Today Tre and I went rock climbing. No, seriously. My parents gave him a half-day rock-climbing lesson for his birthday, and we went today. It was amazing. I’m so freakin’ tired I can hardly think.
Anyhow. Tre did most of the climbing, being his birthday gift and all, but I got to go up a few times myself. During Tre’s turn I would stand there, at the bottom of the great huge rock, and watch him scramble up. I did my level best to keep my mother’s mouth shut, but I kept thinking “To your left, baby. No, the other left. That’s it, there you go, now to your right.” I kept as silent as I could and he went right ahead, figuring it out without my advice. The hardest part was when he was he was rappelling back down. He wouldn’t lean back far enough, and his feet would start slipping. In my head I’d be hollering, “lean BACK!” In my head I was drawing diagrams, showing him how staying perpendicular to the rock presses his feet into the rock instead of at an angle, causing him to slip. In my head it was fairly simple.
Then it was my turn. Heh, heh. Not so simple. I kept all the instructions in my mind, but once it was my body going up that rock, those words meant less than they had. I KNEW I should put my weight into the steps, so my shoes could grip the rock. I KNEW I should look up and plan my moves. I KNEW I should lean right back into the harness when it was time to rappel down. I just didn’t want to. I WANTED to do what FELT safe, instructions be damned.
Now, I call that a good start to a new school year. As the year goes by I’m going to do my best to remember being on that rock, sweating. Struggling to remember the instructions. Struggling even harder to obey them. I hope it will help me have more empathy with my boys as they strive to overcome math or phonics or writing. After all, it all seems fairly simple from the ground.

Back to school day. I sent my innocent wee babes off into the vast jaws of EDUCATION. Wait, you’re saying. Hold it there. Are you not a homeschooler? What is this talk of vast jaws, of sending off?
Ah, you are an astute reader.
Yes, I am indeed homeschooling my boys again this year. But they are also going to a one-day a week homeschool enrichment program, called Hope School. On Mondays Tre and Max are off to join hordes of other kidlets in activities of enrichment. This means art, science, music, PE, and something called Brain Gym. All good stuff. Very…enriching.
Oh, but it requires the sending off. Them, going away, into the arms of strangers (I know I had them going off into vast jaws before, bear with me. It’s been a rough day). I was making their lunches this morning, and as I was folding the aluminum foil around their PB&J’s (strawberry jam for Tre, pomegranate jelly for Max), it struck me that I wouldn’t be there to unwrap these sandwiches, to encourage them to eat their crusts. What if they couldn’t get them open? What if they went hungry? (As an aside here, I realize now that if they were so helpless they couldn’t figure out how to unwrap the foil around their sandwiches that lunch would be the least of their worries. I SAID to bear with me. At the time I was suffering from the effects of morning.)
My mom was sitting at the table, eating her breakfast. She saw me blinking back tears and said something very wise. “If it’s any help – and it was to me – sort of – this isn’t going to be nearly as hard for them. Their faces are turned away, and this is what they’re supposed to do. It’s a good thing.”
Well, she was right. It is a good thing, this day away. They bounded off into the jaws of education/arms of strangers, with hardly a backwards glance. I had arranged to have a friend watch Raphi for the morning. Her oldest son also attends Hope. We watched our babies file away with the other kids, and I turned to her, blinking back tears yet again. Her response was less tender, but no less true. “Oh for heaven’s…” she rolled her eyes, “it’s ONE DAY.”
So she took my Raphi and I was off. A whole morning on my own. I went home for a while, and as I stood at my front door, I turned to look at the neighborhood. All the front doors were closed. No one called across the street to a friend. No bicycles whizzed by. I literally heard crickets. It was eerie, like the Pied Piper had just been through.
I spent the morning doing things I never get to do. I spent a good hour reading in Starbucks. I strolled the aisles of Wal-Mart, free to wander past toys and candy without a fight. The whole time I felt like I had gone out without a shirt on, not having my kids with me.
But Mom was right. It was good.

Oh, and just to add to the pandemonium that “blog it forward” has become, here are my questions, should you bloggers choose to play.
1. What’s the best thing to happen to you this week?
2. What’s the worst?
3. What do you worry about?

Lame, huh? Guess I, for one, should go back to leaning on Lani.

