She Likes the Nightlife, Baby

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Steph

The kids have been back in school now for three weeks and so far everything seems to be going pretty well. Noah’s homework has been light enough that he’s finished before bedtime as often as not so he’s had some free time in the evenings. He was able to go see The Giver with me over Labor Day weekend. And the next weekend he was actually finished by lunchtime on Saturday. I made him do some research about his high school options that afternoon—because the Open Houses are in October and we need to decide which ones to attend—but we all went to the Takoma Park Folk Festival on Sunday. He invited Sasha to come with us. Noah had been at Richard and David’s house two days earlier to play a role-playing game called Dragon Lord. They are thinking of making a standing date every other Friday afternoon. It makes me happy that he’s had some time for leisure and hanging out with friends. If it’s true what everyone says about eighth grade being easier than seventh at his school, it would be a welcome change. Friday & Monday: Violin Lessons June’s violin lessons have started back up after a brief recess between the summer and fall sessions at her music school. At the last summer violin lesson, in mid-August, her teacher told us it was going to be her last lesson with June, as she was moving to Virginia Beach. Her husband got a job in the symphony there and the school didn’t want her to tell us until they’d hired a replacement. Elizabeth was a wonderful teacher, so we were sad to hear she was leaving. Right before this lesson, June started complaining about practicing and even said she wanted to quit violin so when we found out Elizabeth was moving, Beth said it was almost as if she had a premonition about it. Anyway, we decided she’d give it until November because we were right at the end of session and I didn’t want her to quit if it was a passing whim. The new teacher was sick the first week of the school year so June didn’t have a lesson until the Friday after Labor Day. Then she had another lesson the next Monday. Because the first one was a makeup lesson and I acted quickly to secure a good time, it was at four, which is when June’s lessons with Elizabeth were. I like this time. It gives us just enough time to take the bus to the music school when she gets home from school and have a snack at the Co-op before the lesson, which has become a comfortable routine for us. Unfortunately, her new regular lesson time is 5:45, too early to eat dinner beforehand and too late to cook dinner when we get home. I’m not sure how I’m going to handle this problem in general, but this week June and I made corn chowder before we left for the lesson and reheated it when we got home. At the first lesson, the teacher, Robin, spent about fifteen minutes chatting with June, asking her questions about her favorite colors, school subjects, what she wants to be when she grows up, etc. She said she needed to know what kind of person she was because music is all about conveying emotion and seeing into people’s souls. This would have been a bit touchy-feely for me and I was glad I wasn’t answering these questions and having someone assess my soul, but June rolled with it. Robin liked June’s answer about her favorite color—aquamarine. That always impresses people who are expecting a primary or secondary color. Then she looked through June’s music books and Elizabeth’s notations on them to see what kind of music June could already play. When June mentioned she’d composed two songs during her lessons with Elizabeth, Robin immediately decided to concentrate on these for the rest of the lesson (which ran over by about five or ten minutes—there was no one immediately after June and it wasn’t dinnertime so I didn’t mind). She listened to June play “Half-Scale Song,” and “Flower on a Butterfly” and taught her how to write the music. They did the first measure or so of the first song together. Her homework was to finish writing out “Half-Scale Song.” When I asked Noah to find some staff paper online for June, he knew of a program that would allow you to input the notes and print out the song. It can also play the song back for you. Over the weekend he took June to the site and he helped her figure out the notes through a combination of her playing them on the violin and listening to the computerized violin play it back to them. In about a half hour, they had it printed. At the second lesson, June and Robin went over the song again and they both played it—June as she wanted it to sound and Robin as it was written, and together they corrected some errors near the beginning. Robin circled the measures where there were still inconsistencies and asked June to fix them before the next lesson and also write out “Flower on a Butterfly.” All this was very interesting to watch. Robin’s an enthusiastic and engaging teacher, but I was a bit stressed by the fact that she seems to run habitually behind schedule. Our lesson started five minutes late and ended fifteen minutes late, even though there was another child waiting. It only started when it did because I tracked down the school director and asked if Robin was in the building and he found her. And it only ended when it did because once it had gone five or ten minutes late, I pointed out the time to her and mentioned I’d seen another child on the whiteboard schedule right after June. So, I guess I will need to be the timekeeper during these lessons, but other than that, June’s off to a good start with her new teacher. Tuesday: Brownie Meeting Tuesday night was June’s first night of Brownies. It was actually the third meeting of the year but we didn’t decide to join until after the list of after school activities at June’s school came out and she wasn’t interested in any of them. She had also decided against playing soccer because her best friend Megan’s not playing this year. Then I remembered she really wanted to join her friend Maggie’s Brownie troop the year before but it would have kept her up at least a half hour past her bedtime. Even with her new bedtime I thought it would be tight, but when I asked if she was still interested she was enthusiastic, so we decided to give it a try. So she now has regular evening activities on two consecutive days, which might mean I am lightening up about dinnertime and bedtime, although I keep asking at the music school if we can get an earlier time slot if anything opens up at any time, pretty please with a cherry on top, so maybe not. We arranged to carpool with Maggie’s mom. She would take the girls to the meeting and Beth, who gets home later, would fetch them. I went with Kathryn and the girls because I needed to do some paperwork. The troop meets in a little building in a municipal park with a playground and the girls were playing on the playground when we arrived. Three of June’s preschool classmates are in this troop and another is thinking of joining, plus there are three girls June knows from her elementary school, so she felt right at home, even though she was joining in media res. It’s a mixed age troop, Daisies to Juniors, though all the girls wearing vests (and only about half of them were) were Brownies, so I’m guessing it’s a majority Brownie troop. I’d mentioned to June when she said she wanted to join that it’s a school year-long commitment and then she wanted to know if she could attend one meeting before I actually paid. It turned out I didn’t even have to ask for this accommodation because while the leader had the required health forms for me, she couldn’t locate a registration form and she didn’t want payment right away. When June got home, though, she knew she wanted to stay. She’d earned a badge for politeness, after spending much of the meeting discussing said topic. Some, but not all, of the girls earned the badge for participating in the discussion. They are going zip lining next week, not on their meeting day, and in the evening, so June’s nightlife is just getting more and more exciting. Meanwhile she immediately started bugging Beth about buying her vest online. I think she’s hoping to have by the next meeting. Thursday: Back to School Night Two nights later, Thursday, was Back to School Night at June’s school. When Noah’s school had Back to School Night last week, we got a sitter, but because we’d be closer to home for this one, we decided to leave the kids at home alone. They’ve done this before, but never at night. Thursday morning we reminded Noah of this fact and told him he might have to put June to bed. “How about she puts herself to bed?” he asked. “You don’t want to exercise your new power?” Beth said. “Oh, right. She has a new bedtime. 7:45 again!” (Noah’s been annoyed that the gap between June’s bedtime and his has shrunk since she got a new one at the beginning of the summer and he’s unlikely to get a new one as long as he has to get up at 5:45 a.m. on school days.) For the third time in four days I was in a rush to get dinner on the table because of an evening activity. As we were eating I remembered I’d forgotten to give June her bath before dinner. It had been a hot day, too, and her hairline was all sweaty. She clearly needed a bath so I asked if she thought she could handle it herself. She agreed and before we left I started the bath water running, dumped half an envelope of bubble bath in, put her towel and a pair of pajamas on the bathroom counter, and brushed her hair. “Don’t be too bossy,” I said to Noah as we headed out the door and he told June she was his servant now. But when got home, five minutes before June’s bedtime, and I asked if he’d been too bossy, she said, “He was fine.” Beth then asked Noah if June was well behaved. “She watched Netflix the whole time,” he said. She’d bathed and gotten herself ready for bed on time, which is more than I can say for Noah even though he was getting ready while we were home. But it’s good to know we can leave them for a couple hours and they won’t kill each other. Beth and I might even go to a movie this weekend without getting a sitter, though probably a matinee. I think we’ve all had enough of the nightlife this week.

sooperdooper

Posted on August 24, 2014 by Steph

I. The End of the Summer

I had an idea for a blog post in which I was going to chronicle every argument the kids had during the last two weeks of their summer break. I even had a title—“Why Do We Scream at Each Other” from “When Doves Cry.” I figured material would be plentiful. After all they would both be home those two weeks, without any camp. But then a funny thing happened… they didn’t fight much. A little, yes—they weren’t angels—but not enough for a wry, amusing blog post. And I have to say I don’t mind not getting to write it. I was working those two weeks, reduced hours, but enough to dread having to play peacemaker on top of everything.

Maybe Noah was too busy finishing his summer homework to argue with June. He didn’t leave it all until the end of the summer (like some of his panicked classmates who’ve been posting recently on their class listserv) but he had quite a bit left two weeks out, especially for someone who’s a slow reader and writer.

He had to read a collection of poems from various periods in American history, pick four poems and write a set of historical and literary annotations plus a short essay (expanding on the literary annotations) for each of them. He had to write a speech nominating someone to be the subject of a documentary he’ll be making for his media class this year. And then there was a reading log he was supposed to have been keeping all summer and which required some creativity—he didn’t fabricate anything, but I’m sure there were omissions. And he also had to write a paragraph about his volunteer work at June’s tinkering camp in order to get Student Service Learning hours for the twenty-two and a half hours he spent doing clerical work and playing with campers there back in June. As I mentioned, he hadn’t exactly been slacking off in the homework department. Earlier in the summer he completed a geometry packet, wrote a short essay on sixteenth and seventeenth-century immigration, read a novel and wrote a set of annotations for it. Does anyone else think this is just too much? I do.

When I wasn’t working, I took June out of the house as much as possible to give Noah quiet to work, and to keep her entertained. We went to the library twice, the movies twice, and the playground and the creek once. We had two of her friends over and she went to two of her friends’ houses. The second week when I had five hours of babysitting and she had three play dates was much more pleasant and less stressful than the first week, when I had no babysitting and she had one play date. We are not yet to the point where I can work peacefully with both kids home and every one just does his or her own thing, though it always feels as if it’s on the horizon. (Work-at-home parents with older kids: when exactly does this happen?)

Noah did find time to read at least a chapter of Allegiant every day and to play Monopoly with June and me for several hours one day. I’d forgotten how long it can take to finish a game (we didn’t), how fun it can be, and how good Noah is at it. When we quit, June had been eliminated and he was far ahead of me.

The weekend in between those two weeks we went to Sasha’s Bar Mitzvah and the Montgomery County Fair. Sasha and Noah have been friends since kindergarten, so even though his congregation seems to play down the “becoming a man” aspect of the ceremony, in favor of “beginning the journey” of becoming a man, it was very moving to see him up on stage, giving his presentation about graphic novels and Jewish history, and to hear his parents’ heartfelt, honest, and funny speeches. The fair was fun, too. I’d probably write more about that, but the last weekend before school started, we went to HersheyPark and as that’s more unusual for us—we go to the fair most years and we’ve never been to HersheyPark—so I will focus on that.

