Out of the Haunted House

Posted on November 5, 2008 by Steph

Three days before the election, we drove out of Obama territory into McCain country. Noah had a four-day weekend, thanks to a teacher grading and planning day on Monday and the election on Tuesday. (His school is a polling place.) The kids hadn’t seen Andrea since our visit to Wheeling at the beginning of Noah’s summer break so it seemed like a good opportunity to meet up with her. We chose to stay at the Wisp ski resort (http://www.wispresort.com/wisp/index.aspx) in Western Maryland, which is located in the scenic Laurel Highlands somewhere between our neck of the woods and Andrea’s. Andrea insisted on paying for everyone and said she didn’t want “to hear any backtalk.” So, I’ll just say thanks.

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. He wanted to know why it is that people who support one candidate or the other tend to live clustered together. We didn’t have a good answer for him.

Sometimes Noah has seemed indifferent to the election. He told us a few weeks ago he didn’t care who won. Other times, he was interested in how the electoral college worked and how voters make their choices. When his morning class had an election recently, he considered running for office, though he ended up deciding against it. (Sasha was elected class secretary.) For a while, he was pretending to run for President of the United States against Beth. They both wrote a stump speech. His was remarkably civil and even-handed, perhaps because he was running against his mother. Here it is:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=43673&l=4e704&id=508407876

I think we might be better off as a country if all candidates for elected office were half as generous.

It was late Saturday afternoon by the time we got to the hotel. We socialized in Andrea’s room for a bit, then we ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. Noah was impatient to tour the haunted house set up on the hotel grounds near the ski slopes. (There was also a haunted coaster going down the slope, but he had not interest in that.)

We asked at the front desk if the haunted house was appropriate for a seven year old. The clerk said she hadn’t been through it herself but she’d heard it was more family-friendly in the opening seven to eight hour of each evening. We were encouraged by this, but we asked again at the ticket counter. The man with the chainsaw directing traffic in the parking lot had given us pause. One young staffer with a simulated bullet hole in her forehead said her four-year-old sister had been through both before and after eight and did fine.

In retrospect, we were asking the wrong question. It should have been– is this appropriate for a seven year old who has been sheltered, who only watches PBS kids’ shows and who has never seen a PG-rated movie and whose reading material is monitored? Then again, maybe we didn’t really need to ask at all. One look at Mr. Chainsaw and Ms. Head Wound probably should have told us all we needed to know.

I overrode my gut feeling because Noah really wanted to go and because I’ve played the heavy a few times recently about things like this, most notably when I refused to buy him the blood-spattered zombie costume he saw in a catalogue and wanted for Halloween. Beth thought it was ironic I am the stricter parent here because I am a horror fan and she isn’t. But it’s because I’ve read and seen and taught so much horror that I take it seriously as a meditation on the nature of good and evil. (When it isn’t, it’s mostly just exploitation.) I think it’s wrong, and possibly even dangerous to let kids get desensitized to violence at a young age. But on the other hand, I also think facing and conquering fears through encounters with fictional, symbolic monsters in various forms can be empowering for kids. It’s all a matter of timing and temperament. Maybe it was time to let Noah test his limits. After all, we’ve read him the unvarnished versions of fairy tales since he was a preschooler and he’s on a spooky story kick right now. He’s always gotten a thrill from stories that are just scary enough. I do, too.

I asked him one last time if he was sure he wanted to do it. He said yes and Beth bought two tickets, one for him and one for me. We agreed on a code word he would use if he wanted me to take him out of the house early. It was “volcano.” We boarded the shuttle bus. The windows were draped with heavy fabric and the interior of the bus was lit with red light bulbs. The driver gave warnings about how we might not make it back. Noah giggled. He was just scared enough. But I was noticing with unease that our group consisted entirely of adults, teens and Noah.

A man in a torn and bloody shirt divided us into smaller groups and ushered us into the maze in front of the house. I made sure Noah and I stayed behind the two other people in our group so nothing would jump out at us first. There was nothing in the maze except a wrecked car with a dummy in the driver’s seat at the very end. It wasn’t a very realistic dummy and Noah seemed unfazed by it.

We walked through the door into the house itself. Immediately, a light flashed on and a man in a cage came forward brandishing some kind of power tool and shaking the bars. I didn’t get a good look at him because I was hurrying Noah away from the cage.

We climbed a narrow staircase, holding hands. The interior of the house was lit with more flickering red light. The staircase twisted and turned. Nothing jumped out at us. There were no spooky noises.

I think in the end it was the suspense that got to Noah. He forgot all about his code word. “Let’s go,” he said suddenly and urgently. “I don’t like this place! Let’s get out of here!”

“Okay,” I said in what I hoped was a calm and reassuring voice. “We’ll just go back the way we came. It’s not very far and we know what we’ll see since we’ve seen it already.”

We turned and headed down the stairs. “Let’s go,” he kept saying in a panicky voice. I squeezed his hand and kept talking. When we passed people on their way up the stairs, they made way for us. The man in the cage was silent and still as we passed.

We passed the wrecked car and wound backwards through the maze. Noah was worried we wouldn’t be able to find our way out but it wasn’t hard.

The empty shuttle bus was parked outside the house. “Are you going back?” I asked the driver. He said yes, took one look at Noah and flipped on the bus’s interior lights. It looked like a normal bus again. He spoke kindly to Noah, calling him “Buddy” and confiding to him that he didn’t make it through the house either. I have no idea if it was the truth, but it was a nice thing to say.

We rejoined Andrea, Beth and June who were waiting for us by a bonfire, drove back to the hotel and got the kids ready for bed. As I lay down with Noah he said he thought he might have nightmares about the haunted house. I told him if he did he could come into our room. (We had a suite and Noah was sleeping on a Murphy bed in the living area.) I almost never make this offer. It took Noah so long to learn to sleep through the night and June doesn’t do it more than once in a blue moon so I’m protective of my sleep. But I led him into the haunted house, so it was up to me to get him out if any little part of him was still in there.

Noah did wake up around ten-thirty, feeling sick to his stomach and calling for Beth. She got up with him (he seems to prefer her when he’s sick) and she kept him company while he vomited. I’m not sure if it was the lingering effects of the illness we’ve all had or if it came from overeating at dinner and his subsequent scare, but afterwards he went back to his bed and slept the rest of the night with no nightmares.

On Sunday we took a walk by the lovely shore of Deep Creek Lake (http://www.deepcreekhospitality.com/fr_deep_creek_state_park.asp) in the morning and swam in the hotel pool in the afternoon. Sometime in between I told Beth that she was either being very sneaky or quite restrained about checking the polls on her phone. Over the past couple weeks I’d gotten into the habit of checking the Washington Post tracking poll as soon as I picked up the paper in the morning, but I didn’t follow any other polls. Too much information can be confusing and crazy-making. Beth was unable to resist temptation, however. Sometimes she stayed up late checking poll after poll online, Now, though, she was trying to be on vacation. As we drove from one place to another, I told Beth all the McCain-Palin signs were scarier than the haunted house. I thought better of the comment once it was out of my mouth, though. As strongly as I feel about the election, I know that the supporters of each candidate are sincere about their choices. Given the demographics of the area, it’s likely the kindly bus driver was a McCain voter. We’re all trying to put country first in our own way, as we think best.

Monday morning at breakfast, Noah was telling Andrea about Mrs. E, the retired teacher who volunteers in his afternoon class on Wednesdays. “She’s older than you,” he told her. Here he paused for dramatic emphasis. “She’s older than John McCain,” he said, sounding as if it was a wonder Mrs. E managed to get out of bed in the morning and go about her business. And that did make me chuckle.

Later that day we took a short hike to Muddy Falls in Swallow Falls State park (http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/western/swallowfalls.html). June was entranced by the roaring, falling water. “The water is slipping down,” she kept saying. After a lunch of leftovers from our dinner the previous night, we ate Noah’s half-birthday cupcakes. They were marked-down Halloween cupcakes we found at the grocery store, decorated with plastic spiders and spider webs on top. He composed the following song about them:

Happy Half-Birthday to Me
My age is over three
I love my cupcakes
‘Cause they’re so creepy

Monday afternoon we drove home and Tuesday morning, we voted. Before we left the house, Noah was singing “Barack Obama” over and over again to a tune I didn’t recognize. We had some trouble getting him out of the house. It was unseasonably warm and he wanted to wear shorts. Beth compromised with him and let him wear short sleeves and crocs with no socks provided he took a jacket along. At 8:35, we walked out the front door. “Let’s go vote for Barack Obama!” Beth said.

The lines weren’t too long and we were finished in plenty of time to hit Circle Time at the library at ten. That night after dinner, we ventured out into the rainy night to get our free Election Day ice cream from Ben and Jerry’s. During the drive over, Noah asked us to explain again how the “electrical college” worked and wanted to know why in Nebraska and “New Hamster” they didn’t use a winner-take-all system for their electoral votes.

The line at Ben and Jerry’s was out the door but it was a warm night and we were under an awning, so we didn’t get wet. The line moved quickly and within fifteen minutes we were seated and eating our ice cream. It was a festive scene inside. The crowd was diverse–black, white and Asian, young and old, gay and straight. An Orthodox Jewish family discussed which flavors might be kosher. A woman pushed an infant with Downs’ Syndrome in a stroller.

After the kids were in bed, Beth and I settled in front of the television to watch the election results come in. I folded laundry and read the Health section of the Post and clipped relevant articles for Sara during the lulls in coverage. When I started watching around nine o’clock Obama had one hundred seventy electoral votes already. I considered staying up until he went over the top, but by 10:15, he was only a little over two hundred. June had been up a few times the night before with croup and I was exhausted so I gave up on seeing history made and went to bed.

At 12:40, I woke and noticed Beth wasn’t in bed yet. I stumbled out to the living room to see if it was all over yet. It was, but Beth was still sitting on the couch, searching for Proposition 8 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008) ) results on her phone. It didn’t look good.

