be so very happy!

Well. We have an ultrasound scheduled this Friday, at which point we will likely know whether this baby is a little brother or a little sister. Last night before bedtime we were all on the big bed talking about it, and Gabriel set us straight about why he changed his mind.

"If it's a brother, I won't be Didi's favorite brother anymore. But if it's a sister, I'll still be her favorite."

Oh. Mike and I looked at each other, speechless. These two have been a pair for so long! The impending change is already rippling through all of  us in ways we are quietly discovering and absorbing, one moment at a time.