II. A Sweet Day

We didn’t even decide to go to HersheyPark until three days before we went, which for us qualifies as nearly unprecedented spontaneity. We had some coupons and had been considering it in a vague sort of way all summer, but we hadn’t gotten around it to it and by the time there was only one weekend of break left we figured Noah would be too busy wrapping up the loose ends of his homework and we’d kind of given up on the idea. Plus, June was just short of one of the height cutoffs for rides and I thought it might be better to wait until next summer when she’d be allowed on more rides.

But it turned out Noah really wanted to go. He’s been the past two springs on band field trips, he likes the park, and he wanted to go as a family. So I told him if he met a certain benchmark on his homework by Wednesday evening, we’d consider it. At first it seemed like he wasn’t going to make it and I felt guilty about setting him up for disappointment but then he rallied, met the goal, and all of a sudden, we had to a trip to plan.

We left the house at 7:50 a.m. on Saturday and were in the parking lot by 10:40. Cool, rainy weather was forecast and it rained on and off the whole drive. When we got out of the car, it was overcast but not raining and the temperature was in the mid-sixties. However, the parking lot attendant—who told us to “Have a sweet day”—and the security guard who checked our bags told us we wouldn’t need the umbrellas either until evening or at all, so we stowed them along with our bathing suits in a locker and turned our attention to the question of where to go first.

Beth had encouraged both kids to pick two rides they considered essential so we could make to fit them in if lines were long. June wanted to go on a mine ride and a moderate-sized flume ride, called the Coal Cracker. Noah had helped June make her choices, showing her videos from the park web site and giving advice, but he’d forgotten to make his own selections, so we headed for June’s rides. We did the mine ride first and then since everyone liked it and the lines were short, we did it again. Noah and June sat together, as they did at her request every time riders were in pairs. I think she enjoyed riding without an adult right next to her. He was also her “responsible rider” on rides she was too short to ride alone but Beth and I didn’t care to ride.

We also did the Coal Cracker twice. June loved it. She got off of it skipping and pleading to do it again. After the first ride on that we checked out the photo they snap of you and three out of four of us had our eyes closed. “Be more photogenic next time,” Beth advised us and so we were. The result was good enough to purchase.

After lunch we split up so Noah could do a more serious roller coaster, the Great Bear; he had to do it alone because its multiple and closely spaced loops are too much for his mothers or his younger sister. The funny thing about it, though, is that it’s the first roller coaster he ever rode—on the sixth grade band field trip. If we’d been there we would have tried to talk him out of it, but he loves it. Sometimes it’s a good thing for your parents not to be there.

While he was waiting in line I took June to some of the kiddie rides she still enjoys and when we met up again, we decided to tackle the sooperdooperLooper. This 70s-era coaster was one of the first looping coasters, so it’s pretty tame for a coaster that goes upside down. It’s low to the ground and has just one loop. A friend of June’s had recommended it and I thought she could handle it. I thought I could, too. I used to be braver about roller coasters than I am now, especially in my mid-teens to early twenties. I haven’t been on one that goes upside down in a long time and I will admit I closed my eyes right before the loop, but both kids kept theirs open by their own report.

When it was over and I asked them how it was, Noah said, “Awesome!” and June said, “Scary!” She was glad she’d done it but didn’t want to do it again. I felt about the same, but we all told Beth, in unison, when she asked how it was that it had been “sooper doper.” It was kind of an obligatory thing to say.

I would have liked to do a wooden coaster, because I like those and June had a sizable one in mind—also recommended by the same friend—but I don’t think she realizes how shaky wooden coasters can feel. Noah actually got a little freaked out by a slightly larger one just last summer, so I vetoed it, even though she was tall enough. She’d been close to her limit already and I didn’t want to push her over it.

It turned out the height cutoffs at Hershey are quite liberal, so June’s small stature was more a relief to me than an obstacle for her. The one exception was one of those slides you go down on a burlap sack. She was too small to go alone, even though she’s been doing a similar slide at the county fair since she was four. She was very indignant about having to go on my lap.

Even before that, June was measuring herself at every ride. Did she think she’d grown in the space of a half hour and would now be a Hershey’s bar instead of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup? It was unclear, but I saw a lot of other kids doing the same thing and heard one girl resolve to grow five inches in the next year, so she could be a Jolly Rancher, the tallest category. (And why on Earth is it the tallest category anyway? Those things are much smaller than a peanut butter cup, or a Hershey bar, or a package of Twizzlers.)

Noah and I did the swings (one thing June was too short to do) and we all took in the sights on the Sky View (an aerial tram ride) and the Ferris wheel. The Sky View goes right through the tracks of several of the more aggressive coasters. One way amusement parks have changed since I was a kid is the way the tracks of different rides are intertwined. I guess it’s for space considerations but I appreciate getting a vicarious view of a ride I’ll probably never experience, except from this more sedate viewpoint.

We decided to skip the water park, to June’s dismay, because of time considerations and because it was just too cold. The last thing we did was go to Chocolate World, where we took the tour of the fake chocolate factory, ate dinner at the food court, and bought chocolate, of course. I’ve been through that factory ride, both as a kid, and once when we took Noah to Hershey as a baby and I have to say I don’t remember the singing cows. They are so loud it’s hard to hear the informative narration about chocolate production, so if you were hoping I’d be able to provide you with fun facts about manufacturing chocolate, you’ll have to go elsewhere for that.

We stayed overnight in a hotel near the park. In the car as approached the hotel I asked the kids and Beth if they’d had a “sooper dooper day,” and they all agreed they had. I had, too, but I was exhausted and ready for bed as soon as we arrived, though I stayed up long enough to put June to bed, read a chapter of Allegiant to Noah, and read Facebook for a little while. But an hour or so after we checked in, we were all in bed with the lights out, our sweet day over, and with only one day of summer break left.

Quarter Past Eight

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Steph

First Weekend: Camping Trip

The kids have been out of school for ten days now. Beth and the kids went camping the first weekend, leaving only about an hour after Noah got home from school. June got home a little earlier and had a quick play date with Zoë before they hit the road. Beth and both kids camped in Western Maryland Friday night and then Beth’s mom and brother came to collect Noah for his week with them on Saturday, and Beth and June camped another night before returning home Sunday afternoon.

While Beth and the kids were roasting marshmallows and attending nature programs, I had two days to myself and I made the most of it. I worked in the garden preparing beds and transplanting seedlings. I sorted through mounds of June’s schoolwork and recycled most of it. I went out to dinner by myself, read an entire novel, attended a benefit concert for NARAL in a friend’s back yard, and nearly finished working on a (very) short story I’m submitting to the Rehoboth Beach Reads short story contest.

Sumer Break Week 1: Drama Camp

The next week June attended Round House Theatre camp. I’d been thinking her half-day yoga camp would be a good way to ease into summer. I could work in the mornings and she and I could have some quality time in the afternoons in the absence of her brother. But when the yoga camp was cancelled, I quickly realized I was more willing to have her in a full-day camp than no camp at all so after many frantic emails and phone calls to various camps, she ended up at Round House, which is a tried and true choice for us. We’ve had one or both kids in their summer camps since Noah was six.

Other than Noah’s absence (which is a big “other than” of course, as I missed him a lot) and other than the commuting to and from Silver Spring (Beth did drop-offs and I did pick-ups), it was in some ways a lot like a school week. Beth and June left a little earlier than June’s school bus and I needed to leave the house a little earlier than she usually gets home so I had a workday of about the same length as usual.

Most days after camp we lingered in Silver Spring for an afternoon snack, on Thursday I voted early, and on Friday, I came to see the end-of-week sharing and then took June to play in the fountain until it was time to meet Beth for pizza and ice cream. The sharing was cute, as always. June was one of several Little Red Riding Hoods in a dance version of the story. The wolves carried Hula Hoops representing their bellies and when it came time to eat the Little Red Riding Hoods, they flipped them over their victims’ head so they were inside. June’s look of comic surprise as she was being eaten was priceless.

One thing that made the week different was that we changed June’s bedtime, effective the first night of summer break. It’s been 7:45 for a long time, which is earlier than most of her peers go to bed. Unlike allowances, which go up on a predetermined schedule (on the child’s birthday every other year), bedtimes at our house are more based on what the child seems to need and his or her circumstances. June has always needed more sleep than Noah did at comparable ages, but I’d noticed recently she was having trouble falling asleep at night and I also wondered if she might wake later in the morning if she had a later bedtime. Summer seemed like a good time to experiment, so we bumped her bedtime up to 8:15, which in a pleasing coincidence is also her age. (She’s eight and a quarter as of today.)

So far, the new bedtime is not having either of the desired effects. She’s still awake long after we put her to bed, not every night, but many nights and she’s not getting up any later. But it’s possible she needs longer to adjust. I’m willing to give it the rest of the summer and see how it goes. (I did tell her it might be a summer-only change.)

Meanwhile, going to bed later and not getting up any later has left her over-tired on occasion. On Tuesday while we were on the bus from camp to violin lesson she actually fell asleep and on Friday while we were at Ben and Jerry’s and she dropped her cone on the ground, she burst into tears and kept crying even after Beth said she could have a new one, which is not like her.

Second Weekend: Return of the Prodigal Son & Violin Recital

On Sunday Beth drove back out to Western Maryland to retrieve Noah. June and I had a pleasant morning at the farmers’ market and the library and then she had a play date with Riana, whose family is about to leave town for two months. Among other things, they cut the dead (but quite fragrant) parts of the lavender plant in June’s garden and made sachets out of orphan socks and bits of ribbon. I purchased one in a Little Mermaid sock for thirty cents and put it in my sock drawer.

Shortly after Beth and Noah returned, laden with treats from YaYa, we all headed out for June’s second violin recital. June seemed pretty confident about the recital ahead of time. In fact, when she showed up at her last lesson before the recital in a shimmery silver cape she’d made at drama camp and her teacher observed mildly that she’d never given a lesson to anyone in a cape before, June pointed her bow at the ceiling and declared herself, “Super Violin Girl.”

When the time came to perform, June didn’t seem to have any of the pre-recital jitters she had last time. She was happy to sit next to Toby, a boy she knows from after-school activities (cooking and drama clubs) while she waited for the recital to begin and she was highly amused that the program called it the “June Recital.” “My recital,” she mouthed to Noah who was sitting close by in the first row with his video camera. June played third out of nine performers and did a nice job on her three pieces: “Long, Long Ago,” “Happy Birthday,” and “Ode to Joy.” (Later she admitted to Toby’s mom that she had been nervous but she “tried to look calm.”)

