The Streets of Baltimore

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Steph

Well my heart was filled with laughter
When I saw those city lights
She said the prettiest place on earth
Was Baltimore at night

From “The Streets of Baltimore” by Tompall Glaser and Harlan Howard
http://www.lyricstime.com/gram-parsons-streets-of-baltimore-lyrics.html

I had to hold on tight to June’s hand in the parking garage and Beth had to call to Noah to stop and look for passing cars before crossing over to the elevators. We were on our way to visit the Port Discovery Children’s Museum in Baltimore (http://www.portdiscovery.org/#home) and they were both giddy with excitement. Noah’s been asking to go to a museum for a long time and when he got a free child’s admission by submitting a code from Tropicana orange juice lids online, we decided instead of going to the Smithsonian as we usually do, we’d venture out to Baltimore.

We’ve been to Port Discovery only once before and that was the day Beth adopted June. The court proceedings were in Baltimore and afterwards we went to the museum and after that we went to the Inner Harbor and celebrated June’s three-month birthday and her adoption with cake. I couldn’t help thinking about that day as we walked through the doors of the museum and later as we passed the infants and toddlers room where June and I had spent most of that museum visit, nursing and playing on the floor mats and watching the giant tubes filled with moving bubbles while Beth took Noah through the exhibits. It was a joyous day.

We might be on the brink of another legal milestone for our family and then again we might not. On Wednesday gay marriage became legal in the District of Columbia. Shortly before this, the Attorney General of Maryland Doug Gansler issued an opinion that Maryland could honor gay marriages performed in other states and then Governor Martin O’Malley signaled his agreement with the opinion. So theoretically, we could hop on a Metro train, get married in the city and have it recognized at home. But of course, gay marriage is never that simple. A member of the state legislature has threatened to have Gansler impeached and the issue will surely end up either in the legislature, in the courts or both. It could be a while before it’s settled and Beth and I have decided we don’t want to do it unless it’s going to stick. We’ve already had a commitment ceremony in front of our friends and family. What we want now is legal recognition and we don’t want to confuse the kids by getting married over and over as the legal sand shifts underneath us. When we do it, we want it to be for good. I keep telling myself it might not happen and if it does, it could be a long time from now and then I go around the house singing, “We’re going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married.”

The museum was fun. We split up because Noah was interested in the exhibits for older kids, such as the Egyptian exhibit and Miss Perception’s Mystery House where you get to solve mysteries. June played with pretend food in the farmer’s market, dressed up in a knight’s tunic (which she said was a princess dress), played an African drum, made her own monster out of cloth pieces that attached to each other with Velcro and played in the Curious George exhibit. She was almost as happy to see the statue of George as if the monkey had been there himself. When we had to leave, she insisted on hugging him and kissing him on the lips. The only exhibit that both kids could enjoy was the three-story metal and rope climbing structure and even then, he went in the big kids’ entrance that allows you to go all the way up and she went in the little kids’ entrance that doesn’t.

When the museum closed at five, we walked to Little Italy for dinner. Noah was crying most of the way because he had not finished the second mystery they started. He claimed there wasn’t time. Beth said he quit because he was too scared to climb through a dark drainpipe to retrieve a clue. June skipped along the sidewalk and offered occasional report: “He’s stopped crying. Now he’s whining.” I lifted her up so she could see a canal as we crossed over it and she spotted a tower in the distance. “A castle,” she exclaimed.

Noah had calmed down by the time we entered the restaurant and he loved the poster in the foyer with illustrations of dozens of kinds of pasta so much he went back to look at it after we were seated. Beth said it was the kind of Italian restaurant they have in Wheeling where they serve you soft white bread and salads made with iceberg lettuce. I knew what she meant. It was like an Italian restaurant in South Philadelphia. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want.

Beth had eggplant parmesan, I had gnocchi, June had rigatoni with tomato sauce and Noah had spaghetti with a butter sauce. He didn’t care for the sauce, but he was happy enough with bread and butter and the side order of broccoli the kids were splitting and every one else dug into their entrees. “Always trust a fat waiter,” the waiter said when Beth and I took his advice and got the chocolate mousse cake for dessert. Our trust was not misplaced.

When we left the restaurant at 6:15, it was still light. I was surprised. It always creeps up on me when the days start to get longer. Since it’s part of our family code not to visit Baltimore without stopping at Vaccaro’s (http://www.vaccarospastry.com/), we ducked into the bakery for Italian cookies and cannoli to take home. We emerged at 6:25 and it was noticeably darker. We live right on the border of D.C. and I’m often in the city, but rarely after dark, and to be walking through a different city in the dark blue twilight felt like an adventure. June must have felt the same way because she looked up at me and said, “I love this night.”

And walking through the streets of Baltimore, thinking of the day almost four years ago when June became Beth’s and Beth became June’s in the eyes of the law, and thinking of the day when Beth and I can say the same, I loved it, too.

Smashing Pumpkins

Posted on October 24, 2009 by Steph

“It’s pouring rain,” Beth announced as she opened the front door at 3:20 this afternoon. We were herding the kids out to the car so we could drive out to Potomac Vegetable Farm (http://www.potomacvegetablefarms.com/) for our Halloween pumpkins.

“You’re kidding,” I said. Heavy rain had been predicted for the whole day, but so far we’d had only overcast skies and a little drizzle. June’s soccer practice went on as scheduled, a bit of good luck since it had been rained out last weekend. She even scored two goals when the kids went up against the adults, three on one. After soccer, Beth took Noah to his swim lesson and then they went shopping for Halloween costume materials. (He’s going to be a pirate ship. A direct quote: “Most people who wanted a pirate-themed costume would be a pirate, but I am going to be a pirate ship.”) Our day seemed to be humming along. I had been careful not to mention anything about going to the pumpkin patch to June in case rain developed, but with Beth and Noah on their way home at 2:45 and no rain falling, I told June we were going to a farm to pick pumpkins and she could not have been more delighted. She danced around the house crying, “”We’re going to a pumpkin farm! To get pumpkins!”

Beth and I stood at the open door, looking at the rain pelting down on the lawn and quickly conferred. It was hard to know what the weather would be like forty miles away and we had a very excited little girl on our hands. We decided to brave it. If worst came to worst, we could dash out of the car, grab four pumpkins, pose the kids in the hatch of the car for our annual picture and consider the outing finished. In years to come we’d look at the pictures and laugh, remembering the year we went to get pumpkins in a downpour.

But by the time we pulled into the parking lot, the rain had let up. There was just a light drizzle. At first Noah carried Beth’s umbrella while he inspected the pumpkins but soon decided it was too much trouble and abandoned it. I put June’s rain jacket on, but didn’t bother to zip it.

Noah and June had very different impressions of the field with its rows of pumpkins piled up on pallets before them. Noah was puzzled. Didn’t it used to be bigger? We had to skip our farm trip last year because we were all laid low by a nasty stomach bug so he hadn’t seen it in two years. It looked smaller to his eight-year-old eyes than to his six-year-old eyes, apparently.

June didn’t remember ever having come before so it was all new to her. “We’re here! We’re at the pumpkin farm! Look at all the pumpkins!” she cried.

The kids ran around between the rows of pumpkins, peeking out at each other from behind the piles. June clambered over a row, sending pumpkins rolling onto the grass. I reconstructed the pile and checked the errant pumpkins for damage. One stem had snapped off but that was it. No more climbing on pumpkins, I said. She pouted a little but got over it quickly. June and Beth and I made our selections and carried them to the red wagon. It took Noah longer to find the perfect pumpkin, but eventually we had what we came for and we headed over to the farm stand to buy a baking pumpkin for soup, and sweet potatoes and green beans and green tomatoes to fry and apples and cider pressed that very day. June was enchanted with the decorative gourds so I let her select one and then Noah had to have one, too. Noah pulled the wagon around the stand and Beth had to keep a close eye on him so he didn’t crash it into the bins of vegetables, or obstruct foot traffic or go too close to the cars in the parking lot. “Pumpkin delivery! Pumpkin delivery!” he called out as he pulled the wagon back to the car. It was raining harder now. But our mission was complete.

We stopped on the way home for dinner at the Vegetable Garden (http://www.thevegetablegarden.com/). We got honey-fried black mushrooms, spring rolls, noodles with vegetables, veggie tempura and eggplant hot pot. It was delicious. Noah ate and ate and ate but June wasn’t too hungry and she soon grew restless. She was climbing all over the booth, trying to scale the back of it and then she was crawling under the table, wanting to play hide and seek. The waiters kept trying to take our food away before we’d finished eating. I wondered they were hurrying us out because of June’s shenanigans, but Beth thought they just wanted to clear our table before the dinner rush. Finally, I took her for a walk outside under the awning of the shopping center while Noah finished up.

As we pulled out of the parking lot onto Rockville Pike, Noah started yelling. The hatch was open! One of the pumpkins had fallen onto the busy thoroughfare! I didn’t see it, but Beth and Noah did. He said it looked like a basketball was bouncing next to the car. Beth pulled onto a side street and parked. I got out of the car and went in search of the pumpkin. It was a longer walk than I thought it would be, but finally I saw it. It had rolled into the relative safety of a bus lane and appeared to be intact. I picked it up and found a small hole with two cracks radiating from it near the bottom. I could see seeds and smell the clean scent of fresh pumpkin through the hole.

I brought the pumpkin back to the car to much rejoicing. “At least we have a head start on carving the eyes now” Noah said. (He thought the hole was higher up.) The boy is a born optimist. I felt very lucky just then, for a minimally damaged pumpkin, an outing saved more than once from the brink of disaster by my intrepid partner, enthusiastic daughter and irrepressible son.

