***a good way to keep up with us*** Contact me at meeshemama@gmail.com
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Prouder still
(Elias is feeling much better. He and I went to see the doctor, and although he was pretty dehydrated, Elias drank some red g@torade, slept, nursed and got himself back up to speed by the next morning (after memorializing the whole experience on his bedroom carpet). Thanks for all the well-wishes.)
Now on to the prouds...
Elias was helping me set the table and I handed him two plastic spoons-- one for him and one for Kindred. He put them out and later I asked him what color they each were. He held his up and said, "Blue." Then he pointed to Kindred's and said, "Green." (Sounded more like geen, of course.) But he was right!
~~~~~~~
After playing in the water and getting cleaned up, Elias was downstairs helping Daddy cook, I was on the computer, and Kindred was playing quietly in his room. I could hear him whispering to himself for a long time. Finally I got up to see what he was up to. This is what I found:
He had been whispering the alphabet to himself, over and over. And he'd made it the whole way to "U"!!! He finished it while I watched him. Brilliant!
(BTW, I know I haven't posted more about my retreat. It's coming. Promise.)
Poor guy. He threw up last night and now is feverish and listless. He is sleeping on the downstairs couch, clutching a cracker in his hand. He and I have been hanging out since about 4am. At one point he fell off the futon while I took a short bathroom break and he landed with his legs on the trash can up in the air and his face planted on the carpet. And he never woke up. Awww. Kindred is so sweet to him and kissed his forehead gently on his way out to school. "Feel better, baby," he said.
Noon update: He threw up again, and has been sleeping and sleeping all morning. But the morning was interrupted by this outside our door:
The (most ironic) accompanying story? Michael came home after taking Kindred to school (soo late. He'd also been up most of the night, not sick, just awake.) and pulled up in front of our house. I watched him get out of the car, then just stand in the street looking at his feet for a long time by the curb. Why? Well, folks, there was a grenade (yep) lying there on the street in front of our house looking old and little rusty and, quite frankly, not wanting to be messed with. So Michael moved the car and made the call. The bomb squad didn't have to come (this time), but the cops in blue were baffled and amused (one took a picture with his phone), and the cop in white who came later confirmed that it had indeed been real at one time but was now the equivalent of a discarded souvenir. They took it away, and we chuckled, and called Seid.
Some say that pride is not a good attribute. But I don't think it's deemed bad when it's pride about someone else. And I am proud of my family. Here's a few reasons.
The boys were taking a bath tonight. I made their hair look funny, all stickin' up. Kindred looked at Elias and said, "He looks just like a queen, Mommy!"
We have a fabulous park right around the corner from us. (A selling point to the house, really.) It is big and green and full of trees, cleaner than almost any park I've encountered in this city, and not crowded. We have been there the past 2 days and it's been considerably empty given the beautiful weather we've had combined with a holiday weekend. Yesterday, I took the boys there by myself. There is a little "road" area that I've been wanting Kindred to ride his bike on. It has little signs and pavement with dotted yellow lines that swerve around a few grassy knolls and a few hopscotch boards.
I decided to load the bike into the wagon with one boy (I was hoping Elias but he screamed and cried and begged to be freed from the entrapment of the bike in the wagon, so Kindred took his place and I carried E) and travelled the block or so to the park. When we got there and unloaded, Kindred jumped out of the wagon, climbed on the bike, and ZOOM he was off! He rode all around, even paying attention to the "road signs" and staying in the lines. When he wanted to turn around, he would do a k-turn. I was floored. I had never seen him ride more than a few feet, and I'd never seen him pedal on his own. He's a pro!
(Michael also taught him how to slide down the pole on the jungle gym, and he's gotten really good at that too. Just like Fireman Small!)
I'm also really glad to give Elias a chance to run free in the park. We had the little tiny area next to our old apartment where Kindred learned to walk and ride his bike and I would let him wander around that by himself for hours while I watched from a bench. Elias hasn't really had that same opportunity, so it feels really good to let him go off and commune with trees and bugs and dirt all on his own. Of course, he always brings me samples of everything he finds. Today he came running, shouting, "Nut! Nut! Mommy!" with a walnut shell in his hand. The other day it was handfuls of dirt, which he can also say.
And finally, here's Michael, MowerMan. Every few days when we are outside before dinner, he will pull out our little push mower, left here by previous owners, and run it around our yard-- which is mostly patches of clover and crabgrass. (There isn't much real grass in it, thanks to the previous owner's 2 sizable dogs.) He seems to enjoy this job, now that he has mastered the art of it. Today he kindly let Elias help. He's so patient. Our yard wouldn't look half as good as it does without his help and dedication to it.
So celebrate those you love with joy, and splashing.
Have you ever added "Get Dressed" to your to-do list for the day just so you can cross it off-- even if you can't cross it off until 3:30pm?
