The Pre-Teen Prep Zone

The other day Ru went off for a big boy day in the redwoods with friends, no mama oversight, not even any drop-off....just a handed him a packed lunch and waved as he hopped in the car with friends and took off. Its a wild new phase. I feel the tug of the crazy scheduling stuff yanking on us a little more as he gets older and we start to dip our toes into the world of the pre-teen, more independent zone. I am trying to help him get out on his own a little more and make sure I provide opportunities for stuff to do and space to build his own interests and world but keep the center of our life calm, teach boundaries and continue to help him nurture connection to home and those who love him. He has been texting with one of his grandmas this year, spending time having solo phone conversations a little with his other grandparents and writing private handwritten letters to one of his cousins.

There is also a lot of cozy family stuff still happening here at home to keep us grounded. We have folded Sabbath dinners into our life and moved them around from Saturday to Sunday and finally landed back on the traditional Friday night with our tea party tradition melded with the Sabbath meal. We have been hiking once a week together as a family which is a good practice in being outdoors and free together, learning about our California environment together and practicing understanding both parents and their differing styles of activity and direction. We have also been doing lots of read alouds. We are reading the Harry Potter series now (book 3) and also in the middle of Swallows And Amazons. We just finished The BFG which was really popular. We also try to take afternoon walk together through our neighborhood in the old time slot for quiet hour. As the boys get older I find that I am struggling to find more space for physical activity than for quiet. There seem to be so many times I tell the kids to just be quiet and to occupy themselves and to sit still and listen and to apply themselves and less opportunity to push them towards physical exertion. These are a few of the little home rituals that I am building in to try to keep life sane and warm, and build connection. Special Time with each boy, Family Meetings, outings to make sure that each kid feels celebrated occasionally and date night for Aaron and I are works in progress but are also part of simple routines for connection.

I have been watching Ru get more independent and thinking about all the ways I can support that leap to individual space and yet help him learn to respect advice, work towards closeness and feel understood and valued. I have the following on my reading list:

• The Teenage Brain by Frances Jenson
• Brainstorm by Daniel Siegel

He has taken over cleaning up the table and the floor under it after our evening meal and I have given him Pom as an apprentice to teach about the job. He decides what needs to be done to clean up and simultaneously gives directions to Pom and works himself. Teaching someone smaller is a good way to learn. He's also learning more and more in school. He's reading pretty fluidly and pleasurably on his own and he has been reading chapter books in his own time and we also have one that he is reading aloud to me (for fun and for the sake of correcting inflection, rhythm and pronunciation on trickier words), A continues to tutor him along in math (I'm impressed....fractions at 10!) and he is writing papers and diagramming sentences this year for the first time in conjunction with our co-op. So much new stuff. This week we added a run around the block every day, and when I told him his new assignment he said "Once? I think three times is better." So three times it was. Here we go racing around this new block in our lives, trying to stay tender to all the learning and then newness and then beauty and let go of my fear, relinquish the worries and open my hands to the strange things I feel intimidated by. 

Springtime Shifts

Its been a good winter....again, and I am loping on into a New Year, February already a new notch in my belt. There are big fat buds on the apple tree that leans over our fence, the snails are out doing war  with the cole crops in my garden every night and the acacia trees are flouncing along with their yellow blossoms all down the freeways. Its the first of the really solidly spring blooms...before the poppies are spilling down the hills like orange sprinkles or the bottle brush trees are a standing in fierce crimson array on every street corner. So wonderful to live in a place where winter means green, and lush and damp fog laden moss. I have to get my tail down to the redwoods again, haven't been for a couple of shameful months...the trees call in this kind of weather.

I have noticed that in the waste space along the freeways there are some old forgotten orchard trees...I saw them for the first time last year and assumed they were cherries but missed a chance to go see them close up because we were so busy with baseball. They are just opening to peak bloom right now and I managed to park and run over to check some out on a side street near an overpass. They are not cherries, but maybe some kind of plum or peach. I am curious to see what/ if any fruit develops as the summer goes on. Lovely to feel homey enough where I live to be able to start picking out little curiosities like that to keep tabs on.

I am starting to feel pretty settled. I have places for most everything in the house, I am starting to feel like our possessions are trimmed down to an amount that more closely match this space. I have people to call in case we are trouble, know the neighbors, have the mailman's name down and even occasionally run into folks we know at the grocery store. Its such a good feeling to nest in more firmly and feel the amazing mix of wonder at the novelties but comfort over the known.