We woke up to different country today. June’s music teacher ended class this morning by talking about how full of hope she was for all the children in the room. Sometimes I feel that hope, too, though sometimes I wonder if we’re expecting far more than any one person can accomplish from our charismatic new President. I guess we’ll find out. I have to say I don’t envy President-elect Obama. (However much I like typing that phrase.) He didn’t lead the country into the haunted house where we’re currently lost, but he’s the one we’re asking to gather us all up and lead us out.

At My House (For Sara and Dune)

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Steph

This is my house

At my house I can hear…BAM BAM
See saw see
Rap rap rap
Ssss Ssss
Zing-zing
Clunkety clunk clunk

At my house I can smell…Ooooo
Sniffy sniff sniff
Whiff
Mmmm Mmmm
Good
Yummy

At my house I can taste…Yum, yum
Sweet
Syrupy
Tangy
Buttery

At my house I can see…Up up up
Straight
Round
Down, down, down
Green, yellow, brown

At my house I can feel…Fluffy
Smooth
Warm
Fuzzy
Soft

This is my house

At My House
By Claire Clark and Susan James Frye

June got this book (along with a couple more books, a few cds and a pretty rosewood xylophone) in her take-home kit for the fall session of Kindermusik, which just started up again last week. The session theme is Milk & Cookies. It’s all about domestic routine. During the first class we pretended to be clothes in a washing machine and at one point we were all issued dust rags, which we pretended to use. I’m pretty sure she got what we were doing in the washing machine but that whole dusting thing might have been a bit perplexing to her. It’s possible she’s never seen anyone dust.

Anyway, this book really captivates June. I read it to her over and over and she delights in finding the stuffed kangaroo on each page. Extended exposure has gotten me to thinking about our own domestic routines. Here’s what that kangaroo might have seen (and smelled and tasted and heard and felt) at our house over the past few days.

Friday: At my house I can smell… Italian frosted cookies.

“Do you still want to make cookies this afternoon?” I asked Noah when he got off the school bus.

He nodded his head enthusiastically and did a Cookie Monster imitation, “Cookies!”

After we’d read a few chapters of Dragon Slayers’ Academy #13 (Beware! It’s Friday the 13th) and he’d watched his allotted hour of television, we got started. One of June’s Kindermusik books has recipes for cookies from around the world and Noah had been paging through the book and asked if we could make the Italian frosted cookies. I said sure, though I was a little dismayed to note it looked like the most complicated recipe of the lot. The dough has to be kneaded and shaped into rings, baked, glazed and sprinkled with candy.

I put one of June’s new Kindermusik cds on in the living room to keep her occupied while Noah and I measured and mixed the ingredients. I wanted to include her later in the process, but this looked like it would take longer than whipping up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and her attention span is about what you’d expect from a two and a half year old.

At one point she wandered into the kitchen and almost immediately, the kids were fighting over who would stand on the stool we use to reach high shelves. I folded it up and said no one could stand on it. Noah accepted this, but June sobbed and sobbed and I wondered if this was going to derail the whole baking project. Then, all of a sudden, she was finished crying and went back to playing.

By the next time she came in, we were rolling the dough out on a floured board on the dining room table. I gave her a lump of it to knead and she was a happy, happy girl. Both kids sank their fingers in the dough and poked and squished and giggled. We let June keep kneading an ever-diminishing ball as Noah and I formed the rings and placed them on the baking sheets. I wondered if she’d have trouble relinquishing that last little bit, but she gave it up readily when I let her (and Noah) have a taste. I realized that all the extra steps I had seen as a hassle were really the fun of the project.

Beth got home early, around six, because we were going out for pizza. I was proud of myself for having timed everything perfectly. She got home right as the cookies were coming out of the oven. Except when I checked on them they looked like dough, not cookies. Come to think of it, I’d never smelled them baking. The oven was not turned on. I must have turned it off inadvertently when I’d turned on the oven light early in the baking. I consulted quickly with Beth. Should we wait to heat up the oven and bake the cookies or just leave? We decided to go ahead and bake them.

Twenty minutes later, as I headed to the oven to retrieve the cookies, Beth said, “Now that smells like cookies.” The rich smell greeted us again when we came home from our dinner.

At my house I can smell…the sweet smell of an hour’s play.

Saturday: At my house I can taste…homemade pesto

Saturday was a busy day. I folded and put away three loads of laundry, mowed the back yard, glazed the cookies and sprinkled colored sugar on them, attended a meeting at June’s school, read more four more chapters of DSA #13 to Noah and The Tale of Peter Rabbit to June (at least six times) and made dinner.

Five o’clock found me in the garden, cool in the growing shade of a late September afternoon, snipping basil stems off near the ground and putting the leaves in a measuring cup. I’d read online that if you leave a little stem and a couple leaves the basil will keep growing. I wasn’t certain we had a cup’s worth of leaves and sure enough I came up a little short. I wondered if I should just pick everything, but in the end I left two leaves on almost every stem. I‘d surveyed the garden: the cilantro, cucumbers and spinach were finished; the second planting of lettuce was getting sparse and all but a couple carrots were gone. We had eight tomatoes in varying stages of ripeness on the vine, but there hadn’t been any new green ones in a long while. I wanted to stretch the bounty of the garden out a little longer if I could.

An hour and twenty minutes later I took my first bite of whole-wheat penne with pesto. It was just right. Even Beth, who had a cold, said she could taste it.

At my house I can taste… a rich, green, fleeting moment of summer.

Sunday: At my house I can hear…Noah reading.

Noah was sprawled out on our bed, his math worksheet in front of him. He was alternately staring into the middle distance and playing with his pencil. Beth and June were at the farmers’ market and I’d come into the room for a book. I checked his progress. Three problems left on the sheet plus one more page and he’d be done his ten pages of math homework for the week.

I decided to forget my book and said, “Do you want to take a break and read some DSA after you finish that page?” He agreed readily. It’s always more fun to read to him when June’s out of the house and not interrupting us every few minutes and he and I are so rarely alone when I don’t have pressing chores. I prodded him into finishing the last three addition problems and we got started. I read the last four chapters of the book. It took about twenty-five minutes, five more than he needed for his reading log. I was getting up when he said he wanted to read the DSA newsletter at the back of the book.

I hesitated, but then he offered to read it to me, so I said yes. Noah’s a good reader but he still prefers for us to read to him. He read the whole nine-page newsletter, occasionally misidentifying a word (“community” for “committee”), reading other hard words (“evidence”) with ease, and laughing over and over at the jokes: “Why was Cinderella so bad at sports? Because her coach was a pumpkin!”

At my house I can hear…the written word coming alive in my son’s voice.

Monday: At my house I can feel…sick

Beth and I have been trading a couple of separate illnesses back and forth. She had the stomach bug first and then the cold. I got the cold first and then yesterday morning around 4:15 I woke feeling decidedly queasy. I will spare you the details, but it was bad enough that Beth decided to stay home and watch June today so I could rest. The worst of it was over by 9:30 in the morning, but I spent a lot of the day on the couch, cuddling with June and watching Sesame Street, or in bed– sleeping, reading the most undemanding thing I could find in the house (http://www.cookiemag.com/) or reading to June.

I found my favorite white cotton long underwear bottoms I haven’t worn since spring and spent the day in them and I swiped the comfy fleece throw from Noah’s room. Beth bathed June, read to her, took her on a couple of outings and brought me back an almond latte. When Noah got home from school, she read to him.

At one point, June climbed into bed with me and said, “We’re cozy, aren’t we?”

Even though I did two loads of laundry and made a simple dinner while Beth supervised Noah’s homework, it still felt like staying home from school and having my mom watch over me.

At my house I can feel…nurtured.

Tuesday: At my house I can see…two and a half candles on a cupcake.

“How ‘bout we give her a half present?” Noah said on his way out the front door this morning. We’d been discussing plans to go to the supermarket after school and get cupcakes for June’s half-birthday.

June is two and a half today. Now that we’re at the halfway point, I can say her twos haven’t been terrible, at least so far. She can throw a decent tantrum (she threw one this afternoon at Starbucks as a matter of fact) and we hear “Give it back! It’s mine!” quite a lot (more often when the object is not in fact hers), but her fits, while intense, pass pretty quickly. She can usually be distracted or jollied out of them. They are nothing like the tantrums Noah had when he was three and half to four and a half (one of which led me to sit down next to him on the sidewalk outside the Takoma Metro stop and cry). Maybe she’s still warming up, but if not, I feel like we’ve gotten off pretty easy.

I know we did with her transition to school. She has loved it from day one, with no period of adjustment. On Thursday and Friday mornings she’s so excited to leave the house that more often than not we leave earlier than we need to. We’ve taken to walking instead of using the stroller. As I watch her run down the sidewalk, tiny behind her huge backpack, I wonder where my baby went and where this little girl came from, the one who calls Beth and me “You guys” and who sometimes says “No problem” (it comes out sounding more like “No pwobwem”) instead of “Yes.”

Beth called around 6:20 to say there were delays on the Red Line and that she’d be late getting home. We ate without her. June dug into her whole-wheat spaghetti with fresh tomatoes, cheese, olives and veggie meatballs. I didn’t make her a salad because she hasn’t been eating them recently but she asked for one when she saw mine and so I got her some spinach leaves and garbanzo beans and she ate those, too. After dinner she climbed up on the kitchen stool to peek at her cupcakes on the counter.

“What are my cupcakes doing?” she asked. I’d promised she could have one after dinner. I told her we were waiting for Beth to come home and eat her dinner first. June went to the living room and sat down in her rocker with a stuffed bunny in one arm and a copy of Babybug (http://www.cricketmag.com/ProductDetail.asp?pid=10) in the other.

