On a wing and a prayer...

Today was good and semi-eventful, so I will do a bonus entry. We had friends over this morning, which is always fun but not necessarily bonus blog entry material. Then the boys took naps while I researched how to do a fishless cycle of an aquarium, which is a means of preparing a tank for fish BEFORE introducing the fish. (A great idea in theory, but nigh impossible in practice because A) it requires pure ammonia, which is about as rare as a four leaf clover, who knew? and B) it requires material from an existing, healthy aquarium, which I am also having difficulty finding.) But none of that is blogworthy either, I'm surprised you're even still reading. After naps, we went downstairs to find it was pouring rain. I suggested we go sit out on the porch in the rocking chairs and watch the rain, which we did recently and everyone enjoyed. So we did that, I held Charlie and Henry sat in his own chair, then I held Henry and Charlie sat in his own chair. It was really raining, and that held our attention for a while, so I don't know why I glanced over at the mason jar on the table next to us, the one with the old dried up praying mantis egg sac.

*****Flashback to about three months ago******* I'm at Panera on a Saturday morning for Jill Time, and I meet my friend Hollie and a few other friends for coffee. Hollie is moving to Wisconsin soon (booooooo) and this might be one of our last coffee dates. She greets me with a mason jar containing a dry, grayish, flaky looking thing about the size of a big tooth. "Oh, thanks!" I say reflexively. "It's a praying mantis egg sac!" she announces. I remember then that she and her two boys had had a pet praying mantis last year, and that I sort of half jokingly asked her to save me a baby if it had babies. So she has, she's saved me like dozens (hundreds?) of babies! She instructs me to keep the jar outdoors, because only after six or eight weeks of warm weather will the egg sac open, spewing forth tiny praying mantises (manti?). So I take it home, place it on a little table on our front porch, and forget it. Occasionally over the ensuing weeks, I check for babies, but even after spring passes and unofficial summer is upon us, there is just a dried-up looking pod. I figure the babies didn't make it, and I secretly hope Hollie never asks about them, because I fear I may not have cared for them properly. HER egg sac (there were two) opened weeks ago, IN THE CAR, on the long trip to Wisconsin! I contemplate throwing the egg sac away but don't, mostly out of laziness. Occasionally Henry asks when the egg will hatch, and I tell him I don't know. Never once do I stop to consider what might be involved in raising a multitude of baby praying mantises (that seems right, "manti" doesn't sound right).

Fast forward back to today, the first official day of summer. I glanced over at the mason jar, prompted by the same impulse that causes me to glance over at Pokey's fish tank each time I pass by it in the kitchen, even though I know it is empty. Tiny, feather-light bugs lined the bottom of the jar. Many were dead (how many days ago did they hatch?) but some were not. "The egg sac! The egg sac!!!" I squealed, jumping up and dumping Henry from my lap. The boys looked startled. I showed them the tiny babies in the jar. I felt a little panicked, as I had no idea how to care for baby mantises. I Googled "raising praying mantises" and emailed Hollie, and I found out they need a habitat with grass, moist cotton balls for water, and bugs to eat. Tiny bugs in the beginning, then larger ones later. I packed the boys in the van, happy to have an adventure, an we went to the pet store, where we found a plastic terrarium and a jar of wingless fruit flies with what looks like suet in the bottom. (I can't believe I paid money for this; it stinks to high heaven and features thousands of fruit flies from every stage of the fruit fly life cycle, including squirming larvae, swarming around in disgustingness. However, the alternative was to scour our yard for bugs small enough to be eaten by tiny praying mantis babies.)