Five Summer Days and Four Summer Nights

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

Tuesday evening after the kids were asleep, Beth and I lay in bed discussing her upcoming business trip to Pittsburgh. I told her I had more trepidation about it than usual, mostly because our summer schedule is so chaotic already. Some weeks Noah is at camp, others he isn’t and each camp is located somewhere different and has different drop off and pickup times. I try to keep June busy because it’s better for both of us to get out of the house but we have no regular scheduled events, other than Circle Time at the library on Tuesday mornings. On the occasional Wednesday she attends a drop-in music class, but not very often because it only meets in the morning three times this summer and afternoons don’t work for us because of Noah’s camp pickups. Most Friday mornings, but not all, she has Leaves playgroup, which meets at a different playground every week. Sometimes we go to story hours at a local children’s boutique (http://shop.thepajamasquid.com/) or the Co-op and she has play dates every now and then but not as many as I’d like because it can be hard to co-ordinate around everyone’s vacations. The point is that I am a creature of habit and easily discombobulated by this rotating schedule so the idea of parenting without backup for five summer days and four summer nights was a little overwhelming.

Here’s what happened in a nutshell: I dropped Noah off and picked him up on time more often than not. Pickups were more difficult because I needed to wake June from her nap to go get him so I tended to wait until the last possible minute and the bus we needed to catch when we left that late was not all that reliable. So I was five minutes late one day and ten minutes late another day, but that was the worst of it. I also managed to send Noah’s lunch with him every day, though one day I had my key in the front door before I realized that not only was it not in his backpack, it wasn’t even packed yet. On Friday he brought home his final projects from robot camp, a sound-activated walking robot he built from a kit and hand-decorated t-shirt that is meant to make him look like a robot when he wears it. This was the last day of his last camp. Third grade is only two weeks away. Where did the summer go?

June had a play date with the Dragonfly and attended her playgroup and made a birthday card for the Squash Bug, whose party is this afternoon. I folded a watercolor she’d painted in half and she dictated the following message for me to write in it: “Dear Squash Bug, I hope Squash Bug gets all her presents. Love, June.” She and I danced in the kitchen to some energetic fiddle music on A Prairie Home Companion. She wet five pairs of training pants in one afternoon after gorging on watermelon at playgroup that morning. I had to put her back into diapers until I got a chance to do laundry. She also got her first bee sting when we wandered into a swarm of angry bees on an evening walk Wednesday. They were swarming around a fire hydrant of all things. We all got stung, but, being three and never having experienced a bee sting before, June took it worst. The bright side is we now know she’s not allergic. Just after I finished applying ice and baking soda paste to Noah’s chest and my arm–June refused all suggested treatments–we were all locked into the back of the house when a doorknob fell out on the other side of the door. Noah was completely panicked, even though I kept telling him we’d find a way out. It was worse than the bee sting. Finally I sent him out his bedroom window to re-enter the house and free us.

Later Noah tripped on a ball in the yard and skinned his elbow and he tried to teach June to play hopscotch without much success. He finished book 7 in the Series of Unfortunate Events—The Vile Village—and started book 8—The Hostile Hospital. He told a lot of jokes— here’s my favorite: What’s faster hot or cold? Hot. You can never catch a hot. The kids argued with each other incessantly, taking occasional breaks to argue with me. Noah pushed my buttons over and over. June gave him a big hug after he had a timeout. All four of us splashed in the creek and toasted marshmallows on the stovetop to make s’mores. We ate kid-pleasing dinners every night—macaroni and cheese, fried tofu, frozen pizza and veggie chicken noodle soup, though they did have to eat their vegetables and drink their milk as well. And every night before bedtime, we talked to Beth on the phone, short, chaotic conversations with everyone trying to talk at once.

In between all this, I did a couple loads of laundry, did dishes –usually a whole day’s worth all at once, vacuumed, swept the porch, watered and weeded the garden, wrote a short article on the nutritional value of squash, rewrote said article and finally got caught up on the newsletters I clip for Sara – I didn’t work on the project while we were in West Virginia so I was pretty behind.

I think I did okay.

Saturday was the nicest day, despite the fact that June woke for the day at 5:35. This might have been because we didn’t have to be anywhere at any specific time so even though we were out the door for a two-hour walk by 9:00 the morning did not have the frantic tumult of the two previous mornings. I snuggled with June in bed and read to her until 6:50, then we got up and I put oatmeal, veggie sausage links and cantaloupe on the table instead of the cold cereal we eat most weekdays. I read the paper for a while the kids played and then we got dressed and left. The official purpose of the walk was to go to the post office and mail a package of hand-me-down Babybug magazines (http://www.cricketmag.com/ProductDetail.asp?pid=10) for my cousin’s baby, who just turned one, but it was a long, meandering sort of outing. I wanted to stop at Starbucks—sleep deprivation makes me crave coffee even though I usually drink it decaf– and we also swung by the 7-Eleven to buy chocolate bars for that evening’s s’mores.

On the way home June said she didn’t want to go home, she wanted to go somewhere else but she didn’t have any specific suggestions. We were near a path I thought lead to a playground, so we wandered down it. It actually went to a section of Long Branch creek we don’t often visit. The water was shallow but not stagnant, just perfect for wading and throwing rocks. Noah stood under a bridge and pretended to be the troll from The Three Billy Goats Gruff. We found a really cool spider’s web. The sun filtered through the leaves above, bringing out the highlights in Noah’s golden brown curls. A leaf fell into his hair and it reminded me of a garland. Playing in the sun-dappled water, he looked like a young faun. That was the very best moment, a beautiful summery moment I will cherish from this week long after I forget the stress and exhaustion and arguments and why I even sent him to that timeout.

The Free and the Brave

Posted on July 5, 2009 by Steph

On Saturday our nation celebrated two hundred and thirty three years of independence. I think for parents of small children, independence is always on the horizon. We marvel as our babies take their first steps or step off to kindergarten, but we are always focused on what comes next and the freedom we will receive when the child sleeps through the night or weans or potty trains or spends a few hours a week away from home. Independence for them means freedom for us, however bittersweet some of the milestones may be.

Beth had the day before the Fourth of July off work because it was a federal holiday. Noah had drama camp and if we could have found a sitter for June we might have had the rare freedom of a few hours alone together. Alas, it was not to be. Still, when Beth took Noah to camp, she offered to take June along and then they went to the playground so I had a nice block of time to myself. Not as exciting as a date, but pleasant nonetheless. After puttering around the house a bit and doing some work for Sara, I settled in under the silver maple in the back yard with a book (the collection of haunted house stories I received for my birthday back in May). I finished a story I’d started approximately two weeks before and read another in its entirety. It felt luxurious to finish a short story the same day I started it.

That afternoon we all went to pick Noah up at camp. It was the last day of the one-week session so there was a performance for parents, which consisted of skits of fables. Noah was in “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” He was a sheep. I was amused to find I could actually pick his “baaing” out from the general din. As we left, we ran into some counselors from previous years, who are now working with the ten-to-thirteen-year old group. They greeted Noah with enthusiasm and asked when he’d be in their group, which actually puts on real plays. Two years, we said. Noah’s been going to drama camp since he was just short of six (he started in the spring break camp). It’s hard to imagine him in the middle of the three age groups. June will be five and old enough for drama camp herself that year! I imagined both of them in camp at the same time. The mind boggles.

After camp was over and before our pizza dinner, we went over to the fountain. The fountain, a circular mosaic with jets of different heights (low at the edges, high in the middle) is a popular gathering place in downtown Silver Spring. In the summer, there are almost always some kids splashing around in it. On a hot day or on weekends, it can get quite crowded. Noah will dash into the fountain with abandon, though he avoids the biggest jets. June has been hesitant about even getting close enough to get wet this year. She was actually more daring last year. I think she might be old enough to process potential threats in more detail now, so while she’s still a daredevil on the swings, for instance, she finds herself scared of things that she used to enjoy, as my stepfather found out recently when he hung her upside down. We’d been at the fountain on Wednesday morning with a friend from music class and his mom and younger brother. June had gone in enough to get her bottom damp. I wondered how she’d be this afternoon. At first, she said she didn’t want to go in, but then she ventured closer. She stuck to the perimeter of the fountain, taking her foot in and out of the water, and experimenting with blocking the flow of water by stepping down on it. Every now and then it shot up, soaking her, but she kept going back, taking her own exploratory steps toward independence.

As the kids played in the fountain, Beth showed me printouts of cars. Our fifteen-year old car was starting to show its age after 126,000 miles. There have been a series of problems, but the latest, multiple oil leaks, would have cost $2,000 to fix, so we were in the market for a new (to us) car. Beth wondered out loud if the car we buy now would be the last practical family car before the Mustang convertible she imagines herself driving once the kids are grown. Probably not, she mused, as we are buying used and ten years is the best we can expect. The second to last, maybe, she said. I said she could have the Mustang if we could move to the beach. She said she’d drive it around Rehoboth and hot women would flock to her. But she’d turn them away, I said. Of course, she added. Sometimes fantasy is its own kind of freedom.

The next day was the Fourth. We marched in Takoma Park’s parade, with the contingent from June’s nursery school. Last year Noah and the Bumblebee’s older sister held up the banner for the whole parade route, but this year he opted to ride his scooter instead. At home, just before we left, we deliberated—stroller for June or tricycle? The stroller would be faster and easiser to control, but she loves her trike and it lets her do at least some of the work of propelling herself (there’s a stick in the back a parent can push). We decided to ask her. “My bike!” she exclaimed, and so it was. When we got to the staging area where kids and parents were decorating their wheels with crepe paper and balloons, we saw that the Ant has the exact pink, purple and yellow trike June has. We got it at an independent toy store in downtown Takoma (http://www.takoma.com/archives/copy/2006/08/guiltFreeTP.html); I wondered if they did, too. I wrapped red, white and blue paper around the trike’s long handle and tied on a red balloon and a blue one, each sprinkled with white stars. And even though it did not match the color scheme, I also put on two pink ones, because June asked me to. As we worked and waited to get started, we chatted with other parents and said hi to the Squash Bug, resplendent in her pink nursery school t-shirt.