When Beth walked in the door at 7:10, June informed her she was reading to the bunny and then told her we had cupcakes.

Finally, it was time to eat the cupcakes. We lit two and a half candles and sang “Happy Birthday” and “Feliz Cumpleaños.” I helped June blow out the candles and then I pulled them out. June attempted to count them. “One, two, three, four, five!” she said. June can count up to twelve or so, but when she’s counting actual objects she tends to go too fast and come up with an inflated total. She examined the sprinkles on the frosting carefully before she ate. “All different colors of my birthday!” she said.

After she’d finished, she said, “It’s not my half birthday, it’s my five birthday.”

“Some day,” I said, thinking she’s already halfway there.

At my house I can see…a girl who charges ahead and doesn’t look back.

This is my house.

Note: While all this was going on, my sister Sara and her gentleman friend Dune bought their first house. May it be full of yummy smells and tastes, joyful sounds and sights, and feelings of love and celebration.

A Fairy Tale Day

Posted on July 18, 2008 by Steph

June was in the bath, chewing on a toy boat and growling. I’d just finished telling her a story about a sea monster that menaced boats and the dolphin that rescued the hapless passengers. I held the sparkly purple dolphin squirter toy in one hand. June played the part of the monster with gusto.

Before she even had the boat completely out of her mouth, she was asking me for a story “about a queen and a prince.” Stories about royalty are popular around here. June’s first-ever attempt to play story-game with Noah a couple weeks ago went like this: “Once upon a time, there was a king and a queen and a princess. They had soap. They had a bathtub. The princess took a bath.” An impressively cohesive start, I thought, but after Noah took his turn and it was June’s turn again she just repeated her opening word for word. It never went anywhere from there.

I thought for a minute. “Once upon a time,” I started, “there were two queens who lived together with a prince and a princess. One day the princess took a bath. Then she put on a pretty dress and went to her playgroup. It was one queen’s turn to host that day and she had to stay on the playground with her guests so the princess did not run into the woods. They swung on the swings, slid on the slides, climbed the twisty ladder, rode on the pony and the motorcycle, threw rocks in the creek and had a snack. Then they came home, had a nap and went to drama camp early see the prince’s performance. Then they ate ice cream. The End.”

This was my plan for the day. It was a busy day in a busy week. On Monday June and I picked up the pottery the children had painted for my mother’s birthday at Color Me Mine (http://www.colormemine.com/). Noah painted a cat and June painted a butterfly, or rather the underside of one wing. She refused to touch the other wing or the top of the ceramic insect. Tuesday we mailed the pottery and went to Circle Time at the library. Tuesday evening Beth and I left the kids with a sitter and went out for Burmese to celebrate our anniversary. (The food was great; the uninterrupted conversation even better.) Wednesday we tried out the Co-op’s new story time. Thursday we went to the playground and I inspected the familiar space, trying to imagine what I might need for the next day’s playgroup that I hadn’t considered. The answer was a tablecloth for the picnic table that was covered with bird droppings. Every afternoon we took the bus to Silver Spring to pick Noah up at drama camp. During June’s naps I wrote a short article about the nutritional benefits of organic milk and produce. I’ve been doing research and editing jobs for my sister’s freelance writing business for almost a year but this was the first writing project I’d tackled.

After June’s bath, I put white barrettes in her hair and dressed her in a blue and white striped dress over a white t-shirt, white socks and black Mary Janes. “A dress for my birthday!” June exclaimed. The dress was a birthday present from my mother, but I don’t think that’s what she meant. She’s been eager for another birthday ever since she turned two in late March and she claims it is her birthday whenever she sees balloons. She’s probably worn a dress a couple times since March but it’s not an everyday occurrence for her so that it was some kind of holiday was a reasonable conclusion.

As I pushed the stroller—laden with five pounds of organic mixed green and red grapes (all sliced neatly in half), cheddar bunnies, whole-wheat bunnies, bowls, plastic cutlery, napkins and the tablecloth—toward the playground, June commented, “It’s fun to play with our friends.” I thought it was kind of funny, given that the kids really don’t do anything that could be described as playing together yet, but I was glad to hear she enjoys these weekly Friday morning outings.

We arrived just before the official starting time of ten a.m. I scanned the playground for familiar faces. There were three teenage girls sitting on rocks down by the creek and a grandmother with two little girls, one about the right age, but I didn’t recognize her. After a cautious conversational opening, I concluded the girl was not part of our group. I chatted with the grandmother a little while longer. She was from Hawaii on a visit to her daughter and her family. She wanted to know if it was always so humid here in the summer. Not always, but often, I conceded.

I got the picnic table set up with snacks, shooed an interested June away from it and pushed her on the swings, but June wanted to roam. I compromised with her. We could walk to the footbridge and look down at the water, but we were not going into the woods. She seemed agreeable. As soon as we were on the bridge, she took off running, the heels of her shoes clattering on the wooden planks. She’d made it a few feet onto the narrow, muddy path that runs into the woods when I caught her and carried her, twisting and kicking and apparently surprised and outraged that we weren’t going into the woods.

I looked at my watch: 10:10. I decided to let June start eating in the interest of keep her on the playground. She settled in happily. I’d bought her favorite snacks. Once she’d eaten a few bites, she looked around and noticed something was missing. “Where people?” she asked. “Where our friends?” I told her they were coming.

I watched as a dad with a two-year-old girl and then a nanny with another one arrived. Neither was from June’s class, but one of the girls stared so intently at the food I invited her and her father to join us. Why not? It was 10:20 and we had a lot of food. I asked her name and it was June! Someone had told me there was another June about my June’s age who frequents this playground, but we’d never met.

The other June and her dad began to eat. “You’re so good. You cut the grapes in half,” he observed. I was glad someone noticed. It took an hour. I’m sometimes a bit lax about choking hazards with June, but I’m conscientious enough not to serve whole grapes to other people’s toddlers.

June and I threw rocks into the creek. I let her get her shoes and socks and the hem of her dress wet and muddy. She found a little tree with sturdy branches just a foot or so off the ground and fulfilled a long-standing goal of climbing a tree.

It was 10:40 now and I was wondering, was I at the wrong playground? Was it the wrong time? The wrong date? Where were our friends? I decided if no one showed up by 11:20 we’d leave the food on the table with a note, go home and watch Mr. Rogers. It was a hot, sticky day and I don’t like to keep June out much past eleven anyway, as she tends to fall asleep on the way home if I do.

At 10:45, Hayden and his parents arrived. Then at 11:05, Mia and her dad came. It ended up being a very nice play date. I do better socially in small groups anyway and I got to talk to Hayden’s mom and dad long enough so I felt I got to know them a little bit. June and Mia had a good time watching each other throw rocks in the creek. The other June and her dad continued to hang out with our group by the slides and at the picnic table. Between the four kids and five adults, we ate more than half the grapes. I mentioned it was a really hot day, right? That’s probably why more people didn’t come, everyone concluded. Either that or a lot of people were on vacation.

Around noon, June wrapped herself in the baby blanket I keep in the bottom of the stroller and wore it like a robe. She wandered around, perhaps imagining she was a princess. She declares herself a princess (or a king, or a queen) quite often while wrapped in her after-bath towel. Then, still wrapped in the blanket, she lay on the grass near the picnic table where I was packing up our things, and she said she was going to sleep. Hayden’s dad said it was a “positive sign” that she needed her nap. We said goodbye to everyone and set off. It’s only a ten-minute walk but June was fast asleep when we got home.

I woke her so she could have a proper nap, lying down in an air-conditioned room, instead of a short snooze in the stroller on the porch. In the hour that followed, I had plenty of time to regret this decision. She couldn’t get back to sleep, but she desperately needed to. She was cranky, then mad, then full of despair. Finally, she slept. What am I going to do about naps, I wondered, when she gets out of nursery school at 11:30 and then we have a fifteen-minute walk home? But that was a question for another day. While she slept I exercised for the first time this week, and worked. I woke her up at the last possible minute to go to Noah’s drama camp. Actually, it might have been a minute or two too late.

We got to the bus a few minutes late and I didn’t know whether or not we had missed our bus. So when another one that takes a less direct route to our destination arrived, we boarded it, just in case. It was the wrong decision. At the place where the two routes intersect, I saw the bus we should have been on whiz by. We didn’t miss it after all. It was just running late. Then our bus got stuck in traffic the other bus’s route avoids. We were only five minutes late to drama camp, but we missed most of a song that all the kids were singing together. Noah had only one other part in the forty-minute performance. It was interesting, though, an improv game. He did well and the skits with the other kids were fun to watch, too. Once Noah’s part was finished, he sat down in a row of kids and counselors right in front of the audience. June, who had been loudly insisting we “go see Noah” the whole time he was performing, bolted from me and clambered into his lap. He threw an arm around her and they watched the performance together.

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.

Rock Around the Clock

Posted on July 1, 2008 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

July is here. It’s full summer and the second half of 2008 is upon us. I feel we’re on the cusp of so many things. This month first my father and then my mother will turn sixty-five. (Happy Birthday, Dad! Happy Birthday, Mom!) In August, Noah will start second grade and in September, June will start nursery school. Her class has a weekly summer playgroup so she’s meeting the boys and girls who will be her first real friends, although their interaction now is mainly limited to staring at each other from across the snack table. In November, we’ll elect a new President. June already knows her candidate—“I wuv Bwack Obama Pwesent,” she says. (I can’t argue with her terminology either. It would be a wonderful present.)

There are other things I can’t predict with any accuracy but I hope will happen before the year turns. Sleeping through the night, anyone? June experimented with this maybe a half dozen times this spring, and then she gave it up. Toilet training, maybe? We got some serious pushback on this when we tried a few weeks ago so the Elmo and Zoe underpants and the Abby the fairy stickers got put away. We’ll try again when she seems ready. Meanwhile, I put her dolls on the potty every now and then. She watches with guarded interest.