We returned home, explained the situation to Russell, who has been very patient with my fish hobby but now I may be pushing it, and went outside to find sticks and grass and leaves for our habitat. We accidentally included a leaf with a spider on it, which would have been unspeakably DISASTROUS for our mantis raising project (!) but we caught our mistake and removed him promptly. We shook four live babies into the habitat (well, three live and one barely alive...I picked three live ones from the mason jar and then poked through the poor dead victim mantises for survivors. I saw a leg move feebly amidst the carnage, so I fished that one out and threw him in too, but I don't have high hopes for him.) Then I had to open that jar of disgustingness and shake out what seemed a reasonable number of fruit flies (12?). They were eager to escape, for obvious reasons. (I joked to Russell, well, half joked, that maybe this could be his role in mantis care, the handling of the fruit fly jar, but his eyes reminded me that he just placed a live fish in tequila not two weeks ago.) We put the lid on the terrarium and looked inside, and at that point we realized we had put in so much greenery, we couldn't find the praying mantises. This is a blessing and a curse, because we won't see them if they die at this stage, but if they live, we won't be able to see them until they are much bigger. We did manage to spot two of them and thought they looked pleased, but then I thought Pokey looked pleased in his new aquarium a few weeks ago, when what he actually looked was near death.

In other news, Henry has fallen asleep alone in the bed for the past few nights! Not without a few tears, but he is being very brave about it, and I am hopeful that moving him to his own room is going to be a success!

This week flew by for some reason, which is almost always a sign that things are going well, and they are. The big news is that Charlie is finally sleeping better! He's still taking a midnight bottle, but then he doesn't wake for another one until about 6:00 a.m. I knew eventually he would get to this point on his own, since Henry did, too, but I'm still relieved to finally see some improvement. All the cry-it-out, "He'll be waking every three hours when he's sixteen," Cassandra types were starting to mess with my head a little, especially when he wasn't sleeping well by age one! Now if he will just sleep through that midnight feeding, we'll be good as gold. I might finally have the energy to get back to running soon. Perhaps the bags under my eyes will hit the road, too! Maybe I won't nod off during conversations! So embarassing.

On Monday and Wednesday we went to friends' houses for play dates, and while there, Henry made an important self-discovery: he likes to draw! He already knew he liked crayons and markers and colored pencils, but up until this week he mainly studied their colors, arranged them, and tried to guard them against Charlie's chewing. I could see big ideas forming in his head as he watched his friends drawing, and sure enough, he announced yesterday that he was going to draw our family. We got out some paper and crayons, and he excitedly drew the following, in this order: Daddy, Mommy, Charlie (well, after I prompted him a little), Henry, a starfish (?), Mamaw, Papaw, Aunt Wendy, Aunt Jana, a crab (oh YEAH, the night before we had read A House for Hermit Crab!), and the sun. I am so looking forward to enjoying more of his drawings in the coming days!

On Thursday after naps, I took both boys to Trish at Great Clips for a haircut. Henry has been to her lots of times for haircuts, but this was Charlie's first official cut (I did trim off his funny little rear wings myself a few weeks ago, but it was hardly a professional job). Henry volunteered to go (well, insisted on going) first, while Charlie and I sat on the swivel chair at the station next to Trish's and played with the well-used toys from the front of the store. When Henry's hair was done, Charlie sat in my lap and Trish began cutting his hair. There was no need to take anything off the top, because Charlie's hair growth thus far is mostly restricted to the back part of his head. It turned out to be a good thing, too, because approximately 20 seconds into the haircut, Charlie decided he had had enough. Trish did the best she could, but she essentially was shooting at a moving target; Charlie was determined to get down and finish his inventory of the hairs on the floor. I ended up standing up and holding him and bobbing around while she completed the job, which turned out remarkably well given the circumstances.

This week Henry decided how he wants to decorate his new big boy room: with Legos! I was so relieved he didn't choose Caillou!!! It seems like Legos might be a longterm interest, whereas with Caillou, I can envision Henry a year from now regretting huge wall appliqués of a bald four year old. (My own regret would be more immediate.) So we looked online and found a really unique canvas of Greenwich Village in New York, constructed out of Legos. I also found some picture frames made out of Legos. Now if we can just find some bedding. And some furniture. I've actually found lots of furniture I like on Craigslist, but it tends to be in towns an hour away from here. Since we plan on having Henry and Charlie share a bed in a year or two, I am looking at full or queen size beds, but I keep being tempted by twin sized bunk beds, for some reason. One I found actually had a ladder up one side and a slide down the other, which seems like either a really good idea, or a really bad idea.

