But not loud like a train!

Holy whirlwind of a week! The things I had planned for us at the beginning of this week were distinctly different from the things that actually happened to us this week. Monday started off windy, but when has wind ever kept us from anything? Well, there was that one time the wind was so strong that...nope, never. Henry and Charlie and I headed out to Lowes' garden center to poke around. I pictured us exploring and discussing different species of plants and trees and flowers in a very fun, educational way, but instead we spent the bulk of our visit playing around and in the fountains. (This is not the diversion from our plans I mentioned a few sentences ago.) I pointed out to the boys, "Hey! Trees! Lowes sells trees! Did you know there were stores that sold trees?"because I kind of have a thing for trees (see the Arbor Day post from the "Henry Times." I think I did a post about that?), but Henry and Charlie only wanted to focus on the fountains, so we did that instead. It was getting very windy outside - I heard two male Lowes employees telling the older lady at the cash register in the garden center to "keep an eye on this weather," so we headed indoors to check out bird feeders. We ended up purchasing a Venus fly trap and a third hanging plant for our kitchen, some bird seed for our existing bird feeder, a bluebird house, and some garden gloves for Henry. Oh yeah, and some Swiss chard seeds, because Henry wanted seeds and that's what we had eaten the night before. As we checked out, we noticed the sky had opened up, and we were in Lowes with nary a poncho or an umbrella. The cashier offered to watch the boys while I went to get the van, and although she seemed perfectly nice, we decided to wait a minute for the rain to slack off, then make a run for it.

By the time we got back home, unpacked our purchases, changed clothes, had lunch, and downloaded a weather radio application for my iPhone (can't keep the actual radio in the bedroom during nap time - WAY too loud! This way I can get a silent notification on my phone if bad weather is headed our way) it was nap time. As we began our nap, we were under a tornado watch, but this is hardly unusual during springtime in Middle Tennessee. Charlie had opted out of his morning nap, so he was TI-RED. It was more difficult than usual to get him to go to sleep, which meant it took Henry longer than usual to go to sleep, but finally they dozed off. About twenty minutes later, I got a call from Russell. Now, Russell ordinarily would never dare to call during nap time, so I knew this was serious. Simultaneously, I got a bright red notification from the iPhone weather radio: tornado warning! This was what Russell was calling to tell me. Sumner County was under a tornado warning. It is a testament to my insanity where sleep and nap and schedules are concerned that I then actually posed this question: "Should I wake the boys and take them downstairs?" Russell quickly brought the situation into perspective for me, and I woke the boys and got them into the downstairs bathroom. Just as I did, we heard very loud sounds that didn't sound like a train. (I remember that because my first thought was, "Whoa, that was loud!" and the only-slightly-reassuring thought that followed quickly on its heels was, "But not loud like a train!" which I chose to interpret as incontrovertible proof that we were not experiencing a tornado.) I told my half-awake boys, "Stay here!" (Henry: "But I don't need to pee!") as I darted to the front door to look out the window. There I noticed three things: (1) it was raining very, very hard, and horizontally; (2) the standing trees in our front yard were blowing sideways; and (3) not all of the trees in our front yard were still standing. That was the loud sound: two thirds of one of our Bradford pears, the tree providing our yard with the most privacy from the street, had snapped off in two separate pieces. The picnic table was buried underneath it somewhere, and Henry's sand table had been moved, its cover gone. I took this in at a glance, then

headed back to the bathroom, where Henry was asking, "What's wrong, Mommy?" "Nothing!" I cried frantically, "Everything is fine!" I must have seemed a little concerned, though, because Henry decided at that point that Charlie was scared. "It's OK, Charlie, I'll hold your hand." (This really happened.) Once the storm was over, we went back to our naps, figuring we would deal with the whole tree situation at some later point. After all, all we'd really need was someone to remove the downed tree (we ended up getting our lawn guy to do it) and a replacement tree (Lowes sells trees!) and about twenty years for the tree to mature enough to provide the shade and privacy once offered by the Bradford pear (our grandkids will enjoy it!).