Spring is coming and I am working on tuning up my life and schedule...working out all the little ways things can be tweaked and adjusted and let go and removed. Isn't it wonderful to remember that we are the stewards of our own lives?

Here's What's New Right Now:

• I have been making meals for families with new babies or sick members at our church and homeschool group as a little way to contribute to the community. 
• I am cutting back on fruit and coffee and going back to a more strict interpretation of paleo eating.
• I am trying a new sleep schedule (to bed before my husband) to try to get 8 hours and still have morning quiet time alone.
• Minimization has come back into my life in a firm manner.
• Watching the boys play piano is inspiring and I have been planning to get my fiddle back out for tune up and learning.
• I am painting weekly now thanks to standing babysitter dates.
• We are not doing baseball this spring.
• Taking Zumba in addition to yoga.
• I am signing up for another year with Classical Conversations.
• We are planning a big trip to Italy this spring!
• I cut a bunch of length off my hair after it kept breaking and breaking. 

What are you shifting and changing in your life this season?

Consciousness and Vegetable Death

The tomato vines have fallen on their faces, sprawling out of the beds and making their gangling way onto the cement patio, as if they were reaching for the back door of our home. Frost will not come here so watching the hot weather crops time themselves out is a totally new process for me. Its a gruesome spectator sport. There's no sudden icy morning to put them out of their misery so instead things go on blossoming at one end and turning slowly brown at the other, growing more and more thin and leggy, finally flopping in exhausted, ridiculous length like the cosmos that just fell over after growing taller than our garage, the neck of each new bloom absurdly lengthened like some overdone body shaping competition. The squash continued fruiting manically while also deteriorating into the most impressive mass of powdery mildew I have ever seen. Its a strange new way to switch growing modes. The swiss chard produced so heavily that I honestly lost sight of ever keeping up with eating it. Everyone received bouquets of big crinkled leaves and sunrise colored stalks but it kept coming and coming....finally I all but abandoned it ("Swiss chard boys?" *crickets*) and such a horde of aphids descended that it looked like black mold, growing all over each stalk and eventually creeping up and covering the leaves. I ended up sawing them all off at the ground to be humane. Its so different to grow here.

 I have grown plants my whole life and yet, BAM.....new biome and I feel totally new, floundering and astonished. A asks me all the time "What's that tree? What do you think that flower is?" and mostly my answers are just a lot of, "I have no idea." Its intimidating if I allow it to suck the air out of the room for a second...but if I just reach for my curiosity and desire to never be jaded and love of learning and excitement then suddenly its means something good. I keep trying to figure out the next thing, be grateful for the questions and stumped moments that keep me scratching my head and practice letting go of my anxiety, my need to be right, my choking expertism and my soul killing perfectionism.

One of the things that's so helpful about newness is that it forces actual conscious experience. So much of what we "know" isn't even actually absorbed or seen or focused on....let alone mulled over and considered. All the things are amazing and shocking and weird if seen from the right angle, newness is a great way to make it happen. It reminds of the phenomenon of seeing a word that you have known all your life and for some reason suddenly being unsure if it "looks right" because you just really see it for some unknown reason and it looks so odd, so whimsical, so bizarre...."Is that really how it goes?" Even though you've seen it your whole life and written and read it countless times, there it is, looking so conscious and oddly impressive. Its how people learning English feel when they see the word for the first time too, and you just got a freak glimpse of it like some odd wrinkle in time. That's me, in California. Although....I guess, its less a freak glimpse and more "learning English." Learn on!

Nostalgia In June

Its summer now so, I am playing The Dixie Chicks and The Avett Brothers and sometimes even a little Gretchen Wilson or the Stanley Brothers. I miss my roots in this weather. I can't wear shoes for love nor money and I want to spend all day at a little weedy lake fishing with my boys. I am out in the garden every chance I get, picking roses and leaving them on the steps absently, chewing the blossoms of clover and honeysuckle and forever forgetting to go grocery shopping or make dinner on time. I remember that I have a guitar this time of year and I get it out to play randomly, (I can still play!?) but I have the worst time telling the boys to practice their piano. Its the wrong season for piano, its time for banjos and mandolins. I wish I was at a music festival or a picnic or a rodeo all day long.... I feel incredibly at odds with my "real" grown-up life situation in summer.

