12 Years Old, Ru's Taste

Yesterday my oldest son stepped to the brink of coming-of-age and turned 12. I can hardly believe we are here, teetering on the edge of the teen years. Its both refreshing and a little demoralizing to realize that here, in tween land I feel not a whole lot more grave, impressive or wise than I did when I first started parenting. I know a lot more than I did when I first started trying to be a mama to this boy who was handed to my unripened and eager self but most of what I know is how insufficient I am, how much his childhood is about me growing up and how very humbling and human it is to try to be anyone's mother. I am comforted that I am not all jaded or superior and that I am still playing, discovering, laughing-out-loud and even running and climbing trees but I am amazed that at 37 I don't feel very much like I have a corner on anything. I have learned to love parts of parenthood that scared and repulsed me (toddlers who talk back, vomit, and hosting playdates) and I have cherished the pieces that I always knew I would love (the hugs, playing sick nurse, making birthday cakes) and through all of it I am learning so much.

12 years ago, what an exhausting, scary, amazing day

Reuben, one his second day of external life.

 I am figuring out how to be tougher than I knew I was, more vulnerable and open and changeable than I ever have been and man, has this boy blazed the trail in teaching me these things! I don't know how it would have gone if I had started with sweet, little complacent child as my first but I am pretty sure that I wouldn't have learned what I needed. God knew I needed this spitfire of an action figure with a taste for leadership in my life. I needed my world rocked, I needed skateboarding and baseball and graphic novels, to pet more dogs and ride more horses and hear more knock-knock jokes than I could ever have prescribed myself. I am a different woman. I sure love this kid. I love who he is, what he brings to our family and whatever it is he is about to show me about his adolescent make-a-difference, live-an-adventure self.

Here is a little peek into his world, on his second day of being 12 years old.

Reuben Loves:

1. Babies: He's always loved babies but the older he gets the sweeter it is that he hasn't lost his love of holding them, making them smile and knowing just what little things they need. He's a fantastic older cousin and will make a top drawer babysitter someday.
2. Baseball: He's played steadily in Little League for years now, never missing a season and I am amazed to see that he still is wistful over winter when there are no trips down to the ball diamond. He's a sports kid for sure and baseball has been his game, although interestingly he has no real interest in following professional games or players.
3. Greek mythology: He has drawn up his own family trees, read oodles of legends and stories and can tell  you all the details of each of Hercules' labors. This inclination made him great fun as a fellow tourist in Italy. So many stone reliefs were unveiled before our eyes because he recognized the stories.
4. People: He loves groups, laughter, conversation, friends and even strangers. Always has, always will. Card carrying extrovert. 
5. Avocados: He's always loved them but now that we live in California, the land of fresh avocados and can even get them at our farmer's market it seems like a legit part of him. We regularly split on together as a snack...half for him, half for me...although these days Pom in horning in too.
6. Swimming: We are about to gear up to go back to swimming lessons like we did last year before summer. Ru can hardly wait! He regularly needs two or three scoldings to get him out of the water after lesson has finished. He loves to swim, loves water and has great facility as a swimmer too. Fun to watch him learning to dive and perfect the trickier strokes now.
7. Monopoly: This is his favorite board game. We have the original and two other variations and he loves them all with equal fervor. I think this one may be genetic, it was my own mad love as a child too. I may have infected him. 
8. Zinnias: They are always his favorite bouquets at the farmer's market and he plants them every year himself. He can never have just one variety and he's always totally impressed when they bloom. They look good in the packet, but even better in the flesh. He's already got a couple of varieties ready to grow this year. 
9. Audiobooks: We are always listening to at least two together as a family and Ru is always my ready reminder to remember to turn it on during long drives. He's always loved story, hearing, imagining, telling and reading....its in his blood.
10. Mowing the lawn: This has become one of his personal chores over the last year. Its pretty cute to see him relishing the mowing of our teeny little postage stamp of a front yard. He sometimes mows it before it really needs it again just for the joy of the experience. I have just begun to experiment with having him string trim as an extra connected privilege.