Speaking of June, she’s more two all the time. We hear “No!” a lot and she’s starting to throw the occasional tantrum, though they’re still pretty mild. I don’t think she’s really peaked yet. What I mind more is the constant refrain of “Gimme that! It’s mine!” (Whatever it is almost never is hers. In fact, once she grabbed the drawstring on Noah’s shorts and shouted, “It’s my string!”) Along with this possessiveness has come an endless stream of bickering with Noah. Up to now they haven’t gotten along pretty peaceably, but I think he’s out of patience with her and he’s laughing at her assertions of ownership less often and arguing with them more often.

Noah doesn’t change as quickly as June does, but I am seeing glimpses of the boy and even the man he’ll be in years to come. He’s missing four teeth right now and one of the top front ones is coming in. I am half curious how the adult teeth will look in his mouth and half afraid he won’t look like my little boy any more. He’s busy with his summer math workbook and is enrolled (at his own insistence) in three different summer reading clubs. We had his reading level tested last week in conjunction with one of them and he’s reading at the fourth-grade level. He’s moved onto a new passion recently– dragons. We have four different books about dragons checked out of the library, a new dragon pillowcase Andrea made and three imaginary pet dragons living in the back yard. As active as his imagination is, it recently took a rather realistic turn. One of Noah’s favorite activities is “story-game.” We tell a story, each taking a turn adding to the narrative. The one we are telling this week walking to and from art camp is about Noah and Sasha, grown up and working together as marine biologists. Noah’s the head of the team studying dolphins; Sasha’s group studies whales. They’ve even published their findings in scientific journals. (Noah invented one called Leaping Creatures of the Sea. Okay, so it’s not completely realistic, but it’s a change from the usual stories about magic and mysteries.)

People often say of parenting that the days go slowly but the years go quickly. It’s true. The hours and days and weeks and months and years add up until that baby you had not long ago is telling you he wants to join the robotics club in high school– the high school Noah will attend has one– and you think maybe he really will. But we live our lives not in years but in the small spaces of minutes and hours.

Here’s how the first day of July went for us, hour by hour.

June was up twice during the night, but never on the hour, so at 1:00, 2:00. 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 and 6:00 a.m., we slept.

7:00: June and I were snuggling and drowsing in bed. Beth was in Noah’s room reading his morning story to him.

8:00: Beth, June and I were eating breakfast. Noah was playing computer games.

9:00: I was hurrying to get everyone out the door. I needed to deliver Noah to art camp by 9:30 and to get June to the library by 10:00 for Circle Time.

10:00: We were approaching the library, with just a block or so to go. We’d taken a different route than usual because we’d dropped Noah off at camp and June was agitated the whole walk. “We have to go to the library! We have to sing songs with Ms. Karen!” she kept insisting, not heeding my assurances that we were in fact going to the library. When we reached Maple Ave, she seemed to recognize where we were, relaxed a little and said to me, “Don’t worry, Mommy. We’ll find Ms. Karen.”

11:00: We arrived back at home. I read the online newsletters I clip for Sara while June drew with chalk on the blackboard half of the easel. Occasionally, she would commission me to add something to her scribbles. Suns and rainbows are favorites of hers.

12:00: Mr. Rogers ended. We ate a lunch of noodle soup, crackers, cheese and fruit.

1:00: I rode the exercise bike while June napped.

2:00: I hear birdsong from the dining room. It was our clock, which plays a recording of a different bird for each hour. Two o’ clock is the Northern Mockingbird. I was sorry to hear it. I was lying in bed with June. She’d awoken prematurely from her nap and I’d put her back to sleep in our bed. I was holding her with one arm and holding Hearts in Atlantis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_in_Atlantis) in my other hand. The story was engaging and June was warm and snug in the crook of my arm. I could smell the faint odor of sweat on her skin, and the cantaloupe she’d eaten at lunch on her breath. I didn’t want to wake her up and go get Noah at camp, but that’s what I did.

3:00: “This playdate will be better when we get home,” Noah declared.

I’d picked up Noah and Jill from art camp a half hour earlier and brought them to the playground on the way home. Their play got off to a slightly rocky start. As I walked back toward the playground with June in tow (having recently retrieved her from the nearby woods), I heard Jill say, “Stop it right now, Noah, or I’ll tell your mom.”

As I headed apprehensively to the play structure where they were both standing, a woman approached to tell me Noah was blocking a younger boy’s path and not letting him down the slides. When I told him to stop he did, but he ran down to the creek to throw rocks in the water, leaving Jill behind. She told me about a time when he pushed her on the playground at school and she’d told the playground monitor. I wondered uneasily how long Jill’s memory was. Was she recounting something that happened last year, during Noah’s streak of bad behavior or was this recent? I didn’t ask, though, since I had my hands full chasing June around. I made a mental note to ask Noah about it later.

Eventually I got Noah and Jill reunited at the swings, but he was grumpy.

“Do you want to go home now?” I asked, thinking he might be right. A change of venue could help.

“I do,” Jill piped up.

“Not yet,” Noah said.

We agreed on leaving in five minutes.

4:00: Noah and Jill were in his room laughing and making shadow puppets on the wall.

The play date did improve at home. They ate a snack, took turns playing his guitar, and played with the hotel Noah made for school, which now serves as a dollhouse. They dumped all the pieces of the world map puzzle on the floor and didn’t put any of them together because they got distracted by the microscope. A crucial piece of the microscope fell out and they decided to make shadow puppets. All of these transitions occurred smoothly and without rancor. They ended their playdate with a game of online Monopoly. When Jill’s babysitter came to take her to her piano lesson at 4:25, Jill didn’t want to leave.

5:00: Cyberchase ended and Arthur began. I’d finished my work for Sara, folded laundry and had even snuck in a little more reading while the kids watched the first half hour of Noah’s television. It was tempting to keep reading, but I decided to put my book away and cuddle with them on the couch for the second show instead.

6:00: “This is fun,” Noah said. He and I were in the garden sitting by the lettuce patch. I was picking lettuce for salad and he was weeding. I was running late with dinner since I’d read two chapters of Dragon’s Egg (http://home.earthlink.net/~slthomson/9780061288487.shtml) to him around the time I normally start cooking. I’d intended to just dash out a pick a little lettuce but Noah was showing so much interest in gardening that we lingered. The sun was warm and I could smell the moist earth. June ran around the yard in big loops while Noah and I worked companionably together.

7:00: We ate a later than usual dinner of linguine with veggie meatballs and salad.
There was an unexpected benefit to getting behind schedule. Because Beth got home around 6:20, before I’d even started cooking, she and the kids played in the backyard, taking turns shooting hoops (Beth lifting June up into the air during her turns) while I cooked. No one screamed or cried or whined during the entire time I was preparing dinner.

8:00: Beth and Noah were playing a hand of poker. She’s teaching him various card games and they play every night before bed. On bath nights he sits there with his hair slicked back wearing the sleeveless t-shirts he wears to bed, studying his cards and looking for all the world like a 1940s card shark. He just needs a cigar and a fedora.

9:00: The children were asleep. I was in the kitchen and caught a glimpse of the backyard as the twilight faded to full dark. The air was full of dancing fireflies. I stayed at the window and watched them for at least five minutes.

10:00: Beth and I were in bed, but not yet asleep. Our bedtime conversation (whispered so as not to wake June in her bed in the corner of the room) was over. I rolled over on my side and waited for sleep.

11:00: Everyone slept. Time crept on. The rest of the second half of 2008 awaited us.

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

The Land of the Purple

Posted on January 18, 2008 by Steph

Noah has drama class after school on Wednesdays now, so those afternoons are tight. It was easier last year. I would take him his old nursery school where the class is held and wait there, playing with June and socializing with other parents in an unused classroom until the class was over. Then we’d walk home and he’d do whatever little bit of kindergarten homework he had while I heated up my designated quick dinner of the week.

But now he’s in first grade and his homework takes forty-five minutes on a good day. That’s how long it would take most nights if he was consistently focused, and well, not Noah. But he’s not a robo-child; he’s my daydreamer, my wool-gatherer, my highly distractible boy-child. Sometimes it takes an hour and a half. We get home from drama around 5:30. You do the math. Or better yet, do the language arts worksheet, because that would be one fewer thing that Noah has to do. On Wednesdays he has to read or be read to for fifteen minutes, to practice two lists of spelling words (the class’s common list and an individualized list created partially by the teacher and partially by himself—recent words learned: “Antarctica” and “kaleidoscope”) and he has to do a language arts worksheet. This week’s was an open-ended writing assignment about Martin Luther King. They listened to the “I Have a Dream Speech” at school and he had to summarize MLK’s dream and describe one of his own dreams. A lovely assignment, really, but my heart sank as I read it. This was going to take so long. It was exactly the kind of assignment Noah drags out. Give the boy a math worksheet and it’s done before you can say Jack Robinson, but ask him to think about his dreams and you’re in for a long ride. Well, there was no helping that now, I thought as I stood in the living room examining his homework folder. The best thing would be to get at least some of the reading done before we left for drama. It was now almost 3:25. He was using the bathroom. We needed to leave by 3:35. We could read for ten minutes, then we might be able to finish up at the school while we waited for class to start. We’d have one task complete by the time we got home. We settled in on the couch. I read him two stories from a library book of myths about the formation of the constellations from different cultures and we left.

Noah skipped and ran and chattered happily all the way to drama class, just as he had the week before. As if limbering up his imagination, he started every other sentence “Let’s pretend…” We were explorers seeking the fabled “Land of the Purple.” (The nursery school is painted bright purple with lime green trim. Students and parents call it “The Purple School” as often as by its real name.) Noah loved attending this nursery school. He loves the drama class, which he’s taking for his third straight year. He loves the teacher who teaches the 4s class and the drama class. Noah has been in daycare or school since he was sixteen months old. He’s had some wonderful teachers (as well as some not so wonderful ones), but in her respect for children and in her innate ability to enter their social, intellectual and imaginative worlds, Lesley has no equal. Last spring when Noah was having so much trouble at school, drama class nourished and replenished him. So it was no surprise when after a fall of no after-school activities he chose drama when we offered him a choice of up to two extracurricular activities for the winter and spring. (He will start after-school science, also a favorite from last year, in March.)

