Things I Never Imagined

 Will is eighteen now and my mom - the original reason I even started writing any of this down - is gone.  Her death more than two years ago has left a dark hole that I would never have imagined.  The world changed so much when she died. Reading back over some of what I wrote years ago I can't believe this is all the same life I'm still living.  

We are in second semester Senior Year for Will and the college decisions come in and break my heart in ways I never imagined they would.  It's not my journey or my story but I've walked alongside Will for over eighteen years now and the rejections feel personal.   It's not so much that I'm worried about Will and his future - Will has so much to offer the world - it's that it all feels so unfair and so random.  Which brings me back to my mom.

My mom used to tell me a lot of things.  "You're not made of sugar, you won't melt," she'd say when it was raining and I had to walk to school and "Nobody gave you a certificate when you were born and told you that life was going to be fair," when I complained about things.  Nobody promised that life would be fair but it's something I've obviously struggled with for most of my life.   

I understand it in the Christian sense too.  I didn't deserve to be born in a first world country.  I didn't deserve the kind of privilege I didn't even know I was benefitting from.  Kids who get cancer or who lose parents don't "deserve" that either.  Life is not fair.

Last Days

Today is the last day before the Last Day of Elementary School for Will.  Tomorrow is the official "Last Day" but today is the last day before that last day.  Today I'm feeling grateful for Last Days.

So many of our traditions celebrate firsts and many "last days" we pass without every knowing that they are the last.  The last time your little girl asks for "uppie".  The last time they crawl.  The last time you feed them yourself.  The last diaper you change.

Today we woke up and our guinea pig, Marshie, was gone.  She had died sometime in the early morning; her body was still warm but she was gone.   Lindsay had been gone most of the day yesterday and so I had fed Marshie her greens which she ate happily.  I had noticed that she seemed a little "off" and we've had her several years, about the normal guinea pig lifespan, I suppose.  The thought crossed my mind that I hoped she would not die next week when we are gone and our neighbor is looking after her.   I made a special trip to Kahoots yesterday and bought her new hay because she hadn't been eating her hay and Lindsay thought it was because I had purchased the wrong kind.   I gave her a huge handful of the new hay - which she didn't seem to appreciate either - but she ate her greens, apple and carrots happily.   Looking back, perhaps I could have known that yesterday was her "last day" but I didn't and the day passed unnoticed.

Lindsay discovered her this morning and was devastated.  We all were, really.  Watching Lindsay, sobbing with grief, was heartbreaking for us all.  Marshie was her "first" pet and though we all "loved" her, Lindsay loved her most and best.   I watched Lindsay throughout the rest of the day, through the festivities of DanceFest and GoldDust Or Bust! - she put on a brave face but inside her heart was broken just a little.   Yesterday was a "last day" that I missed.  Could I have eased Lindsay's suffering if I hadn't?  If I had noted the day, told Lindsay that Marshie seemed "off".  Would that have prepared her?  Would it have softened the blow?

Of course I'll never know the answer to that and that kind of loss, softened or not, still leaves a hole, as I like to say, that is deep and wide.  I was also 10 when I experienced my first loss; actually it was the same loss - the death of my guinea pig "Petunia".  I've never forgotten it.  I don't remember how or when my first guinea pig, Timmy, died, perhaps because although he was my first guinea pig, he wasn't the first to go.  That distinction belongs to my second guinea pig Petunia, who came into my life second but left it first.  I remember every detail of Petunia's death because her loss was my first experience with the death of something close to me, my first "last day".   I knew that Petunia, or "Tuny" was not well when I left for school that morning but I didn't know when I left for school that it was be the first of the important "last days" in my life.  My mom came to school to tell me that Petunia had died.   I remember everything about that moment:  sitting on the bench outside of the school office, the quality of light, the sloping grass in front of me, the concrete walkway below my feet.   I remember how my mom just let me grieve and I remember how deeply deeply sad I felt.  Almost 40 years later I now understand that that "last day" led me here to this one when I held my little girl and listened to her sob.

I'm grateful to my friend Kelly Bruhn who called me last week to ask about her 8th grade son going to the Fair with his friends without parents.  What did I think of this, she wondered.   I didn't have an answer for her but something about that conversation hit home with me and that afternoon, after school, on a whim, I took my kids to the Fair.  We skipped our plans for the day and instead spent an afternoon full of rides, fair food and tons of just pure joy.  Will is entering Middle School and soon he won't tolerate afternoons at the Fair with his mother and younger sister, but on this day, this Maybe-Last-Day,  we shopped, we rode, we looked at farm animals, we ate "Fair Food", we checked out photography and art exhibits and both Lindsay and Will kept spontaneously telling me how much fun they were having, how great it was and how thankful they were that we had come.  In short, it was a nearly perfect afternoon and I did it because I recognized on this journey through life that these Last Days, when you can catch them, are special times to be lingered over, to be cherished.  I don't know for sure that that afternoon at the Fair will be one of those Last Days - maybe I will be given another "Last" day at the Fair with Will.  And maybe not.

I recognize that celebrating a Last Day is also a kind of grieving, a mourning for times and things that have come and gone.  It's a way to acknowledge their importance in our lives and, so doing, to say good-bye.  So today, on the cusp of another Last Day - Will's Last Day of Elementary School - I'm grateful.  I'm grateful to be here, recognizing and celebrating this "Last Day" and knowing we will never pass this way again.   So thanks Marshie and thanks Del Mar Heights Elementary - we love you.