Reuben Loathes:

1. Cooked squash: All the varieties get the miss. I have to say, I try to make sure nobody knows in our household but I hated cooked squash as a kid. I eat it some now but I always thought it was so squishy and far too sweet for my liking. Not sure what gets him about the whole family of squashes but he sure does skip them all preferentially. 
2. Editing papers: This is his second year writing papers for me and although he enjoys the craft of putting down his thoughts he really doesn't like editing and drafting the next rounds. I drag him through the process of polishing the piece and adding the next layer each time, he'd much rather just bang out the story and be done, fussy he is not. 
3. Star Trek: We showed the boys the Star Wars movies this year and so we thought as a compliment it might be fun to experience a little Star Trek too. Nope. Nope. Nope. We showed Ru the first episode and it freaked him out so much that he can't even calm his skeeves down enough to consider discussing the show. Way too scary. Ooops.
4. Origami: His younger brother's maddest passion completely drives Ru bonkers. He can never stick with the pattern long enough to get all the folds right or crease the corners evenly and he doesn't really care to. We are all given things we love, precisely folding paper is not one of his loves. 
5. Saving money: He loves making money, he loves spending money, he doesn't really enjoy or value saving money. Hopefully, this will come with time but at least we don't need to worry about any miserly tendencies! 
6. Home days with no exciting plans: His least favorite days are the days when we have nowhere to rush off to and nobody coming over. Homebody he is not. 
7. Snakes: Something about moving Out West to the land of genuine rattle snakes has made him very nervous about the whole family. Of course, a few tweeking younger brothers have exploited his aversion and perhaps deepened it with their repeated surprising faux rattle sounds on hikes.
8. Wearing a helmet: He loves to ride his new bike and still enjoys skateboarding along with playing on his new ripstick he got for his birthday but he hates wearing a helmet. He is a devil-may-care child and doesn't see the point of a lot of fuss so we have to be vigilant for him and keep on the reminders. He also runs warm and I'm sure a helmet doesn't help keep him already toasty temp down.
9. Early bedtimes: He loves to stay up late and has no natural inclination to sleep and going to sleep early because of some scheduled need drives him batty. He'd rather flip back and forth in bed for an hour than actually go to sleep early! Total waste of time.
10. Scary movies: He still really doesn't like scary films although he is slowly easing away from his previous jumpy relationship with any plot tension. I am not much for encouraging scary movies anyhow to I feel like his tenderheartedness can just stay right exactly as it is and I won't mind at all.

Colds, Yogurt and Birthdays For Recluses

Spending the afternoon indoors in various kinds of rodent-style hibernation activity: organizing the larder, reading books, folding clothes from the dryer, tucking kids in for naps, roasting meats in the oven, and brewing more coffee and tea. I feel like Moley from Wind and the Willows. :)

Valentine's Day approaches. I have a sheaf of paper doilies  and a good stock of red and pink construction paper. Must make a note to get some glitter. I am hoping to make some valentines with the boys soon. Forethought it good. This was the moral of Christmas. I have a post cogitating about things I plan to change about our holiday celebration as a result of Christmas/New Year's this year.

The boys all have light colds so we are keeping the kleenex handy, making many rounds of tea with honey and rapidly going through Children's Tylenol bottles: lots of sniffles and a few coughs, extra sweaters, snuggles on the couch and a few extra Disney movies to while away recovery. Its a good time of year to go to bed early and catch up on sleep. The baby is starting to pretty reliably sleep through the night....or he was....before he got so stuffy. :)

The weather has gotten super cold again and we had another big wallop of snow. There are big sparkly piles on either side of the driveway and the picnic table that I meant to take inside for the winter looks like it is frosted with a foot tall layer of marshmallow cream. Our poor, wimpy chickens are staying inside the coop around the clock. They don't trust the white stuff. I worry about them and keep going out to check on them but they seem perfectly healthy and content, just staying inside together.

And crockpot yogurt is a fabulous thing! It worked! See?

We are on our second pot-full. New one in the works as soon as I buy more milk! Next up? Flavors!!!