Pieces of my current life feel alien and fake, even hiking feels like a weirdly upper class activity that isn't rootsy or real enough, there's no throwing dirt clods or laying in a field watching the clouds whirl past. I don't know how to be goal directed and in my proper social class this time of year. I can never seem to keep dirt from under my fingernails or remember to bring my purse when I leave the house. I miss my sisters and the whole universe I grew up in and sometimes laying in the cicada buzzed summer night when the whole house is sleeping I wish there was a radio running ad infinitum on low like it was in our teenage girl bedrooms so many warm summer nights ago. Its strange how you can grow up and become so chafingly  different from your teeny, childhood self and yet feel so permanently tethered to all that once surrounded you. I keep thinking about my grandma (Favorite Person Ever Nominee #1) and how she just sold the house where she said goodbye to my grandpa, watched her grandchildren grow up and became a retiree. How odd and between worlds it must feel to know that the things you miss no longer exist.

I have been doing a lot of genealogy research on my ancestors and marinating in the information I keep unfolding and un-knotting. There is so much before me, so much that is part of who I am. So much past, so much old-time once-upon-a-time story. It makes me sad because so many things and people are gone, irretrievably and I long to hear all the inside jokes and hidden heartbreaks and I never will, but it also buoys me because even if its just me reading about these people and trying to re-tell the stories to my boys its part of me now. So many things are in our DNA besides just the bare facts of eye color or nose shape.  I wanna pass this past I know and yearn for and remember, my own early beginnings to my boys and also these mysterious people in black and white photos who had so many beautiful, sad, ridiculous stories. I want them to know that they are not islands, that all these people who were, before are part of them and that all the previous parts of themselves are allowed and don't need to go away. I hope I can tell my kids that its fine with me if they change and fine if they revert. Its all there, future growth and ability to become really different along with the permanence of all that has been.

I don't really know how to untangle all of this for myself. I know I have permission to be shockingly different than I ever was and also permission to hang onto illogically primitive inclinations, maybe that's enough. Its lonely sometimes. I had a boyfriend break up with my once with the line, "You're not the sweet little country girl you were when I met you. You've changed." It made me proud at the time and felt so reactionary but it is strange now to realize how much that was true and also wasn't at the exact same time.

“Walking. I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” -Linda Hogan

Syrup, Glasses and Peachy Walls

The big news at our house is that Dee is taller...(3 inches in the last year) and right on up to 10th percentile and he is also going to be getting glasses! He's all hot and cold, nervous about it...getting rid of the nearsightedness headaches sounds great but he's worried about looking weird and finding frames that "suit him." I am looking forward to a fabulous frame shopping session with just him where we let him try on every single one that appeals and don't come home tell we have suited him up like Gregory Peck in the most handsome pair of specs possible. Must. Call. And actually schedule that appointment.

 The weather is crazy. We had a few more inches of snow this past week, then some warm and golden days where everything melted and then today the wind was whipping around the house and the ground was all solidly frozen again. I stayed indoors, tried not to cry, shuffled around in my moccasins, drank lots of tea and joined a fitness challenge. Oh spring, please come soon! I may elope to Florida if you don't.

 Its sugaring season at the local nature center which makes me feel nostalgic, like an imposter and slightly superior all at once. I love the smell of sap boiling down and the taste of the fresh syrup which just IS different than the bottled product on the shelf, I feel totally silly going through the "This is how real maple syrup is made, kids!" class and activity at the nature center...my parents would eye roll so bad....I know how to do all of this and the only reason why my kids don't is because I haven't ever gotten my tail in gear enough to be able to make it happen at our house. I am also not sure it is worth it. It smells incredible and I have no sugaring shack and it tastes divine and I have no desire to be outside in sugaring weather. Heh. This is why I support local folks with my purchasing power. Check back when we are discussing fresh carrots or foraging for autumn mushrooms.

 BUT....in a teeny nod to the warmth of the summer and the colors I love and the deliciousness of the tropics...THIS is my new bedroom wall color! Isn't it pretty?

There is still a lot of painting to do...it didn't cover perfectly, some spots still need spackle and sanding and the trim always needs some going over. But I love it. Its lush and soothing and just the lifting shade I was hoping it would be. Isn't it great when things work out?!?

I love painting walls...almost nothing can help me relax quite like it.  Except for maybe gardening.

Oh Spring....Can you come now?!?!?!?!?!

Dee, At The Moment

Spending some time being conscious, just thinking about my second child today. Noticing all the new little changes and the way he is shifting and what he has let go of since the last time I took a day for just him. May we all be dynamic...and may our children do the same!

Dee Loves....