A New Mommy For Lindsay

And this is the second story.

This morning when we are getting in the car to go to school Lindsay says to me: "I want a new mommy. Maybe one like Auntie Sheri" (her godmother, my very good friend).

Then she thinks for a moment.

"But Auntie Sheri is expensive," she continues, "And I don't have a lot of money. So I guess I am stuck with you."

I Did Not Ask For This

My mom says I have to write this stuff down - so since I had two new Lindsay stories that she insists I will want to remember and that Lindsay will want to hear sometime in the not-so-distant future I am following her motherly advice and writing (er, typing) them down for posterity (despite the fact that the following story is not one that I'm so sure *should* be saved for posterity).

First. a little background on Lindsay (since it's been about 2 years since I wrote anything here). She's a carnivore. She'll tell you that herself. Will will tell you that he is an omnivore (and truer words might never have been spoken) but Lindsay is our carnivore.

Yesterday after church we went out to breakfast with my in-laws at their golf club. My mother in law asked Lindsay what she is going to order, maybe pancakes, maybe the waffles ...

Lindsay says, "I'm going to have a plate of bacon and oranges."

Mother in law: (looking a bit taken aback) "Oh, okay. Well, would you like some toast with that honey?"

Lindsay: "No. I only want to order what I already said. Bacon and oranges." (Later she adds orange juice for a drink).

Mother in law: Okay then.

When it comes time to order I explain this to the waitress. When Lindsay says she wants oranges she is referring to the slice of orange garnish that they always put on the edge of the plate. Usually Lindsay just steals them from everyone at the table but yesterday she wanted her own.

Fast forward to the food arriving. The waitress puts down a plate of just what Lindsay ordered. Lindsay looks at the plate with some disdain. Then she reaches across the plate to the piece of green leaf lettuce onto which the chef has set the seven or eight slices of orange garnish. She picks it up very carefully between her index finger and her thumb, almost as if she was picking up a soiled tissue. She looks at me, then at my mother in law. "I didn't ask for THIS." she says accusingly.

Like, how stupid are you people? Did you not hear what I said? I SAID "'Bacon and oranges'. I did NOT say 'green leaf lettuce'."

My mother in law was laughing so hard that her eyes were tearing up.

Lindsay's Sparkly Shoes

I'm not sure who in the universe thought it would be funny to give me a little girl who loves shoes but I'd like to find them and lodge a complaint! As if it isn't bad enough that Lindsay has to sleep with shoes (not on, holding them), today she put on a shoe-a-holic display worthy of a toddler Carrie Bradshaw.

Today I needed to stop by the mall to pick up some birthday gifts for two of my sisters in law. Both of my kids are in need of shoes so I decided I'd also do some shoe shopping while I was there. Will was at camp so I just had Lindsay and even though I failed to bring a stroller for her, since it was going to be a quick shopping trip and she's pretty easy to do things with I wasn't too worried. I should have been worried.

First store is Stride Rite for shoes. Despite the fact that she's not yet a year and a half old, Lindsay is already very particular about which shoes she likes. She kept going and getting this one hot pink pair which would have been fine except for the fact that they don't have them in her size. She goes and gets another pair, relatively similar, same color, but Stride Rite doesn't have those in her size either (6W). In the end I buy her white sandles (pretty standard toddler girl shoes) and a pair of white tennis shoes with light pink trim.

Two hundred dollars worth of shoes later (two pairs for Lindsay, two for Will) we head to a store to get something for Kevin's sister Lori. On the way Lindsay stops at the Bebe store (expensive, trendy, high end clothes) and she starts pointing in the window and saying "Dat!" "Dat!" Then she goes inside, still pointing and now also grabbing. I pick her up and carry her out and a few stores down before setting her down again to walk...we have no similar trouble passing by stores like Gap, GapBody, Banana Republic, even Childrens Place. Just Bebe.

Then I go into Nordstroms. Childrens shoe department, third floor. Immediately Lindsay finds the hot pink shoes similar to the ones she liked at Stride Rite. Grabs those. Climbs up on a chair, on her own, and proceeds to try and put it on her foot. I take her off the chair and move her. I am looking at the Pedipeds, she toddles over and finds these sparkly (and I mean sparkly) shoes - with gobs of fake "jewels" and rhinestones on them made by LelliKelly

Same procedure: climbs on chair, tries to shove on feet, has a fit when removed from chair. We repeat this one more time with another (similar) pair of glittery over the top shoes before I wise up and decide that the universe is telling me that I am not meant to buy her any Pediped shoes and I carry her, kicking and screaming, under my arm and down the escalator to the women's department to find something for my sister in law Kelly's birthday gift.

Sigh. How in the world did I, queen of the barefeet and flip flop, hater of pedicures, give birth to a shoe-a-holic who isn't even one and a half yet?

Burning Up

So I've been reading (really, studying) the Spirited Child handbook in the last few months (which I think has helped a lot - mostly me). I put something from that book into practice today with a lot of success. It's not often that something actually "works" over a very short period of time - I was so pleased with the technique that I wanted to write it down. Will can be very intense and really work himself up in a frenzy. One of the suggestions of the SC book is to give children alternative outlets for their feelings, particularly anger, instead of not allowing them to feel/be angry.