Here’s a two-minute video of her performance if you’d like to see it:

http://youtu.be/MzaU4OlIXGo

The other performers were six kids who played piano or guitar, an adult vocalist, and a piano teacher who played one of her own jazz compositions. The vocalist was a big woman with a big voice who sang “All of Me.” June looked rapt during her performance. Later at home, I could hear her singing snippets of the song under her breath. After the recital we went to the Co-op and got the makings of a picnic dinner we ate at one of the tables outside. And so ended the second weekend of summer break.

Summer Break Week 2 Begins

This week will be more typically summer-like, with both kids home at least part of the day. June is in a half-day camp at her old preschool and Noah is volunteering there. He’s doing a mix of clerical work and helping out with the campers. I’m hoping Lesley can keep him busy all week because he needs the Student Service Learning hours.

Although we didn’t do it today, the plan is for them to walk to and from camp by themselves, starting tomorrow. June is very excited about this. In fact, when she was in her middle year of preschool she made a collage she entitled “Me and Noah going to School Without Mommy.” Now, four and a half years later she’s living the dream.

Faced with an abbreviated workday, I had to figure out what parts of my non-work routine would stay and what would go. Here were the results. Housework: eliminated. Exercise: delayed until the kids were home. Reading on the porch with a glass of iced tea: time reduced, but kept.

I am still working on afternoon plans for the kids. Megan came over after camp today. The girls made bird feeders by smearing peanut butter and breakfast cereal on plastic jugs and they had a fashion show, which Noah filmed for them. Wednesday or Thursday we might take a field trip down to the Mall to take in the Folk Life Festival. Both kids made a start on their summer math packets this afternoon and later in the week I will have them do some yard work, too. It’s not all fun and games around here, but I hope to find a good summer balance for them and for me. Whether you’re a middle-aged mom, a teenager, or eight and a quarter, there’s a time for work and a time for play.

True to Type

Posted on May 13, 2014 by Steph

My birthday is always around Mother’s Day. In fact, whenever I talk to my mom on either day (whichever happens to come first) she never fails to mention she brought me home from the hospital on Mother’s Day. Some years my birthday actually falls on the holiday and that’s what happened this year. Even though both events were on a single day, the whole weekend had a relaxed but celebratory feel.

Friday: Girls’ Night In

Friday Noah was on a band field trip to Hershey Park and wouldn’t be home until late, so June had Beth and me to herself for the evening. When I asked her if she wanted to go out for pizza, or stay home and watch a movie or play games, she wanted to do it all. That’s more than can fit in between Beth’s usual arrival home between six-thirty and seven and June’s usual bedtime of 7:45, so we stretched things out on both ends. Beth came home early and we let June stay up late. I knew the rest of us would be up late waiting for Noah and I was hoping that if we let her stay up late, too, no one would be up and making noise at 6 a.m. (It didn’t work. It rarely does, but a mom can hope.)

Before Beth got home, June and I scrubbed the grime off a couple fans because hot weather was predicted the following week and then we drank iced tea and played a board game of her own invention, plus two card games (Rat-a-Tat Cat and Sleeping Queens, both favorites of hers). I suggested we watch Tangled or Brave, because she had not seen either of them and I am getting tired of Tinkerbell movies, even though they’re really not as horrible as you might think. I thought she’d go for Brave, but she said, “Tangled!” immediately and so when Beth came home, bearing pizza, she set it to download while we ate.

June got herself a raspberry-lemon popsicle from the freezer and we settled on the couch to watch the movie. When the backstory of how Rapunzel ended up locked away from the world in her tower was established, I said to Beth, “Didn’t we just see this movie?” Beth later concluded Frozen was better, but Tangled was entertaining enough. Ironically, I’d suggested Brave and Tangled largely because I thought Noah wouldn’t mind missing them, but guess what movie they showed on the bus on the way home from Hershey? That’s right. It was Tangled. What are the chances?

We put June to bed at 8:30 and Beth didn’t need to leave to get Noah until 10:00. She had a long phone conversation with her brother, but even so that left us with forty-five minutes just to hang out and talk, which felt luxurious. Noah’s bedtime is so close to ours that we’re rarely alone together in the house for any extended period of time. It’s that kind of thing that reminds me we need to be more proactive about carving out time to spend together.

Saturday: Dinner Out

Saturday Beth took June to Kung Fu and ran errands and Noah did homework and I did some chores around the house and started a project of collecting photos of my mom, Beth, and Beth’s mom for a set of Mother’s Day albums I would post on Facebook the next day.

We were planning an early birthday dinner at the Vegetable Garden, a vegan Chinese restaurant, because we wanted to avoid the Mother’s Day restaurant crush. It’s a bit of a hike from Takoma, so we were intending to leave around five, but we were delayed over an hour by a flat tire. I almost gave up on the idea of going, because while I’m getting more flexible about bedtime, two nights in a row is pushing it for me. But Beth gently nudged me into going, and we did. I was glad of it as soon as the crispy black mushroom appetizer arrived because it is really, really good. We also got spring rolls, hot and sour soup, dumplings, a noodle dish, and a couple of vegetable-with-fake-meat dishes (my favorite was the “chicken” with asparagus). I just finished the leftovers for lunch today.

Sunday: The Big Day

The first notable thing about Sunday was that I slept in until 8:20. It’s rare for me to sleep past seven on a weekend and I’m usually awake earlier than that. The kids get up early (even the teenager) and though they are pretty self-sufficient about breakfast and entertaining themselves, they are not as quiet as I’d like, plus it’s a small house, and I’m a light sleeper, so there you go. I’d had trouble sleeping the night before, though, so I guess I really needed the extra sleep and it was enough so that I felt reasonably well rested when I woke.

We exchanged a great many gifts: Mother’s Day presents for Beth and me from the kids, and birthday presents for me. Beth got a David Sedaris book from Noah and a big candle from June. I got fancy orange marmalade and a brownie from Noah, salted caramel-flavored sugar crystals and a bottle of shells and sand and shells glued to some driftwood from June. I also got a few books, two mysteries and Joyce Carol Oates’ Accursed, from my mom and Noah. Beth gave me a gift certificate for the American Film Institute, (our favorite date destination), another gift certificate for a Takoma coffee shop, and–best of all–the promise of a mid-week getaway to Rehoboth some time this summer. (We won’t be spending our usual week at the beach this summer, because we are going to Oregon to visit my mom, stepfather, sister and other relatives.) Books, coffee, time with Beth, and time at the beach is pretty much all I want out of life sometimes.

I continued to gather and post photos while Beth and June went grocery shopping and Noah read A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream. In the afternoon Beth went to her MOOCs on capitalism and Andy Warhol.

While she was gone June and I toured the house next door, which after being vacant at least fifteen years and then undergoing a gutting and renovation that lasted about a year is finally for sale. The realtor noted somewhat wearily that a lot of people at the open house were not potential buyers but curious neighbors like us. Because the house next door is three stories and ours is just one, we got to look out the windows at our own roof, which June found quite amusing. She’s hoping a family with kids moves in and soon. Beth is not looking forward to having to share the driveway with neighbors, but it has to be better than sharing it with contractors’ vehicles and dumpsters, one of which clipped our eaves and did $800 worth of damage last summer. A side note: For those of you who don’t know the story of our cat Xander’s adventure in the basement of this house, I recommend this post—it’s a good one, with a surprise ending: “Xander in the House” (3/2/13).

Later I went for a swim and came home to the smell of lasagna baking. I’d requested spinach lasagna, garlic bread, and a salad with Romaine lettuce for dinner and that’s just what Beth made, along with a vanilla birthday cake with lemon frosting served with strawberry ice cream, also at my request. Everything was delicious. I very much appreciate everything Beth did to make my birthday special.

The weekend was especially nice because it came on the heels of a week in which I’d been sick, and after several weeks of high stress at work for Beth and my feeling kind of lost and sad.

There were a couple little things that cheered me during this time, though. My friend Megan very sweetly brought me a latte once day when June was home sick and I was complaining on Facebook that I couldn’t get out of the house to buy myself one. Then I met an old friend from college who was passing through the DC area briefly. While we were catching up I told him about the online courses Beth is taking and about my book club, which was reading the Iliad at the time (we’ve since moved on to Thomas Pyncheon). Because Jim met us when Beth was a philosophy major and I was a comparative literature major–I was reading the Aeneid in Latin one semester when he and I lived together– he was clearly delighted we were proving to be so true to type even at the ripe old age of forty-seven. As for Jim, he was math major, always very interested in computers, and he now works for Square, a company that runs a credit card payment app.

I guess underneath all the trappings of motherhood and middle age, the twenty year olds we once were are still in there somewhere.

An Out of This World Birthday

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Steph

I. Star of the Week: Friday

“Have a good time, star of the week,” I called out to June as she and Beth headed out the door at 8:15. Beth was taking her to school because she was chaperoning the second-grade field trip to Air and Space. It was the first event in an almost unbearably exciting three days: first the museum trip, which corresponded with June’s birthday party theme—outer space—followed by a school fundraiser at Chuck E. Cheese that evening and then June’s birthday party, which would start late Saturday afternoon and last until Sunday morning, on June’s actual birthday.

“You were star of the week?” Beth inquired. Star of the week is a rotating position in June’s afternoon class. Mainly it consists of being responsible for classroom chores, but Ms. K has done a good job selling it. Beth wanted to know if it was a coincidence that it was the week before her birthday. It was, June said.

While they were gone I read a few chapters of a P.D. James mystery, cleaned the kitchen, exercised, worked on the outline for a brochure, and gathered June’s early birthday gifts. I’d bought her a sweater and a skirt with starts on them to wear at her party, and a pair of pajama bottoms with glow-in-the-dark stars, also for the party. June has two pairs of much loved and now ragged glow-in-the-dark space pajamas (hand-me-downs from Noah) which would have been perfect for the party if not for the fact that one pair no longer glows and the other has a huge hole in the crotch I’ve mended multiple times and which is now beyond fixing. So clearly, new pajamas were needed. It turns out glow-in-the-dark space pajamas are harder to find than you’d think. I spent several evenings looking online and finally found a pair (bottoms only) in her size on eBay. I put everything in a dark blue gift bag, which I decorated with outer space-themed stickers. These were for a build-your-own solar system craft for the party but we had more than we needed. In fact, June and I had spent much of the previous afternoon sticking identical stickers back to back, punching holes in them and suspending them from the ceiling with fishing line for party decorations. June also drew Saturn (sans ring) with marker and glitter glue and then made rings for the Pin-the-Ring-on-Saturn game.