Finally it was time to go. As we marched, the Butterfly ran ahead of the banner and dropped behind, fluttering about like a real butterfly. For a while, he defected to daycare just behind us—they had a bubble machine. It was a long route, but June pedaled most of the way. Several families with kids who had been in Noah’s nursery school class, plus other friends, yelled to us from the sidewalk and waved as we marched through the streets of Takoma.

After we passed the judging stand and the parade was over, we stopped at an ice cream truck and indulged. (In our family Easter and Christmas are the two days of the year you can have candy in the morning and the Fourth of July is the one day you can have ice cream before lunch.) On the way home, we let Noah scoot ahead of us, as long as he stopped and waited for us at intersections. This is our normal rule, but because of the crowds, it meant often we could not see him. It was unnerving, but we have been trying to give him a longer leash recently. He goes on scooter rides by himself up and down our block and we have left him home alone for short periods of time (sometimes over a half hour).

We were all full from ice cream when we got home and tired, too, so we skipped lunch and June and I went to our bedroom for a nap while Beth and Noah went to get his hair cut and pick up a few groceries for our Fourth of July picnic dinner of veggie hot dogs, baked beans, corn on the cob, green bean and potato salad and watermelon. They were longer in getting home than I thought they would be, but when they arrived Noah ran inside, yelling that they’d bought a car. It’s a 2005 red Ford Focus with a roof rack. It looks like a mix of every other car Beth has ever driven during our relationship, all of which have been blue or red Ford or Subaru station wagons. This car is number four, so I guess the Mustang will be number six.

Today was the last day of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (http://www.festival.si.edu/) and we hadn’t been yet so we decided to go, even though it made for a busy weekend. Sasha called Noah this morning and asked for an afternoon play date. We wouldn’t be home, so we invited him to come along with us. Once June had napped, we all got in the new car and drove into the city. (Normally we’d take the Metro, but it’s been very slow due to the ongoing investigation of the tragic accident last month.)

All I wanted from this experience, I told Beth, was to listen to some pretty music, eat some interesting food, and take our annual picture of me and the kids by the Washington Monument. Every year the festival features three cultures. We entered the mall at Wales and I was immediately drawn to tent where a trio of Welsh musicians was playing. Noah and Sasha wanted to explore, however, so Beth went with them and June and I stayed at the tent, listening to a love song, a sea chanty, a song about a miner’s strike and some instrumental pieces. June was engaged for about fifteen minutes, and then she decided climbing up and down the bleachers was more fun than listening to music. Our section was not crowded, so I let her go. “Look how high I am!” she called to me from the top bleacher.

When Beth and the boys came back, we snapped the picture and sought food. It turns out the last forty-five minutes of the festival on its closing day is not the best time to try new cuisines. Almost everything was sold out. Beth got a small plate of Welsh cheeses and I got some fried plantains at the Central American food tent, but we were actually forced to go to the permanent food pavilion to get a hot dog and potato chips for Sasha and fries, cookies and ice cream for everyone else. It was not our most nutritionally sound dinner ever.

On the way back to the car, Beth, Noah and Sasha ducked into the Marketplace tent. They were the very last people allowed in. June and I straggled a few steps behind and were cut off by the guard after they entered the tent. A little while later, Noah came out with a cd of corridos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrido) and Sasha had an African shaker made from a gourd. We drove home, tired out from a weekend of celebrating. We were celebrating America’s birthday of course, but also June’s bravery in the fountain and Noah’s independence as he gracefully scooted through crowds and away from us, and all the small displays of gradually increasing independence we and our fellow parents see every day while we are raising children. Now it was time for the free and the brave to go home and go to bed.

A Is For Alphabet

Posted on April 7, 2009 by Steph

On Wednesday morning I was toweling June off after a bath and she noticed my shirt in the bathroom mirror. “You have letters on your shirt,” she observed.

The shirt said, “Feel the Power: VOTE.” I got it back in the early 90s when I worked for Project Vote (http://projectvote.org/?gclid=COWA_PW90JkCFR4hnAodPEgwvQ). “VOTE” is the largest word on it.

“Do you see a V?” I asked June. She pointed to the V. “How about an E?” She pointed to the E. We went through all the letters in “VOTE” and she got them all right. In the past several weeks June has become intensely interested in letters. She doesn’t know all of them yet (maybe 75%), but she’s learning more all the time and she can recognize her own name. She is always asking us what letters begin various words and what sounds they make. The wooden alphabet puzzle she inherited from Noah has become a favorite toy. She’s taking the first wobbly steps of literacy and it’s exciting to watch.

So I read a lot of alphabet books to her these days. Luckily we have quite a few, though ABC: A Family Alphabet Book (http://www.proudparenting.com/node/309) is a favorite. Reading these books over and over (and reaching the twenty-six month anniversary of this blog) has inspired me to make an alphabet of our lives over the past twenty-six months. Most of the pictures have appeared in the blog already, but a few are new. A lot has changed since I started writing here, both for our family and for our country. June has turned one, two and three. She’s learned to walk and talk and started school. Noah has turned six and seven and he seems bound and determined to turn eight next month, despite my protests that he can’t possibly be that old. He overcame a difficult kindergarten year, learned to read and stopped believing in Santa Claus. He’s now thriving in second grade. Since I started writing a woman came tantalizingly close to winning the Democratic nomination for President and an African-American won the Presidency (and the world economy imploded, but let’s not dwell on that).

Here are some snapshots of our lives during these times:

A is for Alphabet

Here’s June playing with her alphabet puzzle on Saturday morning.

B is for Baby

She and I were at a coffee house and she was cruising around and around a low table, eating bits of Fig Newton I handed her every time she passed by. She paused every now and then to remove the sugar packets from their container and scatter them across the table and floor and then she replaced them. As she reached the corner of the table closest to me, she let go and stood, swiveled on her feet to face me and smiled, as if she was going to do something dramatic. I waited, holding my breath, thinking this was the moment. Then she chickened out, dropped to her knees and crawled to me. I don’t know when she will walk any more than when Noah will start having an easier time in school. It could be months from now or right around the corner. (April 25, 2007).

June took her first steps about a week later. Noah’s school troubles cleared up when he started first grade with more sympathetic teachers.

C is for Cherry Blossoms

We went to see the cherry blossoms on Friday and it was…challenging. June had been very cranky for almost a week. She’d been sick the weekend before and at first we thought that was the reason but by Friday she’d been better for several days so I’m not sure what was up with her. Anyway, she wailed in the car, she whimpered in the stroller and when she was walking she kept tugging on my arm, wanting me to go in another direction. At one point she darted under a chain and headed straight for the Tidal Basin before Beth dashed off to capture her. Anyway, the blossoms were gorgeous and afterwards we went out for really excellent pizza in the city that made me wish we still lived there. June threw fits in the restaurant, too.

D is for Duck

Once we were back on land, the guide let Noah pass out the souvenir quackers (duck-bill shaped noisemakers) and instructed everyone to quack “Happy Birthday” to him. It wasn’t quite recognizable as “Happy Birthday” but it was impressively noisy. (May 4, 2008)

E is for Election

The transition from Obama-land to McCain-land was not subtle. Either that or I missed it while I dozed briefly as June napped in her car seat and Noah watched downloaded episodes of his favorite shows on Beth’s phone. Before I closed my eyes there were Obama-Biden signs everywhere. When I opened them it was nothing but McCain-Palin as far as the eye could see, including those annoying ones that say “Country First.”

When I commented on the shift, Noah looked out the window long enough to spot one. “That’s the first McCain sign I’ve seen in my whole life,” he noted.(November 5, 2008)

F is for Friends

Jim is one of a handful of people in my life who bridge past and present. We lived down the hall from each other our first year of college and we were roommates the next year. We were living in a student-run co-operative dorm where co-ed rooms were possible with a little administrative subterfuge. The summer after sophomore year, when I fell in love with Beth, Jim and I were living together again and he was the one who urged me to kiss her while I was agonizing over the decision. Even if we had no more history than that together, I’d be forever in his debt. (February 26, 2009)

G is for Gabriel

Gabriel is usually known as the Caterpillar on this blog. He’s a sweet, affectionate, well-loved boy, who will be three in July. His moms are hoping to adopt a younger sibling for him. They are looking for an African-American or biracial baby. Here is their webiste: www.emmyandbethadopt.com. Please visit if you think you can help.

H is for Hug

As we were getting ready to leave the house to go vote later that morning, I found Noah and June in a spontaneous embrace. “Hug!” June announced.

“Take a picture, Mommy!” Noah suggested.

I went for the camera, thinking it likely June would have wriggled out of his arms before I got back. But when I returned, they were still at it.(February 14, 2008)

I is for Ice Cream

It wasn’t a perfect day, but fairy tales aren’t perfect either. They just have happy endings. Here’s ours: And then the queen and the prince and the princess had ice cream. The End. (July 18, 2008)

J is for Jump

At 5:30, I could hear Noah singing out in the yard as I poured orange jack-o-lantern lollipops into a bowl….I brought the bowl outside and set it down on the round table on the porch. Noah and June were playing in a pile of leaves under the dogwood while Beth watched. (October 31, 2007)

K is for King

This was the first headshot of Noah that appeared on the blog. It was taken in December 2006 at the Children’s Museum in Wheeling, West Virginia.

