Autumnal Sunday with Friends
the girl
Old Friends, Old Zoo, New Experience
We’ve been to the zoo enough times that we have it memorized. Indeed, we’ve had it memorized for so long that we could probably give a tour to visitors blindfolded. Still, it’s a new experience for the Boy, and that makes it a new experience for us all.
Halloween 2013
Sign Language
Early Morning with the Boy
The Boy’s sleeping schedule is somewhat more flexible than we’d probably really like it to be. It probably has to do with that stubborn illness that’s been lingering.
Some days, he sleeps until eight; other mornings, he’s up at half-past five. It would be infinitely convenient if the former days tended to fall on the weekends and the latter during the work week, but infinity and convenience are rare companions. And in the end, isn’t convenience overrated?
Besides, when we’re the only two up — K already out of the house and L asleep — it’s reminiscent of the early weeks. Tiring weeks, but always magical in the morning.
“Magical morning my foot,” K might say. “I remember how you complained!”
Reading
Autumn Sunday in the Yard
New Friends
Saturday Soccer
It’s been a tough soccer season, the mirror image of last year’s spectacular season. We’ve had some tough losses this year, and the only win thus far came last week, when L was home with a bad cough.
This week, she’s back, playing all positions: goalie, defender, mid-fielder, forward.
The irony of that statement is that she often played all those positions at the same time — all the kids do. A sort of herd soccer. They’re beginning to learn about positional play, but they get excited, each and every one of them, and soon, there’s a little herd of green and blue jerseys, all attacking the ball.
Today, there is such hope: we are up one-nil for the first quarter. The green team equalizes, in a sense: one of our players shoots into his own goal trying to clear the ball. Soon, though, we’re up three one.
And then comes the barrage of little number five on the green team: a little blond girl shorter and faster than everyone else on the field, with phenomenal ball control. She shoots one, two, three goals within five minutes.
So we lose, five three. Well, four three. One doesn’t count. But of course it does. But of course, it doesn’t.
October Sunday
“What do you want to do this afternoon?”
“We could head to the pumpkin patch we usually go to this time of year.” Yes, but that’s almost a forty-minute drive one way.
“Maybe we could go to the park.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Conestee?”
We were there last week, though. And the other park we frequent is across town.
Our options don’t sound very relaxing, and for a family with a sick boy, an almost-sick girl, and two always-exhausted parents (K more so than I, I’m sure), relaxation is at a premium.
So maybe some sandbox time followed by a game of Roll the Pool Balls at Each Other. E’s a natural. He’s going pro — I can sense it already! He’s got such original techniques, feeling, sniffing, even tasting the ball.
Of course he always puts safety first: he never even considers approaching a Roll the Pool Balls at Each Other table without a helmet.
Explaining in Poland
I’ve only now been getting around to the videos from Poland.
Clearing Out
“I’ve outgrown them,” L explained as she packed up her Barbie odds and ends — including her beloved Barbie Camper — to be taken down to the basement for storage until an eventual yard sale or something similar.
But the Boy is into vehicles, and he spotted the camper, and he took it out of the box for a spin.
Saturday
Saturday is usually a day of hustle and bustle in our house, a day of constant movement and seemingly unending motion.
Yard work, repairs, cleaning, cooking, child care, soccer games, shopping — it makes the day pass in a flash. And I never really notice just how busy we usually are until we aren’t. With both kids a bit sick, today became a stay-at-home day.
And except for some cleaning and a bit of cooking, with some grading squeezed in here and there (40 out of 50 complete) and the Girl’s Polish schooling, it was an uneventful day.
It’s hardly something to complain about, though. Nothing on occasion is just fine.
Silly Story
A bug named Rose lived in a hut made of Roses. Rose is a good bug. Rose has a tub full of mud. Rose likes to play in the mud. Rose is awesome.
A story by the Girl.
First Autumnal Sunday
Outdoor living in South Carolina really only becomes comfortable around mid-September. Temperatures dip, the wind seems to blow more, and it feels less humid.