This weekend we went to Morristown to celebrate Father's Day with our fathers. Sam is back at home and doing really well. He is still confined to a wheelchair but should be getting his prosthesis soon, after which he will hopefully be able to get around almost as well as he did before the amputation. He has grown a beard and looks very distinguished. It's so strange to think that Charlie, and probably even Henry to some extent, will only ever remember him as having one leg. Henry and Charlie got in a lot of good play time with Aunt Wendy and Uncle David, who were also at Grammy and Grandpa Hodge's house. Henry is always worn OUT after playing with them; they are both really good with the boys. Henry got to go out to Grandpa's garden and pick cucumbers (he insists they're pickles), squash, and peppers, which he loves doing. My goal for next summer is for us to plant our own garden. We certainly have the room for it, we have friends with the know-how, and I personally am developing something of an "il faut cultiver son jardin" life philosophy, so...it's a plan!

Some photos from our week:

Playing at Drakes Creek Park, or "Bomb Park" as our family calls it:

At a swimming play date this week:

Helping snap green beans for dinner:

Enjoying Thai food in Morristown on Father's Day:

Snuggling at nap time (see, they are going to do so well sharing a bed!):

R.I.P.P.

I didn't know, but in hindsight probably should have guessed, that last week's blog picture of Pokey in his new tank would be the last (and really, second) picture ever taken of him. I spent much of the week, and no small amount of money, trying to save him. However, when we woke up this morning, it was evident that he was pretty far gone and suffering a lot. I think he has had ich or some other kind of parasite, probably contracted from his new tank mate, who incidentally is the picture of perfect health at the moment. I personally blame Genie/Jeannie, the cleaner fish who was with us overnight last week. But finger pointing aside, we had to make the difficult decision to euthanize him so he wouldn't die a slow, painful, visible-to-Henry death. Of course we had no idea how to humanely euthanize a fish. Flushing? A website advised us only barbarians resort to such means, and similarly discouraged us from smashing him abruptly with a hammer (!!) or beheading him (!!!). The same website instructed us that the quickest, most pain-free method involves immersing the fish in alcohol, like vodka or tequila, a process akin to anesthetizing the fish. Several questions arose. We're not big drinkers; should we go to a liquor store, or...? Wait! We have a full bottle of tequila from a trip to Cancun in the days when we did things like take trips to Cancun! Next, who would perform the task? (To me the answer to that one was obvious - Russell; to him, it was less obvious, but I helped him to arrive at the right answer.). Unfortunately, having never dealt with the loss of a pet before as parents, these negotiations were being carried out in front of the boys, prompting Henry to blurt out, "But I don't WANT to kill Pokey!" We tried explaining to him that Pokey was very sick, but it wasn't until Russell told Henry we could bury him in the yard and visit him whenever we wanted that Henry seemed satisfied. We said goodbye to Pokey, then the boys and I hopped in the van "to go see how many tulip poplar trees we could find in our neighborhood" (five) while Russell did the deed. (He truly is the best husband, and dad, ever.). When we got back, only Teeny, the new fish, was in the tank, and Pokey had been packaged in part of a brown paper bag which was folded neatly into a square and carefully crisscrossed with black electrical tape. Henry carried the package around for a while, which was a little macabre, asking, "Is Pokey REALLY in here?" like we might be putting him on. We had a burial service this evening, Russell and Henry taking turns digging the hole. "But how will Pokey swim, in the ground?" Henry asked, and I had no good answer for that one. Here is the first picture we took of Pokey, on the day Henry won him at a Halloween festival:

The rest of our week was comparatively much better! We spent lots of time with friends, playing some outdoors but mostly indoors due to the heat. The UPS man brought us an umbrella we ordered to keep us cool at the pool and other outdoor events, and it really does the trick. Russell was invited by Governor Haslam to attend a bill signing in Memphis related to charter schools, which he does not plan to attend, but I was still impressed that he was invited! (His office prepared a report related to this bill.)