L is for Liberty

We caught the last ferry of the day, the 3:40, and sat on the top level, for the view and so I wouldn’t get seasick. After a scenic (and very windy) ride we arrived at the statue. She’s impressively large in person and really quite beautiful. We admired her and walked around the island. We paid a quarter for Noah to look through the telescope at the harbor, and then we got back in line for the 4:45 ferry. On the way back we opted for the heated lower level. We shared a warm soft pretzel, and Noah got a pair of Statue of Liberty sunglasses, much coveted by a little boy sitting near us. (December 27. 2007)

M is for Moms

Clearly he was paying attention at Kids’ Camp because he knew exactly what to put on such a sign. He instructed me to write, “I Heart My Moms!” and to fill in the heart with rainbow stripes. As a finishing touch, he decided the point of the exclamation point should be heart-shaped. (June 9, 2007)

N is for Nest
It turns out four adults to two children is about the right ratio for me to spend an almost perfect day at the beach. Noah and I arrived around nine, and had built just enough sand castles and played just long enough in the water to be looking at each other and wondering “what next?” when my mom arrived and he had a fresh playmate. He found a hole someone else had dug and spent a lot of time jumping into it. Later it was a nest and Mom was a bird laying eggs they made out of balls of wet sand. (August 25, 2007)

O is for Ocean

He’d been quite taken with the idea that he was “the only one in the whole world” who knew both my “versary” gift to her and hers to me. He kept the secrets faithfully, only letting slip that he thought Beth’s gift to me was better. “But they’re both good,” he added diplomatically. This piqued my curiosity since Beth had hinted she would make up for her absence on the actual day of our anniversary through the gift. Inside a store bought card with a picture of a falling star on it was a card she and Noah made on the computer. It had a photo of the house where I lived during the summer of 1987 on the front and the Rehoboth boardwalk on the inside. “We’re leaving Friday afternoon for Rehoboth Beach,” it said. (July 22, 2007)

P is for Princess
June wore a dress with a black velvet top and a puffy, gold satin skirt that a friend of Ya Ya’s bought for her. Ya Ya said she looked just like a doll. Beth’s brother Johnny and I both said, independently of each other, that she looked like the Infanta Margarita in this painting (http://www.artchive.com/meninas.htm). In either case, doll or princess, it was a new look for her. (November 23, 2007)

Q is for Queer

We went to our favorite Mexican restaurant that night to celebrate twenty years with spinach enchiladas and virgin mango daiquiris. (July 22, 2007)

R is for Redhead
The snow was dry and powdery, useless for snowballs or snowmen, and just barely serviceable for sledding. He went down the hill a few more times, then bored of it. We took turns dragging June around the yard. She was tranquil, but not as enamored with it as the last time. (February 7, 2007)

This is from my very first blog entry. June’s hair turned blonde the following summer.

S is for Santa

Noah seemed happy and satisfied with his visit to Santa. But as soon as we left the little house, he asked if it was possible that the person he’d seen was just someone in costume pretending to be Santa. We allowed that this might be the case. Beth pointed out that Santa couldn’t be everywhere at once so maybe he needed some helpers to visit with children and find out what they wanted. Probably, they would send an email to Santa with the requests. “But he just asked my name. Why didn’t he ask my address?” Noah was suddenly alarmed at the possibility that his information would be incompletely conveyed to Santa. (December 10, 2007)

T is for Train
Just around the time I reached the tricky part of the operation, spooning the batter onto the griddle and making sure none of the pancakes burned while I was distracted by something else, they both wanted my attention at once.

Noah had tired of his magazine and said, “What should I do?”

June wanted to know if I could “play train tracks?”

“Maybe Noah can play train tracks with you,” I suggested. I only gave this idea about a 25% chance of succeeding, but you have to try. Much to my surprise, Noah took June’s hand and they walked into the living room. He repaired a track I had built earlier in the day and they took turns running the trains over it, looking startlingly like two full-fledged kids playing together.(March 23, 2008)

U is for Underpants

This was the headshot of Noah when he was in first grade. If you remember the photo and thought he was wearing a bandana on his head, those are underpants. Beth took it on their mother-son camping trip in September 2007.

V is for Valentine
Noah dug around in his bag and pulled out a card. “Here,” he said, handing me the funniest valentine I’ve ever received. There’s a snowman lying on its side on the front with the words “Love you to death!” written in crayon. Inside it says, “OOPS! I guess I loved you to much!” Like mother, like son is all I have to say about that. Also this– it was the perfect Friday the 13th valentine. (February 13, 2009)

W is for Wizard

The last day of spirit week was “Put on Your Thinking Cap” day so after some careful consideration, he put on his wizard hat. (March 9, 2007)

X is for Xylophone

You were expecting something else? I took this picture on Thursday.

Y is for Yard

After Noah ate breakfast, brushed his teeth and got dressed, it was time to bounce. Along with the hopping ball, we bought Noah his own personal bouncy castle for vestibular stimulation, deep pressure on his joints, oh, and fun, too. He loves it. We’ll see if it helps organize and focus him the way the occupational therapist says it will, but in the meantime he’s using it several times a day. When possible, we try for a bouncing session before Beth takes him to camp. (July 10, 2007)

Z is for Zeitgeist

Next we moved inside to carve our jack o’ lanterns, or in Beth’s and my case, our Barack o’ lanterns (http://yeswecarve.com). (October 26, 2008)

I can’t claim this blog consistently captures the national zeitgeist, but if you have or once had elementary-school or preschool-age kids, or if you live in Takoma Park or its environs, or if you’re gay, lesbian or bisexual, I hope you sometimes find a little of yourself reflected in it. Thanks for reading.

Yes We Can

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Beth

Guest Blog by Beth

The tickets! I was going through my mental Inauguration Day checklist as Noah and I were waiting for the bus. Noah and I had gotten out of the door by 7, a good start. But I’d left the tickets inside. I made a quick dash into the house to retrieve them. Almost leaving the tickets behind actually came as a relief to me. I have a superstitious belief that if you’re leaving on a journey and have nearly forgotten something major but remember in the nick of time it means you haven’t forgotten anything else.

After a short wait, we caught our bus to the Metro. Takoma Station was busy, but not over-crowded. As we waited on the platform, three trains came and went, all too packed to board. The next train seemed like it might have room for two more to squeeze in, so squeeze we did. The car was filled with teenagers from Arizona, in town with their history teacher for the big event. The whole car was filled with excitement and energy. As we lurched our way down the tracks, one of the passengers who had been on his way to work decided to call in sick so that he could participate in the festivities. The history teacher from Arizona took charge, explaining the situation and asking all of us to be silent while he made his call. Miraculously, everyone did quiet down, then erupted in whoops and cheers after he finished.

We got off the train a stop earlier than planned, at Union Station, because Noah was starting to get antsy from being squeezed in so tight. As we left the station we found several streets blocked off for vendors selling anything and everything, all adorned with the name or face of the new President. I promised Noah we’d return later so that he could shop, and hurried him along. It was about 8 by this time, we were still making good progress, but I didn’t know what lay ahead.

I couldn’t believe the crowds of people on the streets near my office – streets that are usually nearly empty. The crowds began to thicken as we headed toward the 3rd Street tunnel. Normally a high-speed funnel for crazed commuters headed toward I-295/I-395, the tunnel had been closed for the day to provide a route for pedestrians to travel from one side of the mall to the other. It was fun to take over this space usually reserved for cars. We emerged on the other side, and crowded onto 3rd St., SW. Time check: 9:20. Not bad. I could see the gate for Silver Ticket holders about a block away. Surely we’d be through security and onto the mall in an hour or so.

I broke out the hand and toe warmers I had purchased the day before and stuffed them into Noah’s crocs and his gloves. We continued to shuffle slowly forward. Occasionally we’d come to a halt as officers stopped us to clear Independence Avenue for official vehicles. By 10:00 we had made it across Independence. Then…nothing. The crowd just stopped. After about 15 minutes rumors made it to us that people without tickets had “broken through” and taken over the Silver area. But there was no-one official around to confirm this. Some turned to leave, planning to make their way further West to at least have a chance to get into a non-ticketed area of the Mall.

Noah began to complain. He was cold. I was cold. Both of us we getting buffeted by the confused crowd, some still trying to push forward, some trying to leave, some joining hands and slicing horizontally through the throng. I was starting to doubt the wisdom of even attempting this. Maybe we should have stayed home to watch on TV with Steph and June. Thank goodness June wasn’t here – she would have been crushed! Why weren’t there any police around with bullhorns to explain what was going on and what to expect? Time was ticking away. The sea of people was gradually inching toward the mall, filling in the spaces of those who had left. I could glimpse the Capitol thorough the trees.

Suddenly, at 11:20, the crowd rushed forward. (For a view of the crowd just before the breakthrough, see http://specials.washingtonpost.com/inauguration/satellite/.) I could see the nearly empty security gates. Noah and I dashed for a line and after a few short minutes were were there. On the Mall. Our view of the jumbotron was somewhat obscured by the trees and the sound wasn’t the best, but we could see the Capitol in the distance and feel the energy of the crowd.

Noah had forgotten about being cold and tired of being pushed around. He danced. He cheered when the crowed cheered for Carter and Clinton. He chanted Obama’s name. He looked at me when the crowd began to boo Bush. I shook my head no. It just didn’t seem right to boo. Partly it didn’t seem in the spirit of the day. But it also seemed to reduce Bush to a comic-book villain, divorced from the reality of what his decisions have meant for millions of people across the globe. The program began. Some in the crowd around us waved rainbow flags as Rick Warren spoke. We cheered for Aretha and her fabulous hat and for Joe Biden after he took his oath.

Then it was time. I hadn’t been able hold Noah up so he could get a better view for the whole thing; he weighs nearly 60 pounds now. But, as tears ran down my face, I lifted him up to see Barack Obama take the oath of office and become the 44th President of the United States

Want to feel like you were there? Check out this awesome Gigapan photo: http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c . The resolution is so amazing that you can zoom in to see Yo-Yo Ma using his iPhone.

Blueberries for June

Posted on August 2, 2008 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

“One day, Little Sal went with her mother to Blueberry Hill to pick blueberries,” I read.