We arrived at the school at 3:55, just in time to finish our last five minutes of reading. We walked around to the playground behind the school. June took off running toward the slide. I motioned for Noah to sit on the steps as I dug the constellations book out of the diaper bag.

“I don’t want to hear that book,” Noah protested. I stared at him dumbly. We’d been reading it after school all week. I thought he really liked it. “I only want to read two stories from that book every day.” At once, I understood. It so happened that on Monday and Tuesday two stories came to roughly fifteen minutes. It doesn’t take long for Noah to notice a pattern and insist on its repetition. I tried to reason with him. We hadn’t read for fifteen minutes yet and this was the only book I’d brought. I tried to bribe him. If he’d listen to the next story I would buy him a treat at the convenience store on the way home. (This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. I had already committed to stopping there after drama “some day.”) He wouldn’t budge. I gave up. There wasn’t time to convince him. He played on the seesaw with June until it was time to go inside.

June and I stayed on the playground, despite the cold weather. The equipment is toddler-friendly and she was having a blast going down the slide, crawling in the tunnel and playing with the toys scattered on the ground. All the time we were playing I was irritated at Noah’s stubborn insistence on doing things his way. I know my own irrationally intense desire to get the fifteen minutes of reading done before class wasn’t much different, but knowing you should let go and actually letting go are different things. We’d had what Beth calls one of our “Taurus moments” and it wasn’t quite over.

After a while we went inside. The nursery school is full of books, puzzles and other toys (June is especially drawn to the felt board) so it’s a great place for her to play. I was hoping the mom I’d talked to last week would be there. Her five-year-old son took yoga with Noah at the Purple School two falls ago and he was excited to see Noah. She and I started talking and I learned her son also has Sensory Processing Disorder (a more serious case than Noah’s) and also had difficulty in kindergarten, so much so in fact that they switched schools and they were already planning to have him repeat kindergarten next year. This week, though, she didn’t stay. There was a nanny and a mom there, but the nanny was talking on her cell phone and the mom was engrossed in her PDA. I found myself missing Kathleen and Chris, whose daughters took drama last year and who were always good for companionable conversation. I read to June and played with her until 5:00.

On the way home Noah updated me on the ongoing story they’ve been acting out. It’s about a jewelry heist in a castle. Noah is a guard. He’d built a spider web-trap and was granted the super-power of being able to yell so loudly people thousands of miles away can hear him. (It’s not such a stretch, that last one.) When we passed the convenience store I couldn’t stop myself from sighing loudly and saying what a shame it was we couldn’t get a treat. (Did I mention how sometimes I can’t let go?)

We got home. I preheated the oven for potpies, changed June, and we got to work. I read Noah a story from a book of Cornish fairy tales. He practiced his spelling words. I sat at the dining room table and listened to him whine that he didn’t know what to write, he didn’t have any dreams, etc. I asked some gently leading questions about what might make the world a better place and finally he came up with people not littering. He wrote a paragraph and drew a picture of someone throwing trash into a trashcan. Somewhere in between assignments we ate dinner. Eventually, the homework was finished.

This morning, Beth and I were back at the Purple School to observe the 2s class. We are in the midst of preparing June’s application for next fall. Because Noah’s an alumnus, we have a reasonably good chance of getting in, but competition for the twelve slots in the class is intense. When June and I were at the rec center’s community playtime a few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation about getting into the Purple School. The mom in question conceded that she probably had little chance and outlined her second, third and fourth choices of preschools. We don’t have any backup plans. I wondered if we should.

The children in the 2s class were predictably cute. I recognized a few (including Chris’s son) who’d had older siblings in drama last year or from seeing them on the library-circle-time-community-playtime toddler circuit. I watched the teacher and the co-oping mom calmly handle routine crises (a tower of blocks knocked over, a child pushed). I noticed how rapt the children all looked when the teacher read a story about a princess who takes on the dragon who has made off with her prince. During the Q & A afterward, Beth and I had few questions (“How is the 2s class unique?” was the best I could do) while the other parents nervously peppered Lesley, the 2s teacher, and the membership committee representative with questions.

Later that day, Beth sent me this email: “I actually ended up catching a ride with the woman who was also observing this morning. She’s stressed out — about getting in, about how to handle naps if both kids get in, etc. It is so much nicer to be in our position.” I asked Beth if by “our position” she meant having widely spaced kids (the woman in question is applying for slots for two kids, one in the 2s and one in the 4s) and therefore not having to co-ordinate the two classes, which meet at different times, or to do double committee work, or if she meant feeling more relaxed about our chances of getting in. She said both. If I had to give that woman advice, I would tell her the logistics are worth it. The Land of the Purple is not an easy place. It demands a lot of your time, in the classroom and on committees, and it can be hard work. You don’t always love other people’s children on their bad days. But it’s also an enchanted place, a place children run to, a place that gives them super-powers.

Sweet Sixteen Months, or Five Days with June

Posted on July 27, 2007 by Steph

Noah’s science camp this week was a full day one, instead of the half-day camps he’s had so far this summer. He and Beth left the house every morning at 8:30, 8:15 if they decided to visit the playground near the Montgomery College Takoma Park campus (www.montgomerycollege.edu/tphome/) before camp started at 9:00. June and I boarded a 2:55 bus to pick him up at 3:30 each afternoon. This schedule gave June and I more time alone together than we’ve had in several weeks. Here are a few things we did while Noah was off making a race car powered by the air escaping from a balloon, a dump truck with a hydraulic system made of syringes and glow-in-the-dark slime.

Monday Morning: June Turns Sixteen Months and Is Taken For a Boy and a Six Month Old

June was enjoying the toddler-sized play structures at the Westmoreland playground, especially the staircase with a railing that allowed her to walk downstairs unassisted, when a voice called from the roof, “Hello!”

I looked up. It was a girl about Noah’s age. “Hi,” I answered, probably less surprised than she hoped. Noah likes to climb up there too.

The girl was lying on the roof with her face hanging over the edge, a few inches from my own. “How old is he?” she asked, gesturing to June, who was spinning the cylinder with noisemakers inside.

I glanced at June. When people hazard a guess at her gender they are more often wrong than right, since she mostly wears Noah’s hand-me-downs and a lot of the clothes we have bought for her came from the boys’ aisle of the consignment shop. We just like boys’ clothes better. Today, though, June was wearing a pair of white pants with red, orange and yellow flowers on them, hand-me-downs from Kathleen’s daughter Caitlin. They even have red bows at the ankles. True, she wore a plain red t-shirt and navy blue sneakers with them, but this is about as girly as June gets, unless it’s a dress-up occassion. “She’s a girl,” I said, “And she’s sixteen months.” Exactly sixteen months, to the day, I thought, but didn’t say.

“How old are you?” asked the girl.

I laughed, surprised at the question. We are so often called upon to report our children’s ages and so infrequently our own. “Forty. And how old are you?”

“Six. My mother is twenty-five. She works for State Farm. My grandmother is a babysitter. She watches her.” She motioned to a preschool-age girl standing near-by. “Where do you work?” A long exchange ensued in which I tried in different ways to explain that I stay home with my kids and she kept asking me what my real job was. Eventually, I told her I used to be a teacher, but on hearing I wasn’t currently looking for a teaching job, she was still unsatisfied. Finally, she hit on the answer herself. “So you’re a babysitter for your kids?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“Lucky mom,” she commented. She looked back at June. “What’s her name?”

“June.”

“But June’s a month!”

“It is, but it’s also a name.”

“My name is Vanessa.”

“My name is December,” the younger girl piped up.

“She’s lying,” Vanessa said. “She always lies about her name. It’s Catherine.” Catherine/December looked abashed. Soon after Vanessa’s grandmother came to collect them and they left.

That afternoon as we waited for the bus, a man at the stop looked at June and said, “About six months?”

“Um, no, sixteen,” I said. Okay, she’s little. She was even wearing size 6-12 month clothes at the time. But she was also standing on top of a wall, taking sideways hops along it in one direction, then the other. Is she that hard to recognize as a toddler girl, I wondered, even in floral garb, even walking on a wall two feet off the ground?

Fortunately, June was not bothered in the least. She began trying to climb down the wall so she could walk on the sidewalk and perhaps even dart into traffic. I was mean and wouldn’t let her.

Tuesday Afternoon: June Multitasks

I often ride the exercise bike in our basement with June bobbing up and down on my thigh. This week I was aiming for twelve minutes a day. (And I did it!) It’s about as long as June can last without getting fussy and five times twelve minutes equals an hour. It’s not much as far as aerobic exercise goes, but it’s something, and something is better than nothing. I never know when or if she’ll nap alone so I like to spend that time (if I get it) having some one-on-one time with Noah or getting a jump on making dinner. (I have this crazy preference for cooking without anyone clinging to my legs and screaming.) Plus anything I accomplish with June awake feels like a bonus.

Tuesday afternoon we squeezed exercise time in right before we needed to get on the bus to get Noah. I held June in one arm, while using the other to flip through a book of Roz Chast cartoons (www.planetcartoonist.com/editorial/success_rozchast.shtml). The book was an experiment; I had reached a new level of multitasking.

I looked down at June. She was busy, too. In one arm she clutched her favorite bunny, in the other she held a Maisy book (www.maisyfunclub.com/), which she propped (upside down) against my chest to free an arm to page through it. “Book,” she muttered over and over, pronouncing it clearly, even with a pacifier in her mouth.

