Spring Break Trilogy: Part I, Before the Beach

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Steph

Not since Noah was in kindergarten and in trouble all the time at school have I been so ready for his spring break. Noah’s not in trouble now, quite the contrary, he’s happy at school and recently brought home his best report card of the year (7 As and 2 Bs). But he’s been working so hard that he really needs some down time. He’s got homework, of course, but not much more than a normal weekend, which means he can spread it out over the course of the two weekends that bracket his vacation and keep the five days in the middle homework free. During that time, we’re going to Rehoboth for three days. Here’s how we spent the first three days of break, before the beach:

Day 1: Saturday
The first part of the plan for Saturday was to go to the Smithsonian (Air and Space) to meet a friend of mine from high school who is in town briefly. She was traveling from the Philadelphia area with her husband and son and needed to swing into the Virginia suburbs to pick up her nephew. But almost nothing on Saturday went exactly according to plan.

To make a long story (involving heavy rain, traffic and a broken cell phone) short, I will just say we cancelled around 11:20 when we discovered that Regina and her family, who’d hoped to be at the museum by noon, were only as far as Aberdeen. Since everyone was geared up to leave the house and we had a broken cell phone (mine) on our hands, Beth proposed we go to the AT&T store in Silver Spring, out to lunch at Noodles & Company (Noah’s favorite chair restaurant) and then to Starbucks. A good plan, with something in it for everyone, I thought, so we went, got the phone fixed and ate lunch.

Returning to the car after lunch Noah asked, “Why are those lights on?” He was referring to the taillights of our car.

“Oh no!” Beth said and explained to Noah that the battery of the car might dead.

“We’re having a bad day,” Noah observed. Beth agreed.

Before she even checked to see if the car would start Beth was saying it would be okay if it didn’t. I could take the kids home on a bus and she would call someone to fix the car and cancel the presentation on text messaging she was supposed to be making in the city very soon. Whenever Beth says it will be okay and calmly outlines alternate plans, it’s a good sign she’s panicking inwardly, so it was a relief when the car started up fine. Beth drove us home and left for her presentation.

When we’d left, June was already pretty wet from playing outside in the rain while Beth had been trying to fix my phone and Regina and I were exchanging calls and changing plans, so by the time we got home, she was chilled and wanted a warm bath. It was unorthodox timing, but it seemed like a good way to get her warmed up and it would clear some evening time in case we managed to connect with Regina during the evening, so I went ahead and ran her a bath. Once she was clean and dry, she had her Quiet Time. Toward the end of it I started getting things ready for her lemonade stand.

Yes, that lemonade stand, the one that was the reward for being fully potty trained. June needed to be accident free for seven consecutive days and the previous Tuesday had been the seventh day. When I asked her if she would like to do it immediately or wait for warmer weather, she said as soon as possible. So we picked the first weekend day, even though cold and rainy weather was predicted. We have a roomy front porch. I figured we could set it up there and I was not expecting much foot traffic anyway. I posted it as an event on Facebook, sent out an invitation on the listserv for her preschool class, emailed a couple friends, and for good measure put up a few signs at Ride-on and school bus stops near our house. Noah made a fancier sign that he put on one of the pillars of the porch. (He would have made all the signs, but I wanted them up by Thursday night so they’d be there during the morning and evening commutes on Friday and he had too much homework to finish his sign until Saturday morning.)

Once June was awake, she and Noah started helping with preparations. I cleared everything off the round table we keep on the porch and cleaned and dried some plastic patio chairs and brought them up onto the porch along with a metal folding chair from inside. June selected a sheet with a Noah’s ark pattern to drape over the table. We brought out some quarters to make change and a collection of paper cups in many designs left over from birthday parties past. We made a pitcher of lemonade. I put a teakettle on a low boil in the kitchen and selected a few varieties of tea to display on the table because it really was quite chilly and I thought some of the adults might prefer hot tea.

Then it was 4:20, forty minutes before our advertised opening time, and we were all ready. June was so eager to get started that she wanted to start sitting at the table, but this didn’t seem like a good plan, so after an aborted attempt at thawing some cookie dough to bake into cookies for the stand (the dough didn’t thaw fast enough), we settled on reading Catwings books (http://hem.passagen.se/peson42/lgw/books/b_catwings.html) until show time. We finished the third one and then brought the fourth one out onto the porch.

Beth got home from her meeting around 4:55 and found us sitting outside. She asked if she could buy a cup of lemonade but June said family would have to wait until all other customers were served. There were no other customers in evidence, but Beth agreed to wait. At almost exactly 5:00, there was a terrific crack of thunder and June bolted inside the house. It was raining hard and there was a severe thunderstorm warning and, just for fun, a tornado warning, too. Beth started to talk to June about this, to prepare her for the idea that she might not get the turnout she was anticipating.

June looked stricken. “Do you think no-one will come?” she asked. We said we didn’t know. Beth promised her she could have another lemonade stand some other day if no one did.

We resumed our posts outside. I picked up the book and started to read. And then around 5:10, I saw a familiar red Prius with an Obama bumper sticker pull into our driveway. Noah ran out into the rain to greet the Mallard Duck and her mother and toddler brother.

“You’re a good friend,” I called to the Duck’s mom from the porch.

“It was so hot and I was getting thirsty for lemonade,” she said.

And then Lesley arrived and the Ground Beetle and her father and brother and soon we had quite a little crowd drinking lemonade on the shelter of the porch and watching the rain. Some people even had seconds. I made a second pitcher around 5:20 and then a woman who grew up in the same small Bucks County town where I lived from age nine to thirteen and whose mother is still a good friend of my mother’s was walking down the sidewalk with her daughter. She’d seen the announcement on Facebook and as she happened to be in our neck of the woods that day, she decided to drop in on us. And then the Toad’s father came by solo, even though his kids were at their grandparents’ house for the weekend. Finally, at 5:55, Andrea came with one of her daughters. I made her a cup of green tea and she took some lemonade to go and after she left, it was past our closing time of six so we started clearing off the table.

June was thrilled to see each new customer arrive and she made change more or less correctly (we’d practiced) and was quite satisfied with the whole experience. She cleared three dollars in profit. I felt grateful to everyone who’d come to drink lemonade in a thunderstorm just to make June happy. Though no one mentioned it, most of the customers knew why she had the stand. I will miss the community of her school terribly when her final year there ends in less than two months.

It turns out Noah was wrong. It wasn’t such a bad day after all.

Day 2: Sunday
And as if one Facebook-initiated meeting with some one I had not seen in twenty-five years was not enough for one weekend, we met up with Regina and her family for dinner Sunday night. Since they were on their way back to the Philadelphia suburbs and June had her swim lesson at the University of Maryland, I picked a diner in College Park where we met for an early dinner. We ate and talked about family and work and mutual friends and travel and children’s books and all manner of things. Regina is friendly and gregarious and Noah responded well to Beth’s coaching about interacting with people he’d just met and June remembered not to mention that meat comes from dead animals when Regina’s family ordered meat and we got desert to go and sent them on their way north. It was a fun time.

Day 3: Monday
Monday morning started off like a normal Monday. Instead of taking Noah to his bus stop Beth took him to Round House’s Theatre’s spring break drama camp, but they left at the same time they usually do. So after June watched an hour of television (The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That and Dinosaur Train), we took our usual Monday morning stroll. Because we didn’t need to get home by eleven for an early lunch and school (which starts at noon), the walk was a long meandering affair. We went as far as the Langely Park post office, where I mailed a packet of newsletter clippings to Sara and then we headed for Long Branch creek.

I watched June scramble down muddy embankments and balance on fallen trees, singing a little song to herself. “I’m not the girl you think I am. I am strong. I am brave,” over and over. I wondered who the “you” in her song was, but I thought if I asked her she’d become self-conscious and stop singing.

Eventually she got down to the water and started pulling rocks out of the creek and handing them to me. She was pretending she was a mother fishing and I was her daughter watching. The rocks were slimy with creek muck and pretty convincing as fish, if you used your imagination. I lined them up on a log and we counted them, first in English and then in Spanish. When I said it was time to go, June was reluctant.

That afternoon, shortly before it was time to go to Silver Spring and fetch Noah I got a call from the Field Cricket’s mom, inviting June over. So instead of spending from three-ten until forty-thirty standing at bus stops and riding on buses with me, June got to build a fort and play in the Cricket’s sandbox. It seemed like a pretty good deal.

Noah and I were on the porch reading The Sea of Monsters when the Cricket, his mom and little sister delivered June back to us. Noah came running down the sidewalk to greet her. “We’re going to the beach tomorrow!” he cried. June relayed the same information to the Cricket’s mom.

“We’re going to the dentist,” Noah added, sounded glum.

“We’re going to the dentist!” June sounded much more excited.

Noah hasn’t been to the dentist in longer than I will tell you and June’s never been. She likes new things and she’s almost as excited about her appointment as our trip to the beach. I hope both experiences like up to her expectations.

A Whole Handful of Years

Posted on March 27, 2011 by Steph

Tuesday night, the night before June turned five, she and Beth were horsing around in our bed while they waited for me to come read a story. When I arrived, Beth was holding up all five fingers on one hand “because I’m going to be five,” June exclaimed.

“Yes, a whole handful of years,” Beth agreed.

Five seems momentous. Although kindergarten is still five months off, she’s the age she will be when she steps onto that bus and crosses the line from little kid to big kid. When that happens, for the first time in over ten years there will be no infants, toddlers or preschoolers in our household. I am more happy than sad about this. June is, too. She’s been telling us all the things five year olds can do, although she concedes that “even five year olds still need a mother,” so we’re not obsolete yet.

I. Wednesday: The Big Day

At 6:50 a.m. on the big day, June crawled into our bed. She’d been up late the night before, full of anticipation and unable to fall asleep, or even stay in bed. Finally, at 9:20, Beth told her if she didn’t stay in bed long enough to fall asleep she’d never turn five and she’d be four forever. That did it. The next time I checked on her, she was asleep.

“There’s a five year old in our bed!” Beth cried, but June is always slow to wake, even on her birthday, and she said she was not ready to open presents. Twenty minutes later, we all trooped out to the living room, where we spread out her presents. There were clothes and books but the biggest hits were the paint-it-yourself ceramic butterfly bank (allowances start at age five in our house) and the SmarTrip. I really did not expect June to be as thrilled about receiving her own bus and train fare card as Noah was at age five, but apparently being old enough to have to pay on public transportation is a big deal to my kids. A lot of the presents were bird or butterfly-related (Fancy Nancy’s Bonjour Butterfly, a hooded towel with an owl head on top and wings on the sides and a tail in back). That’s because the theme of her party was birds and butterflies, not that she knew it yet.