“Little Sal brought along her small tin pail and her mother brought her large tin pail to put berries in. ‘We will take our berries home and can them’ said her mother. ‘Then we will have food for the winter.’

“Little Sal picked three berries and dropped them in her little tin pail…kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!

“She picked three more berries and ate them. Then she picked more berries and dropped one in the pail—kuplunk! And the rest she ate. Then Little Sal ate all four blueberries out of her pail.”*

June was snuggled up against me, half asleep. I’d awoken her a little early from her afternoon nap so we could make our yearly berrying trip to Butler’s Orchard (http://www.butlersorchard.com/). She wanted to go back to sleep and I was trying to get her interested in staying awake by reading to her. After I finished the book, I asked her. “Would you like to pick blueberries like Sal? There wouldn’t be any bears,” I hastened to add. “Just berries.” June was still too tired to answer, but she smiled around her pacifier. “Let’s check your diaper and put your overalls back on,” I said. “Then we’ll go.”

Beth showed June the berry pail she’d fashioned for her, a plastic pudding tub nestled in a purple Easter basket. Now June was wide awake and she ran all around the house carrying the basket. “It’s my own,” she declared.

The orchard was closing at five and it’s a forty-five minute drive so we’d hoped to leave by three at the latest, but it was closer to three-thirty by the time we’d left the house, filled the car up with gas and gotten underway. We’d invited a high school friend of Beth’s who now lives in the D.C. area and her three-year-old son to join us but they’d been unable to come. I was a little disappointed about that and also a bit concerned about the predicted thunderstorms. There were some dark clouds on the horizon but it didn’t look too threatening. It was a little cooler than it’s been for a while as well, which was nice since we were intending to spend an hour or so walking around in the sun.

During the drive Beth and Noah told a story-game involving a group of butterflies on a quest to liberate another group of butterflies from a museum. June made occasional (and random) contributions. I think in several months she might be able to participate in story-game in a meaningful way. And maybe soon after she and Noah could play without adult involvement. Dare we hope?

When we turned off onto the gravel road that runs through some woods toward the farm, Noah wanted to pretend we were explorers in a forest. He confided to Beth that driving on a road with no houses or people in sight was “a little scary.” No country boy, he, I reflected. Soon the woods cleared out and we were driving through cornfields lined with black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace.

The shuttle wagons that run you out to the fields on busy days were not operating so we drove straight out to the blueberry fields. It’s the tail end of blueberry season and we had to really search the bushes for the powder-blue berries. They were smaller than usual, too, so our pails filled slowly. Or maybe that was because June kept running down the rows and I need to run after her. She only got out of my sight once, but once was enough for me. I was more concerned about berry-pickers’ cars and farm workers’ tractors than bears. When she was with me, she was tossing green berries in my pail or digging around in it for ripe berries to eat. Occasionally she would stop to wipe her berry-stained hands on my white t-shirt and khaki pants.

I could have taken my cue from Little Sal’s mother and said, “Now, June, you run along and pick your own berries. Mother wants to take her berries home and can them for next winter,” except I didn’t really want her to run along (tractors remember?) and I don’t call myself Mother and the berries weren’t destined for canning, but for my Sunday morning oatmeal, homemade blueberry ice cream and blueberry kuchen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuchen). Besides, she was enjoying herself. There was space to run around, and things to put into other things, which is one of her favorite occupations. I trusted we’d get enough. Some years we’ve come home with eight or ten pounds of berries and not known what to do with all of them. We skipped our berrying trip last year so this was the first time she’d been since she was four months old. I had to spend that entire outing walking up and down the rows of bushes, carrying June in the front pack. If I tried to stop long enough to pick a handful of berries, she’d start to wail. This was a lot more fun. Noah was really focused on picking berries this year for the first time, too. He knelt down on the ground and found the ones Beth couldn’t see. She told him he had an “eagle eye.”

Around 4:45 we decided to make a quick trip over to the blackberry fields before getting the berries weighed and doing at little shopping at the market. The blackberries were plentiful and large and close together. In less than ten minutes, we picked a little over three pounds. Thirty-five minutes in the blueberry field had only netted us just under a pound and quarter of fruit. We stocked up on produce and farm market treats (kettle corn, an apple brown betty, bread and butter pickles, etc.) and checked out. It poured rain for several minutes while we were in the market. I only noticed since I went outside to use the restroom. Beth, Noah and June missed the squall entirely.

As we drove away, Noah read the sign that said, “Have a Berry Nice Day” and laughed. I have to say, that even with absent guests and light berry pails, it really was a berry nice afternoon.

From Blueberries For Sal, by Robert McCloskey, 1948.

Two Years, Two Months, Two Weeks: A Toddler’s Day

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Steph

The Wee Hours

June woke around midnight, got up on her knees in bed and started crying. I stumbled the few steps from our bed to hers, scooped her up and set her down on our bed next to Beth. I made sure she had her pacifier and offered her a drink of water before shuffling off to the bathroom. By the time I returned, she was nearly asleep again. At 1:30 she woke again. This time she was a bit more restless, rolling around and asking for her sippy repeatedly before she finally settled down and slept again.

This is how our nights go and have gone for so long that it took me a while to realize that June isn’t nursing at night any more. She appears to have night-weaned herself at least couple of weeks ago. I don’t know exactly when it happened because her night nursing has been sporadic for months so it wasn’t a sudden or obvious change. And I’m not getting any extra sleep as a result. Middle of the night requests for water and her “’fier” are just as frequent as ever.

I considered night-weaning June many times, but I always put it off because I was certain it would be a drawn-out and traumatic process. I also wasn’t sure it would help her sleep for longer periods because when I night-weaned Noah at eighteen months he continued to wake up just as often as he had been before. So, it wasn’t long and traumatic, but it hasn’t helped her sleep either, at least in the short run. It’s still a good thing, a necessary precursor to sleeping through the night…someday.

Morning

Beth and Noah left for work and school at 8:20 and by 9:00, June and I were out the door. We have an outing almost every weekday morning. It could be a trip to the library or music class, or a walk to the playground or around the neighborhood. This morning, though, I decided to stay home and mow the lawn. The grass was getting tall and the predicted high temperature for tomorrow is 98 degrees, so it seemed like a good idea to get at least part of the lawn mowed before the really hot and muggy weather sets in. June was happy to play in the yard until she discovered I had locked the gate between the side and back yard to keep her out of the wading pool while I mowed. She stood by the gate and cried, “But I need to go in the swim pool!” in increasingly desperate tones. Eventually she abandoned words all together and sobbed. I tried to calm her and had little success so I went back to mowing, deciding the sooner I finished the better.

By the time the front and side yards were mowed, June was calmer and the object of her desire had shifted to blowing bubbles on the porch. I glanced at the back yard, calculating how long it would take to clear it of toys and empty the pool (I didn’t want June in it unless I was within arm’s reach). I’d have to do all that before I could even begin to mow. I decided to leave the back for Beth. She’d probably be pleased and surprised I’d gotten any of the mowing done. I blew bubbles for June (she doesn’t have the hang of doing it herself yet). Then she wanted to swing, so I put her in the sky chair. I sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Clementine.” (For reasons I don’t fully understand, I have always sung my children songs about death while I push them on the swing.) June sang along, all smiles. She had traveled from despair to joy in a mere half hour. It’s not a long trip when you’re a little over two.

Afternoon

After Sesame Street, a bath, lunch and a nap, June began lobbying to go into the wading pool again. I meant to take her out there before Noah got home from school so she could have it to herself, but I kept trying to squeeze it in one more chore before we went outside. I folded a load of laundry, emptied the dishwasher and skimmed an article about the health benefits of green tea and printed it for Word Girl’s background files. Then, before I knew it, it was 3:15, time to wait for the school bus. I took both kids out to the pool together. There was the predictable splashing and laughing, but also a good bit of squabbling. When June wanted Noah to move she attempted to push him and had about as much success as you’d expect a 22 ½ pound person trying to shove one who weighs at least 55 pounds. She tackles him with gusto, as if she’s sure one of these days she will be able to take him. I have to admire her spunk, even as I strive to improve her manners.

June got out of the pool and commenced climbing up the incline of the slide. She’s a climbing fiend and loves to go up slides this way. Sometimes she turns around at the top and slides down. Other times, she will just climb down the ladder. She’s a strong girl and a stubborn one and she likes to do things her own way.

It’s partly that stubborn streak and partly the horrible time we had potty training Noah that makes us approach training June with such trepidation. June’s been telling us when she needs a change since she was eighteen months old (which is more than Noah did at two, or three, or even four). However, whenever I talked to her about using the potty “sometime soon,” she regarded me with incomprehension or skepticism, or she simply said, “No,” in a matter-of-fact tone.

Then yesterday as I was changing her and mechanically going through my spiel about how she’ll use the potty someday, she surprised me by saying. “June use potty. Sit on potty today.” Not one to let the window of opportunity slam shut, I waited until she’d had a dry diaper for a couple hours, then asked if she wanted to sit on the potty. She said yes and ran to the bathroom. I tried her on the child-sized seat that folds out of the toilet lid, but she was scared of sitting up there, so I fetched the potty from the basement. She didn’t like the feeling of sitting over a hole there either, so we compromised on a brief, bare-bottomed sit on the closed lid. She’s happy to sit on the potty this way and has done it several more times.

After Noah and June finished playing outside, she demonstrated her potty sitting for him. He was kind enough to cheer for her and she looked pleased. I’m not sure how to get her to sit on the potty with the lid open, but we have a trip planned to Target this weekend to look for Sesame Street underpants and reward stickers. I hope this will inspire her to take the next step.

