Thirty One

1.  I don't have a favorite color.  My favorite color to wear is red.  But it has to be the right red, or I will look like death warmed over in it.
2.  I have brown hair and brown eyes.
3.  My brother's wrestling coach used to call me "M&M Eyes". 
4.  I asked my husband out on our first date.  Sort of.  It was the first week of August 1994, and I was 17.
5.  We went to a concert: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  Or maybe not Young.  I'm not sure.
6.  Neither of us was really sure that it was a date at the time, but looking back it definitely was.
7.  I drink a lot of tea.  This is our tea drawer:

8.  My favorite teas are Constant Comment and Earl Gray.  Yum.
9.  I also like this tea a lot.  I bought it in Korea and I have no idea what it is:

10.  Before I had kids I was a morning person.  Now I sleep as late as I can.
11.  I miss the quiet of the early morning, the simple thrill of being the only person in the house who is awake.
12.  When I cannot fall asleep at night I imagine myself walking or driving through cities I have visited or lived in, trying to remember the proper streets to take in order to reach a favorite coffee shop, book store, or beach.  It works every time.
13.  The hardest trade-off for living close by our families was leaving the ocean. 
14.  I think that fog is one of the most interesting aspects of living near the ocean.  When the fog pours in off the water on late-winter mornings, the whole world goes milky white and everything familiar disappears.  Sometimes you can even see individual water droplets float by your face, but you can't see your fingers at the end of your outstretched arm.  That is cool. 
15.  I used to work in daycare and I hated it.
16.  I currently work in daycare and I (mostly) love it.
17.  It would be the perfect job if I didn't also have to worry about housework, cooking meals, and letting the dogs in and out 300 times a day.
18.  I wrote my first book when I was in grade school; it was about my teddy bear, who currently resides next to my son's pillow on his bed.
19.  I still wind him up and listen to the plinking tune of Teddy Bears' Picnic when I am sad.
20.  Someday I hope to write my second book.
21.  I am hoping I will have something more universally interesting to write about than my teddy bear.
22.  Yesterday I found two old, junky paintings in the basement and let our kids finger paint over them with acrylics.  I hung them in the living room when they were dry, and I secretly think they are better than any of the works I produced when I went to art school. 
23.  Watching them paint inspired me to try it again, and I have been sketching all morning. 
24.  When I went to college I spent far too much time worrying about the cost of my art supplies and far too little time worrying about my subject matter and technique.  I had all of the time in the world to paint back then; now I have the money for good supplies and lots of ideas, but very little time to paint.
21.  I once dropped a class after two weeks because I hated the way the professor wore her glasses on the end of her nose, such that she was always looking over her glasses and down her nose at us.  My last boss wore hers the same way and I tolerated her for a year and a half.
22.  When I was little there was a field of ferns behind our house that were taller than me, and I used to like to sit beneath them and pretend I was living in the jungle.  They aren't there anymore, but I can still close my eyes and remember what it felt like to sit there and listen to the woods around me, watching the fern fronds sway and lift in the breeze.
23.  One day I hope to visit an actual jungle where the ferns seem just as tall as they did then.
24.  I want to see the world, but if I don't start soon I fear that I will never get beyond New York.
25.  I don't like breakfast foods for breakfast.  I prefer soup, a salad, or leftovers from dinner.  I also think that breakfast foods make a perfectly acceptable dinner.
26.   Yesterday I spent an hour looking at pictures of birds on flickr.  It never got boring for me.  Really.
27.  I want to build a tree house in our backyard for me our kids.  I think every child should have one.
28.  When we do build the tree house I will try really hard not to cringe every time they use the ladder or lean out of the window.  I will also try not to hog the tree house the way I hog the building blocks.
29.  When people ask me how old I am I often have to stop and think about it, because I still feel like much the same person I was when I was twelve, or eighteen, or 21, or 25.  I wonder if everyone feels that way to some extent, like they are still their 5, 7, 15, and 23 year old selves just quished into an older, perhaps wiser body?
30.  The sound of Harry and Emma laughing together is one of my two favorite sounds in the world.  The other is the door opening at the end of the day, which means Brendan is home and we are all together, the four of us.
31.  Today is my birthday.  I am thirty one.

