I am sitting in the bathtub fully clothed holding a computer. Silas and Eden are whisper-fighting about being on each other's side of the sleep sofa bed, and Maeve is asleep at the foot of our bed. There is no where else to be in this hotel room but here.
We are in Costa Mesa for our last week of summer. School starts in 6 days, and I can't believe how ready I am. I bought Silas green pencils, fat pink erasers, and a pencil bag with a mouth in hopes they would rocket him into excitement. I wouldn't say my efforts have worked, exactly, but hopefully they've helped. Eden tries out Silas's phrases of protest, but really is ready to go.
Tonight I sat on our teeny hotel balcony and almost missed the sunset on the bay because of conversation, while the kids swam in the pool below us and Maeve slept in the room behind. I'm trying to front load our days, pitch them toward the jet lag with full mornings and second breakfasts. This is week two (last week was family beach week) of doughnuts regularly before dawn.
My brain is shutting down, now that it is 8:15 in the west, and I am going to stumble through the dark to bed. The kids have quieted, and early morning pancakes call.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Friday, August 01, 2014
A poem for today
A poem by Audre Lorde
As I Grow Up Again
A little boy wears my mistakes
like a favorite pair of shorts
outgrown at six
my favorite excuse was morning
and I remember that I hated
spring's change.
At play within my childhood
my son works hard learning
which doors do not open easily
and which clocks will not work
he toys with anger like a young cat
testing its edges
slashing through the discarded box
where I laid my childish dreams to rest
and brought him brown and wriggling
to his own house.
He learns there through my error
winning with secrets
I do not need to know.
As I Grow Up Again
A little boy wears my mistakes
like a favorite pair of shorts
outgrown at six
my favorite excuse was morning
and I remember that I hated
spring's change.
At play within my childhood
my son works hard learning
which doors do not open easily
and which clocks will not work
he toys with anger like a young cat
testing its edges
slashing through the discarded box
where I laid my childish dreams to rest
and brought him brown and wriggling
to his own house.
He learns there through my error
winning with secrets
I do not need to know.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Regression all around -- it's hard to be the mom
This week, week two of day camp, I cannot leave my house without all three children crying. Maeve hits hysteria. Eden becomes weepy and clings to me. Silas broods with angry tears pinned to being unable to read together (we are reading Percy Jackson, which is hard to put down).
Last night Ben and I left for a date to see Magic in the Moonlight. It took me 20 minutes of fury at Ben for blaming me for badly handling everyone's tears as I squeezed out the door (which he wasn't exactly doing, more what I was doing) and the pungent smell of popcorn finally to calm and settle into being together.
Today all I tried was to go to yoga. Maeve and I talked about it all the way there. Last week she reluctantly leaned into the woman's arms and I left without a scene. Today, as we walked in with her giant book and tiny doll, she screamed a beet-faced cry as if I'd just left her for life.
After Eden's dance camp --she is carrying herself with a whole new posture, head right up in the stars readying some internal posture for her performance tomorrow -- she spoke baby talk for an hour -- "me ga ga want ga" Really?
At bedtime, Ben becomes almost invisible, though his kind voice walks through books and he lies next to kids asking about their day. Where's mom? Is she coming? I need her to tuck me in? Can you read me a book? Dad already read to you. I want YOU to read to me!!!!!! And then the crying and clinging. At 5am, after a trip to the bathroom, Eden appeared at my bedside with alligator tears, but I want to get in bed with YOU. The three of us squeezed like sardines under the covers.
And so we hit mid-summer.
This is the note I found next to Eden's face on her pillow last night:
Last night Ben and I left for a date to see Magic in the Moonlight. It took me 20 minutes of fury at Ben for blaming me for badly handling everyone's tears as I squeezed out the door (which he wasn't exactly doing, more what I was doing) and the pungent smell of popcorn finally to calm and settle into being together.
Today all I tried was to go to yoga. Maeve and I talked about it all the way there. Last week she reluctantly leaned into the woman's arms and I left without a scene. Today, as we walked in with her giant book and tiny doll, she screamed a beet-faced cry as if I'd just left her for life.
After Eden's dance camp --she is carrying herself with a whole new posture, head right up in the stars readying some internal posture for her performance tomorrow -- she spoke baby talk for an hour -- "me ga ga want ga" Really?
At bedtime, Ben becomes almost invisible, though his kind voice walks through books and he lies next to kids asking about their day. Where's mom? Is she coming? I need her to tuck me in? Can you read me a book? Dad already read to you. I want YOU to read to me!!!!!! And then the crying and clinging. At 5am, after a trip to the bathroom, Eden appeared at my bedside with alligator tears, but I want to get in bed with YOU. The three of us squeezed like sardines under the covers.
And so we hit mid-summer.
This is the note I found next to Eden's face on her pillow last night:
Mom, I am
terribly missing you
today and all
month and all
year can we
have some
special time
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
the sauce (spicy cilantro sauce for everything)
- A few weeks ago my sister-in-law and I sat on the basement floor among piles of laundry and flipped through recipes. It was a rare moment, our kids in camp together, when our our daily overlapped. We both pulled out Sunset magazine's Chicken Steamed Over Ginger-Garlic Rice. The rice was great (recommend). Steamed chicken left a little something to be desired, would grill it next time, but what was amazing was the sauce. I used only one green jalapeno (no red) and seeded it almost completely. I've made the sauce for steak, too, and it would be great on grilled chicken,kabobs, fish.
- THE GREEN SAUCE:
- Sunset, July 2014 (photo from Sunset)
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- ~2 in. piece ginger, peeled and thickly sliced
- 1 garlic clove
- 2 green onions, chopped
- 1 cup loosely packed cilantro leaves and tender stems
- 2 tbsp. lime juice
- 1 green jalapeño chile, sliced and stemmed
- (1 red jalapeño chile, sliced and stemmed)
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
- Purée all ingredients plus 2 tbsp. water in a blender.