June requested a surprise party this year. A few people have remarked to me that organizing her own surprise party is quintessential June. At first I thought it was absolutely crazy, but then I realized it would give me a lot freedom to plan things to my own liking and it ended up being kind of fun, buying butterfly stickers and bird finger puppets for the gift bags in secret.

Despite the fact that she did not know when the party would be, or who would be invited or what the theme would be, she did set down some ground rules for us. It would be an at-home party, with five guests (she had to choose between this or renting a space, inviting the whole class and forgoing presents). The guests all had to be girls. And we simply had to buy the sun piñata she’d fallen in love with at the grocery store. I conceded, even though I’d found some nice bird ones online and butterfly piñatas are everywhere. This was the downside to the surprise element. She kept suggesting things that did not fit in with the theme. For instance a mere a week before the party she proposed it have princess theme (“and which princess could be the surprise”) but by that point we’d long ago settled on a theme, bought party favors and sent out invitations featuring her own artwork of, your guessed it, birds and butterflies. So there was no going back.

After lunch on her birthday June tried chewing gum for the first time. We’d been telling her she could try it when she was five for a long time, and then she just happened to get five pieces from the piñata at the Gray Squirrel’s birthday party last weekend. She liked it and did not swallow it, though she was unable to blow a bubble (even after sacrificing one piece of gum so I could demonstrate). I told her it might take a while to learn.

After that excitement was over we walked to school, bringing two dozen homemade mini-cupcakes, vanilla with pink icing, and I stayed for about half her school day so I could be there for all the festivities. At Circle Time she got to walk around an oblong rock-filled tray with five lit votive candles (a preschool tradition) and say what she did when she was one, two, three, four and what she will do when she’s five. When she was one, she learned to walk. When she was two, she learned to put things together (she may have been referring to train track pieces—there’s a photo she likes of her doing that on her second birthday). When she was three, she learned to ride a bike (not true incidentally). When she was four she started the Tracks class. When she was five, she was going to try not to hurt her feet when she stepped down hard. Lesley said, she’d never heard that one before and it turned out to be oddly prescient, but more on that later.

After school we opened Auntie Sara’s presents, which had arrived during the day. Among the many lovely gifts were Owl At Home (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Owl-at-Home/Arnold-Lobel/e/9780064440349), a book June loves, which is also a childhood favorite of Sara’s, and a very cute pair of pajamas with green and blue penguins. I’m not even sure if Mom or I told Sara about the bird theme or if this was a coincidence.

Shortly before dinner, June got a splinter in her big toe. It was large and deep and looked pretty easy to get out, but as I tried to pull it out, it broke off, leaving a good chunk inside her toe. I put June to soak in a warm bath in hopes that it would loosen it and when Beth got home she tried unsuccessfully to get it out. She used a needle and June was scared but very brave, holding perfectly still as Beth worked. We took a break for dinner and then I heated up some water on the stove to soak her foot again. This time, Beth was able to get it out and there was rejoicing all around. We ate some of the leftover cupcakes and put the kids to bed.

Somewhere in the middle of all that drama, June decided she would try pooping on the regular toilet instead of her potty and lo and behold, she did it, of the first time ever. We’ve had a real breakthrough in the past couple weeks. She’s having many fewer accidents and it looks like that lemonade stand we promised six months ago that she could have when she was fully potty trained might be set up in our drive way sometime soon. Unless it isn’t. This has not exactly been a linear process.

That night she decided to sleep in underwear instead of a diaper, also for the first time (on purpose anyway—there have been nights we forgot to change her into a diaper) and she was on the verge of agreeing to try sleeping without her pacifier, but at the last minute she backed out. I didn’t press the issue. There had been a lot of milestones in one day.

When it was all over, the presents, the gum, the school celebration, the splinter removal and toilet adventure, June was well satisfied with her day. “I feel so much like a five year old, I don’t even remember being four,” she said.

II. Thursday

The day after her birthday, June arrived at school wearing the pink and orange sundress and fuchsia tights Sara got for her with a coral long-sleeved t-shirt she already owned underneath. Between her birthday, some recent thrift store finds and a hand-me-down shirt, June practically has a whole new wardrobe and “the spring line” as the Bobcat’s mother dubbed it, has not gone unnoticed at preschool. June was also chewing gum and to my surprise when I asked Lesley if she needed to spit it out, Lesley said no. So I left her at school wearing her birthday finery and chewing her birthday spoils.

My mother arrived that afternoon. She has an annual conference that often coincides with June’s birthday, so she was staying for several days. June opened more presents, a lot of clothes and Fancy Nancy, Explorer Extraordinaire! (in which Nancy and friends go exploring and find both birds and butterflies). Mom read to June and we had dinner and the last of the cupcakes and put the kids to bed.

III. Friday

Two days before the party, the weather reports for Sunday were growing increasingly dire. Highs around 40 degrees (and the party was in the morning so we were looking at party-time temperatures in the 30s) and rain or possibly that other stuff, you know, the frozen stuff. I can’t even bring myself to type the word. It’s spring, for heaven’s sake! And we’d planned a walk around the neighborhood to look for birds! And we had a piñata! I briefly considered rescheduling, but the next weekend was the Ghost Crab’s birthday party (four girls in June’s class have mid-March to early April birthdays) and everyone we invited could come on the original date, so after consulting with Beth, we decided to plow ahead (no pun intended). They have outdoor recess at her school in all weather, so her friends are used to playing outside in the cold and wet.

IV. Saturday

One day before the party, Beth took June shopping for balloons and ice cream. June was going to the Cottontail Rabbit’s party in the afternoon and successfully lobbied to wear the flowered, ruffled, beribboned party dress and sparkly pink shoes my mother bought for her all day long. Beth says the shoes were much commented upon by passersby.

After the Rabbit’s very entertaining Let’s-Put-On-A-Show Cinderella party (June played one of the stepsisters), we arrived home to find Beth baking a cake. June took a nap and then went out with Beth to buy a replacement balloon for the Tinkerbell balloon Noah accidentally popped while we were out. They came back with a Dora balloon. (The balloons are an eclectic mix but Beth did manage to get a butterfly balloon into the group.)

That evening Noah vacuumed the living and dining room while all three adults straightened up the house. After the kids were in bed, Beth frosted the butterfly cake and Mom and I assembled the gift bags.

I emailed the parents of the guests, suggesting they send their daughters in boots, coats and mittens.

V. Sunday: Party Time

Despite predictions of one to five inches of the white stuff, we had only a dusting that fell overnight and during the early morning hours and melted by party time. It was very cold, but sunny. I could live with that. However, a new complicating factor was that I was really sick. Beth and Noah have been sick recently and I’d had just the mildest cold the day before that started to really wear my down by evening. I’d been up a good bit of the night, unable to breathe or sleep. But if I hadn’t backed down in the face of a predicted spring blizzard, I wasn’t going to let a head cold stop me either.

That morning, June put on a butterfly sweatshirt. I’d suggested it, and was shocked when she said yes. She generally doesn’t pay much attention to my fashion advice. Noah wore his owl shirt and I put on a pewter necklace with a mother bird feeding her baby.

Through a process of elimination, June had figured out that the party was on Sunday a couple days earlier. (We’d told her it would be a weekend day and she didn’t think it would be on the same day as the Rabbit’s party.) However, she still did not know what time it would be, and Beth came up with a very clever way to surprise her. At 9:40, twenty minutes before the party, Beth and June left the house, allegedly to go grocery shopping. Mom, and Noah and I made the final preparations and waited for the guests. Around 10:10, they had all arrived and I called Beth on her cell. Beth told June she’d forgotten her shopping list and they had to come home.

The look on June’s face when they came in the door and all her friends yelled “Surprise!” was priceless. After weeks of taking her suggestions and negotiating how much of this surprise party was going to be secret, we’d actually surprised her. For a moment she couldn’t even speak, and then she let out an excited, high-pitched squeal. Soon all six girls were talking animatedly with each other.

I told them to come sit on the living room rug for a story. I didn’t have much of a voice, so Mom and Noah took turns reading Fancy Nancy, Explorer Extraordinaire, to set the mood for our bird-watching walk. There was a lot of jostling to see the pictures and occasional side conversations broke out, but overall they paid attention pretty well.

When the story was over, we got everyone back into shoes and coats and set off on our big adventure. Noah had prepared bird identification sheets with images he’d found online of a blue jay, cardinal, crow, duck, robin and sparrow. He also included a parrot on the back as a joke. “We’re not going to see a parrot unless we go to a pet store or the rain forest,” the White-Tailed Deer commented. I said if I took them to the rain forest we would not be home when their parents came to fetch them at noon, so we’d have to stick to the neighborhood. Of course the first birds we saw were starlings and mourning doves, birds neither Noah nor I had thought to include. But eventually the kids were able to check crows, robins and sparrows off their lists. We went down to the creek to look for ducks, which we occasionally see there. The Mallard Duck said she saw one, but no one else did so it’s possible that was wishful thinking or some kind of duck solidarity. Or maybe she has a very sharp eye. Just as we were heading back to the house, I heard a woodpecker. It was hard to get everyone quieted down enough to hear it, but eventually, they all did.

When we got back to the house, Beth left to pick up the pizza and Mom and Noah and I distributed paper, pencils, crayons (and a marker for the Duck, who specially requested one) so they could draw the birds they saw, or a bird from their imaginations. June chose to draw a cardinal. This activity did not last quite long enough to bridge the time to pizza, so Noah organized the girls into a band with instruments from the instrument bin and when Beth came home, she walked in our their impromptu concert.

We had pizza and cake and ice cream. Parents started arriving during the cake so we gave them slices, too, and Beth’s moist and tasty strawberry cake was much appreciated. When everyone had finished eating, it was piñata time. All the little kids had a turn but it was the White-Tailed Deer’s older brother who demolished that thing. Noah didn’t even get a turn, but he didn’t seem to mind; he had been plenty involved in the party.