Tuesday we had plans to go into Nashville to have lunch with some of my old friends and coworkers, who would be meeting Charlie for the first time. These plans actually came into fruition, and we had a great time, but little did we know it would be the last social event of our week. (Our week's schedule had been a teensy bit too full, anyway, and I foresaw lots of rushing around with tired boys on my hands: Wednesday morning we planned to visit a fire station with our moms' group; Wednesday afternoon we would go to a birthday party; Thursday we would fly kites at the park with the moms' group; Friday we would attend another friend's birthday party and tour another preschool for Henry.) On Tuesday afternoon we got news from Russell's family that his grandfather was very ill, so we decided to make a trip to Morristown the following day. Wednesday was a relatively normal travel day; you know, six hours of packing for the trip, three hours of trip - normal. Thursday Russell went with his parents to visit Papaw Woody at a hospital in Oak Ridge, and the boys and I spent the day with my parents at their house. Grammy and Grandpa hid Easter eggs for Henry outside, a "test run," and blew bubbles with him in the yard. Charlie mostly spent his time exploring every inch of the house (he's totally unaware of ever having been here before, and at any rate, he wasn't able to explore the house before now) and harassing the cat. On Friday morning, Grandpa made blueberry and strawberry pancakes for us outdoors on his grill's griddle, then we blew more bubbles and looked for dandelions. At lunch we went to Russell's parents' store, where we hung out with them and Aunt Carrie and Baby Dylan for a while. In the evening, Aunt Wendy and Uncle David came for a visit, and we all went to eat Mexican food for dinner. Russell's grandfather's condition took a surprise turn for better, and he was moved from the ICU to a regular room at the hospital. We have plans to stay in Morristown until Sunday if he continues to improve. So, it wasn't the week we had planned, but it was a week with family, which we always, always, always welcome!

Ahhhhhbless you!

We went to three fun play dates this week - Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - so I was required to devote a relatively small amount of brainpower to finding ways to occupy the boys. A welcome respite, I'll be honest. Wednesday's play date was special because it was our friend Cindy's annual Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia (CDH) party. Our friend Claire is a CDH survivor, and we are always happy for a reason to celebrate her. Everyone was to wear turquoise in observance of the date, but only I was able to do so, as the boys don't own a single article of turquoise clothing. I dressed Charlie in blue and Henry in green (or maybe it was vice versa), my calculations being that blue + green = turquoise, but I'm not sure the other partygoers picked up on that. Probably they just thought, "Wow, she took care with her own dress but not her kids'! How festive!"

On Tuesday, we toured another potential preschool for Henry. This one is a for-profit, secular school, and it costs twice as much as the church-based one we toured last week. Unfortunately (for the school) I was not twice as impressed with it. The facility itself was obviously newer and more expensive, but the assistant director did not impress me - we stood at the front desk for ten minutes before anyone appeared in the window, though I should add that we were more than ten minutes late for our appointment, so maybe we were being punished? - and the teacher to student ratio was higher than I would have liked. In the classroom we visited, there were like eighteen three-year-olds with one teacher (who appeared to be about 25 years old) and one teacher's assistant (who was maybe 19 years old). They were seated at tables of four or five kids each, so at any given time, two or three of the tables were unaccompanied by a teacher. Many of them looked lost (I thought), and I mentally inserted Henry at one of the tables unattended by a teacher, and that was when I decided this was not the school for us. Now, I know he won't be able to have a teacher holding his hand all the time (he actually asked me the other day, "Mommy, will the teacher hold me?"!!!), but I would like to see him in a classroom with fewer students. After we left our tour, we met friends at the little walking trail next to the library and enjoyed the beautiful weather, playing in a dried-up creek bed that Henry pretended was the ocean. It was a good thing we got out that day, too, because the rest of the week was cool and intermittently rainy. On Tuesday night, my parents (Grammy and Grandpa), fresh from their trip to Israel, spent the night with us. They brought the boys toy camels and donkeys, and shirts with a screen-printed Elmo which read, "Shalom!" We were glad to have them back safely, and when they left the next morning, Henry said, "I hope you come back soon!" We are planning a trip to Morristown over Easter, and he asks every day if it is Easter yet.

On Thursday, we had the morning to ourselves, and after trying and failing to get Charlie to take his morning nap, we headed to Target. We looked around at a leisurely pace, spending probably an hour browsing through the store in our standard pick-up-an-item-of-interest-for-each-boy,-deposit-it-wherever-we-happen-to-be-when-interest-is-lost,-and-repeat fashion. I will most definitely go to shopper's hell, if it exists, for these habits (once I was in the grocery store with my mother-in-law and suggested that we just put an item back on the nearest shelf, rather than in its rightful spot, and she gave me an odd look and said, "Oh no, we don't do that," which made me wonder if something might be seriously wrong with me), but it's just too exhausting to heave ourselves around in that big red shopping cart and go back to return all those items to their designated places. We looked at action figures in the toy section, we checked out arts and crafts in the arts and crafts section, buying Henry two glue sticks he desperately needed, we perused shower curtains and bath mats for the upstairs bathroom, we bought a picture frame, we bought the ingredients to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies later that day (having just that morning sworn off sugar "for good this time"), we picked up a small bean bag chair for the play room, then thought better of it, wondering if we really had the space. Finally, we went to check out, and Henry said, "Mommy! Will you get Elmo for me? I was sitting on him." Henry was in the big part of the cart, the cart part, and he had brought an Elmo figure into the store with him, then dropped it into the cart when something else caught his attention. I looked underneath him, shifted the brown sugar and oats and chocolate chips around - no Elmo. Did I mention the cart is red? The same shade of red as Elmo? And it has Elmo-sized holes all over it? Elmo apparently had abandoned ship at some point on our journey. So what else could we do? We heaved the cart around and retraced our steps, calling out for Elmo. Henry mused that he was probably crying somewhere. I knew which path to follow because of the conspicuous items that littered the aisles where we had been. The search took us probably twenty minutes, but there was no sign of Elmo, and eventually we had to admit to ourselves that he was probably lost forever. Henry took it well, and we returned to the checkout line to load our items onto the belt. As I removed my purse from the platform beneath the cart, I noticed a red object interrupting the symmetry of the cart's lines: it was Elmo! He was with us all along! I mused that he was probably laughing down there the whole time, the smug little bastard, and I glared at him, returned him to Henry, and we all went home. We made cookies later that afternoon, and they were delicious!