Soon To Be Sold

Remember this house?  It is under contract, and has been for some time.  Every time we drive past it we see cars in the driveway, and one can only assume that work is being done on the inside before the closing takes place.  I drove past today on my way to the pediatrician (three doors down) and saw that the outside, which had been a wreck when we first looked at it, has gotten far, far worse with winter weather. 
And if I am being completely honest I would also have to report that I am so, so glad we didn't get foolish enough to make an offer.  My goodness, what were we even thinking?

Record Keeping

We had well child check-ups for both Emma and Harrison today.  It was the first time I had taken them both for appointments at the same time by myself, and I have to say that my Mei Tai carrier is invaluable.  Harry had tagged along for one of Emma's check-ups once, but today was the first time they both had to be seen, which involves undressing them both, keeping them both in the room, and keeping one occupied while the other visits with the doctor.  I am feeling very accomplished that I did it all by myself!
Harry went first, and after a few seconds of extreme shyness, his curiosity won over and he was agreeable and helpful for the rest of the visit.  He grew an astounding 4 1/2 inches in the last year, and if he maintains his current growth arc he will be 6'2" tall as an adult!!!  He gained nearly 6 lbs, which my arms have certainly been feeling.  He is not color blind, and he has 20/20 vision.  Dr. Anderson wondered if he is already in pre-school because he was speaking in such clear sentences with big words, drawing letters with a paper and pen I had given him, and was counting the different the items in a picture on the wall.  We must be doing something right.
Emma had to have two shots, her final DTap (diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus) and her final Pneumococcal Conjugate (PCV7)...whatever that is.  Ear infections, maybe?  She cried when the stethoscope came out, and it was downhill from there, but we survived it.  I am glad her appointment was second in line because Harry was really upset with the nurse for "hurting his baby".  She certainly has a tough job, standing up to the accusations and glares of big brothers all day long!  Emma weighed 22.1 lbs and was 34 1/4" tall, and is by all accounts developing as she should be.  The doctor told me that we have smart, healthy, well adjusted kids, and there is nothing a mom likes to hear more than that!

The Week In Pictures

  

Not One Good Segue To Be Found

Could winter just end now?  Please?  I mean, this is just starting to drag on, isn't it?
With the warm snap of a few weeks ago we were doing so well.  I was able to take Emma and Harrison both out to play on the driveway, where neither could get stuck in snow, but where the snowbank boundaries also worked in my favor as a sort of child-corral.  I dragged out the ride-on toys and basked in the delight of sunshine on my face for hours, watching them splash in puddles and throw slush balls at each other.  They were good and tired by naptime, which gave me a few free hours with which to sit at my sewing machine in the afternoons.  Life was very good.
But Mother Nature has nothing if not a wicked sense of humor and now we've got 15 inches of new snow out there, which just makes me grumpy.  I am tired of this, I want to be somewhere where I can see the grass, where the lake water isn't frozen, where I can leave the house without 42 layers of protective clothing.  I am very, very ready for spring.