Beth got home from the field trip a little after two, reported it had been a success, especially the IMAX 3-D movie about the Hubble space telescope and then she started baking the cake. June decided she wanted a three-tier cake with sky blue frosting and roses on it before she settled on her party theme and she could not be swayed to a more space-themed cake, even after I found out through a photo posted on Facebook that one of my local friends owns a star-shaped cake pan that would have been perfect. June did agree to some star-shaped candles and picked out black plates, cups, and napkins with gold stars on them.

Once both kids were home from school and June had showed me her rainbow-striped coloring page of the space shuttle, she opened her early presents, which also included some fabric and sewing patterns from YaYa, a clue that June was getting the sewing machine she asked for from us. Then Beth and June set out on their second trip to Party City in less than a week, this time to get the star and moon-shaped balloons we’d already bought filled with helium and to procure additional balloons, including a huge one that says, “another year of fabulous!”

When they returned, it was off to Chuck E. Cheese. We ate pizza and June ran around with friends and played games and had several pictures taken of herself, with and without a statue of the mouse. Beth, Noah, and I played a lot of skee ball and I shot hoops, too. The tickets we earned playing games with twenty dollars worth of tokens netted June a bookmark, a container of purple play dough, a glow-in-the-dark plastic snake, a box of Nerds and a roll of sweet tarts. No one ever said the prizes are a good deal, but we had fun and we also raised $9 for June’s school between the tokens and our meal and Noah didn’t complain too much about being forced to set foot in Chuck E. Cheese, the very concept of which seems to offend his preteen sensibilities. There’s a Fro-Zen-Yo next door so we had dessert there (except for June who opted for an ice cream sandwich plucked from a machine by a robot arm at Chuck E. Cheese).

After June was in bed I wanted to make sure Noah and I had some one-on-one time during a busy, June-focused weekend, so we started reading The Martian Chronicles, a book I used to teach. He liked the part where the astronauts from the second expedition end up in a Martian insane asylum.

II. Out of This World: Saturday

Saturday was a whirl of party-related chores. We cleaned and reorganized the living room so that there was enough floor space for five sleeping bags and cleared everything on the porch to one side to make room for the piñata and the Pin-the-Ring-on-Saturn game. June and I cleaned the kids’ room, filled the goody bags, and worked on the party timetable. Beth and Noah hung a paper curtain in the living room and practiced projecting a movie onto it, and Beth and June frosted the cake. In the excitement we forgot that June had a make-up violin lesson, but her teacher dropped by with a small gift for her (polka-dotted rosin).

All day June was singing “Let it Go,” because we were going to show Frozen at the party. June had not seen the movie because with rare exceptions she was not allowed to watch PG-rated movies until she turned eight and Frozen has been the hottest movie for kids June’s age for months. She’s watched the video of the most famous song many, many times and has it down pat. She was also wearing a small tiara like Elsa’s from the time she got dressed that morning.

The party started at five, but June had asked if Megan could come an hour early, ostensibly to help with last-minute preparations. I remember my sister and I doing this when we were kids; the real reason is to affirm best-friend status, and as Megan is without question June’s best friend, I said yes.

Once the rest of the guests began arriving, June directed them to page through a book about the moon she’d set out on the living room rug along with one of Beth’s old astronomy textbooks from college. Noah started a playlist of songs about the moon for atmosphere. Then we directed them to the table I’d covered with newspaper and set out clear plastic sun-catchers in the shapes of the moon and stars, along with paint, brushes, and cups of water. This proved a popular activity and the girls painted a few each before Beth and Noah returned with pizza and we had to clear off the table to eat.

After pizza, the beautiful blue tiered cake, and ice cream, June opened her presents. Marisa got her a book about space. There were several presents of fabric and a sewing kit and Lego and Lite-Brix kits. Maggie made a nice card with chalk drawings of outer space on black construction paper.

The piñata was the last order of business before the big event—getting into pajamas and watching the movie. This year’s model was star-shaped and covered in shiny gold foil. It was actually quite pretty. Last year was the first year one of June’s guests broke the piñata without maternal or fraternal assistance and it was after everyone had a had a few turns so I was unprepared when Megan, only the third girl in line, broke it. In retrospect, I should have only let each girl hit it once during a turn so more girls had a chance. Live and learn.

I was a little worried before the party started that in an effort to fill sixteen hours, we’d actually planned too many activities. Beth looked over the schedule right before the party started and said it was “ambitious,” but I ended up glad for the full schedule because the party, surprisingly loud considering the small number of guests, always got louder and more chaotic whenever there was a down moment. And as it turned out, we had all the girls in pajamas and sleeping bags, supplied with popcorn and ring pops and ready to watch the movie at 6:55, five minutes ahead of schedule. I noted this with some satisfaction and Murphy’s Law immediately took effect. The movie wouldn’t start. It wasn’t compatible with one of the devices we were using to project it. Beth and Noah tried several fixes and finally Beth had to purchase a new copy online, which at fifteen dollars was totally worth it. The film began at 7:03. Luckily, speedy tech support is Beth’s specialty.

There was some chatter during the movie and many admonishments not to give anything away because June had not seen it already (it’s possible all the guests had). They certainly knew the songs and there was some singing along. When “Let it Go,” was about to start they all sat up in their sleeping bags. I told Beth it’s like the anthem of their generation, and she predicted they will all be belting it out when they’re thirty and going through bad breakups.

Marisa was not spending the night so her mom came to pick her up when the movie was over and everyone else brushed their teeth and got back into their sleeping bags. I explained the rules, everyone was to stay put unless they needed to use the bathroom but they could converse until ten. It was around nine-fifteen, an hour and half past June’s bedtime and she said she was tired and just wanted to go to sleep and not talk at all. Her friends all wanted to stay up and June was starting to look upset. Someone suggested reading and she went and got an armful of books for her friends. I supplied flashlights to those guests who had not brought their own (a surprising number of them had) and soon everyone but June was reading quietly and she was snuggled down with her eyes closed.

I was surprised by this turn of events and wondered if getting them quiet for the night might be as simple as that but by nine-thirty I was hearing voices, including June’s, now sounding cheerful. Shortly before ten I came to remind them it was time to sleep. I returned with a similar message shortly thereafter and then Beth went in at 10:15, got water for everyone who was thirsty, and spoke somewhat sternly about the need to stop talking and by 10:30 they were all asleep or doing a reasonable imitation of asleep.

III. The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars: Sunday

I fully expected them to all be up at the crack of dawn, but they surprised me by sleeping until almost seven and they were sluggish and disinclined to get up even then. The girl who’d kept the rest up after they wanted to go to sleep was complaining that she wanted to go back to sleep, but everyone was talking. I put in a Magic School Bus DVD about the solar system and they watched it, still lying on the floor, while Beth made pancakes and I sliced bananas and set the table. June wanted a candle in her pancake because it was her real birthday so I put one in and they all sang “Happy Birthday” to her in English and Spanish.

Breakfast perked the girls up and they got dressed and went outside with their moon observation journals (the fact that they are studying the moon at school might have inspired June’s party theme). Although it was supposed to be out at that time, it was too cloudy to verify and they all dutifully noted that in Spanish in their journals. Next they played Pin-the-Ring on Saturn on the porch. June had the first turn and went several feet wide of the mark, taping her ring to the front door, making everyone including her laugh. Zoë went second and almost walked off the porch steps before I grabbed her jacket, so from then on after blindfolding and spinning each girl I took her by the shoulders and gently pointed her in the right direction and then they got more accurate. We had an extra ring so I let June have another turn and she got hers onto the paper with the rest of them.

The last two scheduled activities were making a solar system map with stickers and playing a game Megan had invented especially for the party called Catch-the-Star. It involves chasing a beam of light from a flashlight around the living room. I didn’t quite understand the rules, but the girls all did, and that’s what mattered.

We ran out of activities just ten minutes before the end of the party so we sent them outside to chase one of the balloons. One guest’s mother thought the party ended at ten instead of nine, and she had to come all the way from Rockville so she was just setting out when I called at nine-thirty to inquire if she was on her way. The girl and June worked on building the car from the kit she’d gotten for her.

Once the party was finally over, June opened her presents from immediate and extended family: the sewing machine and a case to carry it, a kids’ guide to herbs, a shawl she’d admired, a saddle for her American Girl doll’s horse, two Edgar and Ellen books, and a lot of clothes. I went overboard with clothes this year because June’s new favorite colors, light blues and greens are easier to find than orange, her old favorite, and blue and green are also my favorites.

Becky, June’s preschool music teacher and the mother of her favorite babysitter, came by in the afternoon with more presents, a historical book about women’s basketball, and certificates for activities with Becky and Eleanor—a manicure, gelato, a tea party, and a game of Horse.

June spent the day quietly playing with her new building kits, reading Harry Potter, which I wouldn’t let her read until she turned eight, watching Frozen again and singing “Let it Go,” under her breath. After dinner we ate leftover birthday cake and June wanted us to put candles on it and sing to her again, so we did.

Happy birthday, dear June. As your card said, I wish you the sun, the moon, and the stars.

Hustle, Hustle, Hustle, Pandas!

Posted on February 2, 2014 by Steph

“People are here!” Maggie yelled to her dad, June’s basketball coach, as I entered the gym with June and Talia for Friday afternoon practice. June and I had picked up Talia in the parking lot where her mom was stranded in the car with her napping younger brother. Other than Maggie, they were the first players to arrive, but soon everyone else was there and the gym was filled with the sounds of sneakered feet and bouncing balls slapping against the wooden floor, as well as the shouts of seven- and eight-year-old girls. The Pandas were psyched.

After a month of twice-weekly practices, their third season began this weekend with a field trip to a high school girls’ basketball game and their own first game. Half the team has been together since kindergarten and most of the rest of the girls joined last year, in first grade, so the team has a nice esprit de corps. (Half of them also went to the same preschool.) They are always the Pandas, though the colors of their shirt varies by year. First they were the Purple Pandas, then the Red Pandas, and this year the Golden Pandas. (I think this last one sounds like a strip mall Chinese restaurant.)

After practicing the line dance that is supposed to help them with their pivots and other footwork, and the passing drills, and the scrimmage, Coach Mike gathered the team for a final huddle and their traditional cheer, “Hustle, hustle, hustle, Pandas!” It’s positive and to the point, like Mike himself. He’s the kind of coach who can pull this kind of thing off: once when the players were glum during a losing game in kindergarten (a year in which they lost every single game), he told them gently, “That’s not the Panda way,” and to a player they all perked up and looked heartened. He’s that good with them.

After a quick dinner of frozen pizza Noah heated up for us while we were at practice, we swung by Megan’s house and picked her up to take her to the high school game. This is an annual Panda field trip the girls love. (Last year June was sick and missed the trip, but we went with a smaller group of Pandas to a University of Maryland women’s basketball game and that made up for it.)