Quickly, quickly, as the end of Jill Time is drawing nigh: What the boys are up to this week:

Charlie: Charlie will hold the phone up to his ear now, chubby little elbow pointing forward, and try to say "hello"!!!! I could not be more excited about this if he had actually invented the iPhone. I've also caught him saying or trying to say "ball," "dance," "night night," "mama," and "dada," and he is definitely saying "bye bye"! It's like all of a sudden, in the space of a week, he is getting the talking thing. He is eating solids better now, in no small part because I borrowed a book of blender baby food recipes from a friend. Apparently, he likes solids, he just doesn't like solids that taste bad! Anyway, he is still drinking WAY more breast milk than advised by any source, anywhere...not sure what to do about that. He currently enjoys a bottle at 8:00 p.m., 11:00 p.m., 2:00 a.m., and 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. And by "enjoys," I mean "demands," as in "accepts no substitute." Dr. Johnson, our pediatrician, says this is merely a bad habit which simply needs to be broken, and then he will sleep. Illuminating advice! Charlie has discovered that he likes to "help" me unload the dishwasher. This involves reaching in, grabbing anything knife-like and potentially deadly, and slicing it through the air before I can stop him. He then steps back to get away from me and bumps his head on the drawer that is open at head-level (Charlie's head), after which I pick him up and comfort him, then set him back down, and repeat until the dishwasher is empty. Another pastime he enjoys now is holding his hand immersed in a glass of cold drinking water; I think it may be some sort of endurance test he's doing. Maybe he will be a runner like I used to be!

Henry: the funniest thing I've noticed about Henry this week is the new fake sneeze he does. I know it's fake because instead of sounding like "Ahhhhhhchoo!" or something similar, it sounds like "Ahhhhblessyou!" and it cracks me up every time. He thinks "bless you" is part of the sneeze itself, not something you say after the sneeze. Get it? That's funny. He has been kinder to Charlie this week, and with less bribery. There is a certain bodily function that Henry still refuses to perform in a toilet, and every time he feels the urge, he tells me, I put a diaper on him, and he goes behind a chair - Henry: "I need my privacy!" Russell: "You know a good place to find privacy? In the bathroom!" - and then I change his diaper. So, we've devised an ingenius plan by which the Easter Bunny, when he comes to bring the eggs and candy and grass, will take away Henry's diapers, thereby forcing him to use the potty when nature calls. It's foolproof! Henry has already begun trying to reason his way out of this. Henry: "We'll have to buy some more diapers!" Me: "The Easter Bunny says we aren't allowed to buy any more." Henry: "You said the Easter Bunny couldn't talk...?" Me: (Long silence) then, "The Easter Bunny is taking away your diapers. You'll have to use the potty." We'll see how that goes...

Eesh!

