Let It Grow

Following a recent rash of birthday parties, the goodie bag has become the bane of my existence. While I was driving us home from a party last Sunday afternoon, C, after comparing his goodie bag to his younger brother's and seeing that the items differed, shouted: "there's something wrong with my goodie bag!" I didn't bother explaining that the goodie bag is a nice gesture from the child hosting the party and not your God-given right as a party goer, it didn't seem like the right time for a "teachable moment." The goodie bags my kids have come home with aren't that bad, as in, they haven't been filled entirely with candy. In fact one bag contained some animal trivia cards that were really interesting. Did you know that there are 1,000 different species of bats? And who couldn't use another super ball?
Generally speaking though, the interest kids show in the contents of a goodie bag seem to be in direct proportion to the time it takes to drive home from the birthday party itself. This might explain why goodie bag items often end up being left all over the back seat of the car.
In January H and C both received goodie bags which contained an item called "grow a bug." You remember how these work. You put them in water and they are suppose to quadruple in size in 72 hours. Well in January C was really into the concept of grow a bug. I could see it in his eyes. He was picturing his bug (a caterpillar) outgrowing our bathtub like the picture book, A Fish Out Of Water, which, incidentally, was written by Dr. Seuss's first wife Helen Palmer. We put his bug, along with his brother's (another caterpillar) in the largest tupperware bowl in the house and filled it with water. For the next 72 hours, when C was downstairs, we brought the tupperware downstairs, when he went upstairs to bed, we perched the tupperware on a chair next to his bed. H, meanwhile, thought the bugs were real and kept taking them out of the water and trying to pet them. C would then yell at him to put the bugs back into the water so they could continue growing.
During this last spate of parties C received a "grow a whale," which boasted it would grow to four times its original size. Skeptical because his bugs failed to fill the bathtub, C reluctantly gave the whale a try. While he was at it he found the two bugs and put them back in the water as well (after you take grow animals out of the water they revert back to their original sizes).
This time, instead of starting off with the biggest tupperware bowl in the drawer, I chose a bowl only slightly larger than the bugs (and whale) themselves, which proved to be a smart move. "Look how much bigger they are," C remarked genuinely impressed, though he didn't feel the need, this time around, to keep the bugs (and whale) next to his bed at night. They did look bigger. I transfered them to another tupperware.
I ended up transferring them into three different tupperware containers before we finally conceded that they weren't going to get any larger. Each time I moved our three "pets" I paid tribute to Roy Scheider by remarking solemnly, "I'm gonna need a bigger boat." Nobody got the joke but so what. I thought I was funny.

song: Let it Grow • artist: Eric Clapton

Eye in the Sky

Ah, Esta, Esta, Esta. When I turned 30, wise Shawna from production assured me that my 30s would be lots better than my 20s. I didn't hear her make any such predictions this year when I turned 40.
Coincidentally I went to three birthday parties last weekend too - two five years olds and H, who turned three.
So were my 30s better than my 20s? Who the heck knows. I can't remember yesterday much less ten years ago. I will tell you this though, when I turned 30 I didn't have a husband, kids, a house (either with or without a white picket fence), or money in the bank. I managed to cover those first three this past decade. Without that much effort on my part either I might add. Sometimes life feel a little bit like that Talking Heads song. How did I get here? This is not my beautiful house. I am not someone's beautiful wife.
As for money in the bank - why there's a new book out every week assuring the rest of us that money doesn't buy us happiness (it's buying books about happiness that buys us happiness).
Ken was 39 when he got married and look - now he's got four kids. Which goes to show that you never know what might happen to you down the road.
It's just like you said, "the sky's the limit."
Well really four is the limit for us personally, but for you my friend - the sky.

song: Eye in the Sky • artist: Alan Parsons Project

Witch Doctor

On Tuesday I planted sugar snap peas and beets in our plot at community gardens. C spent his time in the garden on his stomach, elbow deep in the fish pond trying to catch frogs. When he woke up on Wednesday, his left eye was red. Instead of shipping him off to preschool, all five of us schlepped down to the pediatricians, H for the second time this week (he had a well-baby appointment on Monday). They have good toys at the pediatricians though, so nobody minded spending the morning there. If you've ever been to our pediatricians office you'll know that not only are there great toys in the waiting room, there is a collection of lawn ornament animals outside the front and back of the office. From all the exam rooms parents can distract children by asking them if they see the bear in the tree or having them count concrete rabbits. Clever moms can thereby deftly avoid all talk of needles and immunizations.
After I paid my $15 for eye drops and the assurance C wasn't contagious, we left. Being saddled with two babies in car seats I couldn't corral my big boys into the van fast enough. They headed around to the back of the office for a close-up inspection of the animals. Since they weren't headed for the street I let them go and concentrated on getting the twins into the car. When I went back for them they were smack in the middle of the woodland animals trying to identify them.
The scene was a little surreal and reminded me of something from Hansel and Gretel. There were my children, frolicking in this pastoral scene with baby deer and ceramic squirrels, but instead of chirping birds you could plainly hear the cries of frightened children who were all either about to get shots or be pushed into ovens and eaten by a witch.