By 12:15 everyone had said their thank yous and left. June opened her presents, the games and the books, and she played with the Zhu Zhu pets (http://www.zhuniverse.com/) for a little while but around 12:45 she went to her room and came back with her pacifier. She wanted to know if she could have her Quiet Time. It was early but I said yes, being more than ready for a little Quiet Time of my own. Mom said goodbye to everyone and started her drive home and June and I both took long naps. Being alive a whole handful of years can really tucker out a kid, and her Mama, too.

A Little Bit Fancy

Posted on February 15, 2011 by Steph

“Will I be the fanciest one there?” June wanted to know about the tea party at our friends Jim and Kevin’s house on Sunday afternoon. June had selected a pink and white and green dress with a daisy print and a lot of pink ribbon on the bodice. It’s a sundress so she was wearing a white shrug over it and pale green tights under it. I thought she would be, I said, provided there were no other four or five-year-old girls present.

Jim had said there would be two additional guests besides our family, but he had not specified beyond that. They turned out to be two lesbians, neighbors of theirs, and June did not have much competition in the fancy department. Everyone else was in pants, including me, although I had considered a skirt, mainly to placate June. Beth did change out of her crocs into closed shoes before she left the house and I was wearing a black cardigan over a tan turtleneck, an outfit June told me encouragingly was “a little bit fancy.”

June had also managed to convince Beth to buy a Valentine’s bouquet at the Co-op earlier in the day. This was not an impulse purchase. June had secured a promise for flowers for Valentine’s Day at least a week in advance and had reminded Beth of her pledge many times in the interim. They ended up with a half dozen pink roses. The roses sat in a vase on the dining room table; June was wearing a new dress and heading to a real, grown-up tea party; and there was Valentine’s Day the next day to anticipate. In June’s opinion this was shaping up to be quite a satisfactory day.

We had a very pleasant three hours at Jim and Kevin’s place. They set out croissants, ginger cookies, and an apple tart along with a wide variety of teas. Noah loves croissants and ate both his and June’s. She kept asking for more cookies and I kept fetching them for her without keeping a strict count of how many she had eaten. It was very relaxing to eat and drink and talk for what felt like protracted periods of time, even though to the four childless adults there it probably seemed like I was jumping up constantly to get food for June or to entertain her. (Noah was fairly self-sufficient. I brought homework for him, but mostly he sat and listened to the grownups talk.)

I had paper and crayons for June and set up a valentine workstation for her on the stairs. She sat on the landing with her paper one step up and extra materials two steps up. She made a Valentine for the Field Cricket featuring a police officer and a police car. (The Cricket has a strong interest in law enforcement.) Then she made one for Noah and one for Beth. Finally, she made one for Jim and Kevin. I took her down to their basement where Kevin grows orchids so she could draw one. Fortunately, there was one in bloom. We’d also brought along some Fancy Nancy books (http://www.fancynancyworld.com/) and I read a couple of those to her.

When both kids started to get antsy, we got them into their coats and sent them out into the yard to play Hide-and-Seek. Every now and then I caught a glimpse of June’s purple coat streaking by through the trellis on the screened porch. After awhile they came to the door to report that some neighbor kids had invited them into their yard to play. This was startling, as in my almost ten years of parenting this has never happened, except at the beach when families sit in close proximity and the adults can watch their kids playing together from their separate towels. I thought about how although we live in a neighborhood full of kids, no one ever comes over to play without it being vetted and scheduled ahead of time. Seeing us hesitate, Jim said he knew their mother a little bit.

Beth said yes, but don’t go into the house. Every now and then I got up and looked out the window. I could often see Noah’s orange and brown coat, always in motion. June was a bit too short to be seen over the low fences that separated the yards. I could also see the other mother coming to her own doorway to watch her kids and mine every now and then. Whatever they were playing seemed to involve a lot of running around.

It was close to six when we left and we had a half-hour drive home. This made dinner and baths a bit of a rush, but it was worth it. It was the fanciest afternoon I’ve had in a while.

We were expecting another big outing on Valentine’s morning. Noah’s class was going to present their Day-in-the-Life projects. As part of their second quarter research project, they had to write a story demonstrating what daily life is like for a contemporary child in another culture. Noah’s child was German. He had worked hard on it and we were looking forward to seeing him and his classmates present. The class Valentine’s Day party was scheduled for later in the day, after the parents left. Noah had been anticipating both events and exclaiming over how fun it would be to have them on the same day for weeks.

So of course he woke up at 4:40 a.m. sick to his stomach and was violently ill for the next nine hours. It’s often really hard to tell whether or not Noah is sick because he has trouble reading his body’s signals but there was no ambiguity here. He could not go to school. I think he was just as disappointed not to be able to make his oral presentation as he was to miss the party. He’s that kind of kid. I emailed his teacher and asked if it would be possible for him to read the story to the class at a later date and if so, if we could come. She answered no, that it wasn’t a graded part of the assignment so he would not be able to do it. Even though I understand, as a former teacher, how important staying on schedule can be, I was a bit annoyed with her. It would have only taken five minutes and it would have made him happy. So we’ll do it at home when he gets his story back, but it’s not the same.

To cheer him up and because we would not be rushing him out the door to catch the bus, we agreed to exchange Valentine cards and presents in the morning instead of in the evening as we’d planned. There were a great many cards and presents to exchange and it was kind of chaotic with everyone running to get their things out of hiding and sign cards, etc. In fact, we forgot a few presents that did not reach their recipients until Beth got home that night. Mostly it was candy, though I got tangerine marmalade and lemon-pear marmalade from Stonewall Kitchen (http://www.stonewallkitchen.com/) and Beth got a book (http://www.amazon.com/What-Lynda-Barry/dp/1897299354), or rather the promise of one, as it’s backordered. Noah’s valentine to me was three pieces of paper taped together that read: “Who ever said a Valentine card has to be small?” in small text and then “Why can’t it be BIG” in bigger text, and then “Wishing you a LARGELY happy, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and pnuemonooultramicroscopicsilicovolancanoconiosis-free Valentine’s Day! (With many more LARGE words!!!) love, Noah.” Once that was finished, Beth stepped out the door, wishing me good luck.

If there was a silver lining to Noah being home, I thought, it was that he could get a jump on the first assignment in his author study project, which was due on Friday. Over the course of February and March, he had to pick an author and read four of his or her books, plus a biography or autobiography, and then do a series of assignments on the author. Noah chose Gary Paulsen (http://www.randomhouse.com/features/garypaulsen/) and over the weekend he’d finished his fourth novel, leaving only weekday evenings to complete the first assignment. This had been making me nervous.

Noah was not really up for working at the moment, though, so he watched Curious George and The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That with June. He laughed as hard as she did at the funny parts. When her shows were over, he climbed into my bed with a copy of Car and Driver and June and I went out for a walk. This was partly to get them out of each other’s hair because he wasn’t too weak to argue with her and she was not sufficiently sympathetic to refrain from arguing with him. We set out, June wearing the burgundy jumper she had chosen as an appropriate Valentine’s dress, after much thought and negotiation about appropriate school wear. When we returned an hour later, Noah was still in bed, but now he was reading The Lightening Thief. It was ten-thirty.

I asked if he felt well enough to work and he thought he might, but he accomplished very little over the next two hours. June finished her last valentine, a cityscape for the Mallard Duck (who recently traveled to California, which as it turns out June thinks is a large city). June worked on her valentines over the course of several weeks and they were quite eclectic in style. Most were hand-drawn but one was printed out from a free web site and colored and a few more were cut out from Ladybug magazine. These were all bugs—a grasshopper saying “Bug Me” or a bee saying “Bee Mine.” You get the idea.
As June drew and ate lunch at got ready to leave for school, Noah sat at the dining room table, occasionally paging through the books he was trying to take notes on, but mostly staring out into space.

By the time I returned from dropping June off at school, he’d left his post and hadn’t taken any notes. He was still not feeling well and I wondered if he was just too sick to get anything done, but once we were alone in the house and able to talk through the steps of such a project—deciding which assignment to complete, skimming the novels he’d read, taking notes, selecting quotes for the poster he was going to make and sketching out how the poster would look, things started to move along, if slowly. I’d leave him to ride the exercise bike, or to attend to the laundry and then come back and check on him and give advice. His project is on literary devices (foreshadowing, flashbacks, imagery and figurative language) and we even had some fun conversations. What unemployed English professor would not want to have someone ask her, “Why do authors use flashbacks anyway?” So we talked about literary devices and he had some good insights. It was a conversation we might not have had time to let take its full course on a normal day, with his little sister vying for my attention.

By the end of the day he had most of his quotes identified and typed into a document and he had written explanations of how most of the literary devices furthered his understanding of the novels. If he doesn’t have much other homework this week he should be able to pull it all together by Friday.

Meanwhile, I went back to nursery school to fetch June, who had a handful of valentines from her friends and a homemade sugar cookie the Painted Turtle and his mother baked. She insisted on carrying the Cottontail Rabbit’s card home in her hand and after I read her the text printed on the card (“so glad we’re friends”) she insisted it said “so glad we’re best friends.” June’s got a bit of girl-crush on the Cottontail Rabbit right now.

After her nap, June helped me make orange scones, half with raisins (because she likes them) and half with dried cranberries (because Noah likes those). At around two-thirty Noah had started eating again, consuming a banana, an English muffin and a container of yogurt over the course of three hours, so I thought he could have a little dinner. All he wanted was the scones, so that’s what he had. Beth and I had spinach and goat cheese omelets and vegetarian sausage with ours, and June had sausage and broccoli with hers.

Before bed, Noah, who had been surrounded by Valentines sweets he could not eat all day, politely asked if he could try a little candy, so I said one piece and he had a hazelnut truffle and pronounced it good. I was glad there was a little sweetness in his day. There was some in mine, too, even though it was not the Valentine’s Day any of us expected. I got chocolate and yummy jam and the pleasure of discussing literature with an intelligent student. That’s at least a little bit fancy.

The Eighth of January

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Steph

I am finding myself somewhat out of sorts with the new year. As I was walking June home from preschool on Thursday I noticed a few students wandering around the small college near our house. That campus has been deserted since the middle of December, so I’m assuming their new semester starts soon. Seeing those young people, I was seized with an unexpectedly strong desire to be teaching the Winter Term class on Literature of the Americas I taught twice at the University of Maryland or to be busily prepping for a new semester of the horror class I taught for six spring semesters at George Washington University. I wrote on Facebook that I wished I was starting something as “exciting as fresh, new semester,” but that was not precisely true. I didn’t want something like a new semester, I wanted a new semester.