I’m doing it again, I’m gonna lean on the inestimable Lani and use her “blog it forward” questions. But first, let me apologize to the aforementioned inestimable Lani. I used her BIF questions from last week and neglected to link to her. Bad, bad blogger. I hang my head in shame. You should read her blog. She’s great. Go back in the archives and check out “Note to Self: A Morning Pictorial.” Good stuff.
So anyhow, off to the current batch of BIF questions.
1. Talk about flaws.
Ok, I read that and in my head I heard, “they’ve talked about paws and they’ve talked about flaws. They’ve talked quite a lot about old Santa Claus.” Anyone else do this? Burst out into Dr. Seuss unexpectedly? Years of reading and rereading have burned his rhymes into my brain and I will never be the same. For I will recite him in a box, I will recite him with a fox…
Sorry. Extra points if you know what book the above Seuss quote comes from.
I don’t know if that answers this particular question, except that channeling Dr. Seuss could, I suppose, be considered a flaw.

2. Best time you ever had behaving inappropriately.
Um…not sure I want to share any of these with all of you. My brother is sitting here, suggesting at least one highly inappropriate example. Ahem. Not telling the world about that, Josh. Not happy even YOU know about that. Shut up.
I will tell you about the other day, when Mom and Dad’s phone rang. I answered it, because they were both out. Some telemarketer-type person asked for Mr. (insert Dad’s full name), please. I said he was out, could I take a message.
“Is this the missus?” he asked in that chirpy phone voice. I didn’t want to say it was his daughter, because then people always think I’m roughly twelve and start calling me “honey.” Hate that. So I said, “Close enough.” There was a silence. “Ooookaaay. This is Joel from Promise Keepers. Maybe I’ll call back.”
I’m thinking Joel from Promise Keepers might not call back.
So that wasn’t the best time I’ve had, but it was pretty inappropriate, and I did get a giggle out of it.

3. Are you pursuing your passion? Why/why not?
Yes. I’m writing. I always wanted to, but life kept getting in the way. Then my life got…shuffled, shall we say. A lot of dearly held plans for my future – gone. And I guess I’ve finally realized that no-one’s going to make time nor space for my dreams. Gotta go get them. You just never know what’s happening next, so forge ahead.

In closing, let me share with you a bit of wisdom from my brother, the One True Josh. I came up the stairs from doing laundry in the basement this afternoon to find him sitting at the table. He was staring off in the distance, clearly absorbed in some important thought. “What ‘cha thinking?” I asked, not content to have annoyed him my entire childhood. He gestured at a box of nasal spray on the counter.
“I’m thinking that Metamucil had been named by the people who named Flonase, it would have been called ‘SquirPoo.’”
Well. There you go. Direct from the mind of Josh.

All right, I’m back, with many apologies for missing a day. Thursday, no less. I’m a loser. It was not my fault, though. We had some friends over last night for dinner (hi, Amy! Love to Liz), and there simply wasn’t an evening hour to be had for blogging.
Today was pretty full too. I took all three boys in for their yearly exams at the pediatrician’s. Three boys in a little bitty exam room – that’s grueling work. I’m always a touch anxious at the pediatrician’s. The boys’ doctor is great, I like him a lot, but he has so many opinions about how I should be parenting. It’s not even him; it’s the whole practice. Every time I go, someone’s giving me handouts on what to feed the kids, how to discipline them, how to deal with sleep problems, and stuff like that. I guess the theory is that they’re experts on children, so their opinion matters. The thing is, they’re not experts on my children. But I always worry when I’m there that the great doctor’s office is going to decide that I’m not doing it “right.” Not sure what the consequences there would be, but it makes me anxious nonetheless.
I asked Mom if she felt like that when Josh and I were kids, and she shook her head with scorn. “Doctors didn’t offer opinions on things like that. They wouldn’t have dared. It wasn’t any of their business.”
Ok, so I seem to have gotten slightly off track there for a bit. Anyhow.
The boys are all perfect, if slightly short and big headed. They’re all in the 5 – 15th percentile for height, and the 80-90th percentile for head circumference. It’s a wonder they can stand up like that. Gives you a mental image of a gnome like creature, doesn’t it? Take my word for it, they look fairly normal. It’s only when the doctor wields his evil tape measure and charts that they seem so disproportionate. If I ever get around to switching blog hosts, I’ll post a picture and prove it.
Now, that brings up a good question for everyone. Should I post pictures of the boys on my blog? I get a disturbing amount of traffic from google searches for little boy p*rn. Wouldn’t want those people seeing my little sweethearts. What do you think?
Whoo, back to the subject. (Thanks for playing)
Max got two shots, and he was such a trouper. Didn’t cry at all. He was so stoic about it that the nurse even felt guilty giving him his shots. Tre and Raphi gathered around to watch the procedure, and they were very sympathetic. Lots of tender pats and hugs and encouraging words. It was very sweet.
So they were all pronounced perfect one more time (really, their doctor always ends a well child exam by saying sincerely, “ok, he’s just perfect. See you next year.”). And now I must get myself to bed. After all, I see here on Max’s informational sheet that I should be talking to him during mealtimes. Huh. Guess I’ll have to get some sleep so I can pull that one off over corn flakes.