Have you ever used the excuse "I would have called you but I couldn't find my phone" when talking about your landline?
Have you heard Elias answer "bl-yew" every time you ask him what color something is?
Have you seen Kindred jump off of everything (beds, chairs, walls) like he's the amazing spiderman? (This is a new thing. He isn't as fearful of adventure and risk as he once was.)
Have you heard Elias answer "Yeah" ?
Have you heard Elias' story about the bee that was sleeping on the deck then taking a bath then "Boom!" fell down down down?
Have you ever kissed a little boy's hand so that he could press it against his cheek and know that you love him even while he's sleeping, only to have that little boy come back to your room a few hours later asking for another kiss because the one you gave him earlier is all wet?
If you have answered "No" to more than 2 of these questions, you clearly haven't spent enough time with us lately. Come visit our den of crazy. At least you'll be entertained.
Did some planting recently. I went to one of my favorite local urban farms and purchased plants to replace the sad sad seedlings that did not, well, grow quite as their packaging had promised.
I put herbs and container tomatoes on the "back steps." Cherry tomatoes, lavender (and eventually peppers and basil) furnish this bed. You can see the little romaine and butterhead lettuce seeds that are trying their darndest to be successful plant life.
Cucumbers have plans to climb up a trellis (not yet acquired-- I have some time) to the rails of the deck.
And here, in the bed where the boys and I watched a snake perish after apparently eating something that did not agree with it in the worst kind of way (which is another sad story altogether) are the tomatoes, chives and random plant life that peeped it's head out of our compost heap that we believe is some sort of squash or zucchini or cucumber. I guess time will tell.
In the front we have hydrangeas, peonies and a pink rose bush. I bought these pink-orange snapdragons to bed in front of everything, surrounded by white sweet alyssum...
...and this hanging basket to adorn the front porch.
And this weekend I went on a mini-retreat to a wonderful place to relax and nap, read, draw and continue a journey learning about the Sacred Feminine. Big thanks to my husband and children for letting me have a few days to myself. I will write more about this journey another time.
Gardening is protest. But it goes beyond protest and proposes and answer. ~Wendell Berry
Kindred made up a game one day while he was supposed to be napping. I came in to the room to get him and he grinned up at me. "Mommy, watch my game!" He plays it often, has created some variations, and many times those watching feel compelled to join in. He had a whole room of adults participating at a party last week.
Took a little break for a while. It happens. The urge to write, the material to work with, the level of interest all comes in swings of the pendulum for me, and I was swinging away for a bit. I have not gone on my retreat yet-- that's next weekend-- so my absence in mostly inexcusable.
However, there was one particular happening that made me pause and make me wish I could wipe my blog away for a minute. And apparently it made me so paranoid this morning that I couldn't fall back to sleep after a little, sad voice woke me up around 5am saying, "Mommy, I'm soaked" and I had kid and sheets to change. (Said kid is actually sleeping next to Daddy and I took the now dry big kid bed.) But I couldn't fall back to sleep.
See, I have a tracker on my site here. I have it because I like to check and make sure that no one is searching for nasty things and coming up with my blog. It tells me how many people have looked at it per day, where they are from, and IP addresses, among other details. I average about 25-30 unique visitors per day. Then last week I checked and I'd had 165 visitors in a single day! The whole week went like that, to the extent that I had over 730 visitors in one week. What the heck is going on?? I wondered. Then I looked at the "Search topics" that brought people to me. Darn it. I'd made the mistake of linking to a picture to illustrate what I might have resembled when my full-body mask went awry. The picture of a certain character in a certain very popular movie played by an actress who happens to pose t0pless, or at least scantily clad, often. Yep, all the people looking for her picture clicked away and *poof* were taken to me and my husband's anniversary celebration details. Probably not quite what they had in mind, those dirty searchers. But I took the link away and erased the name of the character and everything, and it still brought people to that post for some crazy rotten how-the-internet-works sort of way. I got weirded out and got up to do some research to make sure I hadn't acquired a stalker. Sigh. It it a strange culture we live in. Our kids, my kids, are going to have to get the "Don't talk to strangers" lecture, but adding "Even if they seem to know a lot of things about you that I've posted on the internet, sorry about your privacy." Sigh again.
Okay, but I can't end this without sharing something much more light-hearted that I don't want to forget. Today the boys and I went to a sort of arts and crafts show in Sketch-City, PA, about 20 minutes from our house while Michael stayed home to do some work. I had promised them that they could ride in the wagon while I pulled them around to all of the booths. (The show was a bit of a flop and was too small for the wagon, so we went for a walk in the wagon elsewhere later.) Anyway, when we drove away from the house, after music requests had been made and moon roof had been opened, Kindred piped up from the back seat. "A piece is missing, Mommy." I looked up to see if the moon roof was broken but he explained:
