a lovely day

Do you know that song on Elizabeth Mitchell's Sunny Day album? It's been going through my head, because it is so very apt today. The clouds have parted, the sun is shining, and Frances mustered up all her courage and let me pull out a seemingly interminably loose tooth this morning. Triumph!

What else? I received some excellent news from a dear friend yesterday (in a real letter, no less!), Gabriel and I laughed in the car, watching Frances sprint to the first person she knew to show off the new window in her mouth at school, we had an impromptu cafe date before I dropped him off, during which Gabriel earnestly explained that biscotti makes him thirsty for chocolate milk. The loveliness of the day had me laughing and agreeing that he definitely needed some chocolate milk (rather than groaning and raising an eyebrow). I'm working on a new project that will be a lot of fun. And did I mention the sun was shining? Not only is it shining, but there is a new coolness in the air. It's still flip flop weather, to be sure, but the end of Chesapeake Bay-style bugginess and mugginess is in sight.  

Two friends wrote long, thoughtful emails to me about my last post, about boys and violence and imagination. Their feedback was immensely helpful, and because of it I was able to see how Gabriel's unique physicality is central to all this. In simpler terms, I hadn't considered how two weeks of rain had curtailed his outside run-around-and-play time, nor given enough weight to the fact that his naps are often interrupted to pick up his sister at school. So often as parent, when I start to make a problem complicated, I eventually come to realize that the bulk of it comes down to eating, sleeping, and exercise. 

So while I think there is more to Gabriel's sudden uptick in aggressive imaginary play and bad moods than being cooped up inside, those issues were amplified a lot because of it. He has been able to play outside for long stretches over the past two days, and his normal cheerfulness has magically returned. (The sports guys obsession has stuck, but it is far less troubling in the mind of a happy kid). A dear friend pointed out that I happen to be a high energy person, so it's not surprising that Gabriel is too. He needs to run and kick and make big sweeping motions, exercising that gross motor stuff like crazy. I also need to move; I get grumpy if I don't. When I considered the state of my own mood when I've been sitting still all day, it helped me to recognize the importance of motion to my boy's well being.

With our babies it's easy to be tuned into sleeping, eating, and exercise, as they are the most obvious things for us to respond to. But older kids can talk a good game, and distract you from the fact that sometimes they just need a snack! It makes me wonder about adults: we talk a good game too. Our bodies can get short shrift in the midst of all our everyday worries. Let us all take a deep breath, have a snack, take a walk, and go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight! Surely everything will feel more manageable if we do.

Have a lovely day, everyone. 

sports guys

While Gabriel napped this afternoon, I packed the car: a leotard and ballet slippers for Frances, snacks and water bottles, phone, wallet, and an enormous cardboard box which I filled with the Sunday Washington Post's sports section, the Sunday and Monday Capital Gazette's sports sections, scissors, and glue. Why? Because I hoped that the promise of another sports guys collage - the biggest yet - to be created during Frances's ballet class would stave off the afternoon demon that has lately begun taking possession of our dear Gabriel.

It did. But I cannot help noticing that my son's sports guy fever has been growing on a track parallel to his sudden rise in tantrums and anger. In the past I have marveled at his love affair with power: the way he channels dump trucks, volcanoes, and superheroes in wild dances around the house, emitting noises that mimic explosions and crashes, singing his own personal theme songs. It makes me smile. It makes me wonder about the effects of gender-bound expectations on us as we grow (he has expressed more aggression in three short years than I have in all my life, I am certain of it). Watching him, I have often wished I could punch the air and shout instead of stewing and simmering inside. It sure looks like a satisfying release. 

Which is probably why neither Mike nor I have intervened much as Gabriel's interest in weaponry and pretend violence has grown, or worried about his fascination with football. (Seriously, it is pretty cute when he shouts TACKLE! with little boy gusto and crashes into the couch). Tinker toy cannons are so innocent! Pirates and knights are the stuff of fabulous stories! What's not to like?

So with the exception of guns and killing talk, I tend not to intervene. (See this post I wrote for Mothering about an ambivalent episode involving water guns - I later buried them in the recycling bin). I heartily approve of imaginative expressions of aggression that are not intended to hurt anyone in real life. So healthy, I think to myself. Yes, let's express our feelings, all of them! 

But maybe while I was sitting back and smiling, we tipped over a line. If I tallied up every spare minute on the couch, in the car seat, or sprawled on the kitchen floor with the sports section, I think I'd find that Gabriel spends hours each day gazing at, and fantasizing about, football players. The more violent the episode captured on film, the better. Maybe instead of sublimating his three year old fiery anger into something manageable, his intense focus on tackling is only fanning the flames higher.