I have other plans for Jill Time today, so this post will be shorter and less detailed than usual, and with no pictures. (Now there's an enticing indroductory sentence!) I want to focus more on what the boys are doing at this point in their lives, rather than what we did each day of this week, so I'll just hit the highlights. On Tuesday, we toured a potential preschool for Henry. I was pleased with it, though I have nothing yet to compare it to, and I put down a deposit to hold a place for him there in the fall; we do plan to tour other schools before we make our final decision, though. Henry seemed to like the school well enough - he was very interested in the toys inside the classrooms, and the playground - but I think touring schools makes him nervous about being away from me. It makes me nervous, too! On Wednesday, we went to a fun Dr. Seuss party at Melanie's house. The boys went dressed as characters from Wacky Wednesday, naturally, because (A) it's our favorite Dr. Seuss book and (B) we're naturally wacky. I guess (A) is a function of (B). Henry was outwardly wacky in that he was wearing a backwards Hawaiian shirt, two different color socks, and two different shoes. Also, his hair, which is longish, was gelled into a stiff mohawk which remained mostly aloft until midway through the party, when it began to list and bend in awkward (wacky!) ways. Charlie's wackiness was limited to wearing two different color socks and a sign on his back that read, "I'm wacky." Not the most original costume, so he asserted his wackiness behaviorally while we were at the party by slipping and bashing his forehead on the hardwood floor (he still has a bruise) and by screaming his head off while I took Henry to the restroom. On Thursday, Charlie had his one-year checkup with Dr. Johnson, who persists in worrying about the hugeness of Charlie's head. This is despite the fact that we already put him through a CT scan to rule out head abnormalities, which he passed with flying colors. Other than that, he is doing swimmingly. He weighs 24 pounds and nine ounces, and developmentally he is splendid (which of course we already knew). On Friday, we went with our friends Christina and Maddie to the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, which was fantastic, and out for pizza afterward. When Henry and Maddie parted ways at the end of the day, she gave him a hug and a kiss, and as we walked away, he said, "I love Maddie." (!!!) Friday night, we took the boys to a children's ballet performance at the old Palace Theater in Gallatin, and they both enjoyed it. At the end, Henry got to go up on stage and learn some ballet moves. He didn't perform them on stage as the other kids did, watching instead, but he did try them out when we got home.

Charlie is going through so many changes right now, and I need to write them down before they pass us by. His main verbalization is something that sounds like "Eesh! Eesh!" This utterance is usually accompanied by pointing (also a new development), and it means, "I want that!" He has become a little...testy lately, not as laid back as I once thought he was. I think this is explained by his impatience to learn everything and frustration at not being able to make himself understood with language. I should teach him some sign language to help alleviate his frustration, but I have not done so...Henry and I did glance through a sign language book the other day and mention teaching Charlie some signs. Charlie loves to have Russell or me hold him while we walk around, letting him point at things hanging overhead, then lifting him up to touch them - light fixtures, fans, plants, anything hanging up high. He is not walking yet, although he has taken a few steps on several different occasions. He seems content to crawl when he is really intent on getting somewhere, but I can see in his eyes that he wants badly to walk. Charlie is learning to hit back when Henry comes at him, and I am not discouraging this! (He'll have "a character forged from conflict," Russell said.) I don't want them hitting each other, and it is a constant battle to keep Henry from hurting Charlie, but I do want them both to learn that it is OK to defend oneself when one is attacked. Charlie continues to be a terrible sleeper. I know it's not his fault, but he truly is atrocious at sleeping. I feel myself on the verge of a deep depression when I consider that he is now past the one-year mark and still waking every two, or at most three, hours every single night. Every single night! For over a year now! How am I still functioning? My mantra for the first year of his life was, "Just get through the first year," because after a year, Henry had begun to sleep, if not through the night, then at least in five- or six-hour stretches. Now I don't know how to cheer myself on...it's less heartening to say, "Some day he'll sleep through the night," but that's all I dare say now. I've stopped complaining about the issue to friends, because I know they get tired of hearing the same old whining, and I get tired of hearing it myself. But I am so very exhausted all the time, and so short-tempered. Arrrrrrrrggh. Charlie is a doll, though, such a joy to have around! I just wish he would sleep. Why won't he sleep? I keep asking myself what I'm supposed to learn from this situation, but I'm not coming up with much. Maybe I'm supposed to learn that there are some things I can't control, but OK, I've got it now, thanks, universe. Got it. Lesson learned. Check. Let's move on to another, less insanity-inducing lesson, shall we?

Henry! Henry is also changing rapidly. Today, for instance, he learned to cut with scissors. I'm pretty sure now he is going to be a lefty, like my sisters. He's displayed an interest in dancing, and for some time now, he has enjoyed watching "The Lawrence Welk Show," then emulating the tap dancers he sees. We went to a park last week with playground equipment manufactured circa 1978, and there were these concrete stairs to nowhere...about ten stairs up, a foot-wide platform on top, then ten stairs back town. Henry climbed up to the top of them, then, unexpectedly, proceeded to tap dance his way back down! I got it on video tape, and it is truly a sight to behold. Henry has more self awareness than many adults I know. He met a new friend the other day and after we parted ways, he said, "He's quiet like me, Mommy. I'm quiet sometimes. I'm shy sometimes." He seems a little concerned about being shy, which is probably a reflection of my being concerned that he is a little shy, and so I told him that I was very shy ("painfully shy" according to my kindergarten report card) when I was little, and he beamed at that and looked relieved. We practice talking and being friendly to others when we are out, and I think that is helping his confidence. When we were at the coffee shop drive thru today, he said hello to the barista and asked her her name! This was a huge step, and I could tell he felt proud of himself. I haven't spent much time trying to teach Henry numbers and letters - I feel like that is what preschool and kindergarten are for; now is for playing! - but somehow he has learned them. I think from "Sesame Street." I loaded some educational games onto my iPhone this week, and one of them is a letter identification game. To my surprise, he knows how to identify almost all of his letters! Ditto for shapes. So I guess that limited, tightly-controlled television policy we have is not a bad thing. Thank you, "Sesame Street"! I've brainwashed him into believing that commercials are evil (which they are), and so when we watch something we've taped on television (almost exclusively "King of the Hill," which we watch once a day, in the evening) and a commercial comes on, he screams, "NO!!!! Commercials!! NOOOOO!!!" That's my boy!