Evening

There was a carnival at Noah’s school tonight, a fundraiser for the PTA. Our first stop was the dunk tank. While Noah waited in line for a chance to dunk Ms. C, his morning teacher, I bought pizza for everyone. Ms. C shook her fist at one of his classmates who’d dunked her, and pretended to be angry with her. Every time she went into the water, she splashed the watching, squealing crowd. Noah took his turn and failed to hit the target. The teacher handing out the balls told him his last throw was close, even though it wasn’t. We all went to sit on the curb and eat. I didn’t have a fork or knife to cut the pizza so I handed June a whole slice. It flopped in her hand as she tried to control it, but she finally found the right angle and she methodically ate all but a couple bites of the large slice, taking an occasional break to swig water from the liter bottle we were all sharing. She wanted nothing to do with her sippy.

When we’d finished, Beth took Noah to play some games and I took June to the smaller of the two bouncy castles. The kids inside looked older than June, but not by much, so I asked the attendant if it was okay for a two year old. She said it was fine if I was comfortable with it. I am working on being comfortable with June’s daredevil streak, her desire to climb higher and go down bigger slides than Noah did at her age. (I’m holding out on the big kid swings. They just don’t seem safe to me, so she’s only allowed in the bucket swings.) Of course, she does need limits. She fell off either the dining room table or a chair last month and bit all the way through her lower lip. Beth had to take her to the nighttime pediatric urgent care. Amazingly, she didn’t require any stitches, but this visit made a big impression. June still talks about it on an almost daily basis. Whenever she gets a bump or scrape she suggests we go to the doctor who will “help me feel better.”

Anyway, the bouncy castle was smaller than the one we have at home and the kids inside seemed pretty sedate. I was plenty comfortable. When it was her turn, June didn’t even bounce. She entertained herself by climbing in and out under the door flap until her time was up.

After she exited the bouncy castle, she dashed off to the playground. She climbed up the slide and slid down for a while. Then she spotted the monkey bars. She was particularly drawn to the triangular handles kids use to swing across the bars. She wanted me to lift her up so she could clasp one. I did. She wanted me to let go and let her dangle. I didn’t. Annoyed, she struggled to get free and when I lowered her to the ground, she took off running across the field. I caught up with her near the basketball courts where three groups of teenagers played three separate games. I thwarted June’s attempts to cross the courts without escort. I carried her, twisting and kicking, through the carnival games and finally found Beth watching Noah jump in the larger bouncy castle. My back ached. I set June down on the grass and Beth told her we’d be going home as soon as Noah got out.

“No!” she cried and sprinted off in the direction of the playground where we’d started. Some days are too good to relinquish when you’re two years, two months and two weeks old.

Sing, Sing a Song: A Week of Music

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Steph

Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things, not bad
Sing of happy, not sad.

Sing, sing a song
Make it simple
To last your whole life long
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough
for anyone else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.

From “Sing” by Joe Raposo, performed by the Carpenters
(http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/singasong.htm)

The summer Noah was two, during a visit to Beth’s parents house, Andrea gave him her guitar to strum and he played it until his fingers bled. When we noticed and pulled him away, he screamed in frustration. Beth’s brother Johnny said we should tell this story to the journalists who would surely interview us when Noah was a famous musician. Knowing what we know now, I think he was probably having a tactile under-sensitive day, but it shows how sure we all were Noah would be a lifelong musician, and possibly an accomplished one.

Noah was passionate about music when he was two and three. He idolized Banjo Man, the children’s musician who plays at the Takoma Park Farmers’ Market. My mom bought Noah his CD when he was not quite two and almost immediately we had to institute a rule that he could only hear the Banjo Man CD three times a day. Noah called the ukulele he carried everywhere his “banjo.” We could not leave town (and sometimes not the house) without it and a few others instruments carefully selected from his ever-growing collection. The toy saxophone and the little accordion were long-time favorites. Whenever we visited relatives, Noah loved to give everyone an instrument and organize a parade through the house. He also enjoyed setting up his ukulele case as if he were a street musician and soliciting donations. We had to throw real money in the case; just gesturing as if we were throwing money was not good enough.

In those days, every Saturday night we would go to Savory and listen to Takoma Zone (http://takomazone.com/Index.asp?PA=0&XX=46&XX=48&XX=83). We’d stay for the whole Traditional/Bluegrass set and sometimes for a little of the Singer/Songwriter set. It wasn’t kids’ music, but Noah would cuddle up in my lap or dance in front of my chair for an hour or sometimes even two hours. I always looked forward to Saturday nights. I was teaching then and there was always work I could be doing at home, so to be away from the piles of papers to grade and lessons to plan, in a comfy chair with a snuggly toddler on my lap and a cup of coffee within reach was the most relaxing time in my week.

Noah was in a toddler music class then and when his teacher had trouble filling a session, she suggested we start him in pre-Suzuki lessons. He was two years and eight months old then, a little young even for Suzuki, but we decided to give it a try. At first it went well. Noah could pick out simple tunes as soon as he picked up the instrument. At a recital when he was three, he broke out into a variation of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” when he was supposed to be playing a single note. When he was three and a half, he insisted on dressing as a violin for Halloween. But his progress stalled almost from the beginning. He never seemed to get much better than he was when he started and he chafed under the strict discipline of the Suzuki method. He started complaining about lessons and never wanted to play the instrument unless we asked him too. So when he was four, we pulled him out of the lessons. I was thinking of it as a break, but he’s never gone back to playing, and he doesn’t play his other instruments much either. I wonder sometimes if music was just a passing fad for him, like so many others we’ve seen come and go, or if he had something truly special and we squelched it by pushing him too hard, too young.

I have been thinking a lot about all this recently because June is the age Noah was when his love of music started to blossom and this week in particular we’ve revisited a number of our old musical haunts. There is still a lot of music in our day-to- day lives. Noah sings morning, noon and night and June does, too. Right now, anything by Milkshake and the soundtrack to The Jungle Book are big on their hit parade. Beth says living in our house can be like living in a musical. Here’s what it sounded like this week.

Saturday Evening: Takoma Zone

We don’t go to Savory nearly as often as we used to, but we were lured by some new menu items (real fruit smoothies instead of the artificial ones they used to have and some new desserts). As we came into the restaurant one of the musicians greeted us and exclaimed over how both kids have grown. He couldn’t believe Noah was seven. It was a beautiful evening so they set up outside. I sat with June in my lap, swaying slightly and sipping my strawberry-banana smoothie. The musicians played “Arkansas Traveler,” especially for Noah. (It used to be one of his favorites, though he doesn’t remember). All was well until about twenty minutes in when Noah wanted to know when we could leave. Beth didn’t remember what time we’d come in and said after the song was over. I was disappointed. I thought a half an hour had seemed like a reasonable, pared-down goal, but I didn’t want to push my luck by insisting on the extra ten minutes once everyone was getting set to go.

I sulked a little on the way home and wondered if we should even bother going anymore. It doesn’t seem to give Noah the pleasure it used to and he just irritates me, insisting we leave when I want to stay. But then on Sunday he surprised me by asking if we could go again soon. I guess it’s worth another try. We just have to take it in small doses.

Sunday Morning: Banjo Man

We went to the co-op and the farmers’ market to buy plants and seeds for our garden, which has turned into something more elaborate than we originally planned. We kept thinking of new plants it might be fun to grow—carrots, cucumbers, herbs, and wildflowers. We saw the first local strawberries of the season and snatched up three cartons, so I could slice them over the buttermilk pie I was planning to make for Memorial Day. After a while, June and I peeled off to go listen to Banjo Man while Beth and Noah continued shopping. We sat on the sidewalk and June scribbled with the chalk he provides. I wrote her name in pink while Banjo Man ran through his repertoire, which ranges from the ABCs to “The Wabash Cannonball.” (During this song he accompanied himself on the train whistle.) When I spied Beth and Noah approaching, I expected them to gesture for us to come along with them, but Noah ran over and plopped down on the sidewalk next to me. I glanced at Beth and she shrugged. Apparently, Noah can be a little nostalgic sometimes, too.

Monday Morning: The Be Good Tanyas

I was giving June a bath. Through the open bathroom window I could hear the clickety-clack of the mower as Beth mowed the lawn. It was the beginning of a day the four of us would spend mostly in the yard, mowing, putting in the garden, splashing in the wading pool and eating a picnic lunch and a picnic dinner. As soon as June was clean and dressed, we’d go outside. For now, though I was watching June play in the water and listening to a new CD playing in the kitchen with about half an ear. Two weeks ago I received four new CDs for my birthday. I’d only listened to two of them so far and not with what I’d call complete attention. When I was a teenager, listening to a new album or tape was a solemn ritual. I’d close the door of my room, sprawl out on my bed and read the lyrics as the music played, completely absorbed in the experience. Now I just let music, brand new or deeply familiar, play in the background of whatever chaos is currently unfolding. If a song catches my attention, I might glance at the lyrics later, if I remember. My best opportunity to really listen comes on Sunday mornings while Beth and June grocery shop and Noah disappears into the study and plays computer games. I do my housecleaning then and listen to NPR or a CD.

So, I’ve played this CD, but I wouldn’t say I’ve listened to it yet. It sounds like something I’d like, kind of old-time and bluegrassy, but I can’t remember a single lyric. I think I will give it another spin next Sunday.

Tuesday Afternoon: Water Music

Noah came off the bus, kind of subdued and complaining of a headache. He asked what we should do. I reminded him that I’d promised he could play with the sprinkler when the predicted high temperature for the day reached eighty degrees. We’ve had a run of unseasonably cold weather, but the high was eighty-four that day. He immediately perked up. I got him some Tylenol and changed June into her bathing suit while Noah changed into his. We set up the sprinkler in the garden. At first it seemed like we placed it in the perfect place to water the garage roof, but eventually most of our little plots got a good soaking. I’d water the rest with water from the wading pool later.

As the water showered down on June she sang:

It’s raining.
It’s pouring.
The old man is snoring.