Dee has started dreaming up his birthday party and I am hoping to get some time soon to Amazon him a couple of small gifts. He wants a Peter Pan birthday....or else Legos. Hard to say right now. The first week of February isn't for days and days...plenty of time to change his mind 6 or 8 times between now and then. The only firm request is, "No extra people, Mommy." The introvert has spoken. I want his birthday to be enjoyable so I think it will just be a family dinner but I do feel a twinge at allowing him to be too reclusive because people make him nervous. I want him to feel confident and to learn to appreciate friendship and celebration. I am thinking about sending the brothers out for the afternoon with A some day soon and sponsoring a quiet playdate with just Dee and one good friend in honor of his birthday too. We'll see. Am I manhandling my quiet little boy?

Birthday, Peaches and Planes in My Dreams

This coming weekend will be our first time as a household celebrating my sister, Lockbox' birthday together. We are planning in some serious shore time, a peaches and cream pie (recipe here!), sparklers, some read alouds, some late night chatting and some cozy mornings sleeping in. We are all still enjoying her presence so much. We'be set up some nice boundaries for personal space and responsibility which are preserving but I think our warm friendship is the most important factor. I have cool siblings. I feel lucky.
We havn't been peach picking in quantity yet. We got a small bag of white peaches from a farm but I aim to pick more like a bushel for canning, fruit leather and freezing for smoothies in the winter.
The garden is clipping along nicely with tomatoes ripening every day, our first cabbages ever and several sweet dinners of baby beets in our bellies. I am really hoping against hope that our sweet potato vines bear.
I have a mad yen for a free plane ticket. A good friend was having a baby shower in Colorado, my sister Foxy is nursing my beloved, tiny premature nephew along in Michigan and I also feel like I am kind of desperate for a small,  careless foray into vernal Vermont. Nobody has shown up with a magic ticket though so I might have to stick with dreamships for transport.
I painting the house madly!!! The trim is starting to look reliably white and glossy around the house. Feeling awesomely capable after charging the drill up myself for the purpose of home rescue.
Tomorrow I do laundry.

Growing 32

I have begun my 32nd year. 

There are 32 teeth in an adult's mouth naturally...should his wisdom teeth grow in straight and strong. I am here standing beginning my 32nd year and watching my baby get his first two teeth at exactly the same time. I feel like I've cut quite a few ivories myself this year in the development of my character and personal growth.

This last year has been a year of big spiritual understanding for me, a year of dreams, a year of finally feeling like I grasped some shred of motherhood, a year for cracking open myself and understanding pieces of humanity and myself that have puzzled me for ages. It has been my maiden voyage into the role of educator, a year of discovering nutritional health and healing and a confirmation of my household as a place where multiple men will be born and come of age. I feel wiser this year, more hopeful, rooted, and more pleased with who I am becoming than ever before. I am letting go of fears I never knew were poisoning me, opening my inner door to hope and love and freedom of a richer kind and learning  the beginnings of what it means to say no from a place of deep health and warmth and positive energy.

He has two teeth!

Newtown happened on my birthday this year and I've had more than one person tell me that they are "so sorry" this happened on "my" day. While I understand the sentiment I feel in some ways like it is also appropriately emblematic. Life and growth don't happen when things are simple and peaceful. Those are time for reflection and soaking in warmth. True strength is made perfect in weakness and true beauty is only shown in contrast to broken ugliness. I'm not asking life to hand me trouble or sadness or calamity but I am expecting that what God gives is my intended spiritual exercise and I am slowly learning to unclench my fists, look for love and resist nothing...even the things that need to change.

Roses...which came to the door for me from my parents and sisters. Love with petals on. 

As my state heals I am praying for growth in the healing.... for love to abound and out of it for people to find hope and peace and great vigor. Life is a miracle, however speckled with pain and darkness....the bright glimpses in between are shot through with incredible stuff that I lately can't even express because it is so beautiful and I increasingly feel so lucky to be a part of it all. 

Spring, Full-On!