Wednesday Afternoon: June Watches a Horror Movie

I decided to take advantage of Noah’s longer absence this week to watch a movie. June’s usually pretty good about playing independently as long as I am sitting still in an accessible place, so she likes movies, too. Soon she will be too old for me to watch much besides kids’ TV with her in the room, so I picked Stephen King’s six-hour miniseries The Stand, or rather the first two installments, to watch this week. I’ve been wanting to see it since I re-read the novel earlier this year. Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear The Reaper,” that good old horror movie-music standby, plays during the opening credits:

All our times have come
Here but now they’re gone
Seasons don’t fear the reaper
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain
We can be like they are

Come on, baby… Don’t fear the Reaper
Baby, take my hand… Don’t fear the Reaper
We’ll be able to fly… Don’t fear the Reaper

(www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/him/dontfearthereaper.html)

Apparently, June is one baby that does not fear the reaper in the least. She danced her little June dance, which consists of bending and unbending her knees while enthusiastically bobbing her head to the music. A few minutes into the film a crow pecks at the eyes of a child’s discarded Raggedy Andy doll. It’s meant to symbolize the coming plague that will wipe out 99% of the human race. The girl who drops the doll is only a little older than June and looks a lot like her. It’s a chilling moment, or it was until June pointed at the screen and said, “Duck!” in a delighted tone. In June’s world, any large bird is a duck and any duck sighting (ducks in book illustrations, rubber ducks in the tub, or best of all, real ones in the creek) is cause for celebration. The crow appears frequently in the film. As an added attraction, Molly Ringwald, on whom I had a little crush in high school, plays of my favorite characters. June and I settled in for a good time.

Thursday Evening: June Hails the Ice Cream Truck

I fear it might be a sign that we are patronizing the ice cream truck too often this summer that as we walked toward it, June pointed and said, “Mo,” June-speak for “More,” or more broadly, “I’d like some of that please.” She has also been known to run to the door when she hears its siren song and say “Truck!”

Friday Morning: June Observes Proper Etiquette…When She Wants To

Since we all get up more or less at the same time (whenever Noah rouses us) our narrow little bathroom can get pretty crowded in the mornings. And since June likes to be where the action is, early Friday morning found her methodically emptying a low bathroom drawer of its washcloths and then replacing them. “Thangoo. Thangoo. Thangoo,” I heard her say. We often thank June when she hands us something or puts something back where it belongs. If we are not quick enough, she thanks herself.

On the bus home from picking up Noah, June was very cranky, writhing in my arms and sobbing. She’s cutting a molar and has been napping poorly for a few days. She’d just quit crying and had collapsed against my shoulder when a woman with a girl about June’s age boarded the bus. I waved at the girl. She waved back. Noah waved. She waved back. By now the girl was staring at June and waving at her, no longer interested in Noah’s or my waves. She grew increasingly emphatic, her waves resembling karate chops. No response from June. Apparently, it was not time to wave.

After a late afternoon nap and a big dinner she was in better spirits. All four of us sat on the porch and sipped watermelon coolers Beth had made and listened to the patter of a badly needed rain. Or rather Beth, Noah and I sat. June toddled around the porch, sucking watermelon juice out of a cup with a straw, babbling happily and waving at passing cars.

Vanessa was right. I am a lucky mom.

Welcome to 6:47

Posted on July 10, 2007 by Steph

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“Welcome to 6:47,” Noah chirped. He was standing by our bed in his T-Rex pajamas, waiting for a greeting from me.

“Good morning, Noah,” I managed.

About a week and a half ago we changed the time Noah is allowed to come into our room from 6:00 to 6:30 a.m. He accepted the change without fuss, possibly because we promised to play with him right away and not insist he try to lay quietly in the bed and avoid waking June, while we tried to drowse a bit longer ourselves. Or it could be because we bought him a digital clock for his room and he loves being able to announce the time.

The old 6:00 system was implemented when Noah was not quite three and new to sleeping the whole night alone. He would sometimes fall back asleep for a half hour or longer if we let him in the bed at 6:00 a.m. Those days are long gone. Now he’s wide awake long before any of his sleepy womenfolk have any desire to be. We were starting the day more and more often ignoring him, or scolding him, or engaging in some kind of conflict.

Our mornings are much better now. He’s holding up his end of the bargain (except for one morning when he came in at 4:48, having only checked the last two digits of the time) and so are we. Plus I like his new morning greeting, “Welcome to 6:32” or “Bienvenidos a 6:30” or some variation. It’s a good reminder to Be Here Now, as the Buddhists say, or to live in the moment as my mother recently advised me. And today we got a bonus, a full seventeen extra minutes of rest.

Noah wedged himself into the bed, between me and June, snuggling up close to me. Soon after June started to stir; then she woke, crying, and climbed over Noah to rest on my chest. First thing in the morning they both want, no, need to touch me. June falls asleep in Beth’s arms most nights after she’s had her fill of nursing and she sleeps nestled against her most of the night. When she wakes, at night or in the morning, however, she wants me. The trick is finding a way to arrange myself and both kids so they’re not fighting over Mommy-access. (Actually, this seems to be a lot of what parenting two is all about.) We also need to keep the snuggle session long enough to satisfy Noah and short enough to minimize sibling conflicts and excessive rough housing in the rather crowded bed. It’s a balancing act.

This morning it lasted twenty minutes. We lay together quietly for a while. Noah and June rolled together and shrieked. We barked like dogs. (June is really good at this.) We pretended to be horses. Finally, it was time for story and game. This is a Beth-and-Noah ritual. They leave the bed for Noah’s room where she reads him a story (right now they are working through a souvenir coffee table book about Disneyland) and then they play a game. This morning Noah wanted to play museum, a game during which he pretends to be a museum guide showing Beth the exhibits in a science museum. The water cycle, the food chain, and evolution are his favorites. Beth prefers Meteorological Moment because it’s shorter. In this game she pretends to be a radio announcer who relays a brief set of facts about weather she reads from one of Noah’s weather books. (If you listen to NPR, think Star Date, but about weather instead of space.) She couldn’t talk him into it, though, and soon the museum guide was telling her about the films that could be viewed at the museum.

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.

It’s the fourth week of Noah’s summer break and the second week of camp. Last week’s camp was art and dance at his old nursery school. It turned out to be more art than dance. This week is music and math through the Takoma Park Recreation Department and it’s turning out to be more music than math. Both camps have been for four to six-year-olds and in both Noah has been the oldest camper. He doesn’t seem to mind playing with younger kids or that the activities have been slightly different than we expected. He seems quite happy in fact.

When I picked him up today a cd was playing and the children were dancing. The drums they’d painted earlier in the day were drying on the project table. Noah had the chance to pick the final activity and he had the teacher and one other child dance a dance of his own invention, called The Acrobatic Sky Show. (This dance and an accompanying chant grew out of a rather wild play date he had a couple weeks ago. There’s even a logo, but that’s another story.) The teacher asked him to bring a favorite instrument and cd the next day. After some discussion, we settled on his accordion and a cd of international music.

At home we had a pleasant afternoon. For lunch we ate cherries so juicy that both the children looked like vampires (and sloppy ones at that) when they were finished. June napped long enough for me to read an entire issue of Big Back Yard (a science magazine for children) to Noah. I tried to get him to alternate reading paragraphs with me (this is how we read the last issue) but he wasn’t in the mood. We watched Maya and Miguel and Curious George. We went to the creek to look for round and oval rocks to paint like beetles (a craft project from the magazine) and he gave the rocks their first coat of paint. I made a vegetable-orzo salad and while it chilled I read two chapters of Pippi in the South Seas to Noah, soaking my feet in the wading pool as June skinny-dipped in it. After dinner, Beth set up the bouncy castle again and the kids took turns bouncing. Before bed, we feasted on homemade sour cherry sauce over vanilla ice cream. (Beth made the sauce last weekend and we have been eating it every night since.)

As I left Noah’s room after putting him to bed, I glanced back at him with a small smile. “Welcome to 8:21,” I said. He giggled. I wasn’t wholly in the moment, though. My mind was casting ahead into the next forty-five minutes or so. I needed to get June to bed, treat cherry stains in both kids’ clothes, talk to Beth about our upcoming conference call with the occupational therapist the next morning, etc., etc.. Before I knew it, Noah was out of his room. The sippy of water he keeps in his bed at night was missing. I located and refilled it and returned it to his room. “Welcome to 8:26,” I said as I left the second time. And this time, the two-child portion of my day was over.

It was a good day, the way I hoped our summer days would be. They don’t always go so well. Sometimes June won’t nap alone and I have no alone time with Noah. Sometimes he’s whiny and June cries and cries and cries and there seems to be no way to make them both happy so I have to choose one, or sometimes neither if that’s what it takes to get dinner on the table. Sometimes I get angry at Beth as 6:00, then 6:30, then 6:45, then 7:00 pass by and she’s not home yet. Sometimes we run after the ice cream truck and we don’t catch it. Some days are more like I feared when ten weeks stretched out in front of me, seeming like a very long time indeed.

Either way, good, bad or in between, the days are now. With varying success, I try to be open to them and to welcome now.

Postcards from Spring Break

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Steph

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Things have only gotten worse for Noah at school. There was the glue incident. (A scuffle over a bottle of glue left another boy with his face covered in glue and Noah holding the bottle. Interpretations of how the boys got into this tableau vary). There was the cutting in line incident. (Noah maintains the girl cut in front of him and he was merely reclaiming his spot, but only he was punished.) And so on. He’s so deep in dutch with Senora A that he has to sit out free-choice play frequently and he’s a regular at the school disciplinarian’s office.