And that’s my problem. I’ve been out of the classroom now for five and half years and I can’t stop looking back. This makes it hard to look forward and it’s time I was doing that. This year, 2011, is the year June will start kindergarten. It’s the year I could, and should start working more than the few hours a week I work now. We could certainly use the money, and I could use the mental stimulation and sense of purpose and identity work would give me. But when I consider my options, I just go around in circles. I can’t think of anything I really want to do. So if you’re reading this and you know me and you have an idea of something I might be good at, please leave me a comment. Sometimes I think I need some opinions from outside my own head. Because my own head keeps whining about things it simply can’t have. It gets annoying.

The year did get off to a good start in some respects. June slept through the night nine times in row. And our friends Jim and Kevin came over on New Year’s Day for a buffet of fancy cheese, fruit, crudités and vegetarian Hoppin’ John (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoppin’_John). I’m not from the South, but I have appropriated this New Year’s tradition of eating black-eyed peas on January 1st for good luck in the coming year. I figure we can all use all the luck we can get. It was really lovely to see Jim, who is one of my oldest friends and whom I hadn’t seen in almost two years. He sent me a hand-written thank you in the mail, which was also delightful. I can’t remember the last time someone did that.

On Friday, I co-oped at June’s school for the first time since November. (The school was closed when the boiler broke on the only day I was scheduled to co-op in December.) It was nice to be back in the classroom. It was my turn to make snack so I brought crackers along with celery, peanut butter, cream cheese and raisins in hopes the kids would make ants on a log out of them, though mostly they ate the component parts separately. And when snack was over, I joined the music class where they were listening to Carnival of the Animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carnival_of_the_Animals) and pretending to be different animals and I played with the kids inside and outside. There’s a big skeleton floor puzzle that’s new or newly brought out of storage and I had fun helping some of them put it together. I also got to see the kids’ newly invented playground game, 1-2-3 Split. Someone says this and they all go running off in various directions screaming. There is some murky narrative to it, involving screaming babies (always played by June and the Toad) menaced by the Robin and protected by the Black Bear. Unfortunately, things got out of hand at one point and the Toad got the worst of it when one kid pushed another and a few of them went over like dominoes. June was in the middle of the pack that went down and her skull crashed into the poor Toad’s cheekbone. Despite the mishap, June was very excited to have me at school; I think she missed having me there.

On Saturday morning we had a little snow and the kids got to go sledding in the yard before it melted later in the day. I have to admit I was a bit grumpy about the snow. It was coming down pretty hard for a while and after last winter’s record-breaking storms, any snow at all makes me skittish. I see snowflakes and I imagine there will be three feet of snow again and will be school cancelled for two weeks and we’ll all go completely stir-crazy. Beth reminded me it was only supposed to be an inch and that is was a Saturday morning, just about the best time for snow, from a school-closing perspective. I know I should be more supportive of the snow-positive members of my family, but I just don’t seem to have it in me.

Beth spent most of Saturday afternoon talking to prospective parents at an Open House at June’s school. When she got home, I made pancakes with an apple-pear compote for dinner. As I prepared the sauce, I listened to NPR. The top story, of course, was the shooting of Representative Giffords, which made me feel sad for the world, its confusion, its anger and its violence. Next up was A Prairie Home Companion (http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/). There was some fiddle music on the show, which put me in mind of how much I miss Saturday evenings at the now defunct Savory Café, where we used to go see Takoma Zone play blue-grass and old-time music. I was now thoroughly melancholy, wishing we could go there after dinner, when almost as soon as I had wished it, “The Eighth of January” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxva-itzRQY&feature=related), one of Takoma Zone’s signature tunes was playing on the radio. And even if a comfy chair and a latte and a live band didn’t suddenly appear in the kitchen, it was as if a little of what I had wished for had magically been granted to me.

Maybe it will be like that eight months from now, when I need a job; maybe it will just come to me. I would like that, even if what comes is only a fraction of what I want in my heart of hearts.

Later in the evening, we all listened to a downloaded copy of “Rebel, Rebel” together, in lieu of our nightly poetry reading. The reason for this is Noah’s new left-handers desk calendar. Each page has a quote or facts about a famous southpaw. It turns out January 8th is David Bowie’s birthday. Noah had never heard of him and wanted to hear one of his songs. (In some ways we have sadly neglected the children’s musical education.) So he found a photo of Bowie online and printed it out for us to look at while we listened. The song was Beth’s choice. I think I might have chosen one that didn’t contain the line “Hot tramp! I love you so” but Noah didn’t ask any uncomfortable questions. All through the song I was struggling to remember the lyrics that were coming up and wondering just how inappropriate they’d be. Despite this, it was also fun. We rarely listen to music that’s not kids’ music anymore. When I have the radio on it’s usually news and I most often listen to music when the kids are out of the house and I can pick my own CD without having to consult anyone else. I think the kids are missing out because of this, though. I have such fond memories of the records my parents played when I was young and the music that was on the radio. It’s something I almost don’t realize I’m missing.

And maybe finding a job or piecing together a part-time freelance career could be like that, too, scary and fun at the same time, and in the end, just what I didn’t realize I should be doing until I do it. I don’t know, but I hope I can be open enough to the possibilities to find out.

Everything We Have

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Steph

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At Thanksgiving dinner my mom asked everyone to go around the table and say what made us feel thankful. Noah said computers, being at his new school, and “Mommy and Beth.” June’s answer was simpler: “Everything I have,” she said. When Mom pressed her for specifics she said her toys, but I liked her first answer better.

We drove to my mom and stepfather’s house on Thanksgiving so on that day we pretty much traveled and ate and went to bed. Friday was an eventful, or in June’s words “a giant day.” Beth and the kids and I drove out to the Main Line, where we lived when I was in high school, and had lunch at Hymie’s deli (http://www.hymies.com/hymiesMarion.html), an important hangout spot during my eleventh grade year and the establishment where I learned to appreciate cheese fries. It also has a “World Famous Pickle Bar” and given that pickles are one of June’s favorite foods, it seemed like a natural choice. In fact, I wondered why I had never suggested we go before. We didn’t count on the Black Friday lunch crowds, however, and had to wait a half hour for a table in a crowded waiting area. Service was fast after that, though, and from our first course of pickles to the black and white cookies and poppy seed hamantash we picked up for later in the carryout bakery corner, everyone was satisfied. (And yes, I did have cheese fries, with a salad.) As we left the restaurant, I thought I saw snowflakes swirling in the wind, but no one else did.

We came home and June and I napped. (She’d been up during the night and awakened for the day at 5:45 so we were both done in.) While we slept, Mom and Beth and Noah played Monopoly. When I woke June at close to four and carried her half-asleep and scowling downstairs, Mom was nearly bankrupt, Beth was rolling in money and properties, and Noah was somewhere in the middle. They suspended the game so we could leave for the Christmas light show (http://www.wanamakerorgan.com/xmas.php) at the Wannamaker’s building, which now houses a Macy’s. This show is a Philadelphia tradition I find somewhat daunting to describe, but imagine yourself seated on a red carpet in an atrium, craning your neck to look upward at a screen, several stories high, consisting of light bulbs (an enormous Lite-Brite, if you will) with a big lighted Christmas tree and an ornate organ in front of it. As the organ plays Christmas music and Julie Andrews’ recorded voice narrates, the lights come on in different patterns to depict scenes from The Nutcracker, Frosty the Snowman, etc. Noah liked it, but June loved it. She was rapt the whole time, a few times laughing out loud with pleasure. She must be exactly the right age to receive it all with wonder and delight.

From here, we proceeded to the Dickens Christmas village on the third floor of Macy’s (http://philadelphia.about.com/od/photo_galleries/ig/dickens_village/). You walk through a winding passageway lined with little houses and outdoor scenes from A Christmas Carol. The figures were mechanized mannequins of the sort one used to see in department store display windows at Christmastime, about half life-size. The first one stood at a podium reading the opening passage of the novella. On the walls were plaques with more passages, at least one for each scene. Some of the mannequins moved and some spoke. We made our way through the display very slowly because Noah was reading all the text. (His interest made me wonder if we could read this book together sometime next month.) Noah’s slow progress wasn’t much of a problem because June wanted to linger in some rooms. She loved the ghost of Jacob Marley and concluded it was a leftover Halloween decoration. When we encountered the ghost of Christmas Future, however, she exclaimed, “Too scary! Too scary!” and fled the room. A few minutes later, though, she was tugging on my hand, wanting to go back, so we did.

After we’d had our fill of Dickens we went out for a very tasty dinner at a vegetarian Chinese restaurant and got home well past the kids’ bedtime. Beth says I did a very good job pretending not be panicking about how late we were out.

The next morning Mom, Beth and Noah finished their Monopoly game. (As expected, Beth won.) In the afternoon we met up with a friend of mine from high school at the Tyler Arboretum in Media (http://www.tylerarboretum.org/). What I haven’t mentioned up to now is that my twenty-fifth high school reunion was Friday night and I skipped it. I’ve actually never been to any of my high school reunions. In fact, until recently I wasn’t even sure if my high school had them—I have Facebook to thank for learning it does. Now that I knew, it felt strange to know it was happening, so close, and I wasn’t there. High school was not a very good time for me, especially the first two years and a lot of the friends I did make when I was in eleventh grade were seniors so there didn’t seem to be much point in going. Facebook has brought me back in touch with a lot of acquaintances from my class and I have gotten to know a few of them better than I did back in the day, which has been rewarding. Maybe in another five years I’ll be up for mingling with them in person, but this year it just seemed too overwhelming.

I did want to make an effort to reconnect, though, so I contacted two friends from the class ahead of mine, John, who still lives in the area and Pam, who is back for a year. Only John was free. We decided to meet at the arboretum so the kids (his two and our two) could run around while the adults talked. What we didn’t know and what made the place magical was that there was a series of tree houses and child-sized cottages scattered along the path. Many had plaques explaining what kind of creatures lived there (fairies, pixies, wizards, green men, etc.). There was a sand sculpture of an ogre leaning against a castle with pumpkins at his feet, slowly eroding away. There was a meadow maze, its grass brown but still mowed into shape with several huge straw people in the center. I said it looked like something people who were planning on making a sacrifice to the harvest gods might make. There was a door set into a hill with the question “What Lies Beneath?” posted. Visitors were invited to write a story about it and submit it to the arboretum’s web site. Some houses were too small to enter, but the kids clambered up every ladder they saw and explored every kid-sized building. (June got stuck in one particularly tall tree house when she lost her nerve about coming back down the ladder so John went up and carried her down.)