Mike had instructed all the girls to wear their team shirts to the game. They’d have an on court high five with the home team, the Blazers, at halftime, he said. He spotted us as we were buying tickets for the adults (kids in basketball league t-shirts got in free) and urged us to stay at least until the end of halftime. He knew we’d be taking June home early because we are strict about bedtime. I assured him we would.

We found the Pandas and assorted parents and siblings and took our seats, then made a snack bar run. June studied the Starburst ingredients list to see if they were vegetarian (no dice, gelatin) and then checked out the Swedish fish (success!) while Megan got a Rice Krispie treat and a couple other things. She asked if she could come back later to get something for her little sister. She had four dollars and she wanted to spend as much of it as possible.

We were sitting right next to the pep band and I was watching them, thinking that would be the only thing that might get Noah anywhere near a high school basketball court. Then I recognized one of the drummers, a tenth-grade boy who plays in a band with June’s favorite babysitter. (We went to one of their concerts last spring at the VFW hall.)

Before the game started, Mike led the Pandas onto the court and they were introduced on the loudspeaker as “The Golden Pandas and future Blazers.” The Pandas stood next to the cheerleaders as the high school players were introduced one by one and ran through the double line of cheerleaders. That would have been enough excitement, but there would be more.

The game started and, not surprisingly, it’s much faster than elementary school basketball. We all admired how the players instinctively knew where the ball was and where to pass it and that they could get baskets from pretty far away. I know in organizing the trip, Mike wants to show the girls where they could be in seven years, at least those of them who really will be future Blazers.

The Blazers were winning 26-19 at halftime. The Pandas walked down the edge of the court, getting high fives from a line of cheerleaders and then disappeared through a door. When they returned half of them were wearing Blazers t-shirts over their Panda shirts. They were going to scrimmage! They were the halftime entertainment! Mike told them only moments before it happened and didn’t tell the parents at all.

The scrimmage lasted about five minutes and considering the baskets were two feet higher than the ones they’ve used at practice and in games, they looked pretty good. Sally, the Panda most likely to be a Blazer someday, even got a basket. Here’s about thirty seconds of it Talia’s mom shot on her phone:

For the record, those empty bleachers you can see comprise the seating area for the opposing team. The home team side was close to full.

When the girls came off the court, Megan had a split lip from falling down, and a bag of ice she’d received as first aid. She didn’t tell anyone she was hurt until the scrimmage was over and she didn’t even cry, she wanted us to know. Beth said she probably had so much adrenaline it didn’t hurt as much as it normally would. In the car the girls could talk of nothing but the game, both their own and the big girls’

“It was like we were the guests of honor,” June said.

“We were!” Megan said earnestly. Then June allowed humbly that before most of the people in the crowd got there, they hadn’t heard of the Pandas. Fortunately, that situation was now rectified.

Next we discussed the Blazers’ game and the strengths of various players. This conversation was somewhat impeded by the fact that Beth could only identify players by their jersey numbers while both girls relied more on the players’ hairstyles. I walked Megan to her door, explained to her mother how she came to be injured, and then we drove home.

The next day was the Pandas’ first game. Before the game, the Pandas bounced balls on the sidewalk outside the school and huddled and Mike asked for thoughts. It doesn’t matter who wins, someone offered. Mike said it didn’t but it did matter that they hustled and did their best. And had fun, another player suggested. Yes, have fun, too, he agreed.

If you haven’t been in an elementary school gym recently, a common configuration is two eight-foot basketball hoops along each of the long sides of a rectangular room, and a ten-foot hoop on each of the short sides. That way you can play two games simultaneously with the short hoops or one full-court game with the tall hoops. In kindergarten and first grade, they always used the short hoops and they’d been practicing on them all January, but this gym did not have enough short hoops. Someone came with a long-handled tool and tried to lower the hoops but it didn’t work, so the coaches decided that instead of splitting the teams in half and playing two games, they’d play on the full court, with the tall hoops.

The Pandas started warming up and throwing balls at the tall hoops. A lot of them were going in, and not just Sally’s. June had that serious look she gets on her face when she is determined to do something, but none of her shots went in. Overall, though, the Pandas looked good. But every now and then I glanced over at the girls in the light blue t-shirts practicing on the other side of the court, the Dolphins, and I noticed their shots were going in, too.

At first, the teams seemed pretty evenly matched. I think the score was tied, or at least close, at the end of the first quarter. But after that, the Dolphins hit their stride and they scored basket after basket after basket. Beth thought June looked tired, even though the fact that they were playing only one game meant all the players were sitting out half the time. I pointed out she’d been up an hour past her bedtime and I wondered if the whole team was tired from the previous night’s adventure. By my count, the final score was 14-2, but Beth thought the Pandas scored twice and she might have been right.

The Pandas didn’t lose heart, though, and they minded their manners. After Sally scored the first (and possibly only) basket of the game, Talia took the time to hug her, and when Lila tripped over an opposing player right before the final whistle, I saw her say, “Are you all right?” before getting back into the game.

The Pandas and Dolphins needed to clear out of the gym as soon as the game was over so the 12:00 p.m. game could start. The team huddled on the sidewalk outside the school again. Mike said there were things they needed to work on, but he found things to praise as well. Then they all put their hands on top of each other and chanted, “Hustle, hustle, hustle, Pandas!”

Midway Through Middle School

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Steph

The kids have just finished a five-day weekend, or five and a quarter if you count the delayed opening today. They had Monday off for MLK Day and Tuesday was the teacher grading and planning day they have at the end of every quarter and Wednesday was a snow day. Third quarter (finally!) starts today and this means Noah is midway through middle school. Last week was exam week. I actually like midterms because the teachers assign a lot less homework, so even though he has to study, his load is lighter than usual. Nonetheless, he’s had a lot going on. There was a band concert last Thursday, he’s been swamped with homework ever since exams ended, and he got braces Tuesday.

Before the Long Weekend: Wednesday and Thursday

Thursday was a really nice day for me, if busy, which I appreciated because Wednesday was not. It was the fourth anniversary of my father’s death, so I was little down all day, and I had a computer problem that stopped me from working on a day when I was already behind, and the fire alarm kept beeping because it needed new batteries and I couldn’t figure out how to get the old ones out of the darn thing, and then I got a mild scare when Noah was a half hour late because he missed the Metro bus after band practice and he didn’t call to tell me or answer my call because his phone was dead. It was that kind of day.

Thursday on the other hand was reasonably productive on the work front, and once the kids got home they were full of appealing requests. June wanted to go down the block and play Horse at our neighbor’s basketball hoop and then she actually asked to hear a chapter of The Secret Garden. We have been limping our way through this book, which I loved a child but she’s lukewarm about at best, for over a year. It was the second day in a row we’d read from it, but we haven’t since then.

Because of his band concert that evening, Noah didn’t have much time for homework, so he asked me if I could read Things Fall Apart to him because it’s generally faster for me to read to him than for him to read to himself. I am never one to turn down a request to read a classic, so we read chapters two to four (and I went back later and read the first chapter on my own).

Noah also had a couple pleasant revelations. “I accidentally won the geography bee,” he told me when I asked how school was. He had not realized there was a geography bee and had not studied for it, but he won nevertheless, which is just classic Noah. He’s a little disgruntled about having to advance to the next level (competing against the winners of other social studies classes at his school) because he thinks she should study this time, but I pointed out that not studying seemed to work out pretty well last time.

The big news, though, he kept to himself. At dinner Beth asked if he’d gotten his IDRP back and he said, yes, and then casually, “I got an A on it.” Because he got a C on the rough draft, we were not expecting this. I’d already told him that I didn’t care what grade he got on the final paper because he’d worked hard and I was proud of that regardless of the grade. I meant it, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy to hear he’d done that well. It’s good to have your work recognized.

So we were feeling celebratory as we headed off to the winter concert. We took June for the first time since she was in preschool. Because she napped back then, she actually had a later bedtime than she does now. Last year the winter concert was pretty short, though, and we thought we’d try bringing her to this one. We may not be doing it again any time soon because they have a new band teacher now and he does a lot of things differently, and one of them is that the winter concert is approximately twice as long. June was leaning against me for much of the concert and she did not get to bed until and hour and a half past her bedtime. I think she enjoyed it, though, especially when the orchestra was on stage and she could imagine when she will be old enough to play violin in a concert. She’s particularly interested in the concept of being first violin, a distinction not available to percussionists.

Speaking of the percussionist, we could sometimes see him, more often his hair than his hands or sticks, but he says he played snare drum, triangle, crash cymbals, suspended cymbals and tambourine and I believe him. Their last number was “Bolero,” which is always fun to hear. Because the percussionists don’t take their instruments home they are supposed to return them to the music room but the other three musicians abandoned the job to Noah so Beth and I helped him in the interest of getting home. I had a lot of reasons to be proud of him that day, but the fact that he would never, ever think to leave the instruments on stage and assume someone else would take them where they belong was one of them.

Long Weekend: Original Four-Day Version

Friday Noah got to relax because Fridays are a no-homework zone, no matter how much homework he has, and he did have a lot. I read to him before leaving for June’s basketball practice and then again after she was in bed. We finished the last book in the Fablehaven series, Keys to the Demon Prison. We’d been reading these books since around Labor Day, so that was satisfying. When we came home from basketball, he was practicing his drums, without my having reminded him, which was also satisfying.

Saturday morning Noah and I picked up another series we’re also reading, The Norumbega Quartet, where we’d left off, with book #4, The Chamber in the Sky, and then he did algebra and media homework. I wanted him to get all his non-social studies homework out of the way because he had to write rough drafts of the annotated bibliography and a process paper for his National History project. They have to turn their IDRP into a new format, so he’s making a documentary about product liability law, or he would be making it if he didn’t have so many preparatory assignments getting in the way. By Sunday afternoon he was ready to start on the annotated bibliography and he worked on it until Monday afternoon.

A great many parents told me it would be better after IDRP and I’m not really in a position to judge yet, as it was five weeks ago that they turned it in and they were on winter break for almost two weeks of that time, and then they barely went to school this week…but National History Day is a pretty big project, too. I hope once Noah gets to actually making the film, he will enjoy it more, but right now while he’s fleshing out his research, it’s kind of a slog.