Noah was running under the sprinkler and singing, too:

You woo-woo-woo-woo can do woo-woo-woo-woo a la la la la la lot in the water You woo-woo-woo-woo can do woo-woo-woo-woo a la la la la la lot in the water… Splash and swim through the blue green waves move your arms and kick your feet. play with the dolphins, chase the pretty fish
but don’t bother sharks you might meet.

(http://www.milkshakemusic.com/lyrics-wuuu.cfm)

Wednesday Morning: Kindermusik

At 8:25 I asked June, “Are you ready for a bath?”

“No,” she said decisively and waved the CD she was holding in her hand.

“Do you want to listen to music instead?”

“Yes,” she said, in a satisfied tone.

Just as well, I thought. We had to be out of the house by 8:55 to catch the bus for Kindermusik anyway. Squeezing a bath in would have made us rush and if I put on a CD it would occupy her while I did the breakfast dishes and gathered up our things. I took the CD from her (it was one of mine) and popped the Kindermusik CD in instead. We haven’t been listening to it as much as I’d resolved. I thought she’d get more out of the class if she became familiar with the songs. When Ms. Becky sings them in class they’re fine toddler-fare, but the performance on the CD is beyond cloying so I haven’t been playing it much. June ran to the couch and sat down, ready to listen. I went about my business and when I came to put on her shoes she announced, “I poopy.” Indeed, she was. I didn’t even need to check. I looked at my watch: 8:53. There was no time to change her. I’d have to take her on the bus as is and change her at music class. There would be plenty of time. We’re always early.

This was my first mistake. If I stayed to change her and walked to Kindermusik (it’s not that far—we usually walk home) we might have arrived close to on time. My second mistake was not asking to get off the bus when it stopped in front of a “Road Closed” sign where Sligo Creek runs under Maple Avenue. The bus detoured along Sligo Parkway and I had no idea when it would return to its regular route. The driver was uncommunicative on this point when another rider tried to engage him. Every few minutes, June would say “I poopy” in a plaintive voice as the bus took us further and further from music class. As it turned out we were almost to Silver Spring when we finally were allowed off. I walked as fast as I could, pushing the stroller up the long, steep hill at the end. I was sweaty and out of breath when we arrived, but we were only ten minutes late.

“Music class is fun!” June declared as I undid the stroller buckles, and hustled her into the classroom. Ms. Becky handed us some rhythm sticks, which we took into the bathroom. June lay on the floor, banging her sticks together as I performed the long-delayed change.

I signed June up for Kindermusik during the week and a half in March when we thought she would not be attending nursery school in the fall. I was looking for alternative activities for her and it looked like we’d have a little extra money to spend since we wouldn’t be paying tuition. Up to now my mantra had been “free or cheap activities only.” Kindermusik is neither free nor cheap. And in some ways it’s similar to the free “twosies” program at the library. It’s a group of twelve kids about her age (eighteen months to three years). There are songs and rhymes. There’s more dancing and moving around, though, and there are a lot of cool instruments to play.

We emerged from the bathroom ready to play. I wrapped June in a scarf and we pretended she had butterfly wings. We scurried around like squirrels. (The session theme is “Creatures in My Backyard.”) We played with jingle bells and assorted shakers, rocked to the rocking song and watched Ms. Becky blow bubbles. June always observes this ritual solemnly, never reaching out to touch the bubbles or chasing them as the other children do.

She has come out of her shell a bit at Kindermusik, though. Two weeks ago, after class on the playground adjacent to the class building, she spoke to a child other than Noah for the first time. June approached a classmate on the play structure and said, “Hey, Baby.” (In June’s world, all children under the age of five or so are babies.) The boy did not answer, but the next week she tried him again. Still nothing. She spoke to another boy, who was holding a plastic dinosaur: “Is your dinosaur looking good?” June has a tendency to turn statements into questions so she probably meant “I like your dinosaur.” It’s hard work talking to other toddlers. So far she’s zero for three in terms of getting a response. I hope she keeps trying, though. These mysterious little people are the creatures in her backyard and she’s trying to learn their ways. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Thursday Morning: Welcome to My Backyard

I was sitting under the shade of the silver maple in our backyard, watching June roam around. Every few minutes she’d come over with a small tribute for me—a leaf, a wild strawberry, or a handful of sand from the sandbox.

This time she was empty-handed and clapping rhythmically as she approached. “Are you ready for your song?” she asked.

“What’s my song?” I said.

“Welcome to My Backyard,” she prompted. So I sang the kindermusik welcome song:

Welcome to my backyard
Come along with me
Wonder what we’ll see
Come along with me
Welcome to my backyard
Listen to the sounds
Listen to the creatures all around

Clap hello to June, clap, clap, clap
Clap hello to Xander, clap, clap, clap (Here I pointed to our cat Xander, sitting on the back steps.)
Clap hello to Mommy, clap, clap, clap, clap

I paused. The names come in groups of four. I needed one more. June waited. I ventured:

Clap hello to the tree, clap, clap, clap.

June laughed with surprise and delight. You are never as good a singer, or a comedian as when you have babies and toddlers.

Thursday Afternoon: Love Song for A Jellyfish

For language arts homework on Thursday, Noah had to pick a poem he liked, copy it and be prepared to read it in class. In preparation, for the past few days we’ve been reading poems from a collection of poems about animals (http://januarymagazine.com/kidsbooks/beautybeast.html). We read the whole insect section, the fish section and part of the bird section. He decided he’d pick one from the fish section since ocean creatures are his current scientific passion.

I fully expected Noah to spend a half hour paging through the book, unable to choose a poem, or to pick one full of words he didn’t understand. (Some of the poems are a bit advanced for him). But almost right away he chose this one:

Love Song for a Jellyfish
By Sandra Hochman

How amazed I was, when I was a child,
To see your life on the sand.
To see you living in your jelly shape,
Round and slippery and dangerous.
You seemed to have fallen
Not from the rim of the sea,
But from galaxies.
Stranger, you delighted me. Weird object of
The stinging world.

It was perfect. I asked him to practice reading it aloud so I could give him some pointers, but I didn’t really need to. He read it beautifully, with only the occasional stumble. He read with expression and paused in the right places.

As part of his bedtime ritual Beth reads him four poems a night from anthologies we check out of the library. I think he must have absorbed something from this experience without any of us knowing it was happening. I taught literature long enough to know how few people can read poetry well. You have to hear the music in the words to do it. He hears it. He really does.

Friday Morning: The Master of His Feet

“There’s a pirate in the kitchen,” I told Beth. Noah had emerged from his room, wearing a t-shirt with a dog dressed as a pirate on it.

Noah skipped off toward the study, singing:

I am the master of my feet, The captain of my ship
I choose to sail the seven seas and make the most if it.
Adventure waits for all who come so climb aboard m’ mate
We’ll head due west when the winds are best Oh, I can h-argh-dly wait
Heigh ho (Heigh ho)
Hoist the anchor friends
Heigh ho (heigh ho)
Come sail the seas again.

(http://www.milkshakemusic.com/lyrics-pirates.cfm)

The real lyric is “the master of my fate,” of course, but Noah always sings it that way and we are too amused by it to correct him. Considering how often Noah trips and falls and crashes into things, being the master of his feet might seem almost as glamorous and improbable to him as being a pirate anyway.

Friday Evening: Pan Masters Steel Drums

Noah, June and I got off the bus at 6:05. The steel drum concert outside the co-op was scheduled to begin at six, but I could see the big drums still being unloaded from the trucks across the street. I told Noah they wouldn’t be starting for a while, but he urged, “Let’s go! I want to be early.” I suggested we go inside the co-op and buy some drinks first so we’d have them when Beth arrived with the pizza. We were having a Friday night picnic at Function at the Junction, a free weekly outdoor concert series in the co-op parking lot. Tonight the featured band was Pan Steel Drum Masters.

By 6:15 we were seated with our drinks and the band was set up and playing. Playing really, really loudly. Noah put his hands on his ears and complained it was “like thunder.” I thought we might get used to it after a few minutes, but when Beth arrived at 6:20, we decided to re-locate to the picnic tables in front of the co-op. From there we could still hear the music but not at quite such a deafening level and we could eat our pizza more easily.

I listened to the music, recognizing the occasional Bob Marley tune, while we ate and chatted with each other and waved to people we knew. Noah and I summarized the plot of the segment of Peter Pan we’d watched without Beth the night before so she’d be caught up when we watched the rest. It was a pleasant outing, even if as we walked home, Noah expressed some skepticism that that was really “the finest steel drum band” as the announcer had maintained. “There must be one that’s finer.”

Just before I put June to bed, I listened to her sleepily recount to Beth the events of the evening. The music was loud. We ate pizza. She was “very happy.” I’m not sure if it was the music, the pizza or both that made her happy, but I was glad to hear it.

Noah will probably never be the musical prodigy I once envisioned, but music is still a big part of the children’s lives. It helps them express their joy at running through the sprinkler on a warm day, relax enough to approach others and feel “very happy.” Every day, they sing out loud; they sing out strong. And, with any luck, that will last their whole lives long

Lucky Duck

Posted on May 4, 2008 by Steph

“I’m seven,” Noah announced when he came into our bedroom at 6:50 yesterday morning. “It’s my birthday.”

“Happy Birthday,” I answered, stretching my arms out of the bed to give him his first seven-year-old hug. “It’s also a weekend,” I reminded him. “So you’ll have to go back to your room for a little while.”

We recently instituted a later wakeup time for weekends. Noah can still come into our room at 6:30 on weekdays, but on weekends, it’s 7:10. (We proposed 7:00 and when he offered us an extra ten minutes, we readily accepted.)

Soon I could hear the clicking of Magna-Tiles (http://www.magnatiles.com/) fitting together and Noah’s cheerful voice singing:

You woo-woo-woo-woo can do woo-woo-woo-woo a la la la la la lot under water
A You woo-woo-woo-woo can do woo-woo-woo-woo a la la la la la lot under water…

You can pretend you are mermaids or mermen
swimming deep beneath the sea
if you find lost treasure on the ocean floor
please bring it back up to me.

