matching tracksuits

fun in threes, sometimes fours

the boy

Autumn Sun

It’s the angle — no doubt. The sun is hitting the earth at a decreasing angle as the northern hemisphere moves further and further away from the sun. Yet that astro-mechanical explanation somehow doesn’t do justice to the quality of light this time of year. We sit down for an early dinner and the light outside is simply magnetic. One must head out to the deck to get a closer look.

Autumn Sun

As the sun goes down, though, attention turns to more important things. The Girl can now read a book — a single book — to E. Perhaps in the recent past it would have been more a question of memorization than anything else, but these days, there’s no question she’s reading.

Reading to Brother

Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the Boy is comprehending.

Shoulder

It’s amazing what you can do if you just put your shoulder into it.

The Moment

Some moments, like on a Sunday afternoon walk in the early autumn, everything seems simply perfect.

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What was before and what will be after both seem to disappear and for a brief flash, we just are.

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The Boy and the Bed

Lately, the Boy has been making the oddest noise...

Nap

Arriving home, the Boy usually likes a little nap in his swing.

Rocking

Laughing Boy

It turns out the Boy is quite ticklish.

Saturday Break

We woke up to rain today. "We probably won't be going for soccer," I think as I poured my first cup of coffee. And the thought didn't break my heart. Still, knowing the Girl had the second game of the day, I decided to drive over to the field, only four or five miles from out house, to see if there were indeed games. I'd heard somewhere that the general rule for determining whether or not to play a soccer game is if the ball bounces when dropped from the waist. If it bounces, the game begins. But I wasn't sure what it would be like for four- and five-year-olds. I arrived at the field in a drizzle to find everyone playing as if nothing were happening. Still, the Girl has a way of getting a nasty cough very easily, so K and I decided it would be best not to go.

No Soccer

We were fairly certain the Girl would be a little disappointed. I saw the patch of dry pavement on the road and thought L would surely see that and certainly use that as justification. "See? It's drying." And so I was a little surprised when the reaction to "Sweetie, we're not going to be able to go play soccer today" was "Yippeee!"

My Math

We ended up staying home most of the morning, with Nana and Papa coming for a visit and then L going to spend the afternoon at their place -- after a math lesson in the kitchen.

Lunch

For E, there were very few changes in the routine. Eating, giggling, pooping, sleeping. Repeat.

Feeding

After some weeks, such a Saturday is just fine.

Over the Shoulder

It used to be something of an obsession. “What was I doing around this time X years ago?” I’d ask before opening up my journal for that month some years earlier and reading to see what happened. Yet what if I’d had a way to thumb through pictures the way I thumbed through my journal entries? For most of my life, I had about as much interest in photography as I had in basket weaving. Then I moved to Poland. And a couple of years after returning to the States, I moved back to Poland, then armed with a digital camera. And so I can open up a photo viewer and easily look over my shoulder.

September 2001: I’d just moved back, and I was still taking daily walks in the fields behind the house where I rented a room. Such pictures now seem almost unreal: did I really live there?

Autumn Babia

September 2002: The fascination remained. I was still talking almost daily walks in the fields, heading up to a small patch of trees known to locals as “Cats’ Castle”, watching the sunset from various locations, impressed that the church was visible from almost every point in the central part of the village.

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And then an empty year. Did my computer crash? Did I not take many pictures? Whatever the cause, September 2003 is void of pictures.

September 2004: K and I had just gotten married. We’d brought all our lovely wedding gifts — the glass paintings and various prints — to my apartment which was then our apartment. We looked through pictures of our wedding and spent lovely afternoons creating photo albums.

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September 2005: Back to the States, to Asheville. “This is where I want to live,” K said the moment she saw the small town surrounded by mountains. It was understandable: it looked so much like her own home. And have a few lovely parks about didn’t hurt either.

Asheville Botanical Gardens II

September 2006: The Girl was just a few months away. We’d heard all the stories, but who can really prepare for how a child is going to change one’s life?

Morning Walk II

September 2007: The Girl was with us, and already showing her precocious nature. She sat only to roll; she crawled only to crash; she lived only to giggle and fuss.

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September 2008: L, able to walk, began asserting her independence. The innocence would surely linger?

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September 2009: Independence increased.

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September 2010: We learned quickly that owning a house is owning a project. A never-ending, always-bank-account-draining, eternally-exhausting project.

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September 2011: Where did that baby go? Certainly she’s somewhere around here?

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September 2012: If I could have glanced forward in time from 2001, surely a wife, two children, a house, and a cat on a tired Wednesday night would seem just as unrealistic as the fields of Lipnica Wielka seem to me now?

Afternoon Nap

Down

Routine is everything. Naps come like the tide: they're regular and predictable, and there's no stopping them. We come home for the day, and fairly soon, the fussing starts. The tired fussing.

Afternoon Nap

And soon enough...

Autumn Sunday

The sky always seems somehow a little richer, a little deeper blue in autumn. I suppose it has to do with angles and refraction as the Earth tilts the northern hemisphere away from the sun and the southern hemisphere toward it.

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Somehow, though, the light just feels more relaxed.

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We in the south finally begin coming out to play at this point in the year. Triple digit heat indexes don’t do much to encourage the average South Carolinian to spend time in the park, kicking a soccer ball around or playing on the jungle gym. (And even if one wanted to, the equipment would be much to hot to touch, and forget about the sliding board.)

Mother and Son

So today, with temperatures only in the mid-seventies, the four of us went to a favorite park for some swinging, sliding, and soccer practice.

First Swing

The Boy sat briefly in a swing for the first time. The seat seemed still to swallow him, and his general inability to support himself combined with his love of peering forward made the prospect short-term at best.

Three Treasures

But there was always the grass. Fascinatingly green, unfamiliarly scratchy, generally puzzling for the Boy. He’d likely have put some in his mouth if he’d realized how easily it could be done. The whole world would go in his mouth if it could fit, piece my piece, chunk by chunk.

Defense

L and I, though, were ready for some practice. With her speed, she can easily outrun most of the players on the field in her Saturday soccer games, so we worked on a new tactic: running as fast as possible while still kicking the ball.

Offense

“Just kick it out in front as far as you can,” I explained, “then run — run as fast as possible. You’ll beat everyone to the ball. Then just do it again.”

We also worked a bit on defense.

Theft

And the Boy finally got a closer look at that grass.

The Boy in Grass