Beth and I both have a very strong desire for Noah to have more free time than he does right now, so we’ve been considering his options for high school and thinking more and more seriously of encouraging him not to apply to any of the academic magnets, although a performing arts magnet is a possibility. He’s been in magnets since fourth grade and in general the rigorous curriculum has been good for him, much better than when he was in third grade, bored, unchallenged, and unhappy. But his ADHD and slow processing make the work harder for him than for many of his peers, and I think this year he may have hit the point where just working harder than everyone else is becoming a less viable strategy. Also, once he’s in high school it will be easier to piece together a schedule with enough AP classes for him to be challenged but not so many that he’s doing homework all the time. That’s what we hope anyway.

Monday morning Beth took Noah to the orthodontist to get spacers in preparation for the braces, and then she took him back as soon as they got home because one of them had popped out of his mouth. He’d been complaining that one felt wrong all along and I guess he was right. Beth gave him some painkiller before the procedure and he didn’t seem to be in much pain. In fact, he got himself a bowl of tortilla chips in the afternoon, which helped me decide not to bother pureeing the cauliflower soup for him at dinner.

On the way to the second trip to the orthodontist, Beth dropped June and I off at Value Village so we could brave the 50% off MLK Day sale. Value Village is a huge thrift store, think big box size, not particularly well organized, and crazy busy on a sale day, but it’s also very cheap and June’s outgrown a lot of clothes recently. We went in with a list of thing we hoped to find: basically leggings and long-sleeved tops, including turtlenecks and sweaters. I told her we were there for practical school clothes that fit now, nothing out of season and not anything to grow into because her style changes. Given that as we walked in the door, she was saying, “How about a party dress?” I think I was lucky we walked out with two pairs of fleece pants (there were no leggings, at least none I could find), three tops, and a white knit poncho. The poncho was not on the original list, but I decided it could serve the same function as a cardigan, so I relented. She loves it so much that when we went to Starbucks immediately afterward and wanted a hot chocolate and I said she could have one but she’d have to take off the poncho to drink it, she opted for water. All these purchases, plus a pair of snow pants for Noah, cost less than seventeen dollars.

At home, I ran a load of laundry, the third one of the day, this one consisting of other people’s size 6 and 14 clothes that are now my kids’, mixed in with a bunch of baby clothes they once wore, which I’m giving to a pregnant friend. I am so sentimental about the kids’ baby clothes that I still have a lot of them, though fewer all the time, because I give some away every time someone I know has a baby. Before I put them down the laundry chute, I looked at them all, and marveled that my quickly growing man-child, who’s taller than me and who has a deepening voice, and has sprouted hair on his legs and a strange shadow on his upper lip, ever wore those tiny onesies and sleepers and footed leggings, but he did.

Tuesday morning Beth took Noah to the orthodontist again for the actual braces while June and I made banana bread and muffins, and watched the snow come down outside. Noah came home with braces. They caught me off guard every time he smiled, and he did smile, which I don’t think I did the day I got braces. He didn’t seem to be in any pain, ate raw carrots at lunch and didn’t take any painkiller. This is very different from how I remember this experience. I’m not sure if there have been advances in orthodontia since the early 80s or if he was having a mercifully tactile under-sensitive day.

Noah worked on his process paper most of the rest of the day. June and I delivered the banana bread, along with the baby clothes to Wakako. She lives just far enough from a bus stop that it felt like an adventurous trek in the snowstorm but not so far that it was arduous. June looked sleepy on the bus home, but she stayed in the yard sledding and making snow angels when we got home. Shortly before we left, June noticed that all the radiators were cold. Beth called for a boiler repairperson and fortunately it was an easy fix, because it was supposed to be frigid the next day, with highs only in the low twenties.

Beth took June for a walk in the woods by the creek later in the afternoon and while they were gone I buckled down to work, which I had been doing only sporadically for the past couple days. I had deadlines and the threat of a school closure the next day had put the fear of God in me. When Beth and June got home, Beth had a conference call and June took it upon herself to shovel a good bit of our long walk. She did a great job, but it was still snowing, so it got covered again soon and then Beth did the whole walk and then it got covered yet again. Shortly after dinner, Beth got the notice that school was closed the following day.

Weekend Coda: Snow Day

When we woke up, the house was freezing. The radiators were cold again so the morning was a rush of calling the heating oil company (Beth once, me twice) to get a service call, going to the hardware store and buying some space heaters (Beth), and trying to shovel the icy walk and then giving up (me). Then Beth drove June over to Megan’s house and left for work, and Noah and I holed up in the study to work. He had a series of essay questions to answer about his film topic. When we turned on the new heater, it registered the temperature in the room as 43 degrees, but over the course of several hours it got up to 69 degrees. Not bad, considering that outside it had been in the single digits overnight and didn’t get past 15 during the day.

The repairperson came around noon and by one, he was finished and the radiators felt faintly warm. I fetched Megan and June and brought them back to our house where they continued their seven-hour play date. When we came home, I found Noah asleep in his computer chair. He woke when I came into the room and said he had a headache and stomachache, so I put him to bed.

I salted the walk, ate a late lunch of grilled cheese and black bean soup, and then went in to check on him. I asked if he wanted me to read to him, and he did, so I read for an hour and twenty minutes. Then he was feeling better and he went back to work while I took a long-handled ice scraper to the ice on the sidewalk and chipped away most of it. By the time I came in, tired, cold, and sore, and discovered the lentils I’d left simmering on the stove had burned, I was feeling as if the day, or maybe the whole endless weekend, had really been too much. And I learned from my friends on Facebook, that there was a two-hour delay the next day.

But the next morning the kids went to school, Noah frustrated he had never completed his essay questions. I tried hacking at some of the more stubborn icy spots on the sidewalk, cleared the toys off the living room floor, read just a tiny bit of a new novel (Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam) and sat down to tackle my own backlog of work in a quiet house. It’s a new semester and time to make a fresh start.

A Game of Twister

Posted on January 14, 2014 by Steph

The week leading up to our anniversary was full of unusual events. Sara and I had some looming deadlines so I’d worked both days of the previous weekend and that left me feeling slightly disoriented about what day of the week it was all week. It always seemed like the week should be further along than it was.

Polar Vortex

And then there was the Polar Vortex on Tuesday. You probably heard about this even if you don’t live in the American Midwest or the Eastern seaboard. There were record-breaking lows everywhere, but it was considerably less dramatic where we live than in the Great Lakes area. We were supposed to get highs in the teens and single digit lows, but the high on Tuesday was around twenty. It was basically just an unusually cold day. Even so, surrounding counties panicked and cancelled school. Shockingly, Montgomery County did not. The most notable thing that happened as a result of the cold was that a bottle of detangling spray we’d ordered for June arrived frozen. It’s really a wonder we all survived.

Monday after school I took June for a walk down to Long Branch creek so we could compare the landscape pre and post-freeze. Beth thought the creek might freeze solid the next day and if it did June wanted to walk on it. We couldn’t go back on Tuesday because June had a violin lesson after school and by Wednesday she’d lost interest in the project and didn’t want to go. I’d peeked out the bus window on the way to violin the day before and noticed that Sligo creek was only about half-frozen anyway. Long Branch is a little smaller and slower but I doubted it had frozen solid so I didn’t push it.

Old Friends

Tuesday evening we got a surprise call from a friend of our Iowa days. From 1989 to 1991 Beth and I attended grad school at the University of Iowa and lived in a housing co-op. Our house had twelve people, a mix of undergrads, graduate students, and several twenty- and thirty-somethings unaffiliated with the university, one of whom was a city council member. If you’d like to see a picture of the house, go to the url above and choose Anomy from the house list on the left.

Sue and her husband Scott were among our best friends in the house. She was a doctoral student in history and he was a musician and a writer. They got married around half way through the time we lived there and I remember translating a poem from Portuguese for them as a wedding present. (I know all you engaged folks are now rushing to add me to your guest lists.)

Now Sue’s a history professor and she was in town for a conference and to visit her mother, who lives in D.C. She invited us to lunch, so we met her near Beth’s office. If my count is correct, this was only the fourth time I’d seen Sue since we finished our Masters degrees and left Iowa to go work for non-profits in D.C. But as Sue pointed out, you just don’t make friends in middle age the way you do as a young adult, especially when you’ve lived together, so it felt easy to pick up where we left off. (The only exception might be parents in your child’s class in a co-op preschool, which is why a large part of my social life still revolves around people we met when the children were very small.) Well, there’s always the nursing home, I pointed out.

A lot of our conversation centered around predictably middle-aged topics—growing children (between the two couples we have one in college, one in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary school), aging or recently deceased parents, career successes and discontents. It wasn’t a long lunch, as Beth had to get back to work, but we covered a lot of ground. It was good to see her.

On the way there, I got leafleted by a D.C. mayoral candidate who was handing out literature at the Gallery Place Metro stop. I could have said no thanks, I live in Maryland, but I liked being taken for a city dweller, as I associate it with my younger, hipper days. (Not that I was ever hip, just marginally more so than now.) Beth and I lived in the city when we tied the knot, twenty-two years ago. We did it in the living room of our apartment seven months after we moved there, with around thirty guests crowded onto the couch and rented folding chairs. And we still lived in the city when Noah was born nine years later and for his baby year, so I will always associate it with those heady days of new adulthood and new motherhood.

The Children Go to School (or Don’t)

I didn’t work much on Wednesday as it takes a big chunk out of my day to get into and out of the city so the next day I was somewhat dismayed when June announced on Thursday morning she had a sore throat, a stomachache, and a headache and she wanted to stay home from school. Noah had been sick with a stomach bug the previous weekend so I was cautious and let her stay home. She was pretty lethargic all morning and spent a lot of time under a blanket staring into space without making a lot of demands so I actually managed to get a good bit of work done in between reading to her and making her snacks (her appetite was unaffected). She perked up after lunch, so we took a walk to the 7-11 to get milk. We passed Long Branch creek and noticed it was more frozen than Sligo had been the day before, but not frozen solid. There were some big frozen puddles in the woods by the creek, though, so we paused there a while so she could slide across them and pretend to be skating.

Friday morning there was freezing rain and a two-hour delay, because why wouldn’t there be? The sidewalks were kind of treacherous, though, so I can’t complain too much. I wasn’t too stressed about getting work done because I knew I’d have enough time for my only deadline that day and I’d logged plenty of hours the weekend before. I actually enjoyed getting to sleep a little later and have a more relaxed time getting the kids out of the house.

June had Megan over for a play date after school and before basketball practice. When Noah got home about twenty minutes after the girls did, they had the Twister mat out and soon he joined them in the game. Noah doesn’t usually play with June’s friends (being five years older) so it was heart-warming to peek at them as I fried tofu and sliced apples for an after school snack. The girls are a lot more limber than he is, but he is longer, so everyone had some kind of advantage. As is always the case when anyone plays Twister, there was a lot of laughing.