Week of March 13 - Part II - Celebrations!

Thursday was St. Patrick's Day, and we went to our friend Megan's house for a party. The gorgeousness of the weather that day surpassed even that of the previous day, and we got some great pictures. The boys had a great time playing outdoors, and Henry made a new friend, Sam, who we are excited about. He seems temperamentally similar to Henry ("He's quiet like me, Mommy! I quiet sometimes.") Henry reminded me of his dear old Dad, clowning it up to impress the ladies that day. The girls were attempting to play jump rope, and he kept running headlong into the rope, disrupting the game and making them giggle (then making them giggle more by flopping down dramatically on the ground).

Friday was Charlie's big day...one year old! We didn't do a lot of celebrating that day; mostly we prepared for the party we had planned for Saturday morning. We went to Publix to buy provisions for party, and while we were there, we did tell every single Publix employee we encountered that it was Charlie's birthday. This won us A) lots of congratulations and B) a balloon for each boy from the man in the produce section. An hilarious moment came when he went to inflate the first balloon with helium and it burst with a loud bang. Henry and I laughed, Charlie looked startled, then laughed, too, and I screamed, "I'm hit!" when a piece of the balloon landed in my hair. The Publix man looked embarrassed but was good natured about it, as all Publix employees are about all things. It's kind of scary, actually. Friday night, Uncle Matthew, Aunt Carrie, and Baby Dylan arrived, having driven 300 plus miles just to attend the party.

Mamaw and Papaw Moore came Saturday morning in time for the party, having made the same journey, and our Sumner County friends arrived at 10:00. The weather was glorious, for an incredible fourth day in a row, and the kids were able to play outdoors after we ate. We sang happy birthday to the baby of the hour, and he seemed pleased. We gave him his own little cupcake to make a mess with, and he did, smearing it on his tray, on a little ball he had been holding, on his shirt, and in the general vicinity. He tasted the cupcake but did not eat much of it, giving me hope that Charlie did not get the sugar-is-crack-to-me gene that Henry and I, but not Russell, share. All in all, I think he enjoyed having a birthday party, and we enjoyed celebrating him. Here are the pictures:

Week of March 13 - Part I

Monday of this week was rainy. The boys and I had nothing in particular planned for the day, so we set out in the van and ended up at Ms. B's, a used book store in town. There I planted both of them at the very back of the store, where the children's books are found, and Charlie quickly got to work rearranging the young adult section. Henry and I found six new (well, used, but new to us) books in good condition: two more Madeline books, a book of fables, a book called More, More, More, Said the Baby, a picture story called The Red Book (which upon reading seems like a precursor to Flotsam) and The Gingerbread Man. The books cost $14 altogether, and just before paying, we realized we had some long-forgotten store credit slips buried at the very back of my coupon holder, in the amount of...$15! An auspicious beginning to our week.

On Tuesday we went with some friends from our moms' group to the huge indoor play area at Cornerstone Church in Madison. It is free and open to the public, and we go there on days when the weather is inclement, as it was on this day. Henry hung close to me and was reluctant to play, although he has played marvelously there on recent trips. I inquired about his hesitation, and he said he was afraid of climbing up the stairs (the play structure is three or four stories high). This is not the first time lately he has alluded to a fear of heights. I share this fear, and I don't do anything to allay it in Henry, as I consider it A) a healthy fear and B) a sign of advanced intelligence. At one point Hen needed to use the bathroom, and I left Charlie in the capable hands of Susie, who ordinarily is one of Charlie's favorite people. As we finished up and exited the bathroom upstairs, though, we heard the loud, lusty Cry of the Moore Boy, and sure enough, when we go back to him, Charlie was red-faced and screaming his head off. And so it is official: separation anxiety/stranger anxiety have set upon Charlie. That seems about right. It seems like Henry began to display these same fears at about this age. Sigh.