• Rotisserie Chicken: He'll sit and eat it until he can't eat anymore and who can blame him? The stuff falls off the bone into its own juices.... This mama is super glad that one of her secret tricks for saving dinner is such a big favorite.
• His Great-Aunt Sheila: She has a quiet, peaceful house with a basket of small, quiet toys in corner of her walk-out basement looking out onto the salt marsh. She makes lunches with many little details all organized and thought out and she saves a particular napkin holder for his cloth napkin which he loves. 
• Hand Sewing: We've started hand sewing together a bit, working on a project, making a set of bean bags for a friend's first birthday. He loves the stitching and he's begging me to teach him embroidery although he didn't know the name for it, "Teach me how to write with sewing, Mom!" I bought him a small sewing machine and working up to teaching him how to use it soon. 
• Watching Video Games: Its funny to me but, he doesn't jocky for video game time himself like his brothers and if its specifically offered to him he will often refuse anyway...but he does love to watch. Ru's video games end up counting for his screen time most of the time because he genuinely enjoys watching, sometimes advising but often just enjoying the ride second-hand. Love his curious, observer's mind.
• Seashore Science: He took a solo class on seashore biology and microbiology and LOVED it and that combined with his Aunt Lockbox's knowledge of all things marine have lit a serious fire. Its amazing the details about the blood of sea stars and the diet of anemone's that he retained. I see more ocean classes in his future and maybe some field guides.
• Studying Things Consistently: He's such a creature of habit and lover of routine that he bugs me if he misses a reading lesson or if we fall off the wagon with his math time. He inspires me. Love that he knows what's good for him in this way. 
• The Idea Of Playing The Flute: He's only 6 so no instructors will take him yet, they all insist that you wait until 8 before the mouth has enough strength to develop an embouchure. I'm amazed at the persistence of his dreaming...he knows he has to wait and is still holding out for the day when he is old enough. I see a Pied Piper in our future!
• Little Girls: You'd think Ru would be my confident dandy but he's very mum about his personal feelings towards girls. Dee loves girls...and has had several little favorites so far already. He's very quiet but confident about his choices and makes no bones about his feelings towards them and his intention that one day he should end up with one of them.

Dee Abhors.....

• Raw Apples: They used to be fabulously handy for taking along as a playground snack...all my kids would eat them, they are cheap and they travel decently. No more. We are on to a stage where they aren't cool with Dee anymore, he'll take pretty much any other fruit as substitute and apples are accepted if they come with peanut butter.
• Factual Errors: He's a stickler for the details, this one. He hates it when people exaggerate, miss the facts or remember things wrong. Trying to teach him about hyperbole, kindness and tact while appreciating his love of truth.
• Swimming Lessons: He's proud of what he learned but he hated, hated, hated the stress of taking swimming lessons. The deep end makes him tear up, putting his face under water is terror and being forced to self-propel through water is mortifying. Add in his instructor's thick accent and brusque manner and you have a special kind of hell. Poor kid cried at every, single lesson. 
• Shots: I mean, who doesn't, right? But really...he hates, hates, hates them. Its all I can do to keep him in the room and reasonably still. Good thing he's getting to the end of the schedule for childhood immunizations. Whew!
• Having His Hair Cut: He hates all kinds of physical disturbance...washing his hair is another one that still really gets his goat. He complains that every little snip hurts and that the hair itches and that he is nervous I'll cut him and that its taking too long. I am letting his hair grow out a little longer at the moment and I wonder if he'll eventually try long hair just for the sake of avoiding the physical annoyance of getting it cut. 
• Not Being Prepared: He needs lead time, lots of it...I'm  always reminding myself to tell Ru at the last minute and Dee, two weeks in advance because that's what works best for their vastly different selves. Ru loves surprise and thrives on spontaneity and hates waiting for things. Dee loves to think about things and mull over them, needs warning and wants to figure out what he is doing far, far ahead of time.
• Wearing A Swimsuit: I wonder if this is related to his hatred of his swimming lesson experience. I haven't been able to get him to explain so far. He sometimes flatly refuses to wear his swimsuit and will purposely wear other shorts to play at the beach and even swim in. I'm not sure if its a control thing or a sensory hatred of swimsuit material or a rejection of lesson memories...whatever it is, its curious. He just says..."I don't want to." when I try to get him to put his swimsuit on, so mostly...I don't make him.
• Coconut: He'll ask me when I am making a smoothie if I put coconut milk in it, he wants to know if I have fried things in coconut fat and he will skip candy or ice cream if its coconut flavor. I am slightly obsessed with coconut so maybe its his way of asserting independence or maybe its a real personal taste preference. Hard to say...he's not big on explaining. 

