PregnancyAugust 17, 2009
Big
Do you remember wanting desperately to be older? I remember, clearly. I remember being a teenager and just wishing for that next year. When I was really young I seriously believed I would grow the night before my birthday, and wake up looking different--older, taller, stronger. I had some feeling that if I could only turn 14, or 15, or 19, then that would be it, the year Great Things Would Happen.
May 22, 2009
Freeze frame
My baby graduated from preschool yesterday. Despite all my claims about being ready a few weeks ago for that day, I'm not sure I really was. Because no matter how much mental preparation you do, you're just never quite ready for that final letting go, for the hands on that huge clock in the universe to click forward one more notch, marking the passage of yet another milestone in your child's life.
May 19, 2009
Projection
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, on Saturday we made some feeble attempts to clean out the crawl space. The crawl space (ours is a walk-in, so no actual crawling is involved) is where we keep the bins of holiday ornaments and decorations, and the bins of baby clothes that are too precious to hand on, and the bins of toys that are too special to donate. I spent a great deal of that time fending off T. who wanted to bring up all the toys she came across. Then, in one of the bins, I spied a familiar shape: something brown and cream-colored, the fur worn down to flat nubs all over its body.
May 7, 2009
Here and now
I love my kitchen, for many reasons. It's not new or fancy, and it sorely needs updating as far as the cabinets and floor go, but I love it because I love the space of it, what it represents, and how I feel when I'm in it. And while the big windows in the breakfast nook make me smile every morning, my favorite part of the room is this wall here:
and the pantry door:
April 13, 2009
The real and the extraordinary
We have a silly tradition at our house on Easter Eve. We have many silly traditions in general around here, but this may be one of our silliest. On Easter Eve the kids pick out teacups from T.'s plastic Fisher Price tea set and we put them out in our bunny rabbit Loopy's cage. Once a year, the highlight of Loopy's life is that he gets to have tea with his old buddy the Easter bunny. They wait all year long, those two, for that one night when they can get together, munch on some timothy hay, drink some carrot tea, and reminisce about the good old days.
March 10, 2009
Bag of tricks: The college survival edition
My students are in the throes of midterm exams this week. Whenever I watch my students bent over their papers, I feel a surge of protective, maternal concern for them--even for those students who taxed my patience in the weeks leading up to exam week. But my heart always goes out to them when they're taking tests. They seem more like the children they were (or are?) when they're chewing on their pencil ends, or staring off into space for the answers, or feverishly writing--pouring out all the stored-up knowledge onto paper.
March 9, 2009
Ghosts
Yesterday we had some friends come over for the afternoon, and they stayed for dinner. Because we went from ice and snow a week ago to 80-degree weather on Sunday, we headed out with them to a park we haven't been to in years. When we first moved to North Carolina, we rented a house for eight months in a neighborhood near the park. Those days now seem so far away, yet at the same time, close enough to touch. L. was only 13 months old when we first moved into the house--a blue two-story with cedar siding (and lots of woodpecker holes).
February 25, 2009
Memory keeper
When L. was first born, a dear older friend (and mom of five children!) gave me a blank notebook with calendar pages and told me I should write down all the funny/interesting/important happenings in our new child's life. It would be especially important, she instructed me, to write down his first words--those first declarations of self out into the world. And I did try to commit as many of these as I could to paper, that first year and a half of his life.
February 16, 2009
The House Rules
I've been thinking a lot lately about House Rules--or, namely, about how they are often not followed at our house, despite having many of them. We had a lot more success with House Rules when the kids were toddlers. Rules like don't touch the outlets, or no climbing on the tables, or don't walk out the front door without a grown-up, or no chewing on toys that don't fit into the end of a toilet paper tube. Those rules were all easier to enforce in the old days, when the kids wore diapers and listened to us.
February 6, 2009
Kindergarten readiness 101
Kindergarten registration began yesterday. Last week Scott took T. to visit our neighborhood school--a different school from the one our son goes to. When L. started kindergarten, we lived in another neighborhood. The school there--large and business-like, didn't seem the right fit for our little guy. But T. is a different child--unique and special in her own way. More and more I hear about parents who are sending their kids to different schools and trying hard to tailor their child's education opportunities.