(http://www.milkshakemusic.com)

Apparently he was anticipating his party, which was going to have an “Under the Sea” theme. He’d picked an underwater scene he found online for the invitations. I’d bought gummy sharks and squids and other sea animals along with rubber ducks and water-squirters in the shapes of dolphins, sharks and alligators for the goody bags. Beth decorated the bags, drawing jellyfish on the girls’ bags and sharks on the boys’, per Noah’s instructions. The guests’ names were written in tentacles and teeth. She also fashioned him the “coral crown” he requested out of pink craft foam and baubles they found at a craft shop. Beth baked the cake and frosted it with a scuba-diving penguin on a blue background. (This, of course, was based on a design from Club Penguin.) The party itself was to be held partly on the D.C. Duck (http://www.dcducks.com/), an amphibious tour vehicle that takes you to see some of the monuments and other sights on your way to the Potomac, where you take a short cruise.

When Noah came into the room Beth (who had arisen at 6:20, showered and left the house) was already on her way to stand in line for tickets for the Duck, which are only available on a same-day basis.

When Beth returned around 8:45, with tickets in hand and laden with coffee and pastries from Union Station, Noah began to unwrap his first round of presents. Among the big hits were the tropical fish short pajama set Andrea sewed for him (he decided to wear the top to his party), Magic Tree House #39 (appropriately titled A Dark Day in the Deep Sea) and a six-month renewal of his Club Penguin membership.

When the presents were opened, he started telling us more about his recess club, the Penguin Secret Agency, or P.S.A. (It’s based on the secret agent program on Club Penguin. Noah recently qualified to be a secret agent on the site.) Right now the recess club seems to be splitting its time between solving mysteries and growing its membership. Peter’s job is to talk up the club on the playground, while Sasha writes its name in sidewalk chalk. They’ve had a recent coup: a second grader joined the previously all first-grade club. I asked Noah if there were any girls in the club and he said no, that he’d wanted to ask Maura, but he didn’t because “she has her own club she’s the boss of, like me.”

“You’re the boss of the club?” I asked. This was news.

“Yeah, because I started it,” he said. This heartened me, not because I think he needs to be the boss of everything, but because after playing almost exclusively with Sasha for the first two-thirds of first grade, he went through a bit of a recess rough patch when Sasha started playing basketball with Sean instead. He remained friendly with both boys and they invited him to join in, but he doesn’t care much for sports so he turned them down. For several weeks he played by himself at recess, trying to recreate the games he and Sasha had played in solo versions. He was a bit downcast about it and I felt helpless to offer advice. I’ve rarely made friends easily and I’ve gone through a few dry spells myself (truth be told I’m in one now). I did try though, making occasional suggestions about how to approach children and reminding him of kids he’s played with in the past. Then, gradually, he began mentioning playing with one child or another for a few days at a time until more often than not, he had a playmate at recess. Then suddenly he was printing out membership forms for his club and discussing its growth potential. He’s rebuilt his social network with admirable speed and panache.

The child development experts say seven can be a whiny, melancholy, self-pitying age. So far we haven’t seen much evidence of that. Granted, he’s only been seven for two days, but it seems to be a good age for him. He’s doing well academically. His teachers say he’s reading and doing math well above grade level and they have no serious complaints about his behavior. His print of the letter N was selected for an elementary and middle school art show at a nearby mall. And he’s overcome a challenging social situation. So far it seems more like lucky seven than sad seven.

Seven is the age when boys in ancient Sparta left home to begin their military training. In medieval times it was the age when sons of nobility moved to the castle to serve as pages in training to be squires and knights. It’s the age at which many Catholics take first Communion. It seems to be recognized in many cultural traditions as an age of increased competence and responsibility. Maybe that’s why, when Noah was a baby and my sister asked how old he’d have to be to fly out to the West Coast and spend a week with her, I said seven. Now that I have a seven year old, and a rather absent-minded one at that, the idea of putting him on a plane by himself frankly horrifies me. So we won’t be doing that, or sending him off to military school, but we did increase his allowance from a dollar a week to two dollars, and with the raise we gave him some new chores.

The party was to be a new experience, too, and logistically more challenging than any we’ve attempted so far. Birthdays up to now have been backyard affairs with grandparents and friends of the family (birthdays one to four) or with his own friends (birthdays five and six). The most recent two have had themes (the five senses and weather) and there were decorations and games related to the theme, but mostly the kids ran around like wild things in the yard and ate cake. It worked for us.

We’ve adhered to the one-guest-per-year-of-the-child’s age guideline for parties, so when it came time to start planning the party, we told Noah he could have seven guests. It so happened this was around the same time he was finding himself short on friends. He could only come up with three. I felt so sad about this I started trying to compensate by suggesting more elaborate parties than we usually throw. My first idea was to take Noah and his guests to tour a cavern. He liked the idea, but when we looked into it we couldn’t find anything closer than ninety minutes from the house and we’d have needed at least one parent and probably more to volunteer as extra drivers, so we nixed the idea. Meanwhile, Noah came up with his under the sea theme and we started working around that. Could we tour a submarine? The only one we could find was at a military museum. We didn’t feel great about that and it presented the same transportation problems as the cavern. How about the oceans exhibit at Natural History, easily accessible by Metro? Closed for renovations. How about a ride on the D.C. Duck, something he’s wanted to do for a while? It goes on the river and not the sea, but it was close enough.

While all this brainstorming was going on, Noah’s guest list kept growing until it hit seven. I wondered if we should have stuck to the cake-in-the-backyard model, but it was too late to turn back. Then right before we sent out the invitations, Noah struck one of the guests from the list and didn’t replace her. Maura, who had her own birthday party and the last soccer game of the season that weekend, sent her regrets. On the morning of the party, Maxine woke up with a stomach bug, and despite her energetic pleading, her mother decided it wasn’t a good idea to send her on a boat. We were down to four of the original guests, plus a late addition, Jill’s younger sister Sadie, whom Jill wanted to bring along. Sadie’s in kindergarten, only seven months younger than Noah and he’s played with both sisters so inviting her seemed like a good idea. The girls’ mother, Suzy, offered to help chaperone as well.

We met Elias, Sasha and Sean at the Metro station at 3:15. All four boys were immediately engaged in a game in which the train was a time machine, taking them back to the time of the dinosaurs. Suzy, Jill and Sadie met us at the Duck at 3:45. The vessel was called “Lucky Duck.” It was smaller than I imagined and our party made up almost half the passengers. We settled into our seats in the open-air vehicle, ready to take in the sights of Washington, D.C. on a warm, sunny spring day.

I’d wondered if Noah’s guests would behave on the Duck, but they were good as gold, requiring only the occasional reminder to keep their elbows inside and to refrain from talking while the tour guide was speaking. June, on the other hand, was a wild woman, restless and noisy and squirmy. I had my hands full trying to keep her from hurling herself, her sippy and her pacifier over the side of the vehicle. I managed to keep her quiet and still for short periods of time by feeding her everything edible I could find in the diaper bag (a stick of barbequed soy jerky and a baggie of mixed dry cereal was all I had). She ran back and forth between my seat and Beth’s every few minutes. I ended up paying more attention to June than to any of the monuments or statues we passed. When we hit the George Washington Parkway and the Duck reached its maximum driving speed of forty miles per hour, June’s hair was blowing all over and she was laughing in delight. Once we were on the water, June was even more intent of throwing herself overboard. Meanwhile, the low-flying airplanes landing and taking off from National Airport fascinated all the kids, big and little. Once we were back on land, the guide let Noah pass out the souvenir quackers (duck-bill shaped noisemakers) and instructed everyone to quack “Happy Birthday” to him. It wasn’t quite recognizable as “Happy Birthday” but it was impressively noisy.

Back at Union Station, we exited the Duck. After Noah and Sasha nearly gave us a heart attack running away from us in the parking lot, Suzy, Jill and Sadie got into their car and we got back on the Metro. Once we were back in Takoma, Beth took June and drove up to Summer Delights, the ice cream parlor where the rest of the party was to be held, while I herded the four boys the several blocks from the Metro to the ice cream place. Noah, Elias and Sasha were playing a game in which they earned points by stepping on certain kinds of materials and avoiding others. This slowed their progress considerably, so I had to keep calling them to catch up to Sean and me. Sean was a bit disdainful of the game and declined to join.

At Summer Delights, we met up with a couple moms and younger siblings for pizza, cake and ice cream in the patio. Beth simplified the ordering process by limiting the choices to vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles or chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. When it was time to sing “Happy Birthday,” the kids all spontaneously blew their quackers between the lines. They were all on the beat and it actually sounded pretty good.

As we left Summer Delights, June called out, “Noah, Sasha, C’mon!” (in a pretty good imitation of the impatient tone I’d used on the way over) even though Sasha had already left. On our way home, we swung by his house to return his quacker (confiscated by Beth for quacking in the train station, which she had forbidden). Then it was home for bath and opening the presents Noah received from his friends.

Today was a quieter day, full of errands and house cleaning. Noah got a haircut, wrote his thank-you notes and carried out his new chores of helping to clean his room and to assemble the recycling. In between, we found time to play the board game he got from Sadie and Jill and to read A Dark Day in the Deep Sea in its entirety. And tonight, Beth, Noah and June hailed the ice cream truck for the first time this season.

When I tucked Noah in, I left him with my usual litany: “Have a good night’s sleep. Sweet Dreams. See you in the morning. Mommy loves you very much.” Often I add something at the end about what will happen the next day, so I said, “Tomorrow will be your first day at school as a seven year old. “

“Yah!” Noah said, seeming genuinely excited about this.

Happy Birthday, sweet seven year old. Here’s to a lucky year.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

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