I think what the kids liked best, though, was the amphitheater. There was a dress-up area with a costume bin and pretty soon John’s nine-year-old daughter and Noah and June were putting on a show for the grownups and John’s just turned four-year-old son, who was too shy to perform. June was a fairy who had gotten lost, John’s daughter was a knight and Noah started off as a wizard but suffered an allergic reaction that turned him into an alligator. Attempts to kill the alligator failed so the knight adopted it instead and then they helped the fairy find her way home. It was a cloudy, chilly day and we had the arboretum nearly to ourselves. It was like our own enchanted kingdom.

As we walked through the woods and fields with the kids racing ahead to find out what came next, the four grownups talked. The feeling was friendly and relaxed; conversation felt easy. John was just as I remembered him, except decades older and with a family if that makes sense. We agreed we should get together again. About an hour into the visit, around 4:40, we told the kids we needed to turn around because the gates closed at 5:00 and as we’d been walking in a circuitous path we weren’t sure how far we were from the exit. The two older kids wanted to keep going, because we hadn’t seen everything, but we persuaded them they didn’t want to get locked into the arboretum for the night (it really was quite cold).

As it turned out the gates did shut while we were still in the parking lot but they’re motion-activated from the inside, so we were able to drive out. (When Beth told this story to my mother and stepfather over pizza that night she said she rammed the car through the gate and my mom almost believed her.)

Sunday we drove home, stopping at the Starbucks closest to my mom’s house for the traditional first holiday drinks of the season. I got an eggnog latte; Beth got gingerbread. We listened to The Austere Academy (Series of Unfortunate Events #5) on the way home. I was glad June slept through a good bit of it, as it’s not really age-appropriate.

Today we’re back in our regular routine–Beth went to work; the kids went to school. Beth was unenthused about going back to her office and I can’t blame her, but I’ve been happy today and full of thankfulness for time with my family and an old friend met anew and deli food and low-tech light displays and Charles Dickens and eggnog lattes and the timeless story of everything we have.

Tea for Three

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Steph

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Yesterday morning Beth posted a photo to Facebook with this caption: “A tea party is happening at my house. The 4 year old girl kind, not the political kind. In some ways just as incomprehensible to me.”

The tea party was weeks in the making. Not in the planning so much as we just threw it together at the last minute, but in the scheduling. Even though I had restricted the guest list to two friends (the same two who were unable to attend June’s birthday party, which is how I got her to agree to such a small party), it still took weeks to find a mutually agreeable date. That it ended up in mid-September was a plus, really, because the party happened to fall on a rainy and unseasonably cold morning, the kind of morning when hot tea seemed appealing.

I’d promised to bake for this party, but I had the revisions on the digestive brochure due Monday so we went with store-bought treats, but only after agreeing to bakery cookies instead of the Pepperidge Farm sampler I had in mind. Beth and June went to buy the cookies (flower-shaped, with pink sugar sprinkles) on Saturday morning. They also picked up some Little Citizen’s Herb tea (http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/beverages-for-kids-republic-of-tea-little-citizens-herb-teas-for-children), which they had previously noticed while grocery shopping, and a baguette and we were in business.

Sunday morning we cleared off the low round table in the living room where the Playmobile castle and some other toys are usually housed. I gave June a choice of several old sheets to use as a tablecloth and she went with the Kermit the frog sheets I slept on as a child (okay, also as teenager—I took them to college with me). Then I asked her to go pick a bouquet from the back yard. She returned with a handful of purple thistles and instead of putting them in a little cup or glass as we usually do, Beth actually dug out a small glass vase. I asked if June would like a zinnia for her bouquet (she’s been wanting to pick them all summer and I keep saying no) and she said, “Yes!” This just kept getting better and better, she seemed to be thinking. While we were out there, I snipped a small bloom off one of the sunflowers as well and we brought both flowers inside. Next we set the table with her new pink and green tin tea set and some princess napkins left over from her birthday party. June set the cookies on the napkins because the plates were too small to hold cookies and bread at once. I buttered two slices of baguette for each girl, put one on each plate and the rest on the serving tray and the table was ready.

June had decided ahead of time that she wanted to wear her yellow dress with the daisies my mom bought her this summer. Due to the chilly weather, we put a white sweater on over it and I suggested tights. I had white ones in mind to go with the pale dress and sweater, but June thought the red ones were more striking, which I should have predicted. Last spring she started to develop some interesting ideas about color-pairings. So, anyway, she wore the red tights, along with a pair of shiny red Mary Janes (or Mary Jeans, as she calls them).

Noah was getting dressed at the same time. I saw him grab a pair of jeans and t-shirt so I asked him if he wanted to dress up a little for June’s party. Sure, he said. He kept the jeans but swapped the shirt for a short-sleeve orange plaid button-down. When asked, Beth announced she would dress up for June’s wedding but not until then.

I let June choose between two outfits for me. She nixed the brown velvet skirt and selected the long pale green cotton skirt with the blue turtleneck and the blue and green vest I wore at Beth’s and my commitment ceremony and which still gets trotted out occasionally for special occasions.

Now the table was set and everyone was in their finery, but it was only 9:30 and the party didn’t start until 10:00. Beth was busy with some last-minute cleaning and re-assembling the fairy princess tent that Noah had broken a week or so ago, so I took June to the computer and we watched clips from Disney princess movies (one of her favorite online pastimes) until it was almost time for her guests to arrive. Noah was composing a song on his keyboard he would set on a continual loop during the party and making a welcome sign for the front door.

Finally the Ground Beetle (a.k.a Red Gingko) and the Toad (a.k.a Yellow Tulip) arrived. They sat right down at the table and got to work on the food and drink. For a while I was kept busy pouring water, apple juice and tea, and fetching more bread, but eventually everyone had what she wanted and I sat at the dining room table with Noah where he ate his share of cookies and bread and butter. From the next room, I could hear the Toad declare the tea “scrumptious.”

When all the food was gone, the girls got up and headed for the dress up bin. In some ways this was an extension of the previous day, when the Ground Beetle’s parents hosted a back-to-school party for the whole class. The Ground Beetle has an extensive collection of dress-up clothes. Twelve of the seventeen Tracks were in attendance, most with older or younger siblings along, and for three hours almost all the kids were old enough to walk were trooping up and down the stairs, each time in a different costume. It was amazing.

Anyway, the girls made do with our more meager share of costumes. The Toad had arrived in a Snow White dress, which she shucked off to get into June’s fairy skirt and wings. The Ground Beetle asked if she could wear the Snow White dress and the Toad graciously agreed, adding, “but you can’t take it home.” June kept her clothes on but she did add her crown with the pink ribbons to her ensemble.

Soon all three girls and Noah were in the fairy princess tent where he read them Dora’s Fairy Tale Adventure. “I love that one,” the Ground Beetle sighed before he started. Earlier she had been examining June’s extensive collection of Dora books a mite enviously.

And so it went. Basically the kids played independently for the rest of the party, which lasted until 11:30 and I actually got to read the Sunday paper. Most of the time Noah played with them, performing magic tricks and helping them organize a wedding. (I never quite understood who was marrying whom.) We must have picked exactly the right ending time, though, because just before 11:30, I noticed June’s guests were in the tent and June was nowhere to be seen. I found her in my bedroom, looking at a book. I suggested she play with her friends but she said she’d rather I read her a book. Okay, I said, but in the living room where the other girls could listen if they liked. The Ground Beetle’s dad came to fetch her before we got started and then I settled on the couch with June and the Toad to read. Before long, the Toad’s mom and brother were there and the party was over. The Toad cried when it was time to leave. (Weeping at the close of festivities: your sign of a successfully hosted affair.)

And so ended June’s tea party. I think it must have been a lot more fun than the tea party rally outside the Capitol the same day.

Wolves

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Steph

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Last Wednesday morning we left the kids with a new babysitter so we could meet with the educational psychologist who evaluated Noah earlier this month. The sitter asked the kids when they’d be starting school. Neither knew, so I told her September 7 for June and August 30 for Noah.

“That’s soon!” Noah exclaimed in surprise. We’d been telling him school started soon, of course, but I remember how when you’re a kid the summer seems endless. It just goes on and on until all of a sudden, and quite surprisingly, it’s over.

Later that morning, as I walked out of the appointment, I told Beth, “It’s what they always say about him.” Noah is a quirky kid, no doubt about it. Over the years we’ve considered or various teachers, his pediatrician, and therapists we’ve consulted have suggested the following diagnoses: OCD, Tourette’s, Sensory Processing Disorder, Asperger’s and ADHD. But with the exception of Sensory Processing Disorder, he’s always fit some of the criteria but not enough for a diagnosis. (And even SPD diagnosis he received at the age of six was a borderline one.) So, this is a long way of saying the psychologist doesn’t think he has Asperger’s, even if she does she recognize some Asperger’s characteristics in his behavior. She thinks ADHD is a possibility, but she wasn’t ready to make an official diagnosis of that either.

What he has and as far as I know there’s no official name for it, is a big gap between his intelligence and his executive function. Or to put it simply, he’s really, really smart and he’s also a really, really slow worker. He excelled on a verbal IQ test (in the 99.6th percentile) but on a writing speed test he scored in the 20th percentile. This wasn’t news to us. Noah’s teachers have been telling us he takes a long time to complete his work ever since kindergarten. Whether they interpret this as laziness or an intrinsic part of the way his mind works often determines what kind of relationship they have with him and how effectively they can teach him. We’re scheduling a meeting with Mrs. B, his fourth-grade teacher, to discuss the report and the psychologist’s recommendations in hopes that she can make some accommodations for him, though the lack of any official type of diagnosis at this point means we don’t have any legally binding action plan. I’m okay with that for now. I’d rather just talk to the teacher and say this is what we think he needs and see how it goes.

The week before school started was busy. As I mentioned earlier Noah had play dates with Sasha, Maxine and a pair of twins who will attend his new school and he also attended Sasha’s end-of-summer pool party. On Tuesday morning I let Noah walk to Sasha’s house alone for the first time. This is something we’d been mulling over for a long time, but since he will need to walk home from the bus stop by himself this year (June’s school schedule rules out my getting him), we thought we should start letting him practice walking places by himself. As I stood on the porch and watched him set out, I could tell by the set of his shoulders and the way he held his head how proud and grown-up he felt. And it felt right to watch him go.