On Wednesday, we went with Melanie and Claudia to Warner Park Nature Center over in Bellevue, Russell's and my old stomping grounds. Since we lived there in 2002, they have added an impressive outdoor fenced play area for kids. The weather was unbelievably gorgeous, and we packed lunches to eat outside. In the interest of not reinventing the wheel, here is the park's own description of its play area, followed by pictures we took there, which I feel convey the experience as well as anything I can write (possibly I'm being lazy, though):

"Remember when you had hours of fun simply playing in a sand pit or dirt pile? Your toys were sticks, rocks, and cups. You made mud pies, truck lanes, and deep holes in the sand. You got dirty, but you had the time of your life. The Nature Center wants kids to experience this good, old fashion fun in our new Nature Play area. Just below the Learning Center you will see a bright ladybug gate on a very cool twig fence, and then you have to look for the secret tunnel entrance. Designed by Tara Armistead and funded by memorial contributions for her father, Dr. William Crenshaw, this exciting new play area includes a cedar wood playhouse, a stone wall in one corner, 2 dirt piles one of which has a slide on it where kids can slide into a huge sand pit next to a huge dirt pit. Plus, (and this is the most fun part) there is a spigot that funnels water into the dirt! Mud pies anyone?"

Nice Things Happen

The big event of this week was a baby shower we hosted at our house for our friends Jenny and Parker, who will be welcoming a new baby girl (Charley!) in May. On Monday morning, our friends Melanie and Claudia came over to entertain Henry and our Charlie while I cleaned the house in preparation for Tuesday morning's shower. Now, I could have cleaned the house on Sunday, when Russell was around, and saved Melanie the trip, but experience has taught me that cleaning up in preparation for company any earlier than the day before is a Sisyphean exercise in futility. Had I cleaned on Sunday, even Sunday evening, the whole place would have been trashed by Monday evening, at which point I would have had to begin cleaning anew. So anyway, the sun rose Tuesday morning on an uncluttered and cleaner-than-usual house bedecked with pink streamers and balloons. The shower was a success, except possibly for the fact that our small house had some difficulty comfortably accommodating all of Jenny's friends. She is one of those fun, warm, open people to whom others are naturally drawn, but our house is one of those fun, warm, smallish houses in which others naturally have trouble finding seating. So things were a little close. There was a tense moment (for me) when a mysterious chocolate substance was being ground into the den's carpet (the cake was strawberry and, astonishingly, nothing substantially chocolate was served, so I'm baffled about what it was, exactly...it looked like brownie. Could someone have snuck brownie into my home without my knowing it? Doubtful.) but overall, I think fun was had by most.

On Wednesday, we went to Peekaboo Play Town (Old Faithful) with our friends Cindy and Claire and Baby Ben. This was Charlie's last nonpaying trip (children over age one are charged $7, and his birthday is coming up next Friday), and he had so much fun it was as though he were trying to squeeze every drop of free-playing goodness out of our time there. Henry spent most of his time dressing up (as a knight, a fireman, a doctor, and, briefly, as a cheerleader) and climbing the five-foot rock wall, which he does proudly every time we visit now. Afterwards we all went to Qdoba for lunch, since it was Kids Eat Free Wednesday. Henry and Claire entertained themselves by running up and down the long bench seating shared by our tables and those next to us. I was OK with that (more or less...tense, but OK with it, generally), but I was not OK with what happened next: I glanced over to find that Henry, probably in a bid to impress Claire, was standing atop a table. Like a drunken bar dancer. In a crowded restaurant. This is not what I consider acceptable restaurant comportment, even for a three-year-old, and I conveyed that to him with words and not-so-subtle facial expressions. We left soon after.

Thursday we went to a play date for children in our stay-at-home moms' group who celebrate birthdays in March. This included Charlie and his buddy Colt, who is one day younger than him but has infinitely more hair. Charlie is learning to deal with this injustice (I've explained that hair is not our family's strong suit), and I think I've pretty much convinced him that bald is attractive, too, in a baby! We sang "Happy Birthday" to Charlie and Colt, and had cupcakes in their honor. As we sang, I was struck by how quickly the year has gone by. I was also struck with anxiety over planning Charlie's birthday party, which will be next Saturday and for which I have not even begun to prepare. I'm thinking I'll have a monkey on his cake; it's a little arbitrary, but he does like the sound I make when imitating a monkey, and he's one - he doesn't have anything that could properly be called "interests" yet. We're just having a few friends over to our house - I've kept it mostly to Charlie's friends, since it's his party - and Russell's family will be coming in from Morristown, too. (My parents will be away on a trip to Israel, and I'm so jealous of their freedom to be world travelers, but so proud of them, too, for taking advantage of this freedom!)