Just thinking about spring makes me want to shake the dust our of our house and make a huge cleaning effort.  I have been slowly but surely getting rid of extraneous stuff and junk, of which we seem to have tons.  It is a slow process and one that I do not find much joy in, but I am determined to complete the project.  My goal last fall was to decrease our worldly belongings by 1/3, which is now looking much more difficult than I once thought.  I think a more realistic approach will be to rid ourselves of 1/4 of our stuff, and implement a strict policy of removing one item for every item added from here on out, with an extra effort not to buy things to replace all of the crap we are getting rid of in the great heave-ho.  It's tough.  There are things I pine for, like new pillows for the couch in a pretty shade of blue, and sisal area rugs for the living room, and new upholstery on the couches in the living room that have been trashed by toddlerhood (Also, who buys dark green upholstered couches?  In Upstate NY, where winters are dreary and dark?  What were we thinking?).  The wish list is ever-so-long, but I am trying not to succumb to the subtle pressures of magazine articles about fresh new looks for spring. 
Our laundry is out of control.  Unless we do two loads per day the mountain of soiled fabric grows exponentially in the basement, where it is easily forgotten unless one seeks it out.  Part of the problem: we've decided the kids have too many clothes.  I started going through them today.  Harrison had thirty t-shirts in his drawer, not counting the plain white undershirts and the stray ones hidden in the mountain of dirty clothing downstairs.  Thirty t-shirts.  That is ridiculous.  I started a bin of items to be donated and tossed in everything that is 2T and under in size, regardless of whether or not I think he can sneak in another month or two of wear.  That eliminated a huge pile of clothing, and I was surprised to see how many 18-24 month items were still in the mix.  I fear the project of going through Emma's closet and drawers.  Like her beloved Aunt Brooke, the Little Miss is a bit of a clothes horse.  Thankfully I have a few places to hand down the girl clothing, and the rest can easily be donated as well.  My goal is to have only clothing that I love for them to wear in their closets and drawers.  With such a variety and stock of clothing surely I can weed out those things that are dated, misshapen from too much laundering, or just aren't great with their skin tones or slender build.  After the kids' rooms come our closets, and I do plan on forcing us both to try on each and every item to check for fit, style, and general like-ability.  Anything that doesn't make the cut will be donated.  We really, really, really need to do this because we just have too much.  All of us.

We are signing up for a CSA with some friends of ours...that's Community Supported Agriculture for those who aren't familiar.  Basically, we're buying a share of a farm's produce for the season, which will be delivered weekly to a convenient pick-up location for twenty weeks.  We've very excited to try the news vegetables and fruits they offer, and I am looking forward to the challenge of finding recipes to go along with the new produce.  We're splitting the share this year, but if all goes well and we like the process we'll consider a full share next year. 

I have realized that we average one roll of paper towels per month.  I think that is pretty good.  How do we do it?  We use cheap washcloths to wipe down counters and kids' faces and we wash them in bleach.  We use a lot of cloth napkins.  We use dish towels for our hands, and our dishes drip dry.  My mom asked me how we manage on so few paper towels and still clean our windows, to which I had to laugh because we clean our windows...well let's just say infrequently. 

And finally, a few pictures of the ice storm we had last week. 
 

Our Boy Turns Three

Three.  The age at which children begin preschool and are potty trained for good (please, please, please).  It's a big year, and we watched proudly this week as Harrison became a three year old, officially.  We had the requisite chocolate cake, Harry opened a brand new Bruder farm tractor with dumping trailer, and we sang him out-of-tune birthday wishes.  He blew out his candles in one well-directed breath, and promptly attempted to stick his fingers into the cake.  That's our boy!
There are no immediate changes that come along with such an age, but there are many big developments on the horizon: this year he will go to school, and for the first time since his arrival 2 1/2 years ago, he will have a life and friends outside of our home and outside of our sphere of influence.  He will learn the millions of little things that go along with school, like getting dressed and putting on your own coat and tying your shoes and cleaning up your messes and eating snacks only at snacktime and crying when you miss your mom and finding out that mom and dad won't always be there to kiss your boo boos and freedom from your plaguing little sister and sharing and quiet time and letters and numbers and new songs...and...and...and...
So many things he will have to learn, so many nuances of society and emotion, relationships and independence.  Yes, three is a big year.
And on a more solemn note, this may very well be the very first time that Harry encounters racism and discrimination without the aid of Mom and Dad by his side.  Before school in the fall it is our job as his parents and family to begin to give this small boy, only three, the armor he will need for the rest of his life in this country and this world.  We need to open up the discussion, to make sure he has defenses and knows what to say or do the first time someone pulls at the corners of their eyes and calls him a name.  We need to make sure he has confidence in who he is, where he came from, and why he was adopted.  We need to make sure that the assumptions of others about his race and identity do not define him, that he alone defines himself.  It is a big job, this parenting thing.  Three is a very big year, indeed.