At four-thirty, Megan’s mom Kerry picked up Megan, June, and me and drove us all to the elementary school gym where basketball practice is held. I normally enjoy the walk but it was still cold and rainy so I was glad of the ride. It was the first Friday afternoon practice of the season. I always enjoy these, both for the chance to see the girls in action, but also to talk with other moms. (And it is almost entirely moms on Fridays; more dads make it to Saturday practices.) I ended up having extended chat with the mother of three girls in the gym, one of the Pandas and the two assistant coaches, both of whom attend Noah’s school, one in sixth grade and the other in eighth. We talked about middle school and the crazy workload and the ups and downs of each grade. When practice was over Kerry drove us home, where Beth, Noah, and hot pizza awaited us.

Date Night

Saturday was our anniversary, both of our commitment ceremony, twenty-two years ago, and of our wedding, one year ago. So now it’s official, we’re not newlyweds any more. Beth took June to basketball practice in the morning and I made our anniversary cake (from the same recipe as the cake at our commitment ceremony) in the early afternoon, with some help from June. In the mid-afternoon, we ate it and exchanged gifts. Beth got me a wallet like hers because I’d admired it, and I got her a shoe rack. I realize this doesn’t sound very romantic, but the kids’ shoes tend congregate in an untidy pile in the hall outside their room. Two years ago, I got Beth a shoe rack for Christmas and it worked for a while, but it was too small for the number of shoes the kids had and it was kind of flimsy. It met its end after a year or so when one of the kids crashed into it. I thought I’d try again with a sturdier (and taller) version.

Around four-thirty, we left for a movie-and-dinner date. We saw Philomena and then went out for tapas, followed by coffee. I can’t tell you how nice this was, but I’ve been thinking of it a lot in the days that have followed, about how important it feels to do things like this. We’ve been married a long time, and sometimes it does feel like a game of Twister. Remember the slogan, “the game that ties you up in knots”? But then we end up laughing and having fun. And when something breaks, we try to build a stronger version of it, something that can last another twenty-two years at least.

Home for the Holidays

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Steph

I. Christmas Preparations

Because we didn’t travel this year and the kids had almost two weeks off school, we had a long stretch of time at home, but somehow it seemed to go quickly.

The Saturday before Christmas in between making six trays of gingerbread cookies and a pan of fudge, we binged on Christmas specials. We own a lot and we all had a great pent-up desire to watch them after telling June night after night that we couldn’t because Noah had too much homework, so we watched four in a row, pausing only to deliver gingerbread cookies to friends of the family who were leaving town the next day. We had decided to give away a lot of the cookies and candy we made this year so we could still have a little of everything we usually make but not be overwhelmed with sweets with only the four of us to eat them. This ended up being really fun, making the treats as well as all the little visits.

Sunday we only watched one movie from our stash, but we also went to the American Film Institute to see The Muppet Christmas Carol in a theater, which was great fun. Noah and I read the book when he was nine, but it was June’s introduction to the story, and a pretty good one at that. I didn’t remember that it was so faithful to the original. After the movie, we discussed similarities between Scrooge and the Grinch. I told June how when she was three and we were watching the How the Grinch Stole Christmas she kept saying over and over, “He is so mean. He is so mean,” and then at the end, surprised, “So now he’s nice?” Same story, really.

Beth went to work Monday and Tuesday, but Tuesday she only worked a half-day and she took June with her so I could get some work done. Monday the kids and I made buckeyes (chocolate-covered peanut butter balls) and we made deliveries to Sasha’s family and to Megan’s because they live within walking distance and Megan’s family was also heading out of town.

While I was gathering ingredients for the buckeyes, I switched on the radio, heard they were about to play an excerpt from “The Santaland Diaries,” thought about it for a moment, decided Noah was old enough for a mild introduction to David Sedaris, and called him in to listen. The part that really made Noah laugh was when a mother wants the department store elf to tell her child Santa won’t bring presents if he doesn’t behave, but he goes quite a bit further, describing how Santa will steal everything from the house, despite the mother’s urgent attempts to hush him.

On Christmas Eve, Beth made cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie, I wrapped presents and the kids practiced their homemade production of The Nutcracker, which they performed for us before dinner. (They planned to make a video version on Christmas day, but artistic differences scuttled the project.) We put out gingerbread cookies in the shape of the word “Ho” (Noah made these) for Santa and I went into the garden with a flashlight to pick one of the last carrots for Rudolph because he deserves the best.

II. On Christmas Day, On Christmas Day

On Christmas morning the kids were opening their stockings by 6:00 a.m., the earliest they were allowed out of bed. I’d heard June going to the bathroom two hours earlier and she told me later she thought she’d heard Santa and the reindeer on the roof while she was in there. Beth and I rolled out of bed around 6:30 and well before 7:30 all the presents were opened. I won’t list them all, but June got books, a skateboard and an American Girl doll (Kaya, the eighteenth-century Native American girl, as well as a box set of books about her and a bunch of accessories). Noah got books, a camcorder, a shirt, gift certificates and a check. I got books, audiobooks, and gift cards. Beth got books and a metal thermos that entitles her to 10% off each drink at a local coffee shop. But our main present to each other was to get the kids’ preschool self-portraits framed, only two and a half and seven and a half years after they finished preschool. Better late than never, no?

June and I went to the playground in the afternoon where I sat on a bench and read Doctor Sleep, struggling to turn the pages with my fingers in gloves while June climbed on the rocks by the creek and swung on the swings for a half hour or so. Later Beth and I cooked dinner—mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, mushroom-Swiss cheese puff pastry, cranberry sauce and rolls. It was all quite delicious.

Overall, it was a strange day; I was half content, half melancholy about being separated from my family of origin on what would have normally been their turn. I didn’t predict it would be as hard as it was because I don’t feel sad when we’re with Beth’s folks for holidays—it’s what we do half the time, I’m used to it and I enjoy seeing them as well. But whenever anyone posted photos on Facebook from my aunt Peggy’s house in Boise where Mom, Jim, and Sara were staying along with Peggy’s family, I had the feeling we should have been there.

III. Christmas Aftermath

But my mood improved after Christmas day was over. The two days after Christmas June went to an ice skating camp run by the county park system. We thought it would be good to get her out of the house for a couple days so she didn’t end up bouncing off the walls, and also so we could have some time alone with Noah and with each other. Thursday was Noah’s day. We took him into the city, where we went to a Van Gogh exhibit at the Phillips, browsed at Kramerbooks, where he spent some of the Christmas money he got from my mother, and then we went out to lunch.

Friday, Beth and I left the house at 11:30 and we were kid-free for five and half hours. We delivered more treats (which now included pizelles Beth had made) to families who live in Silver Spring, had lunch at Republic (Takoma Park’s newest restaurant) and then went back to Silver Spring to see Inside Llewyn Davis. It was our second time in that theater in less than a week but I don’t remember the last time Beth and I saw a movie in a theater alone together. It might have been a year ago, or even two. The movie was fun and it felt good, restorative even, having that long block of time together, and made me think we should get a sitter for our first (or twenty-second) wedding anniversary in a little over a week.

Around this point, halfway through break, Noah started doing homework in earnest. Up to then he’d either been enjoying some homework-free days, or working just a few hours a day. I’m sad to say that he spent the last six days of his twelve-day break mostly working. Because he’s taking high school-level algebra and Spanish he has to take countywide standardized tests in those subjects in January and he had a preparation packet for each of those classes. The math didn’t take long, but he was working on the Spanish for four or five days, full days. I was sad that homework ate up so much of his break, but at least he had some time to relax at the beginning, and he got to go to a movie, and a museum, and I read to him from the fourth and then the fifth book in the Fablehaven series (Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary and Keys to the Demon Prison) every day of break except the very last one.

I worked several days over break, too, but not nearly as hard as Noah did. I’m not even sure what I did the Saturday after Christmas except make our final cookie and candy delivery and take June to another playground where she spun on a merry-go-round and swung on a tire swing until it was so dark out that her blonde hair, jewel-red coat, and the sparkles on her shoes seemed to glow in the winter dusk. And then Sunday I spent an exceedingly slothful day in my pajamas, taking the occasional break from reading one of my own Christmas books to read to the kids from theirs.

However, Monday I roused myself to get dressed and leave the house a few times. Beth and June went ice-skating at the outdoor rink in downtown Silver Spring and I tagged along to watch. She really did learn a lot at skating camp. Over Thanksgiving she was had to hold onto the wall or one of those metal things you push in front of you, but now she can skate by herself and even do a rudimentary twirl. If you are fond of June, this one-minute video is worth watching just for her smile at the end.

We also went to the frame store to drop off the portraits. Going after Christmas turned out to be a good idea. The framer said he’d been swamped right up until Christmas but he did our job in one day. Finally, I met up with my best friend from graduate school and adjunct days, who was in town visiting her folks. We had a leisurely chat over tea, coffee, and dessert, and talked about work, kids, marriage—all the things that really matter. Joyce lives in Indiana now and I hadn’t seen her in a couple years so it was great to reconnect.

The kids both spent time with friends on Tuesday. Sasha came over and he and Noah played a lively game of Forbidden Island, and then started a game of Monopoly. (Does anyone ever finish a game of Monopoly? Sometimes, I suppose, but not often.) Meanwhile, June was at Zoë’s house, and I got a few hours’ work done. We had sparkling apple-grape juice at dinner but that was the extent of our observation of New Year’s Eve. Everyone was in bed by ten. As someone who doesn’t like to stay up late and doesn’t drink, I have never figured out a good way to celebrate this holiday.

New Year’s Day June had another friend over and I worked some more because Sara was swamped and asked me if I could. Beth was engaged in various cleaning and organizational projects. She hung the pictures and a coat rack, and helped June clean the kids’ room. Earlier in the break she’d organized the Tupperware shelf and straightened some areas of the basement. I was not as ambitious, but I ran some errands and made black-eyed peas for good luck in the coming year along with a glazed beet and cranberry salad.

Yesterday the kids were back to school and Beth went back to work. I used one of the Starbucks gift cards I got for Christmas as an excuse to go read in a quiet place before diving into work myself. I think we all had a good break. Even though I missed seeing my family, sometimes it’s good to tend the home fires.

IV. Bonus Day Off

And that’s how that blog post was going to end, but today, after only one day back at school, the kids were home again. We were just at the edge of that big Nor’easter you’ve probably heard about on the news if you’re not from around these parts. We only got three inches, but it was enough to cancel school and what would have been June’s first basketball practice of the season.

The timing was bad in terms of work, because Sara’s been really busy and I’d hoped to put in a longer day than I did, but it wasn’t going to be a really productive day anyway because I had a dentist appointment to get a new crown. Fortunately, Beth and I share a dentist and we happened to have back-to-back appointments so I brought June into the city, the three of us had lunch together and they we traded June off during our appointments and took the train together as far as Beth’s office, where we parted ways.