Thursday evening was extremely rough for our little family, because Henry was in a funk and bent on physically harming Charlie, despite being asked, told, ordered, and commanded not to do so, and despite having various toys taken away as punishment for doing so. The night ended with us putting Henry in timeout in the downstairs bathroom, door shut, after he grabbed Charlie around the neck in a chokehold. Russell, never, ever gets angry (It's a marvel! He has infinite patience! Infinite!), but he gets downright mad when Henry hurts Charlie. After the bathroom timeout, we just went to bed, thinking we would just start all over the next morning. I couldn't sleep at bedtime, though, as I was examining my own behavior during the day - I find that when my positive attitude flags, as it does at times, and when I don't spend enough real quality time with Henry, and when I don't make an effort to find new ways to entertain him, this is reflected in his behavior. I vowed to do better the next day.

On Friday morning, we had breakfast with friends, which was fantastic. Unfortunately for our friends, the breakfast was planned for 9:00 a.m., a time by which it is physically impossible for us to arrive anywhere, and I was only able to bring along my usual breakfast contribution: sweet breads and cakes purchased at the Starbucks drive-thru. I have grand plans for baking and taking impressive dishes to such breakfasts once the boys are a bit older, but we shall see. Henry was much, much kinder to Charlie on Friday, and I rewarded him with his first Cadbury egg during a grocery trip that afternoon, telling him, "See?? Nice things happen to you when you are nice to Charlie!" This seemed to make an impression. Friday evening, I went with my friend Susie to a big local kids' consignment sale, and I bought what will constitute the boys' entire spring wardrobe. We went out for pizza afterward, and it was nice to be able to talk sans children.

On Saturday (I can write about Saturday this week, because I am doing this entry on a Sunday, for a change!), the weather was gorgeous so we took the boys to Sanders Ferry Park, a park we don't visit that often. The boys played in the sand with a little girl who was there, and Henry spent a lot of time spinning round on a tire swing. Charlie was looking a little puny to me (I pride myself on being able to tell at a glance when the boys are sick, but I suppose all moms can do this?) and sure enough, when we got home, he threw up. (I'm pretty sure this is because I recently commented to a friend, innocently enough, that neither of my boys had ever had a stomach virus. I remember this because, being superstitious, I even knocked on wood after I said it. Which precaution apparently was ineffective.)

Charlie seemed better after nap time, though, and so we decided to take the boys to their first movie. There was only one G-rated offering, an unoriginal, painful-to-sit-through computer-generated animation called "Gnomeo and Juliet," so "Gnomeo and Juliet" it was. Henry enjoyed the experience, after getting over his initial anxiety about sitting in the dark ("Will there be SOME light?"), and he particularly enjoyed the popcorn and Milk Duds ("those chewy things"). Russell and I took turns entertaining Charlie throughout, and he made it through most of the movie before we began having to stand up and walk him around. This was our first trip to a movie theater since, we calculated, 2006, and the prices charged not only for admission but for concessions were unbelievably, ridiculously, breathtakingly exorbitant! WE SAW A VENDING MACHINE SELLING BOTTLED DASANI WATER FOR $4.75, and I mean $4.75 per bottle, not per six-pack. I'm pretty sure we will never go back to the movies - the whole environment was so incredibly artificial, it was comparable to being inside a casino, one of my all-time least favorite places to be - but we wanted Henry to have the experience at least once. I saved our ticket stubs for the boys' baby boxes, yes I said "boxes," the boxes into which I throw mementos I plan to one day arrange in their baby books. When we got home, Charlie threw up again. Henry ostentatiously offered him his current favorite truck as consolation (!), and we took that opportunity to remind him that good things happen when he is nice to Charlie. Positive reinforcement: 1. Negative reinforcement: 0. For this week, at least.

Making the Grade?

For whatever reason, the boys and I were largely on our own during the daytime hours this week. Sometimes we have weeks like that, when we don't see much of our friends and it's up to us to entertain ourselves as best we can. The pressure's really on me to come up with fun ways to amuse the boys when we're on our own like this, and I give myself a solid B- for my efforts this week (that may be overly generous, though). Monday we were supposed to have lunch with friends, but the morning was very stormy (Henry has already learned to fear tornadoes, and I hope he won't be plagued by the lifelong tornado nightmares with which my sisters and I are afflicted) and our plans were thwarted. Once the really severe storms had passed, we ventured out in the rain to Target. (D+).

