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Spring Tuesday Afternoon

Tuesday 01 April 2014

Everything is finally waking up. Almost all of the raspberry canes now have leaves on them, and buds are poking out of our single blackberry cane. The irises are resurrecting themselves, and the grass has turned a dark green.

"It's about time!" is just about what all of us would say. I'm not sure I recall being so glad to see winter go in years. The winter months in South Carolina are usually so very mild that I feel we really haven't had a winter at all, but this year, there's no doubting it: we had winter. And it hung on for a while. And kept coming back even after we thought it was gone.

With the arrival of spring, though, come new chores, chief among them watering our new blueberry bushes, six here, six there.

In typical fashion, the Boy watches and then quickly imitates. It's as if he's constantly thinking, "Oh, so that's how you do it. I'll have to give that a try." He remembers details from previous days, little touches that I'm surprised an almost-two-year-old sees.

Some of it has been simply funny. A few times I gave him his bottle when he was younger, I held it as if I were a sommelier at some fine restaurant; he soon began doing his best imitation just before lifting the bottle to his mouth.

Yesterday, he watched me try to jump-start K's car. "Try" only because the battery was too dead and my small, thin cables didn't have the capacity to deliver that amount of power -- too much lost in route due to the inefficiencies inherent in current.

And so when he finds the jumper cables sitting out, he does the logical thing: he tries to attach them to his toy fire truck.

The Girl has her own concerns, though, like a budding reading obsession, that leads her to stumble and fall as she walks and reads. Or was that just the dramatic, theatrical part of her personality, pretending?

"She did that on purpose," K laughs as I snap pictures. Still, the end result is amusing, even if faked.

Later, in the hammock, she reads aloud to me. She stumbles over a few words, proper names mainly, like Ester, but by and large, I just sit and listen.

Words like "gracefully" gracefully fall from her mouth as if she's merely telling the story herself, from memory, with the inflections and drama of a professional storyteller. Well, almost.

Morning Walk

Sunday 30 March 2014

Blue skies in the morning, and there’s only one thing to do: take a walk. It’s been almost two years now since I was taking daily walks with the Boy in the summer mornings. School was just out; the Boy was able to do little more than open his eyes and look straight ahead. On this lazy Sunday morning, with Polish Mass in the afternoon (the last Sunday of the month comes around with surprising suddenness), we have the time for such a trip back through time.

The difference, of course, is in the air, in the trees, in the flowerbeds. The walks two years ago with the Boy were in the summer, when the temperature could rise to the mid-80’s by late morning; today, there’s a cold breeze that reminds us it’s still March.

During the summer walks of two years ago, the shade of trees brought relief; today, the trees are still almost completely bare, and shade only makes us feel the chill more acutely.

Then, the flowerbeds were not nearly as colorful as the beds today.

Then was a beginning, with E just a little bump in the stroller; today is a beginning, with the buds opening and the Boy kicking his feet on the wheels of the stroller and doing his best to chat with me about everything he sees.

“You really want to talk, don’t you?” I ask as we turn to head home.

“Taaaak!”

Stretching into the Future

Wednesday 26 March 2014

It was time for the Girl to go to bed; it was time for Elsa to play. These two events cannot happen simultaneously: several nights, L has come downstairs, kitten in hand, tearfully explaining that “Elsa is jumping on me and biting on me and won’t let me sleep!” Taking all that into consideration, I explained to L that she would have to go to bed without Elsa, which brought on panicked hysteria. “I can’t sleep without Elsa!” I calmed her down, explaining that I would bring the kitten up to her room once she had tired herself out.

For an hour, the cat played with a green bean that had fallen when K was cooking for tomorrow night.

As promised, I took the cat back up to L’s room, nestling her into the crook of L’s neck. And as I walked out, I, the pessimist, the cynic that I am, had the most macabre thought: If they’re this close now, if L is this attached so quickly, what will it be like when Elsa dies? I pictured a teenager, perhaps nearing the end of her high school adventures. Maybe it would happen around prom time, devastating the Girl and running her prom. Silly thoughts, but I mentioned them to K.

“Well, if Elsa dies a natural death, L will be an adult then.”