So this morning Will was all upset because I wouldn't let him wear his Spiderman costume to school. "But I have to save people," he argues. I tell him that if the costume is going to make him disagreeable that's not very super-hero like and I'll have to take the costume away until he's ready to act nicely (if the costume makes you have bad behavior then the costume is going to need to be put away yadda yadda). So then he tells me that he's very angry with me (which I think is a good step - that he's saying that versus just having a complete hissy fit).

I told him that it was okay for him to be angry with me; I understood that and I felt angry sometimes too. Then I asked him (this is from the book) if he'd like to draw a picture of how angry he felt. He said that yes he would so up we went to get the markers and paper out and he plopped himself down and began to draw. He started with black. Then he got yellow, red and after that pink. About this time Kevin came home from running and asked him what he was drawing. He tells Kevin very matter of factly that he's angry with me for not letting him wear his Spiderman costume and so he's drawing a picture of fire burning me up (maybe I was the pink?). Kevin, of course, is pretty taken aback but in typical Kevin fashion he keeps his cool and doesn't really react to it (I later explained the technique to him). He showed Kevin the fire and the black (which he said was the smoke) burning me up.

In the car on the way to school he was still angry with me (according to him) but when I picked him up from school and we got into the car he said to me right away, "Mommy, I'm not angry with you anymore" (I hadn't asked - I had just acted normally when I picked him up; he brought it up specifically).

Here's a picture of the drawing he made. It's a pretty obviously "angry" image - but I thought it was pretty cool that he could get his anger out that way (versus having a fit, hitting something or someone, or even just yelling). So I got fictionally burned up in the process. As my book suggests, parenting should be about progress, not perfection :-)

Mom, How Come ...

Will: Mom, how come there's rain in the clouds if I can't see it, even if I go up in an airplane?

to Ty: Have you heard of "On Beyond Zebra? Which letters do you know?

to Ty: You can't see the air but you can feel it, right?

June 21, 2009

Things I Hope I Never Forget

Lindsay at the fair, her first time seeing a cow. I had been wheeling her around in her stroller but when we got to the AgriFair building I took her out and let her go into the petting zoo. The floor of the petting zoo is a thick layer of shavings and normally Lindsay is pretty particular about her footing (not venturing out into deep sand, often not even wanting to walk on wet grass) but I put her down and she saw the cows and I just saw the lightbulb go off. "Moo!" she squealed and headed over to the cows as fast as her little tripod walk would take her repeating "Moo! Moo! Moo!" all the way. Then "Sheep!" Too bad I had never told her about goats (bad mom). She had no words for them but she walked right over and patted them too.

It all just clicked in her head that these things we'd been seeing in books are really animals, not some little plastic toy.

Art A Day

Kevin and I have decided that the next fifteen months are so are the "sweet spot" of parenting. Today is the first day of summer for us (Will's last day of school was yesterday) and in just about 15 months he'll be starting kindergarden (sighs). Like the Keith Urban song, "these are the days that you'll remember" and we want to spend them, as much as possible, enjoying the freedom of this time in our lives.

As I was pinning up some of the school artwork that came home with Will yesterday it occurred to me tha t, beyond me lobbying to put more art and music into our schools, I ought to be walking the talk and doing exactly that. Instead of worrying about donating to fundraisers to bring art education back to our school district, maybe we should just be getting down and dirty ourselves more often. I love doing art projects - and part of the joy of getting messy is getting clean afterwards. I set a goal to do at least one art or music "project" every day - some days it will be as simple as getting out our MusicTogether CDs and our instruments and playing together but I hope that most days it will mean getting out the crayons, the paints, the glue, the playdoh, t he scissors ... and just getting creative.

On the first day we made a chalk city on our driveway and painted dinosaurs. Well, we started out painting dinosaurs ... then the dinosaur became the ocean. Then we put fish in the ocean. [then mommy paints a sun over the ocean]. Then we paint a purple whale breeching out of the ocean. Then we give the whale a mouth. Now the whale is a megaladon (ancient shark). Then the whale is actually a ladder up to the sun. Then we mix the purple with the sun - now we have a sunset ... and that's where we stop for the day (although we may continue to paint after "quiet time" - to that end the stuff is still set up in the driveway.

Like my goal of getting back into running this year, it's all about momentum. The more you do it, the more you do it. First day of summer and we're on a roll :-)

ArtADay - Day 2

Day 2: we played off of our matchbox car chalk city and ran our cars through paint and then "rimmed" the cars on the paper to create our artwork. We also had fun with Lindsay's bubble machine (she can say "bubble" now very distinctly) and Will's bubble sword. I made giant bubbles with the bubble sword and Will ran around the street popping them with his other sword. This is now referred to as "the bubble game".

Day Three - start of a cheetah, painting the base

Day 3: decided to go with a theme for the week (African Animals). He chose a cheetah today. We looked at pictures on the internet (thank you Google Images) and then decided that cheetahs are yellow. Then I had to cut out a template. Of course Will wanted a cheetah running, so I had to freehand draw that, then cut it out, then tape it down onto the newspaper so he could paint it. Now it's drying and after "quiet time" we'll punch out black dots (that's a skill, right?) and glue them onto the body. Don't know if we'll make eyes or just glue googley eyes to it. I found a cool multicolored snake thing for tomorrow.

the finished cheetah

.