But you should see his face when we open the paper and the sports section falls out! It is pure joy, and the miracle of miracles is that a new sports section arrives every single day. Making collages out of the photographs is a bigger thrill still, and so it is a sincere pleasure to cut and paste with such a happy boy. We have no television, so these are the only images he has to go on as he cobbles together his own version of what god-like sports guys do in their heavenly sports games. There is a lot of tackling, dodging, falling, shouting, and jumping on the couch, to be sure. Can this really be a bad thing?

A therapist once told me that 'brain branching' happens around birthdays and half-birthdays. Brain branching, apparently, can make a person really out of sorts. And maybe all of the refusals to leave the car (or the house,  or the playground, or the backyard), all the swipes he takes at his sister, all the glowering, crying, and declarations of "I don't want to live here anymore!" can be attributed to a simple brain branch. That would be nice. He'll be three and a half next week; clearly it's the neurons!

But what if all the football guys and soldiers and pirates have crowded his imagination, hitting an internal saturation point, and are now poisoning my boy's normally peaceful relationship to the world? Whether or not that's the case, it is high time Mike and I worked out our own feelings about violence and instituted a related family policy. Your thoughts, dear readers, are very welcome on this one. How and when does violent play shift from something that can redirect aggressive feelings into something that can escalate those feelings? And how can we, as parents, discern where that fuzzy line is and then gently nudge our children a few inches away from it?

superbad

Here is what happened when Gabriel first made James Brown's acquaintance this morning.

How is it that I waited nearly three and a half years to have this particular dance/couch jumping party? Somehow the combination of a too-quiet rainy morning, fragrant granola toasting in the oven, and a selfish desire to rouse my boy's jet-lagging grandmother (who came to us last night straight from her annual idyll in Ashland, Oregon) inspired me.

And now? Now Gabriel has a word for his power fantasies that alternately involve karate, volcanoes, dinosaurs, monster trucks, knights, ninjas, superheroes, wild horses, and football.

He's superbad.

a heart is for love

I have been sick to varying degrees over the past couple of weeks. But yesterday the conditions were just right (I was discouraged, everything planned was easy to cancel, and Mike could help out), so I finally declared a Sick Day. Usually when I am sick enough to succumb and take a day of rest, our family becomes unmoored. Mama is...in bed? In the afternoon? The world becomes an absurd place where routines fly out the window and anything could happen. The sight of me halfheartedly gazing at a magazine on the couch at 5 pm instead of making dinner and dancing to our latest favorite song is fantastically disturbing to my kids.  

At least, it usually is. Yet on Sunday everyone was kind and accepting of my need for quiet time. Maybe my children are growing old enough to recognize that I have vulnerabilities of my own, to manage whatever anxieties that fact might elicit, and to feel some empathy for my sniffling. Maybe they are secure enough to know that a cold cannot derail everything good and true in our lives. Or maybe they were having too much fun with Papa to notice!

Mike took them to church in the morning, and later during Gabriel's nap Frances and I snuggled on the couch with our respective crafts. She took out her loom, and I made a Heart for Love, as Gabriel calls them. I first made these little hearts for the children on Valentine's Day, after finding inspiration here. A rudimentary crafter like myself relishes in this kind of small-scale project that results in something sweet, humble, and charming. I had made one for Frances on the first day of school, and everyone in the family took turns closing their eyes, solemnly clasping the heart of felt to his or her pumping-and-thumping heart of flesh, channeling all the love in the world into this new magic object. Then we ceremoniously put it in the front pocket of her backpack, because you never know when she might need a love boost during the school day.

Gabriel's school didn't start for another week, someone at Amazon dillydallied in sending his backpack, and somehow our accommodating, agreeable second child went off to his first day of school wearing a borrowed backpack emblazoned with the name Frances on it, containing neither talisman nor token. Oh, the indignity! Cheerful fellow that he is, this state of affairs bothered me far more than anyone. When his robot backpack finally did arrive, I knew I needed to make his heart immediately.

Watching me, Frances asked if she could make a pillow for Little Will, one of her stuffed animals, using the same blanket stitch. Amazing thing #1: she let me teach her, without a single feather ruffling. Amazing thing #2: she did it. All by herself. But a few short months ago, I don't think she would have had the patience and fortitude to see something like this through to the end.

But there it is, making life a little cozier in the menagerie at the foot of her bed. 

No one uttered a single protest when I retreated upstairs to read a novel in bed later that afternoon. I sank into the pillows and listened to Gabriel's funny little voice drifting through the open window as he and Mike planted kale seeds in the garden below. I so rarely get a chance to stand back (or lie back, as the case may be) and observe my growing family. My children are big, capable creatures who can easily withstand both a sick Mama and a tangled piece of thread. I didn't know that.

It's easy to fall into the rhythm of tending to dependent little ones, anticipating needs and becoming accustomed to the responsibility of being needed oneself. Ah, but they don't need me in the same way anymore. It's a good thing, I know, but part of me is lingering in another time that has very nearly passed, like a child at the playground who is not quite ready to leave.

Five more minutes, okay?