Here I am, back at the beginning of a new week again. We're having real spring here, we're deep the midst of a forsythia explosion, and the daffodils are working to best them in sunny glow. Its a good time of year. Little bouquets come in with me from every single gardening session, my own or gifts from the boys, at least one cluster from our own yard on the table at a time, usually two or three.

Violets from our lawn. Two different colors. :)

We had a great time celebrating Ru's birthday and Easter although it did take a little psychological trimming on my part to pull it all off without any meltdowns. We had an Easter hunt instead of a hunt and filled baskets waiting on the breakfast table. I cut the candy level way down and gave the boys some mini-Lego sets, seed packets and some energy bars to fill out their loot collection.

Happy birthday big man!

I bought myself a new dress but just dressed the boys and A in dress clothes they already had, no mass wrangling into new, stiff ties and matching dress shirts. Easter meal was modestified a bit too, a special lamb roast but otherwise it was simple veggie dishes and easy no prep appetizer type nibbley bits: a small smoked trout, some fresh berries, a blue cheese, some nuts...etc. Special but low fuss was my goal. For Ru's birthday we mostly spent a day together as a family in small celebration and then included friends with another fuss-free event...a nature scavenger hunt at a local park with celebratory glasses of lemonade together afterwards. Less is often more. (How many times do I need to tell myself this in order to actually absorb it?)

Family shot on Easter morning.

Belly-twin shot with a great friend who is due a week or two after me. She is having a girl that she plans to name Ulla...I am having a surprise but if we have a girl, Una is tops on our list. That'll get confusing, eh?

Am feeling the itch and thinking seriously about making this week be my spring cleaning week. I've talked before about The Seasonal Scrub from Brocante Home which is my favorite way to tackle the house with zest and vim. I just printed off her cleaning list and am thinking about opening all the windows and doors next. Its a new week, its a new season and the holiday is behind me...time to nest!

Six Times Around

He's having a great day and he's been around the sun six whole times now! Today Ru turns six years old. We're celebrating some today (lunch at the local cafe, cake and special dinner at home and maybe, maybe a short romp at The Children's Museum this afternoon) and then a little more on Saturday after Daddy A has had a chance to get out and do a little top secret shopping for the man-of-the-hour.

Am so pleased to have shared a little over half a decade with this spunky boy. He's all buzz and high octane, has taught me a lot about myself and about children and been the source of loads of wonderful memories already. I cannot wait for another year of them. Am reminding myself of all the little ways I'm thankful for this boy with the twinkly eyes and the dimple and trying to keep things cheery for him in the midst of this really busy week. BUT...that said, I can't stay long....its nap-time which means it is time for all good birthday fairies to get busy with balloon arranging and cake decorating and burger prepping for all manner of party goodness which will go down tonight!

Letting Go On My 31st

I am not sure exactly what to say about my birthday this year. I love birthdays. I love celebrations and milestones and accomplishment. I love the concept of aging and reject our culture's adoration of the young and the new. I know that true celebrating is done in little ways with simple expressions of love. But, there's no real denying that sometimes life is still hard and sometimes birthdays aren't as warm as you hope they will be.

We're planning a homebirth for this fourth baby, as we have for all three of our children and have successfully experienced twice. Losing our much-loved midwife and our insurance policy changing to specifically exclude homebirths have meant some serious re-shuffling to orient ourselves to some vague new plan. We've been interviewing midwives and trying to narrow it down to just the right provider and I had just finally made my first appointment scheduled to happen yesterday, on my birthday when A told me to cancel it because of insurance snaffoos. Am feeling so frustrated so down and so upset. Tara Wagner's recent writing over at her blog, Organic Sister about her 30th birthday is really hitting home. I'm not entering a new decade, I'm just letting go of things. I hate living up-in-the-air and not being sure what will happen. Pregnancy makes me irrationally emotional and desperate for settled, carefully pre-arranged plans. I have so little buffer in my head for waiting or throwing out the plan or not having things figured out....and it's Christmas and it's my birthday and I was doing so well! Argh! I feel so peeved about this whole prenatal-care mess falling right in the middle of my smoothly flowing holiday plans. Darn it! Am trying to figure out how to stop crying and just find a way to let go of what I had planned and expected and hoped and wanted and accept whatever mysterious thing actually is instead. So. Dang. Hard.