Brave, Rainy Days

It was clear the minute our feet touched our own yard that rain was in order. The strawberries had wilted away to floppy little copies of themselves and the hanging basket by the back door was mostly yellow and crunchy. I was so relieved yesterday evening when it started to sprinkled and bluster.

The only downside was that in the night we were totally startled awake by the loud cracking of a splitting tree. The next door neighbors have a massive, massive white pine that stands taller than our house and although it appears healthy it would utterly destroy our home if it suddenly fell some stormy night. I think A and I both harbor somewhat obsessive fear about the idea although we try to dwell on it or be ridiculous. You can't go chopping down any tree near anything in the neighborhood.
A's subconscious mind was on red alert apparently because, out of a dead sleep he catapulted both of us out of bed at the sound of the tree splitting. Triple Axel Wake Up was a pretty hilarious move when we discovered that it wasn't The Big Pine after all, and then sad after all when we realized it totally destroyed my sister Lockbox's boyfriend's back windshield since his car was parked on the curb in front of our house.

After that excitement, its been a pretty simple day. We have been catching up mail duty, writing notes, addressing cards, coloring pictures to mail out, thinking of cousins we'd like to send messages too....that sort of thing. The postman has a whole stack of correspondence to collect from our front box.

We also made gak slime from Borax, water and Elmer's Glue....and read extra stories. This afternoon I am hoping to drop off our official registration for Homeschool Co-op since its that time of year again and maybe if I'm lucky the curricula I ordered with be delivered. I feel really nervous about trying a curricula for the first time ever this year. I am very concerned that our learning at home not become dry, burdensome and blandy "school-y" in style. I really prefer to do, see ourselves, live, flex and have firsthand learning. I'm a mixture of Unschooling, Montessori and Charlotte Mason if you know anything about educational philosophy. I did some soul searching over the summer and decided that I really would love a neat schedule for what to do every day, all plotted out for me so that I have to do minimal planning and can focus on tweaking and teaching. That's the whole point of curriculum. Enter my exploration of the idea of buying one. If I have to pick I think I'm mostly Charlotte Mason by allegiance so I did some scoping online and purchased Living Books curriculum to try out. Stepping out. Trying new things. Reminding myself that I am the mistress of my choices and I can choose to try things and to quit if it doesn't work.

I love feeling that I can brave and make bold, even uncertain choices and learn from them while not being bound to my learning on the go. Are you trying any new, brave things right now?

Tropical Cure

We have been to parts further south, warming our toes and tanning our pelts in the tropical sun. The world is a much better place now. We are home to our beige and grey yard and it all seems shockingly wan but the snow is almost all gone, the garden catalogs are piling up in a heap on my To Read Shelf and the chickens are started laying like gangbusters. I feel a change in the wind. We 'gon make it!

My life has felt like a ridiculous tumult lately, painful and crazy and feeling out of control. I hate, hate, hate to even tell you that I know part of it has been hormonal woman-timing. PMS is so humiliating and it makes me feel so shammy and non-legit. Blech. Also, I think its a good year to just certify myself as clearly sucked under by Seasonal Affective Disorder and realize that the endless bland, bone-chilling cold and lack of sunshine has screwed with my ability to remain stable. (I am seriously considering getting one of those dorky lights to sit under, folks!) My world has also really been truly stressful. We are trudging our way through marriage counseling, one of those scary things that nobody talks about out-loud. Marriage is hands down the hardest thing, the scariest endeavor and the deepest learning experience I have ever, ever been through in my life. Honestly, it kind of terrifies me and I long for "easy" and "happy" in my marriage but its been everything but. Nobody talks out loud about marriage, you know? Its kind of this confidential, if you-have-one-you-are-supposed-to-feel-blessed kind of a thing. I don't want to make A feel bad or dump our relational dirty laundry but I do think its important sometimes to whistle blow and just be authentic and I know we both agree on the honest desire to be .