Day 4 - paper plate snake. Note to self - make note of which pieces go where before you paint. In theory it's a great idea to practice cutting by cutting the paper plate into pieces and then painting the pieces and then reassembling the "puzzle" back into a snake ... but in practice it's harder than it looks to remember which piece goes where! (and it's also hard to figure out which side to paint if the pieces aren't labeled so we ended up painting both sides of all of the pieces, just in case.

Day 4 - colorful snake

.

Day 5 - I've already learned something. Even though I like having a "theme" and the goal of doing at least one art project each day, I've learned that being too rigid about either really takes the entire point out of it. Yesterday we had a fun, easy day - walked to Starbucks, baked banana bread together, played the bubble game but then it was 5 PM and I realize we haven't done our art project for the day yet (handprint lions from this site: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/lion_handprint_painting.htm) So this week I feel compelled to complete the theme but after tomorrow (Friday) I'm going to adopt a looser definition of "art project". I want to do creative things but I don't necessarily need to create things in the process. There's too much pressure that way - which entirely defeats the point of the project in the first place.

Day 6 - this morning Will had a playdate with a friend whose mom is also very into doing art with her son. She showed me a few cool things that she has to do with Mason (that I now totally covet) and she had a face painting book complete with face paints, a brush, etc. We turned Mason & Will into superheroes with face paints - it was fun. Now if I can only get to Michaels today maybe I can just paint Will's face as a zebra .....

To Be Or Not To Be ...

After a difficult trip with a friend to the Wild Animal Park I started thinking about the way we raise our children and what we're really teaching them and how much of our parenting is not about our child(ren) but about ourselves. And what I ultimately realized is that, as parents, most of the time we're not being honest with our children and maybe that's the reason they're not learning what we're teaching.

When other children are "too loud" we tell our child to say to that child, "You're hurting my ears, please stop screaming" or when they are playing in a way our child doesn't like (chasing, too physical, etc) we teach our child to "use his words" to tell the other child, "stop, I don't like that." But, in truth, as adults, we would never say that to someone who was offending us. When people are laughing and loud in a restaurant we don't go up to them and ask in our most polite tone of voice, "Excuse me, I don't like how loudly you are talking, could you please speak more quietly?"

So why are we teaching our children to "use their words" in this way if we know that, as adults, we don't practice this? Is this really the way we as adults should be acting? Do we think that this is actually the "right" way to interact with people. Should we, as grown ups, walk around using our words to politely correct everyone's behavior because we don't like it? Would we feel better if we did that?

Somehow I don't think so. If you're a "touchy feely" person that likes to hug and kiss people when greeting them how would you feel when the reaction to your affectionate greeting was, "I don't like it when you touch me that way"? What if you like to sing along with the radio and your passenger admonishes you, "You're hurting my ears. Could you please stop?"

As adults we would never do this. We know that would hurt the other person's feelings. But as parents this is exactly what we are teaching our children to do. We're not teaching them about accepting other people's differences or being kind to other people, we're teaching them that to assert their thoughts is supreme. Shouldn't we be teaching our children how to cope with the real world? And I don't mean that we shouldn't teach our children to keep their hands to themselves, or use inside voices - that's not what I'm wondering about at all - teaching children self control is a big part of what parenting is about. What I'm wondering about is what we are teaching our kids with respect to how they react to those situations when others do things that they don't like. Should we be teaching our kids to speak out or grin and bear it as we, their parents, do?

Shakespeare dealt with this very question in Hamlet's best known speech:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them.

When we teach our children to ask (however politely) for other people to change their behavior just to please their own sensibilities aren't we really teaching them that they are more important than anyone else? And then we wonder why they challenge US?

the Spoiling of Husbands

I'm never quite sure how to react when people tell me that I spoil my husband. From where I sit I think that should be a compliment but when people say it to me it doesn't come across that way. It's not a critique, really, but it's definitely not a compliment.

There are two main times that people tend to say this. One is when I am making dinner (which, by the way, is my dinner too, not just his) and the other is related to the care of our children, specifically times when I leave him to "babysit" them. "It's not babysitting when they are his children!" I'm repeatedly told. "He doesn't know how lucky he is" is the other thing that people tell me. In fact, I've heard that very statement at least three times in the last five days. Once from my very good friend, once from his mother (I think SHE really did mean it as a compliment, after all, he is her baby) and once, just about an hour or so ago, from my good friend and neighbor who stopped by while I was making dinner.

I want to say up front that I'm in no way offended when people say this to me, nor do I feel the least bit defensive. But I do find it curious which is why I'm writing about it here (I started this blog solely to have a place for these random thoughts and musings). Why is my cooking him a nice dinner or wanting to not leave him to take care of both kids while I'm off doing "my thing" too often such a cause for notice and comment? Nobody makes this kind of comment when you do something nice for your girlfriend - but husbands seem to be in a different category (apparently of people you should not "spoil" too regularly).