I’d forgotten L is already seven years old. I’d forgotten how long cats can live. Or more precisely, I’d forgotten that things won’t always be as they are now. That’s why the passage of time catches us so unexpectedly. The changes creep by, day by day, and we think it’s always been as it is. E has always been just on the verge of talking. The Girl has always been able to read, stumbling over only the most troubling words. Except all those always’s can’t always be, not even for a moment. But oh how we sometimes want them to…

Tears to Mama’s Eyes

Tuesday 25 March 2014

By the doors to the restrooms in E's daycare room there is a small chair, blue with yellow legs and arms. With its slightly reclined back and arched seat, it looks almost like an Adirondack chair. It would seem likely the teachers put the chair there to provide children waiting for the restroom a place to sit until one realizes that the name of the group is "Toddler 2," which means every child in the room is around two years old: not many children that age likely are using the restroom by themselves. Perhaps it's a timeout chair.

The Boy, however, made his own unique use of it last week, his first week in daycare. Because we wanted to slip him into the new routine gently, K took him to the facility in the morning then came during her lunch break to take E back to the house and Babcia, where he napped, lunched, and played until I returned. K's arrival always coincided with the preparation time for the children's nap. As the children pulled their mats into place and arranged their blankets, all with the teachers' help, E sat in the yellow and blue chair and waited for K.

This week, however, he's been going full days. Two days down, and things could be going better. What a stressful experience for a little kid, and K and I both feel a little guilty for putting him through it. We justify it to ourselves: he'll be stronger for it; he has to go through this at some point; he'll soon be enjoying it. We justify, but that doesn't do much when the teacher tells us that every day at nap time, E still trundles over to the yellow and blue chair, sits down, and waits for K.

Random Monday Thoughts

Monday 24 March 2014

He toddled to the wood pile, on which rests the small box of sidewalk chalk, and tried to climb.

"Do you want chalk?" I asked.

"Taaaaaaaaaak!" he affirmed.

He took the chalk, bounced over to his ride-able toy firetruck, which has a small storage compartment, opened said compartment, and dropped the chalk in. He pushed it out of the carport then up half of the driveway, where he stopped and emptied his cargo onto the pavement. Taking the fat cylinder of chalk in his hand, he scratched enthusiastically at the pavement, just as L had done so many years ago.

Having multiple children is a constant reminder of the cyclical nature of almost all we do. E is now fascinated with chalk for drawing on the driveway -- large, fat chalk that leaves pink and red and blue marks on the black pavement.

"Koło!" he cried as he made yet another circle.

Paris Mountain

Sunday 23 March 2014

“Tata, when are we going to have another Tata-L day?” the Girl occasionally asks. It's our nickname for a little bit of time together, just the two of us. It might be a bit of bike riding together, or it might just be a few errands with a milkshake treat to finish up the outing. Until recently, though, the Boy has really been too small for a Tata-E day.

Today was just such a day

The girls were on their way to the airport for Babcia's return flight, with a planned stop at Ikea to begin planning a room renovation for the Girl's bedroom. It was the perfect opportunity for a bit of little-man-alone-with-Tata time: walking, climbing, falling, looking, exploring.

Over the bridge -- again, and again, and again.

Walking carefully so as not to fall through

Warmth in March

Thursday 20 March 2014

When it's this warm, after days of rain, after days of winter's last stand, a warm and sunny day demands us, commands us, compels us outside. The yellow bells have been blooming for a week, and the green underneath will soon overwhelm the yellow much like the heat of the coming summer will overwhelm the beauty of merely warm days like today.

The warmth of summer isn't the only thing we catch a glimpse of today, though. The Boy glances at me when I call his name, and as I've managed to do several times with the Girl, I catch an instant in which we can see hints of what he'll look like as he grows older.

It's inevitable, of course, but sometimes, like all parents, we just want to keep him at this perfect little age. And keep L at her perfect little age. That's one of the oddities of being a parent: when you're that close to the growth, seeing it constantly, it's easy to forget that a given child hasn't always been this age, hasn't always been just this charming in this particular way.

Hasn't he always been eager to "help"? Hasn't he always been madly repeating every single phrase he hears, with his bubbling, often-near-miss pronunciation? Won't he always love to swing?