- Transfer to a bowl and serve with most everything.
on the porch swing
Is everyone in their 30's tired? With one child, five children? Are people with no children exhausted, too? Is it this decade of building life that is just tiring for all? Or is it more the repeated impossibly-pounding footsteps of a child down the hallway at 5:43 in the morning each day that does it?
I don't know. What I know is that every day around 1pm, I could easily crawl into my bed and stay there for a few hours, which, unfortunately, is also nap time when I could most do something creative or productive.
Do the creative and productive hit in the next life stage?
Tonight I am sitting on a porch swing while my one year old niece, who is trying to pull an all-nighter, chatters and chomps a cracker, wearing a diaper and blond curls. We are all spending the night tonight together at my parents' house.
Maybe it is the combination of camp "carnival," of wild face painting that actually made our kids look like different people, of giant plates of pie for dessert, or the pure intoxication of being with each other, but the cousins are w-i-l-d tonight, which is why I am on the porch.
Mosquitoes are biting my bare legs and arms as the woods chirp and buzz with evening. The crepe myrtle is perfectly still, as are all of the leaves on the trees towering above. It was another California day -- weather breaking records for DC July with this perfection (or the polar vortex...).
Today Silas busily devoured a Hardy Boys graphic novels. Eden suddenly looks two years older as she leans over Maeve giggling. And Maeve spent most of the day, as many days, pushing markers and shoes, sunglasses, keys she shouldn't have, tiny teacups or bears into bags and carrying them over her shoulder.
The sky is shadowed with clouds again, but there is no sign of rain tonight. The deer poke along the edge of the woods, unhurried. The chain of the porch swing creaks, and somewhere inside, kids scamper into pajamas and loose sheets for bed.
I don't know. What I know is that every day around 1pm, I could easily crawl into my bed and stay there for a few hours, which, unfortunately, is also nap time when I could most do something creative or productive.
Do the creative and productive hit in the next life stage?
Tonight I am sitting on a porch swing while my one year old niece, who is trying to pull an all-nighter, chatters and chomps a cracker, wearing a diaper and blond curls. We are all spending the night tonight together at my parents' house.
Maybe it is the combination of camp "carnival," of wild face painting that actually made our kids look like different people, of giant plates of pie for dessert, or the pure intoxication of being with each other, but the cousins are w-i-l-d tonight, which is why I am on the porch.
Mosquitoes are biting my bare legs and arms as the woods chirp and buzz with evening. The crepe myrtle is perfectly still, as are all of the leaves on the trees towering above. It was another California day -- weather breaking records for DC July with this perfection (or the polar vortex...).
Today Silas busily devoured a Hardy Boys graphic novels. Eden suddenly looks two years older as she leans over Maeve giggling. And Maeve spent most of the day, as many days, pushing markers and shoes, sunglasses, keys she shouldn't have, tiny teacups or bears into bags and carrying them over her shoulder.
The sky is shadowed with clouds again, but there is no sign of rain tonight. The deer poke along the edge of the woods, unhurried. The chain of the porch swing creaks, and somewhere inside, kids scamper into pajamas and loose sheets for bed.
Monday, July 21, 2014
June and July in Pictures
In early June, Eden turned 6 with a spa science party
and an ihop breakfast in Philly
where we rode the Philly Ducks...
Then school ended
and it was summer:
Baptisms
Camp Thor hair
Saturday Mornings
Saturday mornings started with Smurfs, Snorks, and Gummy Bears. Then the Top 40 Countdown with Casey Kasem. Eventually they were married mornings with newspaper, coffee filled and refilled, hawaiian bread french toast. Baby Silas breakfasts were at any place opened by 7, and with Eden in tow, we met families on chilly patios where the up-and-down-spilled-water-syrup-hands was permitted.
DC brunches instead of breakfasts, so our Saturdays often land on Breakfast at BB's, with my brother's family, always coffee and bacon.
Maeve has not coordinated with the rest of the family on Saturdays -- no plotting to watch Phineas and Ferb, or to sleep until someone makes her wake, or to read alone with tea. She just wants breakfast. So on Saturdays, like every day really, we sit at the table together.
Today we've been up for what feels like ages. I've poured bowls and bowls of Spoonfuls, waved to her through the window while filling the bird feeder, drank tea, watched milk drip down her elbows as she insists on eating cereal with her hands...
One day I probably will sit here for hours alone while the rest of the house sleeps, busy with growing and dreaming. Hard to imagine such things. In the meantime, I will sit listening to Maeve name the house asleep in a forced whisper:
Dada sssssssss (sleeping)
Hiya (Silas) ssssssss
Doda (Eden) ssssssss,
again and again as the morning brightens.
DC brunches instead of breakfasts, so our Saturdays often land on Breakfast at BB's, with my brother's family, always coffee and bacon.
Maeve has not coordinated with the rest of the family on Saturdays -- no plotting to watch Phineas and Ferb, or to sleep until someone makes her wake, or to read alone with tea. She just wants breakfast. So on Saturdays, like every day really, we sit at the table together.
Today we've been up for what feels like ages. I've poured bowls and bowls of Spoonfuls, waved to her through the window while filling the bird feeder, drank tea, watched milk drip down her elbows as she insists on eating cereal with her hands...
One day I probably will sit here for hours alone while the rest of the house sleeps, busy with growing and dreaming. Hard to imagine such things. In the meantime, I will sit listening to Maeve name the house asleep in a forced whisper:
Dada sssssssss (sleeping)
Hiya (Silas) ssssssss
Doda (Eden) ssssssss,
again and again as the morning brightens.
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