My Max is five today. I spent all day remembering this day five years ago. I know, I obviously have issues. Bear with me.
That morning I was awakened by Tre, bounding into bed with all his three year old joy, requesting my presence in the day. I told him I would get up soon, and he waited for me on the floor at the foot of my bed (he also pulled apart a set of 35 candles, separating wicks from wax and shuffling the different scents between the labeling boxes. Didn’t discover that until later.). I lingered in bed for a few minutes, just listening to the morning and thinking, “I’m gonna have this baby today. My life is changing – today.” Don’t know how I knew, but I knew. After a while I woke up my husband (at the time) and told him I was having the baby that day. He blinked, asked if I was in labor, and when I said I wasn’t he declared that he must go buy a flash for his camera. So as to be ready for the birth, you understand. Then I called my mom and told her I was going to be having the baby that day. She laughed at me, perhaps because I had been announcing for weeks, “I could have this baby at any moment.” Hey, it was August. I was hot.
But it turned out I was right. Around 11 I started having these wimpy little contractions, so wimpy I didn’t even recognize them as contractions. By 12 I was pretty sure it was labor, even though the contractions were still pretty light and really irregular. I announced suddenly that it was time to go to the hospital. I must have sounded convincing, because everyone swung into action. On the way there the contractions went from 8 to 12 minutes apart to one minute apart and REALLY INTENSE. I got in the hospital room at 12:30, and I was in hard labor. You should know that a fast labor isn’t necessarily easier, just faster. I remember being in transition and panicking. I started hyperventilating and spots were dancing before my eyes. “My fingers are tingling,” I told a nurse. She sternly told me to calm down and breathe slower. This only panicked me further. Then I remember my husband getting right in my face and saying in the calmest voice, “Look at me. Look at me. You can do this. You are the strongest woman I know. Breathe with me.” And he breathed in and out and I breathed with him. He was my hero. At 1p.m., after a full two hours of labor, Max was born. I couldn’t believe he was really there, it had all happened so fast. Took me hours to catch my breath.
Max was cold at birth, so cold that the nurses wrapped him in blankets and then what looked like a black trash bag, and kept him under the heat lamps. They wouldn’t let me have him for the longest time. I kept looking at him, itching to hold him and warm him. Finally they handed him over, and I unwrapped him and put him on my chest, skin to skin, and put the blankets over both of us. Soon the nurse came in to take his temperature, and she was amazed at how much he’d warmed up.
He wouldn’t breastfeed for longer than five minutes, and this displeased the nurses. They kept coming in and quizzing me on how long he’d nursed. They started leaving little bottles of formula threateningly by my bed. I took to lying to them. “Oh yes. He nursed 15 minutes on the left, and ten on the right.” Which satisfied them, and was true, except he never did that all at once. Max was from birth, and is to this day, a languorous eater.
Remembering that day, there are truths in it I learned about Max. He will surprise me. His schedule is not, never has been, never will be, my schedule. Don’t push him; he’ll eat what he wants, when he needs it. And hold him tight; don’t let him get too cold.
Still catching my breath.