More disturbing are the things he’s been saying about school. While he and I walked through the college campus on our way home from drama one afternoon shortly before spring break he saw a sign for a job fair and wanted to know what it was. I explained and he said he wished he could go to the fair and get a job and not have to go to school any more. I told him three quarters of a year of kindergarten was not enough schooling to become a meteorologist (his current career goal) and he conceded he’d have to keep going. Then one night when Beth was giving Noah a bath, his rubber duck told her, “Most of the things Noah does at school are wrong.” It breaks my heart he feels this way when he’s accomplished so much this year, learning to read among other things, and doing it all in a foreign language he’s quickly mastering.

So Beth and I have a meeting with Senora A and a school counselor later this week. Meanwhile, Noah’s ten-day spring break was a welcome respite for everyone. When he got off the bus two Fridays ago I greeted him, “Welcome to Spring Break.”

“It’s not Spring Break until Monday,” he said, ever the stickler for accuracy.

Here are some snapshots of what happened over the course of spring break, starting with the weekend before it officially began.

Day 1
At the cherry blossoms Noah’s mood was all over the place. One minute he was grumbling that he didn’t like cherry blossoms and the next he was running gleefully up and down the path. We picnicked near a plaque that informed us that this particular cherry tree was donated by the class of 1972 of a Catholic school from New Jersey. Noah studied the date and decided the plaque was a time machine that would take us back to “the year one thousand nine hundred and seventy two” if he jumped on it.

“How old were you then?” he asked. In April of that year, I was almost five and Beth was nearly five and a half, we told him. “How would you like to be young again?” he asked.

“Go for it,” I said and he jumped. As we spun back through the years toward five, I gave Beth a lingering kiss. We must have gotten stuck for a moment at twenty.

Day 2
In the morning Noah had a real honest-to-God tantrum, the first one he’s had in a year and a half. He and Beth were playing computer games together and when she said it was time to stop, he seemed fine and began to walk away from the computer. Then without warning he was crying and waving his arms and hurling his body around the study, seemingly completely out of control. Beth remembered what to do, dropping to her knees to get on his level, putting her arms around him and speaking soothingly. Once he calmed down she asked him if was upset about anything, maybe something at school? He said no.

Attracted by the noise, June kept crawling into the study and I kept retrieving her so Beth and Noah could talk. I wanted to leave the door open so I could eavesdrop but eventually I gave up and closed it. June stood outside the door balancing against it with her palms. When Beth and Noah emerged I asked her if she got anything out of him and she said no.

That afternoon we had lunch at the Taste of Takoma festival a few blocks from the house. Noah was still grumpy and wouldn’t eat. Then Beth made the wondrous discovery that the moon bounce was free this year. I went home to clean house while Beth and June watched Noah jump for a full hour. They came home; he ate a big lunch and was happy the rest of the day.

Day 3
At 2:50 pm, June and I arrived at the Round House Theater’s spring break day camp. We’d signed Noah up for the camp before his school troubles intensified but Beth and I were both hoping that three six-hour days of make-believe followed by a short family getaway to Ocean City would be just the mix of fantasy and family time Noah needed. Still, I was a little nervous picking him up because he’s been so negative about everything recently. Noah’s friend Maxine was also attending the camp and I chatted with her mother as we waited for the kids to be released. When we were invited in, we found ourselves in a long rectangular room scattered with art supplies and full of kids running around collecting lunchboxes and backpacks. Maxine came over with her arms full of art projects to show her mother. Noah had just a paper bag painted black, with small white paper cups glued to it for eyes. A cat, he told me. Every day at camp they went somewhere and today it was Music Land, he said. They’d made costumes and instruments and played in a band. It sounded too good to be true. Dress-up and music are among Noah’s passions. His group all dressed as animals. “I wish you could see my cheetah costume,” he told me wistfully, but somehow, he’d lost it. We looked around for it unsuccessfully. I asked if he had an instrument to bring home like some of the other children. No, he’d spent so much time on the missing costume he never got around to making the instrument. All this sounded pretty familiar. Noah misses free-choice play working on half-finished school projects about as often as he’s forced to sit it out for behavior. But he seemed pretty happy and not to mind, presumably since no one had made an issue of his not finishing.

After camp we went out for ice cream and to play on the Astroturf. (In downtown Silver Spring, there is a vacant lot the city covered in Astroturf to create a temporary green space where a skating rink is to be built. The turf attracts a real social cross-section– teenagers, singles, families of all income levels and races, anyone who wants to sit outside, which as it turns out is almost everyone. Due to overwhelming popular support for the turf, the skating rink may be scrapped and the turf made permanent. Here’s hoping.) I meant this to be a treat, but as it turns out, the turf is a two-adult activity, one to sit with June and one to tear around with Noah. He didn’t want to run around by himself, so we headed home. Mulling his day over, he decided that he didn’t like the cheetah costume he’d wanted me to see so badly because “it wasn’t very successful.” This is something Noah does frequently these days, revising his first report of events, always in a more pessimistic light. I wondered what his final assessment of drama camp would be.

Day 4
I needn’t have worried. When I picked him up the next day he said, “I’m sad tomorrow is my last day.” Maxine had even more numerous and complex art projects than the day before. Noah had a single tissue paper flower on a ribbon, but he was happy and excited to tell me they had gone to Sports Land and attended the Olympics. Campers invented and demonstrated their own games. Noah made the tickets and Maxine made the concessions. The paper flowers were medals, Maxine told me. No, Noah said, they’re flowers.

“Maybe medals that look like flowers?” I suggested. Maxine’s mother and the theater’s receptionist chimed in their agreement.

“Hers is a medal, but mine is a flower,” Noah asserted. Maxine agreed. Everyone was satisfied.

As we left I told Noah I had a surprise for him. April is Maryland Math Month and Noah had brought home a sheet of math games and activities, one of each day of the month. He wanted to do them all, but some required books we didn’t have. Beth told him we’d have to skip those, but I had made a trip to the library and to Borders and acquired all the books. Noah’s face was joyous when I told him. Today’s book was an I Spy book. For those of you unfamiliar with the I Spy series, every page is a photograph of a jumble of objects with a rhyming riddle directing you what to look for in the picture. The math sheet activity involved counting and sorting objects by attribute. We went to the café at Borders where I thought we could work at the tables. This turned out not to work since June was so antsy. “You have ants in your pants,” I told her.

“Tiene hormigas en sus pantalones,” Noah chimed in and I laughed at the translation.

We ended up moving into the children’s book area where June could crawl on the floor and play with a beanie baby display while Noah and I pored over the book, looking first for the objects in the rhymes, then for red circular objects. The day before Maxine’s mother had offered to drive Noah home the remaining two days but something made me turn her down. I wanted to make this after-camp time special for Noah and it seemed easier to do that away from home. Now I knew we were in exactly the right place. If we’d taken the book home we would have been distracted by something– television, computer games, laundry, cooking, whatever. As it was we were both totally present and focused on our task and each other. I put my arms around him as he pored over the book and nuzzled the top of his tousled hair.

Day 5
By the final day of drama camp, June had what child psychologists call situational awareness. She knew what was coming when we walked through the doors of the room and she began scanning it eagerly. The room was a visual treat– full of colorful objects and kids running around, but she only had eyes for Noah.

Mystery Land was Noah’s final destination. Each group had a mystery to solve. His involved the disappearance of all the lights at the Round House Theater. It turns out a window-seller (who wanted to create demand for windows) was the culprit. Before we left, Noah went up to each counselor and said, “See you this summer!” We’d told him he was going to the spring break camp so he could decide if he’d like to attend the longer summer version. I guess he made up his mind. We made a quick trip to Whole Foods for a smoothie and while we sat at the counter we looked at the I Spy book some more, but Noah wanted to get home quickly to pack for our trip to the beach. On the bus home, I looked down and noticed that June and Noah were holding hands.

Day 6
It was mid-afternoon when we got to Ocean City. After inspecting our quarters, a deluxe suite with a balcony overlooking the ocean and a Jacuzzi tub (the kind of accommodations we could never afford in-season), Noah and I went down to the beach. We ran around in the surf in our boots until I saw Noah was getting pretty wet. We retreated up the beach and built a sand castle, which we decorated with shells and a beach grass flag. It was the castle of a weather wizard, Noah said. He took a short section of beach grass, which he identified as the wizard and another he said was the wizard’s nemesis, who wanted to steal his power to control the weather. The game proceeded without much need for input from me, other than my listening and asking the occasional question. I lay on my side alternately watching the rise and fall of the waves, and Noah’s play. When it was time go up for dinner, we headed back to the room, where a cold and sandy Noah took a Jacuzzi bath. He said he did not like Jacuzzis, but he couldn’t suppress a grin when the bubbles came on.

Day 7
At the information center at Assateague Island National Seashore (http://www.nps.gov/asis/), Noah was back and forth about everything. He couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to touch the horseshoe crab, whether or not he wanted anything from the gift shop, whether or not he wanted to do the Junior Ranger activity sheet. Finally he settled firmly into a bad mood, lying down on the floor and saying he didn’t want to go hike the trails, he wanted to go back to the hotel. “Noah, get up right now,” Beth said firmly, and for a wonder he did. We hiked three short trails: forest, marsh and dunes. The whole time, Noah alternately grumbled and dashed ahead of us, seeming carefree and happy to be out of doors, asking me to read all the informational signs and pretending Hacker, the villain from PBS’s Cyberchase cartoon, had stolen the many missing signs and that he was on a mission to read all the remaining ones before they disappeared. We saw the famous ponies, but Noah didn’t seem all that interested. His reward for completing all three trails was the chance to ride his scooter down a paved trail near the beach.

That night we had pizza at a restaurant on the boardwalk in Ocean City. As we left, Noah announced, “I have great news. At 7:50 p.m. Noah Lovelady-Allen will be performing tricks on his scooter on the boardwalk.” And he did, zipping around, trying to make the little wooden scooter do a wheelie. After the performance, we took a walk down the boardwalk. It was cold, but the lights were bright and Noah zoomed ahead of us on the scooter, weaving around pedestrians, nearly crashing into many, hitting none.