The next play date was Wednesday. The dynamic of meeting two new kids at once was a little challenging. At first one twin seemed more interested in playing with Noah while the other hung back, and then the twins played together with Noah left out until their mom suggested we move the play date from the playground to an inside space where it might be easier for them to interact. An inside space, of course, meant our house, which was nearby but in no condition for guests, particularly guests I’d never met before. So I just said, “Well, I didn’t clean,” and she said not to worry so we went home and as it turned out they did play better when they had something more structured to do. (They played Monopoly.) Monopoly was the game of choice again on Friday when Maxine came over. She stayed from 9:30 to 1:30 and they actually finished the game, which was satisfying to Noah since the twins had to leave mid-game.

I had the chance to watch Noah at Sasha’s party since it was a parents-invited potluck. At the beginning when it was only Sasha, Sean and Maura playing in the pool he did pretty well. He splashed in the pool, played with the squirters and ate chips when the kids got out of the water and hit the buffet. But as the party got bigger he started to hang back. I encouraged him to join the other kids when the herd of nine-year-olds moved to the trampoline because he likes bouncing, but he stayed on the screened porch with the grownups. By the time the activity had switched to sword fighting with sticks, I didn’t even mention joining them anymore because I know he’s not comfortable with that kind of play. He’d gone back to the pool to anyway. He was alone but he seemed to be having fun. We haven’t been swimming much this summer and he ended up spending almost the whole three hours and fifteen minutes we were there in the water. I think it was okay, given how big crowds of kids overwhelm him. He spent a lot of time alone but he did socialize some, too.

Of course, in addition to the play dates and party, there were school events, too. The ice cream social was Wednesday night. The principal and the teachers played Two Truths and a Lie. Each one had a Power Point slide with two true facts and a lie about himself or herself and the parents and kids had to guess which one was the lie. We didn’t know which teacher he had yet at the time but I think Mrs. B was the one who has gone bungee cord jumping from a crane. Or maybe she was the one who once parachuted out of a plane. In any case, she did not try out for the Olympic Track and Field team. I know that for sure. After learning about the teachers there was a human treasure hunt in which you had to find people in the room who met certain characteristics. (For instance, I signed a lot of people’s sheets as their vegetarian.) Beth and I both find these kinds of icebreakers tedious, so we were happy when it was finally time to line up for ice cream. We did see a few families from Noah’s old school and get to talk a bit, which was nice.

We were back at school on Friday afternoon to meet Mrs. B and tour her classroom and see who Noah’s classmates are. Samira, who has been at the same school as Noah since nursery school days, is in his class, along with Maura who he has been friendly with on and off since kindergarten. There was also a boy who recognized Noah from Improv camp (though Noah couldn’t remember where they’d met until the boy told him) and one of the twins. So there should be plenty of familiar faces.

I studied a flow chart about the writing process and noticed there was a great quantity of books on the bookshelves and a beanbag chair nearby. “Can I come here and sit in the beanbag chair and read?” Beth asked me. A couple of the kids did just that, picking out a book from the shelf and settling in to read.

There was also a display on the wall about different kinds of ecosystems. I said it looked like they were going to study ecosystems and Noah, standing right in front of the wall, said, “Why?”

Then they all had to ask the teacher a question before they left the room. After giving it a tremendous amount of thought, Noah asked why the wall of cubbyholes was filled with two-liter bottles. For a science experiment was the answer. On our way out we bought a car magnet with a wolf on it, as this is his new school’s mascot.

On Saturday afternoon Noah practiced walking home from the bus stop. He and Beth walked there together and then she waited five minutes to follow. Sure enough, they both got home, five minutes apart. I asked him if he felt confident about walking home and he said yes. After a pause he added, “But it was a little scary walking alone.”

On Sunday I made him copy his summer reading log over again because it had gotten wet at some point during the summer and the bottom was all raggedy. More importantly his handwriting was nearly illegible. He made a new grid on the computer, printed it and filled it out by hand, somewhat more neatly. As he was doing this he realized he had not actually finished one of the books he wanted to put on the log, so he spent most of the evening doing that. After he finished he paced around the house, seeming nervous and keyed up, but he went to sleep pretty quickly after going to bed at his new bedtime of 8:45. (We moved his bedtime back when we made June’s earlier. He thinks going to bed fifteen minutes later and having a bedtime after his little sister’s for the first time in his life is “awesome.”)

He slept until 7:00, which qualifies as sleeping in for him. Beth made him his requested lunch of shredded cheddar cheese, saltines, mango slices and grape juice. I took his picture at the gate and (he wanted to pose as an old man) and at 8:10, he and Beth walked off to the bus stop. Fourth grade, I thought. That is old.

June and I went about our day. I took her to Great Kids Village (http://www.greatkidsvillage.com/drop_in_playtime.html) to see Banjo Man (http://www.banjomanfc.com/), who has a Monday morning gig there, and we had a picnic lunch nearby before getting back on the bus to come home. She fell asleep during Quiet Time for the second day in a row. (She would do it the next day as well.) We’d just finished reading several chapters of James and the Giant Peach when Noah walked in the door at 4:25.

“The first day was good,” he said, before I could even ask him and he gave me two thumbs up. He likes his teacher. She had students from her last class write letters to her current class to tell them what to expect. “You shouldn’t be dreading all the homework people say you are going get. True, there are long-term projects but they are usually fun. Mrs. B is an awesome teacher and you are lucky to have her,” begins the letter Noah received. They are doing a lot of get-to-know-you activities right now. For homework he had to write five interview-style questions for the teacher, which she will answer at a mock press confererence and he had to put several objects in a “memory bag” he’ll bring to class and explicate. (So far he has a magnet in the shape of West Virginia and a potholder he made at his old school in the bag.) They have a whiteboard that you write on and what you write is projected onto a screen. They painted on a real canvas in art class. He played with other kids at recess. He said it was less scary walking home by himself the second time. He seemed really, really happy talking about his day.

I don’t know what Noah’s first year as a Wolf will be like. Of course, there’s a lot I could worry about from his uneven social skills to his wandering mind to the logistics of getting him to school and back and the question of how he will respond to the increased workload. But I have a lot of hopes, too, hopes of fun and challenging assignments and kids to whom he can more easily relate. Wolves are pack animals after all. Most of all, I hope he finds his pack.

Napless in Takoma

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Steph

At dinner on Sunday night, I made an announcement. I told June she’d be starting the Tracks class in a couple of weeks and asked if she remembered that we’d talked about how it meets in the afternoon so she will need to stop napping. She nodded. I told her I thought it was time to start practicing and instead of napping the next day, she’d have Quiet Time instead. I thought she might protest, but she took it remarkably well. In fact she didn’t even seem very interested in the conversation.

Now when I made a similar pronouncement to Noah at the same age, he was ecstatic because we’d been struggling over naps for some time. But June loves to nap; she asks to go to nap and usually falls asleep in less than five minutes. At least she did until Monday, when we went napless. I was expecting her to fall asleep during Quiet Time most days in the beginning and for her to be a teary, cranky mess when she didn’t. But five days in, it’s going pretty smoothly, not without challenges, but a lot better than what I was anticipating.

Monday after lunch June said, “Can I go to nap now?”

I replied, “We’re doing Quiet Time instead, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” she said casually. “But can I still have my pacifer?”

For the past year or so June has only been allowed her pacifier at naptime and bedtime. I’d considered this question and had decided ahead of time to say yes. I thought it would ease the transition.

She looked relieved and ran to get it. I spread some CDs out her bed for her inspection. They all still had the little stickers on the backs with the running times on them I’d affixed when Noah used to have Quiet Time. Quiet Time CDs must be at least a half an hour long. I still need to put stickers on all the kids’ CDs we’ve acquired since Noah started kindergarten and we discontinued Quiet Time. I’m not in a big rush, though, because June picked the same CD of fairy stories the first four days (http://www.amazon.com/Barefoot-Book-Faeries-PB-CD/dp/1846861632). I have a feeling the Quiet Time CDs we have labeled may last for a long time.

I also provided June with some markers and drawing paper and she got right to work drawing as I turned on the CD. About twenty-five minutes later I peeked into the room. The drawing was on the floor and June was in bed, under her beloved Cinderella blanket, looking very sleepy. Okay, she’ll be asleep soon, I told myself, but a little later I heard her getting out of bed and at the end of the CD’s fifty-minute running time she trotted out of the room wanting to show me her picture. It was of someone wading in water, not surprising since Noah and June and I had spent the morning wading in the creek.

I’d been conflicted about what we should do in the afternoons this week. Should we stick close to home in case June was too tired for outings, or would outings keep her mind off the fact that she was tired? June’s general preference is to go, so I decided to give it a try. We took a walk and even though she was very slow on the way home, she remained cheerful. By dinnertime she was dragging, but she managed to stay up until I put her to bed around 7:40. It even took her fifteen minutes to fall asleep, faster than usual but I though she might go out instantly.

Tuesday things went pretty much the same way. In the morning Noah went over to Sasha’s to play and June went to a babysitter’s so I could get some work done on a writing project about a prebiotic and fiber supplement. Again, June went to Quiet Time shortly after lunch, drew and listened to the fairy CD and did not fall asleep. Again, I took her out of the house in the afternoon to help keep her awake. We went to Now and Then (http://www.mainstreettakoma.org/nowandthen) and bought her a tea set for an upcoming tea party she is hosting for two of her friends and then we went to the playground. She was exhausted by dinnertime and this time she fell asleep almost immediately after I put her to bed.

Beth and I were both surprised at how easy it seemed. “Maybe she was more ready than we thought,” Beth said.

Wednesday we had a packed schedule. In the morning Beth and I were leaving the kids with a sitter and meeting with the educational psychologist to discuss the results of Noah’s testing (more on that in another post). In the afternoon, Noah had a play date with twins who will be attending his new school. (Their mother had posted on a local listserv looking for play dates.) And in the evening, there was an ice cream social for the incoming fourth-graders at the Center. The original plan was for me to stay home with June while Beth and Noah attended the ice cream social, since it started at seven, which would keep June up much too late in the new scheme of things.