song: Witch Doctor • artist: David Seville

Silence is Golden

As a mother, I often wish I could control time. Take one of my twins (when he's not crying), stop time, and just cuddle him for all eternity. There are also plenty of times when I wish I could fast forward through moments of extreme aggravation.
C was noticing the passage of time recently and commenting how some things are unique to a particular moment. For example, he made a mental note that there are five letters in his name and that he's five years old.
"This is the only time that will ever happen." he said solemnly.
On his younger brother's birthday C took H aside and said, "I have some bad news for you, H."
I thought he was going to pontificate on the passage of time and tell H how he'd never be two again but instead he told him: "It's a rainy day on your birthday."
There's a new book out on the benefits of silence. We've really become a nation addicted to self help books if we need a book to tell us that a little silence is good for the soul. Any mother of young children can tell you that silence is more valuable than jewels. Next someone will write a book explaining how sun and water are good for plants or how moisture is bad for your basement.

song: Silence is Golden • artist: Frankie Valli

Smile

Both the twins are smiling. I noticed S for the first time this week. Baby smiles are so great. They are unreserved and big. Babies smile with their whole mouths. Not like the forced, pinched smile that seems to say, "why are you torturing me," which is what you get when you ask an adult to smile for a photograph.
Last night when we put N to bed he looked as if he'd just had a jolt of black coffee. His eyes were wide open. He lay there on his back in bed fixating on the hand he was waving around; staring at it as if he was stoned.
"Hey man. Check this out. It's my hand."
I know it's impossible for someone to look as if they are simultaneously experiencing both a caffeine high and a pot-induced high - impossible, that is, unless that someone is three-months old.

song: Smile • artist: John Turner, Geoffrey Parsons and Charlie Chaplin

Old

Today is H's birthday. He is three. To celebrate, his older brother gave him a present - a card with one dollar and seventy-five cents in it.
One dollar and seventy-five cents.
Why one dollar and seventy-five cents? Earlier in the week it was only going to be one dollar. How did H's net worth nearly double in the course of the week? I couldn't tell you, but C was really excited about his gift. He couldn't wait to give H this monetary token of his affection.
It's my mother's birthday later in the month. C says he's going to give her a dollar.
As for H, his latest thing is recognizing letters. First it was only H, upper and lower case. He points out H's everywhere. In the usual spots like the pages of books and on street signs, but also in unusual places like the H at the end of Falmouth painted onto the high school track and the H in the middle of FHS.
One night he pointed to my forehead wrinkles, the ones on my nose, between my eyes, and announced "that a H."

song: Old • artist: Paul Simon

I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

Yesterday Doug and his girls came over to our house. Doug is the only parent I can have over because our houses are equally messy.
The kids all played in the backyard and got on reasonably well. Having someone smaller than him to push around proved too much of a temptation for H who acted didactically. He gave instructions such as, "don't run in garden!" while he himself demonstrated exactly what running in the garden looked like. He also protested loudly whenever one of the girls picked up a baby toy despite his own penchant for hoarding the twins toys.
Doug's oldest daughter kept calling me by my first name. As in, "Look Joanne, the baby is crying" and "I want to show the ladybug to Joanne." It was nice. Like we were friends instead of me being the nagging Mommy who spends the majority of her day saying things like, "you two need to work it out for yourself," "please put your shoes on the stairs," "put the cat down," and my personal favorite, "everyone wears undies."
Doug thinks that it is only by having children that we are able to get anything done. His theory is that before having children, you might have sat around with a limitless expanse of time and no sense of urgency to get anything done. But as a parent you only have this brief window of free time, which makes you hyper-productive whenever the chance to get things done presents itself. In this way, you can accomplish in 20 minutes what, before children, would have taken hours to complete.
Interestingly, Doug is the only person I know who has managed to take up new hobbies since having children. Most of us are barely able to find time to do the things that, before having children, we enjoyed.
I don't know if this proves his theory so much as it confirms the sainthood of his wife.
When I have an extra 20 minutes the hobby I most often pursue is buying birthday presents for five year olds. I swear that if it weren't for C's constant need for party gifts, I'd never leave the house. Today it was Brady who, thankfully, "likes dinosaurs."

song: I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself • artist: Dusty Springfield

sour milk (a couplet)

the gartner twins
are spit up kings