Day 8
On the way home from the beach, we stopped at two lighthouses, one at Fenwick Island, Delaware (http://www.beach-net.com/lighthousefi.html) and one in Saint Michael’s, Maryland (http://www.cheslights.org/heritage/hoopers-str.htm). Noah has been in love with lighthouses since he was three and touring them and photographing him in front of them has become a hobby of ours. At the first lighthouse, which was closed to the public, Noah refused to be photographed. He’s been camera shy for the past year. (Disclosure: I bribed him with a deck of Old Maid cards for sale in the hotel lobby to get his consent for the Jacuzzi photo.) I decided not to push it. So at the second lighthouse, I was surprised when he agreed with only minimal coaxing to pose on the steps of the Chesapeake style lighthouse. Once inside, Noah delighted in exploring. He was particularly interested in finding the ropes of the pulley-operated fog bell on each level of the lighthouse. He and I went up the narrow, winding stairs to the top while Beth stayed on the lowest level with June. When we came down, he insisted Beth go up and see the top, so I stayed downstairs with June while they went up. We thought we were finished when Noah insisted I go up one more time to go out on the walkway. I had not noticed the tiny doorway at the top level when he and I were up there, but he’d found it and opened it while he was up there with Beth. I hesitated because the grounds were about to close and I wanted to use the restrooms before they did. “Beth could take a picture of us up there,” Noah bargained. That did it. Up we went.

Day 9
The night before Easter as I lay with Noah at bedtime he said, “I’m going to keep a lookout for that bunny!” Last year around Easter I got some very pointed questions about the Easter Bunny. Noah finally decided it was not a giant bunny at all but a man in a bunny costume. With this revision, he was able to swallow the story. I was sure it was his last Easter believing in the bunny and I doubted Santa Claus would make it until Christmas, but this year Noah actually seems to believe more easily than last. I wonder if he has a greater need of magic right now.

The bunny came, unseen, and brought chocolate bunnies for each child and jelly beans for Noah. In the afternoon I hid plastic eggs on the front porch and the lawn for Noah (he was unwilling to get our real eggs messy) and then he hid them for me. Once we came inside, we scattered them on the living room rug for June to hunt.

Day 10
Easter Monday was the last day of spring break. Beth was back at work after a four-day weekend. I had a busy day planned—a trip to the pediatrician to get June’s one-year shots (she couldn’t have them at her one-year appointment because she was one day shy of her birthday), a trip to the library, laundry, etc. But June had a truly horrific night and as I lay in bed that morning feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all, I began scaling back. We’d go to the doctor, but everything else was negotiable. Noah had come into our room and was playing with June, touching different parts of her body gently and telling her their names. June watched with grave attention. Beth called from the dining room that Noah’s cereal was ready and he said, “Bye, Juney. I gotta go eat my breakfast.” Then he hopped off the bed, dropped into a starting position and said, “Ready, Set, Go!” and dashed off.

We went to the pediatrician for June’s shots and out to lunch in the city. Then we came home, watched television and looked at the I Spy book. We did not go to the library; the laundry stayed unfolded. Instead of homemade broccoli, lemon and egg soup I boiled some rigatoni and made a salad. I wanted to take it easy because the next day spring break would be over and we’d be back to our routine.

Ready, Set, Go!

44 Centimeters, or Back to Normal

Posted on February 20, 2007 by Steph

Miracle of miracles, the bus came and Noah got on it, with his backpack full of overdue valentines and his feet protected from the slush only by a pair of canvas sneakers. It was a gym day so he needed the sneakers and we decided if we sent him in boots carrying his sneakers it would be the last we’d see of either the boots or the sneakers. He’s like that. Already this year he has lost his lunch box more times than I can count and his winter coat as well. We got the coat back from the lost and found, but not before we’d bought him a new one. He drives his kindergarten teacher to distraction losing his crayons. One recent morning he lost his sock between getting it out of his sock drawer and getting it onto his foot. I have to accept some genetic blame for this. I am much the same way.

A couple hours after Noah left, June and I needed to get on our own bus, headed downtown to the pediatrician to get her head measured. At her nine-month appointment, the doctor noticed her soft spot had closed early and asked us to come by in mid-February to make sure her skull was growing properly. This had created a subtle but steady undercurrent of worry for me ever since. Beth researched early fontanel closure on the Internet and came back with worst-case scenarios of brain damage and brain surgery. Even though I knew chances were she’d be fine, believed it even, throughout January and February, every now and then I kissed the top of June’s head, feeling the softness of her baby-fine strawberry blonde hair and the warmth of her skull beneath my lips and I hoped no-one would have to cut it open.

We were ready early because instead of taking her usual hour-plus morning nap, June slept only twenty minutes, then drowsed for another ten while I held her and sang and tried to get her back to sleep. Once it was clear neither of us was getting any more sleep, I got up and folded some laundry. Then we went outside and I tried to shovel the sidewalk. It’s a point of honor with Beth (both of us really) to keep the walks clear in inclement weather, and while she got the walk in front of the house finished before everything froze solid, we didn’t get to the walk on the side of the house in time and it was covered in thick ice for a week. In the warmer weather we’d had for the past twenty-four hours, it had begun to thaw. I chipped away at it for ten minutes, clearing less than a quarter of it. By then my arms were sore and June (parked in the stroller next to me) was whining and it was almost time to catch the bus so I called it quits, resolving to finish the next day after it got softer. I was pleased to see even that short stretch of clear cement. It seemed like a step in the right direction, back toward normalcy.

At the pediatrician, the nurse called June’s name only twenty minutes after our appointment time. I am so used to marathon waits there I didn’t even hear her the first time and she had to call again. Once we were settled in the examination room, she asked why we were there and I said for a head measurement. The nurse called out to another nurse outside the room, asking if she should do it or wait for the doctor. The second nurse told the first one, rather sharply, that Dr. Ariza would do it. I wasn’t surprised. Dr. Ariza had been quite insistent at June’s nine-month appointment that the head measurement was to be done by a doctor. We waited another ten minutes for Dr. Ariza. I held June and read her an assortment of board books that were lying around. When the doctor came in, she asked how June was doing. I reported she’d learned to crawl since her last appointment and was standing unassisted. She nodded approvingly. I mentioned she’d had a cold for almost two months and I thought she might have an ear infection. She said she’d take a look in her ears after she measured her head. She looked around for a tape measure, couldn’t find one, left and came back. Then she wrapped it around June’s head. It looked like a crown or a garland, I told myself, not like the bearer of bad news. June’s blue eyes peeked out from underneath, alert and curious about the proceedings.

“Forty four centimeters,” Dr. Ariza said. She flipped back through June’s chart. “It was forty three last time.” She seemed pleased. Then she got out the growth chart to plot the number. “How old is she?” she asked.

“Eleven months in three days,” I answered.

Dr. Ariza made a little dot on the chart. “Twenty-fifth percentile for eleven months,” she announced. Even better news. At nine months, she’d been between the fifth and tenth percentile. I asked if wanted to get her weight and length to put it in context, but she said it wasn’t necessary, that the growth and the jump in percentiles was good enough. “She’s never going to have a big head,” Dr. Ariza predicted, and she cautioned that she still wants to monitor her head growth, but for now everything seems fine. She checked June’s lungs and ears and found both clear. Then she flashed a flashlight into her mouth and found two new teeth, her third and fourth, the top front ones, just poking through. I could just barely see a sliver of white on each gum in the beam of light. “That’s probably what’s been bothering her,” she said and recommended Tylenol for the pain. Meanwhile, she ran through the symptoms of intracranial pressure, just in case, and soon we were on our way home. June was in the front pack, where she’s been feeling heavy recently, but walking to the Metro, she felt lighter than she had on the trip out.

After a couple hours at home, we headed over to Noah’s school to pick him up from his after-school science class. I trudged through the slush on the path through woods, his boots swinging in one hand, June strapped to my chest, and observed the water level in the creek. It looked higher than usual but not too high. The snow was melting slowly, a good thing since it meant the basement was probably in no danger of flooding.

We waited in the lobby for the five, six and seven-year-old scientists to emerge. Noah always straggles out toward the back the pack and today was no different. I noticed he was only wearing one sneaker.

He flashed me a smile when he saw me. “We made glue!” he announced. I let him chatter on excitedly for a few minutes without mentioning his shoe. He showed me a construction paper spider with one leg and seven white dots where other legs had been. Apparently, the Hands-On Science program is not going to be a threat to Elmer’s any time soon.

Finally, I said. “Noah, you’re only wearing one shoe.”

He looked down and laughed. “I have one shoe and the spider has one leg. If it had eight legs, I’d have eight shoes!”

“Hmm.” I said. “Noah, where do you think your other shoe is?”

He considered the question and answered, “Probably in the science room.” I had him take me back there and sure enough, under one of the low tables was his size 13 blue Converse low top with the orange tongue. He climbed under the table to get it.

“Don’t put it on,” I said. “We’re going to put on your boots.” Back in the lobby I helped him into his boots and we headed home.

Later that evening, after we ate dinner and everyone had cuddled on the couch watching The Electric Company (Noah’s new favorite DVD choice) and after Noah was in bed, I nursed June to sleep on our bed. She slept snuggled up against Beth, who was reading The New Yorker. I lay there watching them, thinking about the exuberance of small children in school doing experiments, neatly shoveled walks and my daughter’s growing head. I wondered what dreams fit in forty-four centimeters.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Extracurricular Activities

Out of the Haunted House

At My House (For Sara and Dune)

A Fairy Tale Day

Rock Around the Clock

Sing, Sing a Song: A Week of Music

The Land of the Purple

Sweet Sixteen Months, or Five Days with June

Welcome to 6:47

Postcards from Spring Break

44 Centimeters, or Back to Normal