But while the kids were watching television after the play date and before dinner, I noticed June slumping against Noah on the couch. Her eyes were slowly, slowly closing. I wondered what to do. It was past five and a nap now could mean trouble getting to sleep at night. But on the other hand, it could also mean we could all attend the ice cream social. And if I woke her, how on earth would I keep her awake and cook dinner at the same time? Well, it turns out the answer was if I set off the fire alarm while frying tofu that would keep her up. But by that point she’d been conked out on the couch for forty-five minutes because I just didn’t have the heart to wake her.

So we all went to the ice cream social. I didn’t put her to bed until 9:00, her old bedtime, and she was up for a while but she didn’t come out of the room, so I considered it a success. After all, what she really needs to learn to do is to be reasonably alert from noon until three. A catnap in the late afternoon is not a disaster. Goodness knows, Noah had plenty after we officially terminated his nap.

Thursday we went to the library for Spanish Circle Time and then to the Co-op to pick up a few items for Sasha’s potluck end-of-the-summer pool party on Friday. In the afternoon June and I made an oatmeal cake with butterscotch frosting. June did not sleep either during Quiet Time or during Noah’s pre-dinner television hour. (I, however, went to my bedroom while June was in Quiet Time and Noah was reading The Magician’s Nephew and I lay down for my first nap since this experiment started. I found that with the door to the kids’ room closed and the door to our room closed and the fan on for white noise, I couldn’t hear her CD, even though she was in the next room. I managed to doze for a half-hour or so and found myself less likely to snap at the kids when they bickered after that. June’s not the only one who gets cranky without her nap.)

Shortly after dinner, around 6:30 June was sobbing because her diaper “wasn’t comfortable.” I made multiple, futile attempts to straighten it and eventually decided just to take her out of it and all her clothes and put her in the bath to see if that would improve her mood. Soon she was pretending to be a mermaid (her favorite bath time activity these days) playing with her duck, shark and fish friends. That lasted a long while. Once she was out of the bath and in pajamas and had eaten a slice of cake, it was around 7:20 and she said she wished she were in her “warm, soft bed.” Go ahead, I suggested. I wasn’t quite ready to put her to bed because I was engaged in Ten-Minute Tidy, a Thursday night tradition at our house. I bet you can guess what we do—we tidy, at least Beth, Noah and I do. June’s participation is optional. Often Ten-Minute Tidy actually last longer than ten minutes, but Noah’s only obligated to pitch in that long, thus the name. June didn’t help with the tidying, but she didn’t go to bed either. She lay down on her stomach on the kitchen floor to draw. Once I did get her into bed, around 8:00, she fell asleep almost instantly.

Friday morning we had a friend of Noah’s over, along with her mother and younger brother, who’s June’s age. Maxine stayed after her mom and brother had left so the big kids could finish their game of Monopoly. Toward the end of their hours-long game, I took June to her room for Quiet Time. She had finally tired of the fairy CD and wanted to try something different. She chose Pocketful of Stardust (http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/3379764/a/Pocket+Full+Of+Stardust.htm). The very first thing she did was to climb in bed with Muffin, her stuffed monkey, (who she’s recently taken to calling her husband) and get under the covers. Between this and the lullabies on the CD, I thought she might sleep, but in a few minutes she was out of bed, dancing with Muffin. Later, I learned, they went on an ocean voyage. At any rate, she did not sleep. We attended an Open House at Noah’s school and a pool party at Sasha’s house and that kept her reasonably alert during the afternoon. We got home late and she’d tired herself out in the pool and on the trampoline so after a bath and dinner she was more than ready for bed. I think it took her less than a minute to fall asleep once I got her into bed at 7:55.

Not having to lay down with June for twenty minutes and then escort her back to her bed several times after leaving her is a big plus of the new routine in my book. If ending the nap consolidates her sleeping enough so that she starts sleeping through the night more often than her current average of 50% of the time, that would be an even bigger one. I am sorry to miss my more extended break in the middle of the day–that forty-five to fifty minutes goes by fast–but if it means unbroken sleep in the night, it might be a decent trade.

Lost and Found

Posted on July 17, 2010 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

I’m considering never going back to the Langley Park shopping center. We had an experience there yesterday that made June’s tantrum there last week seem like a walk in the park.

The day started off nicely enough. June and I dropped Noah off at art camp and headed for the playground. The Tracks class summer playgroup had been slow to get off the ground this year so I consulted with the mom of the Mallard Duck (aka Yellow Gingko, aka Squash Bug) and we decided to take matters into our own hands and organize the first two. I was taking the first turn.

We got to the playground at 9:35, ten minutes before our guests were scheduled to arrive. June helped me spread a tablecloth on the splintery picnic table and fill the bowls with grapes, plums, Whole-wheat Bunnies, Cheddar Bunnies and Pirate Booty. Then I pushed her on the swing until people started arriving. We got a good turnout—eight kids, almost half the class, plus assorted older and younger siblings.

As I watched the kids tearing around the playground in pairs and groups, splashing in the creek, climbing on the rocks, I marveled at how different they are than they were two years or even one year ago. They play together now–no more shy, silent stares from across the picnic table, no more companionable parallel play; they were in this together. They played zoo, they were airplanes taking off (the former Blue Dogwood’s dad catching them as they leaped from a creekside boulder). June took the Duck to the play structure she likes to pretend is an ice cream parlor and sold her ice cream. And since the Duck was there to play this game with her, I got to sit in the shade and chat with other parents, watch the former Red Maple’s little brother practice his cruising skills and admire the Duck’s six-month old brother, who is just about the smiliest baby I’ve seen since Noah was that age. We had a lovely time.

On the way home, June fell and ripped the scab off an already-injured knee. There was blood; there was screaming; and suddenly my afternoon plans involved getting more of the large size band-aids because I knew we were running low and it has been an exceptionally hard summer on the kids’ knees.

Andrea, who teaches the Bugs class and shares the Tracks class with Lesley and who also had a daughter at art camp, drove Noah home three days this week. After she brought him home with his haul of art projects, and after June had finished her nap, we all headed out to buy band-aids and enjoy our weekly pilgrimage to Starbucks.

I was trying to decide between the Expo Mart, which was more conveniently located but often erratically stocked, and the Rite Aid, which is dependable but on the other side of a six-lane thoroughfare. As we walked, I told Noah we’d try to Expo Mart first, then go to Starbucks, then Rite Aid, if need be. I though that my feeling rushed had contributed to June’s meltdown the week before so we’d left the house at three, a full hour earlier than the week before. I thought no matter what happened we’d be home by five. (Noah likes to watch The Electric Company and it’s only on once a week, Fridays at five.)

We arrived at the shopping center at 3:25, or rather June and I did. Noah had scooted so far ahead of us I had lost sight of him, but I figured he’d be there waiting for us when we got to the parking lot. But he wasn’t. Had he crossed the lot by himself and gone straight to the Expo Mart? He’s not supposed to do that, but June and I crossed the lot in search of him. He wasn’t in front of the Expo Mart. I peered in the doors. He wasn’t near the entrance. Had he forgotten about that part of the outing and gone to Starbucks? It wouldn’t be surprising. It’s where we usually go first and he often operates on autopilot so he could be there. June and I walked the length of the shopping center. I was nervous, but not in a full panic yet. I reminded myself how rare child abductions are, especially when the child in question is not part of a custody dispute. I reasoned if he’d been hit by a car in the lot, there would a noticeable crowd and an ambulance.

When we got to Starbucks I peeked in the big windows. No Noah. I decided to go back to the Expo Mart and walk all the aisles of the store. No Noah. The bathroom at Starbucks, I thought. He mentioned having to go to the bathroom on the way over. Still it wouldn’t be like him to take the initiative to get the key and let himself in. I went back to Starbucks and tried the restroom door. It was locked. The barista gestured to the key on the bar, but I shook my head and said, “Would you recognize my son if you saw him?” He looked taken aback and said yes. I thought he would. We’re regulars there. “Has he been in here in the past ten minutes?” I asked. No, he said. I hurried out without saying anything else.

Now panic was starting to get the better of me and I was crying. June was alternately wailing, “I want my brother back!” and suggesting we halt the search for a diaper change or a drink of water. I told her we needed to keep looking for Noah. I decided I’d go to the Customer Service booth at the Expo Mart and have him paged (though the store has wide aisles and was uncrowded so I was almost sure he wasn’t in there). Then I’d call 911. As we approached the grocery store for the third time, however, I had one more idea I wanted to try before getting the police involved. I crossed the parking lot and went back to the last block where I’d seen him. As we rounded the corner of the high brick wall the separates the parking lot from the sidewalk I saw his empty scooter on the grass. My heart leapt a little, but I didn’t know whether it was in terror or joy until we stepped all the way past the wall and we could see him, standing a few feet from the scooter with a man and a woman. The man was talking to 911 on his cell phone.

The woman started shaking her finger at me and yelling, “Don’t do that again!” over and over, which wasn’t exactly what I needed to hear at the time. I had too much to do to answer her, though. I had to hug Noah over and over and ask him where on earth he’d been. I had to talk to the police dispatcher on the phone and tell her that I was the boy’s mother and how he’d gotten out of my sight and to authorize the cancellation of the police call. I had to thank both the man and the woman for staying with him. He wasn’t crying when I got there, but the woman said he had been when she’d found him. Actually she kept saying that “she” had been crying. I guess it was the t-shirt with the big pink heart on it. Still it was disorienting for me in an already emotionally overloaded moment. I didn’t correct her. After a few more finger shakes, she and the man left.

So as best as we could figure, this is what happened: June and I are in the habit of crossing into the lot as soon as the wall ends, but Noah likes to ride his scooter a little further to the end of the block and he was waiting for us there. Since he was looking for us and I was looking for him, I can only conclude that a car in the lot must have been blocking our sightlines of each other. How June and I crossed the lot unobserved by him, I’m not sure.

I asked him if he’d like to go to Starbucks first so he could use the bathroom and we could all rest a little, but he wanted to stick to the original plan and go to Expo Mart for band-aids first, so we did. When we got to Starbucks, the staff and even some of the customers were all very happy to see us reunited. One of the baristas heard June asking me for water and got an ice water for her before I even ordered anything. Once we were out of the bathroom and seated with our drinks and snacks, I glanced at my watch. I couldn’t believe it was only 3:50. Given that we’d done a little shopping since finding each other, it must have only been fifteen minutes or so that we’d been separated. It felt much, much longer.