Life Potpourri

Little potpourri of our life lately. Today was a good day. 

Big trucks in the yard much to the glee of my boys bearing three lumberjacks with cigarettes clamped in their grins, lustily removing trees and adding sunlight to my garden plot. Yay light! Amazing when you just call professionals and then they just come do work for you. I am not used to white collar life.

I had a long chatty visit with my aunt, watched the baby taking teetery steps across the living room and gently watered my tiny sprouting seeds that are living so very happily on the radiator in the front window. The potted gardenia we bought in the grocery store recently (the world's most suicidal plant) is suddenly blooming and scenting the whole sunroom. Victory delayed is a few levels deeper.

Then I baked two chocolate cakes from scratch in preparation for the world's most intimidating prospect....my first Fairfield county child birthday party. Saturday we'll be throwing open the doors and welcoming all of Ru's little friends to a circus extravaganza and I will not panic! I can hardly wait. Anyhow, the cake cakes are done. (I started to bake only one and realized that I needed way more cake than that.)

The weather is finally warm and suddenly I am awash in happy smells and misty rainy mornings. We're jacket on/jacket off fiends and we can hardly think up a reason to stay indoors when pressed. Good problems.

Ru: At The Moment

Our oldest turned five two days ago. Five years old. Unbelievable. Party and real celebration is forthcoming (enough time for mommy to feel sane after returning from our trip) but in the meantime, we're busy prepping and talking about all the fun to come, working and re-working his birthday Legos over and over. His first big boy Legos, he's old enough to work the little bitty kind and not just the big variety.

Fun to see what he is developing to be. Time for another listy snapshot, don't you think?

Here's our oldest boy at the moment:

He Likes:

• Animals, especially dogs and horses
• Guns (not Mommy's favorite...not really sure what to do with this one)
• Competition
•  Donuts
• His own private water bottle
• Making faces
• Doing yard work with Daddy
• Lemonade
• Tools 
• The color red
• Washing dishes
• Video game arcades (which he calls "art caves")
• Climbing trees
• His sunglasses
• Bow ties
• Showers
• People

He Dislikes:

• Socks that are too long
• Seafood
• Raisins
• Being put on the spot
• Storms
• Buttoning his pants himself
• Saying goodbye
• Sleeping
• The end of reading time
• Sitting still at dinner
• Small forks
• Having people see him naked
• Spicy foods
• The ends of movies
• Visible herbs in his food

Poetry Friday: A Birthday Poem

My small, middle boy is three today, on this brightly sunny, Poetry Friday. We had waffles for breakfast (per his request) and I sprayed a tower of whipped cream on top of his and stuck a candle in it. He dimpled and blew it out and dug in. I think it will be a good year.

Here's hoping this year he learns how to: keep his pants dry all the time, sleep through the night, whine less and talk more, and buckle his own seatbelt. Three is the year. I'm ready and I know he is too.

Happy Birthday, Dee! I love you so. Today the poem is all yours.

Young Biography

He is forklifts, nose wrinkles and faithful glasses of milk.

He is the towering T-rex bones at The Museum of Natural History

He is bottomless sardine tins, Frog and Toad and quiet spaces.

He is a toddler in a surgical gown, a homebirth into quiet waters.

He is whipped cream slurped off the sundae and a raspy dinosaur voice.

He is the way that butter, once-melted-into-your-oatmeal, ceases to exist and is mourned.

He is a painting of Jesus on The Road to Emmaus that hangs at the back of the sanctuary.

He is a tiny sparkle in the corner of an unremarkable beige pebble at the beach.

He is infinite little pebbles, heavy in the pockets of tiny pairs of sagging jeans.

He is sirloin steak and oozing pricey cheese and a funny, little gear that turns, just so.

He is my second son, and this morning he was three for the first time.

You can find all kinds of other poetic delights today at Dori Reads, the home of our Poetry Friday round-up hostess.