Just So I Remember Later

She's gripping a fat pink Crayola crayon in her little fist, and she draws it back and forth through Harrison's hair.  She loves the idea of coloring but doesn't yet grasp that crayons are best suited for paper, or maybe she does but likes the idea of pestering her brother better.  When she does touch crayon to paper it is in the form of dots.  She is into pointillism, it seems, and her page of the coloring book is freckled with pink, white, and blue.  Harry is patient with her and allows her crayon to graze his scalp for a moment, then shakes his head and tells her to color on the paper, and only on the paper.  It's a direction he's heard a lot of in his almost three years.  When she finally concedes and begins to polka dot the paper he pleads with her to make lines instead of dots, but she laughs off his request and continues with her masterpiece.
He is learning to write.  He holds his crayon like a pencil and makes studious, focused lines across the page.  He demands that I make 'dots' for him, which I know means he'd like to play connect-the-dots, the game we've used to try to teach him to write his letters.  He loves making his lines into something, and he is delighted every time a recognizable image appears where only polka dots lived before.  He brings me his "school work" to hang on the fridge, and I happily comply.  The pages he chooses to work on in his coloring book are not the pictures to be filled in with crayons, but the pages that show numbers and letters, word searches, and matching games.  He wants to know what the words say, what they mean, and how to make the letters into them.  He demands the reading of words everywhere, from receipts to newspapers to cereal boxes.  He loves the written word already, before he can even cipher the meaning on his own, and I find myself filled with joy at the thought of the books we will (re)discover together.
*******
Brendan straps the orange snowshoes to his feet while I struggle with my own buckles.  The freshly fallen snow whirls around our heads in the late-morning wind, and we're off.  We start on the driveway, where Harrison quickly finds his rhythm is thrilled to watch his dad use the snow blower, but even that soon gets old for a boy of such energy.  We cut a path across the front yard and then around the back and into the trees.  He asks me if he can go first and I let him take the lead, his little snowshoes making a meandering trail through the untouched powder.  He stops to admire the ice on tree branches, and shows concern for smaller pines that have buckled under the weight of heavy snow and ice.  He insists on dusting the snow off of them and correcting their posture.  We discover "tree huts" under a few tall, old hemlocks at the very back of the lot, and I remember being a child myself and playing in the caverns formed by snow-laden branches of evergreens.  We duck under the snowy branches and Harrison smiles and laughs out loud at the luck of finding such a perfect hiding hole.  As we head back toward the house his cheeks have taken on a rosy glow, and he stumbles over a log that was hidden beneath a drift.  Rather than allow frustration to seep into his outing, he laughs and reaches his hands out to me, and I scoop him up and set him right again.  He leads me along the fence and into the front yard, and we watch his dad circle back with the snow blower.  He doesn't want to take off his snowshoes; he doesn't want to go back inside.  It was only fifteen or twenty minutes but it made his weekend, and watching his adventure through the woods made mine.
*******
She hates to be told "no".  She doesn't hear the word very often because she is eager to please by nature and follows directions more than she bucks them, but every once in awhile Emma is told "no".  She turns her eyes to mine, and the sadness that peers out of those big brown spheres at that one simple word is enough to break my heart.  And then she sticks her little bottom lip out, her cheeks quiver, and enormous tears literally splash down her face.  Her face crumples into devastation, and I am between giggling and tears myself.  It hurts my heart to see the physical expressions of her sadness, but on the other hand I know the reason behind my use of the word "no" and really it wasn't anything to cry about.  I hold her and whisper "shhhh" in her ear and her tiny little sobs quiet.  She looks questioningly into my eyes and I assure her that I love her, but that she still  cannot drink my hot cup of tea.  Satisfied with the exchange she smiles and wiggles her way to the ground, off to new adventures.  Her cheeks are still shiny with tears, but her heart has been restored to sunshine.