“I’m bored,” Noah said after a few minutes.

“What? Getting lost wasn’t a big enough adventure for you?” I said. He thought about it and said solemnly that it might have been the biggest adventure of his life.

On the way home, I kept him on a much shorter leash than usual. I told him it was temporary, but I was still too shaken up to let him get very far ahead of me. The thing is, it wasn’t really an accident that I let him go so far. Beth and I both think that a lot of kids today aren’t given the freedom they need to develop into competent, independent adults. At Noah’s age, I had the run of my whole small town, including permission to cross the busy street where we lived. It’s hard letting go, though, and we still haven’t let him do things a few of his peers already do (walk to a friend’s house alone, fly as an unaccompanied minor). Some of it has to do with his absent-mindedness. I find it hard to imagine him remembering where he’s going or what he’s supposed to be doing in the world on his own. He does go for short scooter rides away from the house and we are thinking of having him walk home from the bus stop this fall. (The bus from his new school will leave him at his old school, about a twenty-minute walk from our house.)

Later we talked the whole incident over with Beth. We talked about communicating clearly about where we expect to meet each other whenever we separate. She praised him for staying put and letting me find him. I suggested if he ever needs to ask someone for help, a mom or dad with kids is usually a good bet. And Beth and I talked about me trying to get in the habit of carrying the cell phone I own and rarely use.

This morning we went to the Lotus and Asian Culture festival at Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens (http://www.nps.gov/keaq/index.htm). Somehow, in our nineteen years in the Washington, D.C. metro area, we’ve never been there, though of course we’d heard of it. As you might expect from the fact that the lotus festival was going on, the lotuses are in bloom now, and the water lilies and the water hyacinth. And now I can tell these plants apart. We walked on earthen paths through the ponds and on a boardwalk and on a forest trail along the marsh. We touched cattails and saw tadpoles in the water and orioles winging through the air. We heard Buddhist monks chanting and watched women dance in kimonos with scarves and fans. June danced along with them, waving her own imaginary scarf. Of course, it was not a completely serene experience, since we did bring the children along, but it was a fun morning in a truly lovely place.

While we were walking along the boardwalk trail, Noah started to complain of ankle pain. He often has pain in his legs, most often his knees, at night, which we assume are growing pains but this sudden pain in the daytime was new. After a while, we left him to rest on a bench while we did a quick loop off the main trail before heading back to the car.

“I am letting him of out of my sight,” I told Beth as we walked away from him.

“Good for you,” she said.

When we came back, he was there, just where I left him.

Ars Longa

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Steph

Noah and June and I had a very pleasant afternoon on Friday. It was a warm, sunny day, but not too humid, perfect mid-May weather. It being Friday, we didn’t need to worry about homework and for some reason, the kids didn’t fight much. Noah rode his scooter up and down the block with June following him on her tricycle. Then he sat under the silver maple in the back yard reading This Book Is Not Good For You (http://www.google.com/products/catalog?hl=en&q=this+book+is+not+good+for+you&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=15407216404610757703&ei=MXDwS6fEJIKdlgeiu-i0CA&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ8wIwAg#ps-sellers) while June and I played in the sandbox. These days her sand castle building prioritizes decoration over building so she will quickly mound some sand together then spend a long time sticking twigs, blades of grass, clover flowers and thistles into it. We also keep a baggie of shells and sea glass in the sandbox for her to use on her castles. When Noah finished reading, he played with his Extreme Bubble Kit he got for his birthday. It took him a little while to get the hang of how to hold and move the rope on sticks to form the huge bubbles, but once he did he couldn’t stop laughing and yelling, “Did you see that one.” When he was finished, he said, “The kit was right, Mommy. This is extreme fun.”

At five we headed inside. I got on the phone to order pizza and the kids watched The Electric Company (http://pbskids.org/electriccompany/). Both kids like this show, despite the fact that it’s designed for emergent readers, in other words kids younger than Noah and older than June. The plot of the main story holds Noah’s interest even if he doesn’t need the little phonics-based sketches that interrupt it. June likes the stories, too, and who knows, maybe she’s absorbing some of the pedagogical material. She has been intensely interested in letters recently. She had a burst of interest last spring, learned to identify most of the alphabet and then forgot about it for a year or so. Now she’s focused on learning to write the letters. Sometimes this is all she wants to do. She likes to make little books. She’ll get one of us to staple pages together and then she’ll draw the pictures and write the words. If she can’t get anyone to help her she will just draw random letters but she prefers to have an adult or Noah tell her how to spell what she wants to say, which is a laborious process because she also asks for instruction on how to shape most of the letters. Just this weekend, she got the hang of starting the letters from the top left corner, going across the page and down to the next line. Before this, she placed them randomly all over the page and was disappointed when the story could not be read back to her.

The Electric Company episode they watched was called “Pop Goes the Easel.” Several of the characters get trapped inside a magical painting and have to figure out how to escape. In the end, what they need is for someone in the real world to finish the series of paintings and paint a castle they can use as an exit. At first the painter thinks he can’t do it because he lacks artistic skill. Then he learns “there’s no right and wrong in art,” gains confidence and saves the day.

I thought it was a fitting gateway to our weekend, which was going to be heavy on the arts. Noah’s school’s annual art show was on Friday evening, June’s school’s art show was Saturday afternoon and on Sunday afternoon we were planning to attend a family sing-along at the rec center led by the music teacher from June’s school (who also used to be June’s Kindermusik teacher). In between all this, we’d squeeze in June’s last soccer practice of the spring season, a long playdate for Noah, Noah’s last swim lesson for the season, some gardening and the usual weekend chores.

I love the art show at Noah’s school. The lead art teacher is very talented and wonderful at helping children realize their artistic potential. It’s always fun to stroll through the halls looking at the paintings, collages, masks, kites and clay figurines, running into families we know. This year a four seasons mosaic made by all the students in the school was unveiled. One circle depicting winter and spring is on the left side of the main doors of the school and another circle depicting summer and fall is on the right side. Noah worked mainly on the spring portion.

I don’t know if more people than usual came to see the mosaics or if people came on the early side to beat the predicted thunderstorm, but it was packed in the halls when we arrived around 6:30. Noah wanted to pretend to be a tour guide as he led Beth around. I thought it would be better for June and me to move at our own pace so we split up. Every student in the school is represented by one or two pieces of work the art teachers select. The kids don’t know what will be chosen until they see it on the walls (usually in the days before as the show is being installed). All the art was lovely, from the kindergartners’ cherry blossom paintings to the fifth-graders’ clay gargoyles. Noah’s piece was a jazz collage. The students looked at art with jazz themes and listened to jazz and then they each picked an instrument. Noah chose a tuba and he represented the music coming out of it with pink and blue strips of construction paper.

The next morning we all headed off to June’s soccer practice. Usually Beth and June go by themselves, but since it was the last day, I wanted to come to see her improvement and to watch her get her medal. Noah brought his scooter so he could scoot around on the path that circles the huge field. There were baseball teams practicing on the field as well and we ran into Noah’s friend Sean (along with his mother and three younger siblings). They were there for Sean and his brother Timmy’s game. They were going to spend the rest of the day at their family’s farm and Sean wanted to know if Noah could come along. I hesitated just a little because it would mean he’d miss June’s art show and I didn’t know if they get him home in time for his bedtime. But it seemed important to say yes so he could have some extended time with a friend. He came home that night around seven o’clock full of stories about climbing on a tractor and in a haystack, gathering eggs and digging in the garden.

Meanwhile, we went to the art show at June’s school. This event is held outdoors, with the children’s art hung on the playground fence, one piece for each of the Bugs and Leaves and two pieces each for the Tracks. In this case, the kids pick their own artwork at a portfolio conference earlier in the spring during which parents get to see their children’s art and journal entries from throughout the year. June ran straight to her collage, which is entitled “Me and Noah going to School Without Mommy.” The kids had selected pre-cut elements to paste together into a snow scene. At the portfolio conference, Lesley told me how careful June had been to match different elements of the children’s clothing and to make sure each figure had a right and left hand mitten. Once we’d admired her work, June wasn’t much interested in looking at her classmates’ art so she went to play in the sand pit with some of her friends while Beth and I socialized with other parents, sampled the refreshments and walked around the perimeter of the playground, looking at the beautiful art hanging on the fence. Around 3:55, five minutes before the show was to end, June decided she did want to look at the art after all so we made a quick circuit. I pointed out every piece that was by one of her classmates. “Where is Yellow Gignko’s picture?” She kept asking. It was near the end, because all the pieces were arranged alphabetically by the children’s first names and the Yellow Gingko’s name starts with a T. Finally we found her self-portrait as an astronaut and June was satisfied.

In some ways it was a nostalgic event. We saw two alumni families from Noah’s class on their way out as we were going in. And even before I saw the Yellow Gingko’s and Red Dogwood’s moms carrying their infants I was reminiscing to June about being at the art show when Noah was in nursery school and how I spent most of the show sitting in a chair, nursing a “teeny tiny baby.”

“That was me!” June said excitedly.

We walked home and Beth and June worked in the garden while I cooked dinner. They weeded and got three tomato plants and four sunflowers into the ground. Beth says June composed and performed a rap called “I Love to Weed.”

The next day Beth had a busy morning grocery shopping with June and taking Noah to his swim lesson and then out on errands. They got home just in time to hurry over to the rec center’s newly renovated auditorium to see Becky’s concert. Along with another singer and with a lot of audience participation, she sang a DC/Baltimore area-specific version of “Little Liza Jane” (a favorite of mine), “Froggy Went a Courtin” (a song that’s four hundred years old, I learned), “The Green Grass Grew All Around” and lots of other folk and childhood favorites. Noah knows that last one from drama camp and loves it. All through the concert he was smiling and singing and doing the hand motions. June was more reserved but she seemed to be having a good time, too. By the end she had started following along with the hand motions.

“Is there anything better than being with kids and singing songs that have been around forever and ever?” Becky asked toward the end of the concert.

Maybe. I think seeing my kids develop as readers and artists and athletes is right up there, but I know we’d all be poorer without the arts in our day to day lives and I hope my children’s early artistic experiences will be with them for a long, long time to come.

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: Friends

Spring Break Trilogy: Part I, Before the Beach

A Whole Handful of Years

A Little Bit Fancy

The Eighth of January

Everything We Have

Tea for Three

Wolves

Napless in Takoma

Lost and Found

Ars Longa