Will and the Bullies

There comes a time in every child's life when the "real world" starts creeping in and encroaching on the carefree days of childhood. Figuring out how to protect your child from those not-so-nice realities and, at the same time, teach him to navigate this new world is the struggle of every parent. Will is 3 1/2 now and fairly obsessed with "mean guys" or "bad guys". He's recently become very interested in Spiderman the superhero who protects people from the mean guys. When he's not wearing his costume (which is often), he's "Peter Parker" (Spiderman's alter ego). He has taken to locking his bedroom door to keep the mean guys out and he asks us all the time about where the mean guys are. He was very relieved to learn about jail and learn that mean guys are locked up there so that they cannot get him.

Will also loves school so it was suprising to me that he came home from school on Monday saying that he didn't want to go back to school anymore. When I asked him why he told me that on the playground that day there were some mean kids from Red Gamal and they would not let him on the slide. Red Gamal is one of the other classes of three year olds but they are the oldest class so most of the Red Gamal kids are four now and, from what I've read, four is the age when bullying starts to rear its ugly head in schools.

I asked Will how he had handled the "mean guys" and he told me that he had "used his words" to tell them to stop being mean and to please let him on the slide but that didn't work (which made him feel sad he said) so then he went over to his teacher, Dana, and told her and that Dana had then gone and talked to the boys and that they had gotten off the slide. This all seemed good to me but it weighed on Will (as things tend to do with him) and he couldn't let it go. He brought it up again and again. We talked about what words he could use and what he could DO (walk away and go play with his friends Zach and Mason). We even role played that a bit when he brought it up again last night. I mentioned it to Kevin that this was really weighing on our little boy and he said it was sad that he had to deal with bullies so young.

This morning before school Will was adamant that he didn't want to go to school and mentioned the mean guys again while getting into the car. He told me that if I was going to make him go to school then he was not going to go outside and play on the playground so the mean guys couldn't be mean to him. Sigh, I thought. Our sweet little boy meets the big bad world.

I decided that I would at least mention it to his teachers when I dropped him off - if four is the age of bullies, three is the age of fantasy and since Will has been so obsessed with "mean guys" I wondered if the story was even true. I also wondered if I had inadvertently blown up the issue by talking with Will about it and humoring his worrying.

So when I went into Will's classroom I mentioned the incident and Will's obsessive concern to Dana and asked her if she even remembered something like that happening. She looked puzzled for a moment and then her eyes opened wide. "It wasn't kids from Red Gamal," she told me. Their class had had a field trip on Monday so their schedule was a bit off and they had been on the playground at the same time as the Pink Tzipor class (two year olds). It turns out that it was a couple of two year olds who had been on the slide (normally Will's class is out on the playground at the same time as the Red Gamal kids) and not let Will pass. She said that the two year olds were not being mean, they were actually pretty afraid of Will (hands down the biggest kid in his class) and were just frozen there when Will was trying to "use his words" to have them move. They didn't know what to do!

She reassured Will that she and the other teachers would always help him and that he didn't need to worry, they were there to protect him. Then she just kind of laughed and said, "Well, that's Will. He's twice their size but he'd never think of just climbing over them or pushing them out of the way and he is just so puzzled when he tries to use his words to get something and it doesn't work!"

I can just picture these little Pink Tzipor two year olds frozen in their tracks and Will gesturing and talking to them (loudly and close!) trying to convince them to let him have a turn :-)

So the "big bad world" is kept at bay another day.

The Arrival of Spring

In the relative sameness of San Diego seasons, it's not always easy to know when the seasons are changing. There are some hints that Old Man Winter is giving way to spring like the whir of hummingbird wings zooming by and, to my three year old son's great delight, the return of lizards sunning themselves on the rocks near our street. But the hummingbirds' appearances, like the lizards', are predicated on environmental factors of the San Diego winter - like how much rainfall did we get and how many warm spells did we have to confuse the spring flowers into blooming early? For example, I had daffodil bulbs springing up right around Christmas. And, as my son will tell you, lizards need warm sunny days to come out - and spring doesn't necessarily mean bright sunshine every day.

But in my house there is one surefire way to know that spring has arrived. It's not the calendar on the 21st of March announcing the spring equinox, and it's certainly not because the bulbs are finally poking up through the dirt, nor because of the quality of light coming from the position of the sun in the sky ... no, the tell-tale sign of spring happens in my house usually around 2 AM some dark morning. On that day (this year that day happened to be exactly two days ago) I am awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of my two dogs clattering their way down the stairs, down the hall, through the dog door to the side yard. This sound is followed by the sound of branches breaking, two eighty pound dogs crashing into a wooden fence, and then their crazed barking. Spring in my household arrives in the form of the raccoon family that makes its annual pilgrimage to the space between our fence and our neighbor's wall to raise their babies and it means that on any given night I may be awakened two or three times as my wonderful dogs protect their turf from these striped invaders.

I had heard that the raccoons were back from several of my neighbors but I had yet to see them. My elderly South African neighbors to the south told me that they had seen the raccoons "fornicating" one evening while they (the neighbors) were doing their "exercises" (I just left it at that). Apparently raccoons achieve a "tie" the way that dogs do as these raccoons had tumbled off of our neighbors patio onto the garden below, still connected to one another. Another neighbor (one with a now empty fish pond) had reported them walking along her wall and a third neighbor had asked me to send my dogs over to scare away the raccoons from his backyard. But the nocturnal pests hadn't ventured into my yard until two nights ago.

This ritual of spring - the clamboring of dog nails on stone and hardwood floors, the barking, the mad scramble of rodent back over the fence to the safety of the wall behind, the lunging at the fence, and the occassional screech and scream of the retreating rodent - lasts for well over a month. The mother gives birth and raises her young and they live there, behind our fence, until the young are old enough to head out of our neighborhood and back to the canyons whence they
came. My Lab, Levi, takes to sleeping outside during this time while our lazier and less vigilant Ridgeback, Kobe, remains inside on his soft bed, covered with a blanket, but he keeps an ear half cocked - ready to leap up "Woo Woo Wooing" and charge outside at the first crack of branches along our fence.

For our household, it doesn't matter what the calendar says - it's the return of the raccoons (and a few extra bags under our eyes from being regularly awakened by this springtime ritual) that says "Spring" to us.

He's always wagging me!

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet says to the players: "Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue..."

I started this blog really just to have a place to write down and keep in one place all the little isms of my life - truths I uncover along the way, cute things my kids say or do, lessons I hope to remember and, more importantly, teach to my kids. This one falls into the second category but I love it also because it demonstrates something that I always used to try to teach my students: language changes.

When Hamlet instructs the players (actors) to pronounce the speech "trippingly on the tongue" we understand exactly what he means. "Trippingly" is not an adverb in our current lexicon but we still understand it. In fact, more than just understanding it, you can almost feel what Hamlet means, the words rolling off of tongues so quickly that they are almost tripping over themselves to come out. Shakespeare is known, ne revered, for this kind of language play. His wordsmithing is legendary.

Now that I have a three year old, it amazes me to have a little wordsmith of my own. Along with my three year old and one year old, we share our home with two dogs. Correct that: with two big dogs. Two big dogs with big long tails. Two big dogs with big long tails that think they need to be everywhere and go everywhere with us. Where we go they go. Where we are they are. Very often as we try to make our way out the door the dogs are crowding along down the stairs or the hallway.

Yesterday we were headed out the door and the dogs were campaigning to come along as usual. Will was trying to get down the stairs to go out with the dogs in his way and he protested (loudly), "Mom, the dogs are always wagging me!"

I love that. My three year old taking language and making it his own. This is what Shakespeare was all about - taking language and playing with it. Sure, it's not correct in the grammatical sense but you understand what he's trying to say and, actually, he has taken the verb "to wag" and imbued it with more meaning. When he says that the dogs are "wagging him" we understand not just that they are wagging their tails but that they are wagging their tails and hitting him with them.

This morning he was using the toilet and wanted to "do it private" so he asked me to close the door. I obliged by shutting the door but leaving it slightly cracked. Will then said to me, "No mommy, do it lockingly." I don't think you'll find the adverb "lockingly" in the dictionary but his meaning was clear.

I'm not saying that Will is Shakespeare in training. That's not my meaning at all. You have to understand how language works, some of the "rules" of language in order to bend them. But a three year old, by virtue of listening to people talk, has started to grasp some of the basic rules and apply them to convey his thoughts. Will cannot tell you what an adverb is but he made the word "lock" into one to suit his meaning. I love that about language: we can take words and play with them, use them in new ways to convey new meanings.

The primary purpose of language is to express human thought and emotion. Many people suggest that our power to use language is one of the key things that separates humans from animals. We use language to convey to others what is happening in our worlds, our minds, our hearts. To bend language to suit that purpose is, I think, one of the essences of being human.

But I do hope we'll always have dogs that wag us.

You Find What You're Looking For

We've been reading this book lately which features a baby tapir so this weekend we decided to go to the zoo and see real live tapirs. Will also wanted to visit the gorillas as he'd been reading a book about them as well. Kevin drove and he took the route which leads you up Park Blvd alongside Balboa Park - thus driving by the playground, "Kid City" (the Ruben H Fleet Science Museum) and "the Dino Museum" (SD Natural History Museum). Of course that meant that Will started asking to go to those places. We agreed that if he had good behavior at the zoo that after we saw the tapirs and the gorillas we could go to the "Dino Museum".

Turns out that there are two sets of tapirs at the zoo - Central American tapirs, housed on Elephant Mesa, and Malayan tapirs, housed along Tiger River. Either way, they are blobby, pig like creatures that don't do much, even in the cool weather we had last Saturday. In other words, the real live tapirs were a bust, nothing like the bopping to the beat of the jungle's song tapir of our book. The gorillas were great though - we got to see the male silverback strut his stuff and the baby, born early this fall. We also got to see the now adolescent tiger cubs in action and even heard them growling at one another and jostling over food.

After we left the zoo Will, of course, remembered our promise that he could go to the Dino Museum if he'd had good behavior. He reminded us of this so of course we had to agree. Since it was already later than we'd planned, we agreed that he could go to the Dino Museum quickly and say hello to his friends the dinosaur fossils and then we had to go home.

Once inside the museum Will quickly visited his friends "Fossy" (the Allosaurus skeleton or fossil - hence "Fossy"), "Meggy" the Megalodon, the tiger (and the lizard that lives inside the tiger's lair), "Albert" the Albertosaurus "cousin" to T-Rex, "Perry" (the Lambeosaurus that is part of the Hadrosaur family, which Parasaurolophus is also a part of, hence "Perry" for Parasaurolophus), "Ketzy" the flying reptile (I won't even try to spell the real name of this dinosaur), "Anky" the Ankylosaur and the "raptor who died and the mice are eating him" (I guess since he's the only "dead" one he doesn't get a name).

Then, in an effort to prolong the visit, Will went into this forested area of the museum which has mainly replica reptiles and rodents that also lived in the Jurassic period. I followed him in there in an effort to shoo him out and guess what we found? Tapirs! Small tapirs the size of rabbits up to large ones, the size of hippos (well, those were really tapir-like cousins but still). There was even a tapir statue that Will could ride. If you follow the link below you can see pictures of this area. In the first picture you can see the tapirs - they are white beccause the picture shows the exhibit being installed so the animals haven't yet been painted to look authentic.

http://www.sdnhm.org/exhibits/mystery/makingof/index.html

Tapirs at the Dino Museum, who knew? We'd gone in search of them at the zoo but found them at the Dino Museum. I read the signage at the museum which told me that tapirs have been around since the age of dinosaurs and, as their bodies/lifestyle has not changed significantly in over fifty million years (!!!), scientists sometimes refer to them as "living fossils". We went to see the dinosaur fossils but found tapirs instead. We've been to the Dino Museum probably fifteen times and we always go through that section (though we rarely linger there) and I've never noticed that there were tapirs before Saturday.

I think that there's something to be learned from this, and it's not just that tapirs have been around for over fifty million years. Will calls the SD Natural History Museum the "Dino Museum" because Will loves dinosaurs. When he goes to that museum what he sees, what he focuses on, are the dinosaurs. When you're shopping for a new car you suddenly start seeing tons of the kind of car you're hoping to buy. Get pregnant? Suddenly there are pregnant women everywhere!

In life, like the Dino Museum, you find what you're looking for.

Peaceful Transfer of Power

No matter which end of the political spectrum you fall on, Tuesday's inaguration was an important reminder of one thing which makes Americans so fortunate: the peaceful transfer of power.

I've only been alive for maybe two "where were you when ..." moments (shuttle Columbia explosion and 9/11) prior to this one, and while neither Lindsay or Will will remember the day but I made them take this photo to commemorate that they were "there".

The Magic of Christmas

We had a magical Christmas. I said beforehand that I thought that this might be our best Christmas ever and it lived up to its billing. Will is three and just getting into the magic and wonder of Christmas and Lindsay is at that perfect age where boxes and ribbons are the most wonderful playthings imaginable. I could not have scripted a better Christmas or week leading up to Christmas. Everyone was happy, healthy, and fully invested into the magic of the season. My favorite moment, though, came at the start of the week, when we were having dinner with several of our friends at our house. Will and his friends were seated at the "kids' table" and Will says happily to his friend Spencer, "Our whole families are here and that's what Christmas is!"

Out of the mouths of babes...I could not have said it better myself.

A Thousand Words

Good morning.

Good night.

Need I say more?

The Nice Part First

Today Will watched "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" for the first time. ABC is doing this thing where every night in December they air some kind of classic holiday programming. On Monday it was the Grinch; we DVRd it and he got to watch it today.

He knows the story from reading the book and so when he sat down to watch the movie he asked me, "Can I watch the nice part first and then the mean part and then the nice part again?" To Will "the nice part" is the part after the Grinch has stolen all the toys, decorations and food and Christmas day dawns and the Whos down in Whoville still come outside and start singing. Grinch realizes that "Maybe Christmas isn't something you buy in a store, maybe Christmas means something just a little bit more" and then his heart grows three sizes bigger and he goes back down to Whoville and brings all the toys, decorations and food back to the Whos and celebrates Christmas with them.

So that's the part that Will wants to see first, the happy ending. He's three. I'm amazed that this need for the happy ending starts so young. Maybe it's just an innate human trait, to want everything tied up all neatly with a bow.

Will's definitely playing with good and bad these days. Mean and nice. He's very concerned about labelling things as "mean" or "nice". Darth Vader is a "mean guy" and Clone Warriors are "nice guys". Buzz Lightyear and Woody are nice guys; Zurg is a mean guy. And more and more often I'm seeing him struggle with his own perception of himself. Sometimes when he's playing dress up he really really wants to be a "mean guy"; other times he's a fireman or a Clone Warrior and he's helping people, teaching them about how to be nice (that's the job of the Clone Warrior in Will's mind). He was always the cooperative kid in school, followed directions, listened well, played nicely with others. This week he started telling his teachers "NO" when they asked him to do something and for the first time (that I've heard of anyway), he got "in trouble" at school (he didn't stay in the line to wash his hands before lunch and went off to play instead - he got quiet time for that). My little guy is growing up and he's discovering what it means to be "bad" and "good" - and he's trying to figure out where he fits on that continuum I think.

And the Grinch seems to be a metaphor for that. This is the first character I've seen Will grapple with the idea that someone could be both mean AND nice. First the Grinch is mean. He does mean things. Then he learns that being mean didn't make his troubles go away (those noisy Whos down in Whoville sing anyway, despite the Grinch's mean acts) so the Grinch figures that being nice is really the better choice. I think this is a big revelation to my three year old. Good and bad, all in the same person.