Tuesday, I was determined to make up for Monday's lack of creativity, and I decided to take the boys to the airport in Nashville to see planes take off and land (A+!). We called the airport first to make sure that non-ticket-holders could actually pass through security and out to the terminals to see the planes, and it was a good thing we called, because as it turns out, they cannot. It was a gorgeous day, though, and I quickly came up with the somewhat less original idea of taking the boys to the Nashville Zoo (B). Once we had wakened Charlie from his morning nap, packed lunches, and driven into Nashville, we only had about an hour and a half to spend at the zoo, so we had to enter the zoo with a definite plan for what we wanted to see, and what we would have to put off seeing until a later trip. Henry really wanted to focus on monkeys, because we've been reading a book called Little Monkey Lost, which contains a variety of monkey species. Specifically, he wanted to find the uacaris, a species he favors for its angry crimson face. Now, the Nashville Zoo doesn't have uacaris, but we didn't know this for sure when we entered the zoo (I suspected as much, but I didn't want to burst his bubble unnecessarily). After passing the howling black gibbons just inside the zoo entrance, we set out on a loop the zoo map promised would have lemurs (which are monkeylike, at least) and guenons (which are definitely apes). Henry found these to be acceptable substitutes for the absent uacaris. Along the way we also saw meerkats, alligators, cassowaries, red pandas, a cougar, a clouded leopard, and a flock of astonishingly pink flamingos. We ended up at "Critter Encounters," a fenced barnyard where kids can touch, or at least come in very close proximity to, various beasts of burden, including goats (OK, I don't know if technically a goat is a beast of burden), donkeys, and camels. The lady zookeeper charged with caring for the goats was particularly (1) close with the goats - she knew each one's name - and (2) helpful in pointing out which goats were most amenable to brushing. (Apparently goats require brushing.) She provided Henry with a special goat brush, which he used shyly after a brief period of hesitation. After Critter Encounters, we shared a quick lunch of hummus and crackers, turkey and swiss sandwich, carrots, and baby food. Just before we finished eating, a low jet flew overhead, so we got to see our airplane that day after all (B+).

On Wednesday we went to a park in Gallatin with a group of mamas we don't get to hang out with too often, which is always nice (but C+). Charlie crawled in the grass and tried to eat pebbles while I alternately did finger sweeps of his mouth and pushed Henry in the swing. Henry was acting a little puny, and sure enough, Wednesday night, he came down with a fever of 103.5. He does this about twice a year: gets a really high fever for about twenty-four hours, with no other symptoms, then he's back to normal the next day. I think he has a super strong immune system, like his mom, and just burns to smithereens any invading bug he might encounter before it can make him really sick. So anyway, this ensured that we would be homebound on Thursday. No pressure that day to get us out and having meaningful life experiences, but no meaningful life experiences, either (D).

On Friday, Henry was back to himself and, perhaps inspired by Tuesday's trip to the zoo, we decided to go to the local pet store to look around (B-). We started as usual with the cats ("I want a cat like that, Mommy." "We already have a cat." "I want another cat." "No way.") then moved on to the birds, stopping briefly at the doggie treat bar, which Henry likes to dig around in with the scoopers. Then we checked out the rodents, where we briefly considered getting a dwarf hamster, which despite its being a rodent is unbelievably adorable. However, when I checked the bags of hamster litter to see how often the cage should be cleaned, I read that the hamster owner is advised to check the cage daily for signs of urine or fecal matter and change the litter weekly, or more often, I quickly employed my standard "We'll have to ask Daddy first" stalling tactic, and we moved on to the fish and reptiles. We almost escaped without buying anything, but then Henry noticed a shelf of little succulent plants, and we bought one of those to take home and repot, singing Sesame Street's "A plant needs water and sun and LOVE," as we left the store. The three of us ate lunch at Cafe Rakka afterward (hummus and pita, that's always a safe bet for everyone, I thought), but only one of us enjoyed the lunch (me). Charlie refused it outright, while Henry picked at it for a while and started wondering aloud about dessert.

OK, briefly, here's what the boys are up to this week:

Charlie: He's definitely waving hello now, and if he's holding something he's particularly enthused about, he'll hold it up and wave it at you. "Look at THIS!" He seems to have grasped the concept of willfully pestering Henry while Henry tries to play, and I'm pretty sure he'll be using this trick for the rest of his life. In the past day or so, he has begun insisting on holding his own bottle of milk, which he holds casually in one hand, sips from, lowers, then sips from again.

Henry: We've implemented a new "Gum for Kindness" plan, whereby if Henry is nice to Charlie all day (i.e., doesn't harm him physically all day), he receives a piece of gum to chew when Daddy comes home at the end of the day. Bribery is working out very nicely for us, better than anything else we've tried - time out, positive reinforcement, taking away toys - though for some reason it's not mentioned in the parenting books. Henry is also working on learning how to snap his own pants, and he's almost got it. An important life skill!