That took four hours out of the middle of the day, but I worked before and after. June played in the snow before and after. She made a snow angel and a snow volcano (which she colored with red food coloring so it could appear to have erupted), she went sledding on the little hill in our back yard and she went exploring down the block to see how it looked in the snow. She was outside a long time, considering the temperature never rose above 25 degrees, probably two hours, not counting time spent at bus stops, on train platforms and walking down city streets where the wind rushed as if we were in a canyon.

Noah spent the day at home. He went outside to clear the snow off the car with June and then he took all the ornaments off the tree (which he said made him feel like the Grinch), practiced his drums for two hours, and did some algebra homework.

It wasn’t exactly how I planned to spend the day, but last year around this time I was really, really sick with bronchitis, so anything better than that seems like an improvement. Happy 2014, one and all!

Spooky

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Steph

Thursday: Halloween

On Halloween, June forgot to attend her after school reading-cooking-art class and came home on the bus. I was a little dismayed to see her home earlier than expected because the class wasn’t cheap and I’d gone to some trouble to get her on the wait list when it filled before she enrolled. Not to mention it was the second time that week my workday was unexpectedly cut short. I’d had to pick her up at school on Tuesday because she lost her shoes at recess. (Don’t ask. I don’t know why she removed them or where they went.) On the other hand, I remember how exciting Halloween can be when you’re seven so I wasn’t too surprised the class slipped her mind.

June was dressed as Amy from the 39 Clues series because students at her school were invited to come to school dressed as their favorite character from a book on Halloween. In the past her school has not observed Halloween (unless you count the vocabulary parade last year—and I don’t). I suppose this compromise was meant to straddle the line between those who want some festivity and those who don’t approve of the holiday or at least the more ghastly aspects of it.

I don’t think there’s a very detailed physical description of Amy in the books and they’re not illustrated, so that left June free to imagine how she thought Amy might dress, based on the choices available at our local thrift store. A pink and orange, tiered dress with a green belt, a brown scarf, teal leggings, and sparkly white shoes were what she choose. It wasn’t that different from what June might wear on a normal day. Noah, who’s been reading this series for years, protested, “That’s not what Amy would wear,” but as Beth pointed out, June likes Amy so she assumes whatever she likes, Amy would like. To clarify things, she carried a copy of the first book in the series to school with her.

At June’s bus stop that morning there was a boy dressed as Rin Tin Tin, which also needed explaining, and a girl (the same one who was a picnic table at the parade last weekend) dressed as Ramona Quimby. Ramona had a helpful identifying sign attached to her shirt with a safety pin. It made sense once I read it because the girl’s outfit was more tomboyish than her usual style.

Noah got home about fifteen minutes after June because he didn’t have band practice. While June watched the special Halloween episodes of The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That and Curious George, Noah and I settled on the porch where he proceeded to give his SmarTrip costume some finishing touches, and I read to him from Grip of the Shadow Plague while he painted. It was an unusually warm day, around 70 degrees. He wore a t-shirt and I was barelegged in denim skirt.

After Noah finished working on his costume, or stopped rather—he never quite finished all the details he wanted to paint—I ran a bath for June and started making dinner (grilled cheese and minestrone from a can). Meanwhile, Noah got the little coffin/fog machine going, lit the jack-o-lanterns and tried to replace the dead batteries in the light-up ghost head, a project that ended up being harder than we anticipated and required Beth’s help.

Beth came home early, exclaimed over Noah’s costume—“You made it even more beautiful!”—and we were eating dinner by 5:45. Then it was time to cut hand holes in Noah’s costume so he could hold his candy bag and to attach it to him with suspenders, as it had been somewhat awkward to carry during the parade. Beth said she hated to cut it, though, because she had to remove part of the Washington Monument and some of the lettering at the bottom. June got herself into her costume and Beth painted her face white and applied lipstick to her lips with little drops of blood going down her chin.

June’s friend Megan and her sister Fiona came by shortly before 6:30, dressed as Hermione and the Bride of Frankenstein. After they left, Noah went to meet Sasha and Beth and June set out in search of treats. I was left at home to hand out candy to a fairy, whose dad said we had “the spookiest house on the block,” a firefighter, and a skeleton with a bloody face. Around 7:20, we got a group of about a half a dozen boys including a box of Cheerios and a chicken. When I opened the door, I realized it had started raining. This was a surprise as I’d heard on the radio there wouldn’t be any rain until midnight, well after trick or treating time.

I wondered if Beth and June would come home early. I’d authorized Beth to let June stay out a little past her bedtime, until eight, but just as I was wondering if they’d stay out that long, they were on the porch. Given that Sasha and Noah were out without any adults, I didn’t expect him much before his appointed return time of 8:30, rain or no rain. I remember being twelve, too.

I asked if it had just started raining and Beth said it had been raining a while. Apparently when it started June, in Beth’s words “declared that vampires love rain, that, in fact rain is the favorite weather of vampires and there was no reason whatsoever to consider cutting our route short.”

June dumped her candy on the living room rug to inventory it and decide what pieces to eat right away. A leprechaun came to the door and when I commented how everyone who’d come had been very polite, saying thank you for the candy and complimenting our decorations, June whispered something to Beth and thus reminded, Beth reported that June had also remembered to say thank you at each house without any prompting from Beth.

We were playing Halloween music and June and I danced together to “Spooky.” When it got to the line “Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl like you,” I pointed to her and she pointed back to me. Then she said we should both point to Beth at the next repetition of the chorus, but we were interrupted by another group of trick-or-treaters. The rain did not seem to be deterring anyone. In fact, around eight, as I was handing out candy to a dragon and a pirate, I saw Noah and Sasha, who was wearing I thought might have been a mummy costume—he was in white and had a big round head anyway—pass by our house without pausing.

They were back by 8:20. On closer inspection, I could see Sasha was wearing a lab coat and a pale green fright wig. “Mad scientist?” I guessed and he said yes. The paint on Noah’s costume was smeared from the rain and had rubbed off on his candy bag. I told him to leave it out on the porch so it didn’t stain anything in the house. I said I didn’t think anyone would steal it and he said it “wasn’t unheard of” for people to steal SmarTrips.

When I asked what people thought of his costume, Noah said a few people told him his was the best one they’d seen all night. One person even said it should be in a museum and some people offered him extra candy for his effort. (June had been told she made a “beautiful” vampire, so her ego was satisfied, too.)

A group of students from the college just a couple blocks from the house came by, explaining that they’re on the track team and they’d noted our house while out on a run and determined this would be a good place to go for candy on Halloween. They were our second to last group. Around 9:20, Noah and I went outside to blow out the candles in the jack-o-lanterns, switch off the glowing skulls and other battery-operated props, turn off the fog machine, and call Halloween a wrap.

Friday: Día de los muertos

The kids had Friday off school, not because it was the day after Halloween, not because it was All Saints’ Day, and not because it was the Day of the Dead. They had it off because Thursday was the last day of the first marking period and Friday was a grading day for teachers. Beth took it off, too, and in the morning we took Noah to the orthodontist for a diagnostic appointment. They came up with a treatment plan and a payment plan and took all manner of photographs and x-rays and impressions of his teeth. One of the x-rays was of his whole skull and neck, which was kind of cool to see, especially given the date. He will be getting braces in mid-January and will wear them for approximately two and a half years if all goes as planned. I felt morose and sorry for him the whole appointment because I did not particularly enjoy having braces, but I guess it’s a rite of passage and surely there have been advances in orthodontia since the 1980s that should make it more comfortable.

Afterward we had lunch at California Tortilla, which did not appear to be observing the holiday at all (missed opportunity there) and the kids and I coaxed Beth into trips to Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, which are both located in the same shopping center. Beth and I both worked a little in the afternoon and June had a make-up violin lesson, which Beth got to attend for the first time.

Saturday: All Souls’ Day

Noah and I made pumpkin bread Saturday afternoon. While I was scooping out the shell of the pumpkin, I found a sprouted seed inside it. I kept it to show everyone. June wanted to plant it and I automatically said no, because it’s November and the wrong time to plant pumpkins, but then Beth said why not put it in a pot and see what happened, so I relented and wrapped it up in a wet paper towel to keep it moist until I got a chance to plant it. It did seem determined to live.

Later that afternoon, Beth and I participated in June’s therapy club and her martial arts club. This was the second meeting of the therapy club. I’d missed the first one last weekend while I was at the pool. Therapy club consists of sitting in chairs outside and chanting a series of syllables after June, lying on the ground on a beach towel, and eating fresh mandarin oranges. Her martial art—Niclimba—involves doing movements with sticks and was less soothing to my soul, largely because I could never remember the sequence of the movements.

Sunday: Fall Back, 12.5

We set the clocks back on Saturday night, which meant that when the kids’ conversation in their bedroom woke me at 6:15, it felt like 7:15 and I wasn’t as irritated as I might have otherwise been.

June had a birthday party to attend with a wraparound play date because we were planning to take Noah to see Ghostbusters at the American Film Institute and our regular sitter was not available. When I asked Megan’s mom Kerry if June could play at their house that day (completely forgetting Kerry had a birthday party—a Chuck E. Cheese’s birthday party no less—to supervise that day) instead of saying, “Are you crazy?” she welcomed June to their house before and after the party. Thanks, Kerry! I owe you.

When we got to the theater, Beth said what she always says, that the full-size, ornately decorated theater is how all theaters should look. I remembered surprisingly little about the film, but I enjoyed it. Bill Murray’s comic timing and delivery of his lines is exquisite. The film was both scarier and sexier than I remembered, but I think it was okay for Noah. He laughed at the right places, anyway, and seemed to especially like when the demon takes the form of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man at the end. He’s growing up—in fact Beth actually forgot to buy a twelve-and-under ticket for him and then she said, “It’s because you’re so mature. I don’t think of you as a child.” And he won’t be eligible for that twelve-and-under price much longer. It was his half-birthday on Sunday, so we stopped at Cake Love after the movie, for the traditional half-birthday cupcakes.

Later that afternoon (or should I say evening, as it was dark), June and I took down the Halloween decorations from the porch and yard and packed them in boxes. Beth made a white bean soup for dinner and after dinner we had the cupcakes to celebrate a decade and a quarter of Noah.

“How did our baby get to be twelve and a half?” I asked Beth. She just shrugged.

Time marches on, Halloween is over, and my kids keep insisting on getting older. That’s okay, though. Whether he’s dressing himself as public transportation fare card or she’s inventing a new martial art, wondering what’s around the corner is what keeps me going sometimes. Love is kind of crazy with a spooky little girl and boy like these two.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Friends