I take comfort, though, in his request for "the nice part first." Maybe the mean part doesn't seem so bad when you already know that the story ends well, that the good in you pays off after all. This idea probably wouldn't sell well to the Hollywood types but I'm thinking maybe it's not such a bad idea for my three year old.

Nike was right after all

For several days I've been struggling with major frustration and aggravation on my part, bordering on depression. Every minor incident sends me into a tailspin. My good friend Sheri likened it to going up the down escalator. I am fighting not to make any forward (or upward) motion, but just to stay at the same level. This requires all of my effort and the moment I let up I'm going backwards.

I tried (hard!) to intellectualize myself out of the slump. I had long conversations with my husband (who is very supportive), I reminded myself of all of the reasons that I should, in fact, be happy: health, freedom, great husband, good friends, healthy, happy kids, supportive family ... really, the list goes on and on. But just telling myself that I had so much to be happy about wasn't working. In fact, I think it made me feel worse. How could I be so damn ungrateful when I had so much to be grateful for? What does that say about me?

A few days ago I lit on the idea that maybe I wasn't happy because I didn't have any real goals. I wondered if this was a common reality once you hit mid-life. When you're younger there are all these milestones to reach, goals you set (real or perceived) ... graduate from college, get a job, move out on your own, fall in love, get married, buy a house, have kids .... [insert your own goals/milestones here]. Maybe once you've "arrived" (wherever that destination is), you just get on this treadmill of sameness. So the question is, can we be really happy treading water or is it the going forward towards something that gives us that sense of satisfaction?

I thought I would be happy being a stay at home mom because I thought it would be so great to have all of this freedom. I can make my own schedule, do things when I need to do them, and there's nobody telling me what I need to do when. That's what I thought. Of course that's not exactly how it works and it turns out that a three year old and a baby can be quite the demanding bosses (particularly when it comes to scheduling) when they want to. But I'm getting off track here.

What I did figure out about being a stay at home mom is that I've managed to give up those goals and milestones of my own. Sure I can set the goal of teaching my son to play the piano by age four or potty training my daughter by 18 months ... but the reality is that those kinds of milestones really aren't achievable because I'm not (at all) in control of them. I can no more make my son learn to play an instrument than I can grow wings and fly (and that's not just because I'm not musically oriented). I can bring him to piano lessons, buy him a piano to practice on, play piano pieces while we're driving in the car and hanging out at home, but if he doesn't want to learn to play the piano the simple fact is that I can not make him learn. I am in charge but I am NOT in control. This is the old addage about "leading a horse to water".

So what about setting goals outside of parenting? My own goals? Run a marathon perhaps. Been there, done that. And I don't mean run a marathon (although I have run plenty of those). I mean the setting and achieving the goal part. After Will was born I was bound and determined to reclaim my life, my former identity. As soon as the doctor told me it was okay (6 weeks after my C-section), I started running again. I set a goal to run a marathon as soon as possible - and I did. Seven months after Will was born I flew to Nashville with two of my sisters in law and ran the Country Music Marathon. The funny thing about that was, I didn't feel any better. I checked the box: run marathon soon after giving birth. Done. So either the goal or the achievement of the goal weren't enough or it wasn't the right goal. But if it wasn't the right goal, what is? Can setting false goals and milestones help change your attitude?

Then today, while assembling the Imaginext T-Rex Mountain (which is Will's Christmas present from us), I lit on something that seems resonant. Maybe it's not achieving things like goals, maybe it's just doing something, anything really, that boosts your morale, help you feel like you can get through the rest of the day.

Today I built a T-Rex Mountain.  Sure, that doesn't sound like much of an accomplishment or any kind of measure of success ... but it was amazing how assembling all of these tiny plastic pieces into something actually made me feel good.

I started with a cardboard box of miscellaneous plastic pieces.

I had bought two Imaginext sets off of Craigslist for about 1/10th of the price of one of them new. Good deal. But the bad part of the deal was that the sets were a) all mingled together and b) came without any directions. I managed to go online to Fisher Price (which makes Imaginext) and find the instructions. Kevin very nicely printed them out for me ... so all I had to do was follow the directions (and I LOVE directions). Easy peasy right? Wrong.

First I dumped the box out onto the floor.

Then I sorted as best I could into two separate piles by the color of plastic ... brown and tan were T-Rex Mountain, blue and grey were the Dragon Castle. Then the real fun began ... trying to follow the diagrams, select the correct pieces and put them together. Like most things, the first part was the hardest. It took me ten minutes just to find one of the three parts shown. Then suddenly I kind of got into a groove and after about twenty minutes I had half of the base built.

Then the other half took only about another ten minutes.

But there was something magically therapeutic about fitting those pieces together and assembling the mountain. It is only a heap of plastic, I know, but somehow completing this little plastic mountain felt like I'd summited another more metaphorical one.

I couldn't intellectualize the problem. And I couldn't just change how I was feeling. But just digging in and building a mountain helped me climb over one. Maybe the marketing folks for Nike aren't so stupid after all. When thinking and feeling fail, sometimes "Just Do It" is a good life philosophy.