Ok, I just wanted to tell you quickly about the trip out to the airport to pick up Josh. On the drive out there Raphi discovered the concept of volume. As in loud. We were driving peacefully along, listening to The Five Little Peppers And How They Grew on tape, and Raphael noticed that Max was turned away, looking out his window.
“MATS? IS YOOO SWEEEEEEPING?” he shrieked (translation: Max, is you sleeping?). Max, who had been startled out of at least a few years of his life, was glaring wordlessly at him.
“MAAAATS? ISSSS YOOOO-” I cut him off.
“No, honey, Max isn’t sleeping. Can you use a quiet voice in the car please?” He nodded in assent, and we went back to peaceful listening mode. Eventually (after about a week – do you know how far away DIA is from actual Denver?) the airport came into view.
“AH SEEEE DA AIRPORT! WEEEE GET JOSH?”
“Yes, Raphael,” I replied, wiping the blood from my ears, “we’re going to get Josh.”
I’ll spare you the rest of the drive out there, but suffice to say it was painful.
Then we got there, just a touch early. Like, say, 15 minutes. Which is good, because the airport is such a fine place to wait with three squirrelly boys. What with all the strangers running around and all. Sigh.
We were standing in a waiting area, waiting, and Max took to alternating between asking contemplative questions and hitting his older brother. That scene went something like this:
Max: (gazing at the cavernous ceiling) Mama? How do you know we’re not on TV?
Me: (lugging Raphael back from yet another escape attempt) Well, I’ve never seen us in the TV guide, so we must not be.
Tre: OW! (rubbing his arm where Max just hit him)
Sigh.
There was a helpful airport employee who came over to us and asked what time the flight we were waiting for came in. I told her 12:50. It was by then 1:05, or something like that.
“Oh,” she nodded at us knowingly, “you DO know that you have to add a good 20 minutes onto the landing time, to let them de-plane and make their way out here? Right? It takes about 20 minutes.” I smiled, hoping it wasn’t coming across as a grimace,
“Yes, so they should be here in five minutes or so, right?” She consulted her watch,
“Right. Five to…15 minutes. Somewhere in there.” Then, her work done, she sailed on to annoy…er…help some other person. Tre had been closely following our conversation, and at her parting shot he descended into despair.
“FIFTEEN MINUTES? But we’ve been here an HOUR already!” You should know that this hour was in Tre time, which can vary greatly from reality. We’d been there maybe ten minutes.
“He will be here when he gets here. It really shouldn’t be long now. Max, sit down. You’re still in time out. Oh, hi Josh. Raphi, you – JOSH!”
Hugs all around, and now all is well.

Blogging may be spotty over the next week. (Spotty blogging? Ewwww) Anyhow, my big brother Josh is coming to visit. We’re all agog. Mom and Dad, of course, are thrilled. Having both their children under the same roof…bliss. My guys are very excited. Tre remembers Josh pretty well, but I think a good deal of his excitement stems from the fact that we often remark that he’s so much like Josh was as a child. Max thinks Josh is very cool, and is his favorite person to talk to on the phone. Raphael suspects he may bring presents. Raphael is very into presents, having just been to a birthday party Saturday.
And I am pretty happy about it myself. Josh is very cool. Often we suffer from a big brother/little sister dynamic, where I do my level best to annoy him, while he acts long suffering and…annoyed. But we’re also great friends. I adore him. We’ll have some fabulous arguments, I’m sure. I’ll keep you somewhat updated.
But for now, I have a headache that’s causing me to type things like theype instead of type. I’m going to bed.