And so on a day like that — the first day like that — we decide we must take advantage of it. We head to our near-neighborhood favorite, less than five miles away. Lovely views, a flat paved path for the Girl to ride on: it’s a perfect place to pass a couple of Sunday hours.
It’s a great place for L to practice on her new bike: hand brakes and gears make for a stressed, confused girl sometimes, and so a gentle, flat path is what she needs more than anything to grow accustomed to new techniques. She still tries to brake by pedaling backwards, and the overly-sensitive gears on the bike sometimes wreck havoc on her confidence, not to mention her pedaling.
Still, she manages.
As we walk, the Boy, who spends much of the time in the stroller, finally reaches a breaking point. He must get out and walk. But he doesn’t walk when he’s outside. Ever. He runs. And falls. And he has eternal scabs on both is knees to prove it.
His teetering and tottering about add a new stress element for the Girl: she decides it’s safest to ride far in front. Until she realizes she’s far in front, then she stops and waits for us.
Those breaks, though, will come fewer and farther between as she grows older. She’ll soon be seven, and that’s so difficult to believe that I think I must be making that up.
September Day
It occurred to me that I never posted Saturday’s pictures.
There’s a story behind them — we can all see that. But I can only piece together bits of the morning side of things because I stayed at home with the Boy while K went with L for Saturday morning soccer.
Another tough loss, I hear when they come home. Not like last year’s start, which included four goals in the first two games.
No, this year they’re on the other end of it, getting whipped. And that’s good. In fact, I think as an educational experience, getting your tail kicked is more instructive than winning. Many more lessons to learn: humility, sportsmanship, graciousness.
Hang on — those are the exact same things you can learn from winning. Perhaps it’s just the sting that matters: we all have to get used to it sooner or later. I’d rather it be sooner for my children.
Apples 2013
We must crave rituals, for we invent them endlessly. We sleep on the same side of the bed nightly. When we participate in a class, we often end up sitting in the same seats throughout the course that we chose the first day. We go through periods of eating the same thing for breakfast.
It’s easy to understand why: ritual makes life comfortable because it provides signposts for our lives. It adds predictability and stability, and early humans certainly lacked both of those, I would say.
Some rituals are natural: it doesn’t take much thought to understand, for example, where birthday celebrations come from. Birthdays come around every year, whether we want them to or not, whether we’re aware of them or not.
Other rituals, like cuddling up with a family friend who is in many ways more like simply family, come from the comfort they bring. Sweet conversations about school, the difficulty of speaking Polish, listening to your mother — these are things we repeat simply because they make soul glow just a bit brighter.
Some rituals are flexible, born out of obsession, such as an obsession with pushing, pulling, tugging, conjoling, and wrestling anything and everything that’s bigger than you are.
Still other rituals receive their form from the calendar: seasonal rituals are beyond the control of even the most OCD toddler or desparate-for-an-outing parents. Apples cannot be hurried, and we cannot make an autumnal ritual repeat in December just because.
We pick up most of these rituals by watching others do them. All the parishioners at our church genuflect and make the sign of the cross before entering the row of pews. It’s not something I’d ever seen in Poland, and K has never really done it. As such, I’ve never really done it. L took it upon herself to do so this morning at Mass. Perhaps she’s creating her own personal ritual by watching others’ traditions.
The Boy is keen on such watch-and-learn rituals. He knocks on closed doors when he sees them, and every time he passes something that’s off limits, he reminds himself and others with a shake of the finger and the Polish equivalent of “no-no.”
And rituals often themselves contain sub-rituals. A visit to the orchard, which often includes the usual suspects, always concludes with a group portrait — or a semi-group portrait, because someone has to take the picture.
Just like someone has to push the cart.
It’s ritual. It’s habit. It’s life.
Early Afternoon
Polish lessons.
Lunch.
Nice start to Sunday.
P-english
Mama, masz cos twardy żeby bear down on?
Boosterthon 2013