Marriage is hella hard, yo. I have never cried harder or felt deeper or worked more from the pit of my own soul than this. I am encouraged to know that people change, relationships are dynamic, that I am growing, that we love each other, that we have resources, and that we are not the first people to walk this way. Please know, if this is you in any way....not everyone marries their high school sweetheart and gets to post on Facebook that they feel so lucky to be married to their best friend. Lots of us out there are working out our marriages, its about growth and change and hard self-work and grace and patient turtle medicine in bucket loads. I have been doing some serious soul searching and I honestly believe that life belongs to the over-comers, to the learners and the doers, those who will not be defeated and will not give up, to those who humbly and vulnerably connect and believe in a spirit of change. I'm clinging to evidence of our progress and firmly planting myself in the committed but unwilling to be victimized category. I'm committed to our marriage, to the pain and the growth and the believing in each other, to preserving myself and encouraging him to do the same, to sacred advisors and the village that surrounds us, to showing our children and people who don't have it easy can be winners too and figuring all this craziness out. Please know that you, struggling married person of great worth, are not alone. I'm all about creating a new culture of humanity, openness and growth around marriage....I'm super over the trite happy-happy pretend that all is bliss or that all conflict is sickness.

This is what the tropics hath wrought. I read and prayed, and dreamed and saw things on the shore, talked and argued and made resolutions and said brave things, soaking in sunshine, slept and slept and slept, wrote lists, took photos and just *was* in a hammock on the seashore. And I'm more whole, more honest, more awake and determined to make it.

Ru, Right Now

I love doing these little posts. They are deceptively hard though. It seems so simple to jot down a fast list but it is actually quite the exercise in slowly down and observing. Its amazing how easy it is to live with people and not really observe them or notice how they are changing and evolving. It takes some real thinking and puzzling and remembering to dig up a nice batch of personal characteristics. I like the sweat involved, its good relational muscle-work.

May we all, notice the ways those we love are growing and changing....and I don't just mean the children. Everyone wants to be seen as alive.

Right now, Ru is like this:

Ru's Favorites

• Daddy's chocolate chip pancakes: His favorite food of all-time at the moment. Its a weekend treat tradition at our house.
• Skateboarding: His current sport of choice. The board and helmet goes everywhere with us in the trunk of the van so that he can whip it out at a moments notice in any store parking lot. He's loving the new skateboard class we found to attend once a week.
• Playing video games: He's really into racing games right now, especially a particular game where you race boats through really vivid terrain. It makes me clutch at my chair arms to watch.
• Competition: He will do almost anything if you can find a way to turn it into either a challenge, a race or a contest. He's a natural athlete psychologically as well physically.
• Pomegranates: If we buy them, he eats them. Suddenly all the pomegranates are gone. Bam!
• Cheeseburgers: Its that pre-teen thing comin' on. I can see it now!
• Comic books: He loves them all, from Archie to Spiderman.
• Snow and ice: He freaks out when all our snow melts and its a party day when it snows again. Its kind of emotional whiplash living in Connecticut in winter for this kid, this however is a good year for him.
• Books on cd: He'll listen by the hour. A and I have both recorded some stories for him and we sometimes get them from the library too. The appetite is bottomless. Reading them himself voraciously is the next hurdle.
• Our chickens: He's the Keeper of the Fowl at our house and he loves to hold the hens and talk to them while he feeds and waters every morning. Love to peek out the kitchen window while I'm getting breakfast and see this gentle piece of him.
• Science: He's my deep outdoors lover. Anything about the world outside will have him hooked.
• Disney's animated Robin Hood: He is quoting little bits of it around the house and its his first pick if a movie is ever suggested.

Ru's Un-Favorites

• Leaving people he loves: He is heartbroken, real tears and genuine misery every time we drive out of his relatives and friend's driveways.
• Soup: I can't kick it. He won't touch the stuff.
• Going to sleep: He'll stay up as late as possible. The boy is a night owl through and through.
• Having Daddy work in California: Ru is a real Daddy's guy and he really hates it that A is working one week a month in another part of the country. Handily, A has planned it so that he is only gone during the five work days and not for any weekend time.
• Zipping his winter coat: I can tell him as many times as I want to but, the boy runs hot and he likes his coat to flap.
• Getting things out of the basement: You know, its a basement. There are things down there.
• Leaving his top shirt button open: He's a straight-laced kind of guy. Every time we go to church I double-check his buttons before we get out because he loves to slyly button up again in the car, chokingly tight, right up to his chin.
• Cooked carrots: I remember not liking them too. Not sure why. They're sweet and crunchy raw and maybe just too perfect from a kid's perspective to be improved upon? I dunno. He hates them.
• Quiet Time: I am iron-fisted about quiet time happening every day and although Ru is too old for napping he still has to spend a quiet hour alone taking a break and he really can't stand it. He's an ultra-extrovert and spending an hour alone in perfect silence is a real exercise when he'd rather be in the middle of a crown laughing loudly and chatting it up.