Oh, I remember what I wanted to blog about yesterday. We finished swim lessons! Since Monday I’ve been warning the boys, “This is the last week of swim lessons. After today there will only be three more days…two more days…one more day.”
Well, the last day finally came. Can I tell you how ready I was to have it over? No more damp towels in my van. No more mad sunscreen slopping sessions. No more frantic searches for a clean swimsuit. Oh, I was so ready to be done.
So there we were. The last lap had been swum, the last hauling out of an unwilling Raphi from the baby pool. We’d waved goodbye to our poolside friends for another year, and headed out to the parking lot. Free at last.
I strapped the kids into their seats and started up the van. And as I began to pull out of the parking lot, a wave of sadness washed over me. Shake it off, I thought. This was a grueling schedule I was happy to have behind me. Time to settle into the soberness of the school year. Who needs all those UV rays, anyhow? No, I told myself firmly, you will not get nostalgic about another year of swim lessons behind you.
Ah, but I’m hopeless. Even though I know I’ll be all excited about the new school year next week, tonight I’m just a little sad about the end of another swim season. In the time it took me to get from the pool to the van I did an emotional 180, forgetting how tired of the swim routine I was. It’s pitiful, I know.
I have this problem about milestones of all sorts. Remember Raphi and the horses? Well, he used to say “horsies.” I don’t know why, but he likes the diminutive form of a lot of words. I, on the other hand, appreciate precision in language. So every time he said “horsies,” I would primly reply, “Oh, do you see the HORSES?” Then one day we were driving past and he said, clear as a bell, “Horses!” And I, who had been pushing the correct terminology on him for weeks, got all teary at my baby growing up.
So here’s the question; in another 16 years or so, when all the boys are out of the house, do you think I’ll forget how much I wanted a few minutes to myself? Am I going to be weeping by the window, failing to take the opportunity to read a book, write a book, eat an entire bowl of ice cream without assistance, or take a nap? Yeesh. If that happens, remind me, ok? Someone promise to give me a swift kick if I need it.
Onward and upward, and no looking back!

I’m going to use the topics Lani so generously provided, because it’s late. I’ve been on the phone with my brother for the last…um…hour and a half. Josh is brilliant, but his mind just runs on a different set of rails from the rest of us. Whenever I talk to him it’s like this surreal little vacation, where I go away from the life I know and enter his world. Whew. He also makes me laugh a lot. I’m tired.
So I’m leaning on Lani here.
Talk about how your favorite TV show jumped the shark. Well, I used to love ER. Then there was that show where the guy killed Lucy and almost killed Carter. Gripping drama, that. I remember the scene where Carter’s sinking to the floor, having just been stabbed, and he sees Lucy lying on the other side of the bed in a pool of blood. It was intense. It got to me. But after that it was like they just had to keep HITTING YOU OVER THE HEAD with more and more emotion, trying to live up to that episode. Or eclipse it, I guess. It’s like the writers were all sitting around, brainstorming ways to brutalize their viewers.
“Hey, let’s kill Greene off with a brain tumor! Right after his baby’s born!”
“Oooh, I know, let’s have someone’s arm cut off…BY A HELECOPTER!”
I can’t take that show anymore. I’ve got enough trauma in my life.
Gap Kids: Get my charge card or Are you kidding me? Well, I love Gap Kids. They have the best boy’s clothes. It’s easy to find cute girl stuff, but not boys. If you want t-shirts without Bob the Builder (and I do, oooooh, I do), you have to shell out for a place like Gap Kids.
But I just can’t. It’s silly, but I just can’t stand it. I can’t pay $36 for a pair of 2T shorts. Even if I have the $36, I just can’t do it. Luckily for Raphi, my friend Amy can. And her son is 3 and she gives me his cast-offs. BIG kiss out to Amy.
Also, Old Navy has stuff that’s just adorable, but less expensive.
Your biggest guilty pleasure.
Oh, gosh. Bad TV. In particular (blush) Blind Date. It’s a really awful show, where they send two people with low standards out on a blind date. The date is filmed and little comments and graphics are added in to mock the participants and exploit any hint of sexual content. Then the host, Roger Lodge (motto: “That is so not my name”), makes fun of the couple some more, and they move on to the next date. Awful. Just so bad.
I also love the TLC show A Makeover Story. That one is a much better show, but a more guilty pleasure, because my sons are awake while I watch it. So I’m not only rotting my brain with the hair/clothes/makeup talk, I’m also rotting theirs. Sorry, guys.
Kids program/movie you will go to any lengths to keep out of your home.
Beauty and the Beast. I mean, really. He’s a BEAST, mean and violent, and manipulative to boot, but her love turns him into a man. A good man. A handsome man. A prince. Hey, ladies, if he’s a beast, keep looking. A beast that is well loved is just an irritated beast. Your love will not fix him. Ick.
A writer who makes me want to write.
Barbara Kingsolver.
Anne Lamott
Theresa Lust
The authors of my many favorite blogs (you know who you are, except Lileks, who knows who he is but not who I am…you know what I mean…jeez, it’s late.)
Um…there are more, but did I mention it’s late?