Henry: Henry continues to be extremely helpful around the house. One night he picked up the entire den and playroom, UNPROMPTED! I nearly fainted but tried to pretend that's a totally normal thing for a three year old to do. He also clamors for me to let him use the dustbuster (um, OK!) and vacuum cleaner. Part of me worries that I'm turning him into some sort of cleaning freak, and that's entirely possible, but then I also remember reading in The Montessori Way that it's normal and healthy for kids his age to help out around the house, so I choose to believe the latter. It's less than two months until Henry starts going to preschool twice a week. I'm trying to talk about it every day, to prepare him, and I point out all the positive aspects of getting to go to school (mainly, "There won't be any babies there to get into your stuff!")

Charlie: Charlie has begun saying "Muh!" for milk, and he also uses this for when he is generally thirsty, too. He can also say "wawa" for water. "Ball" is a multipurpose word for anything remotely round, including a half moon (?). He loves to play the "uh oh" game, dropping objects on the floor repeatedly, so he's definitely a baby. He has decided lately that he wants to be picked up almost all the time. He's a strong little guy, and now in addition to looking up at me and saying, "Uh! Uh! UHHH!" he physically grabs my pants, turns me around, and pulls me toward him! The way a bully might grab the shirt front of a guy he was about to beat up. He is experiencing some INTENSE separation anxiety when we are anywhere but at home and I step away from him for even a second. At play dates he is gaining a reputation as something of a screamer, but no one seems to take it personally. Sometimes if I step away from him to, say, get Henry a drink, as I'm walking, I count in my head the seconds until I hear Charlie's scream. I typically make it to about three. When I return to his side, though, all is well. He is my little chunk!

For the Birds

This morning we had Henry's friend, Parker, over all morning, which was fantastic. Henry does pretty well now playing with his friends, especially one-on-one. (He still gets shy in crowds, but hey, so do I, so this may be a trait that sticks around. Or suddenly disappears at age 40? I'm still hopeful). With Parker he seems especially comfortable, because we've been getting the two together since they were six months old. We spent a good bit of the morning playing outside in the shade of the trees in the front yard. Henry and Parker played around in the sprinkler, inventing a new game called "Bottoms in the Sprinkler" (yes, it's exactly what it sounds like), and in the water table. Charlie tagged along, keeping up as best he could. Everyone ended up soaked, but that goes without saying.

After the water play began to lose it's allure, it occurred to me: "Hey, we haven't shown Parker the baby birds in the nest over in our dogwood tree! He will love that!" Henry raced ahead to show Parker "his" baby birds, and Charlie and I followed close behind. When we got to the tree, I set Charlie on the ground and lifted Parker up to look in the nest at the three adorable fuzzy heads and gaping beaks (the nest is at about my eye level in the tree, which seems a little low to me, but then I'm no bird.) I lifted Parker up, and as we glanced into the nest, several thoughts raced through my mind in rapid succession: "Hmm, the babies must be really nestled down in their nest this morning;" "Oh dear Lord, they're not in there;" "Don't look down!! DO NOT LOOK DOWN!;" and, glancing down, "Abort! Abort!". On the ground, next to Charlie's shoe, a small, still, brown and white mound of feathers. I didn't have time to look for the other two babies; I had to keep the boys from seeing what I had just seen! I lowered Parker hastily to the ground and said in one breath, "Oh well they're not in there today they must have flown away good job little birds!" and abruptly herded the boys away from the tree, back toward the house. Henry and Parker looked puzzled. "But what about the...?" Henry asked. "Look, dandelions!" I said, and we moved on to blow dandelions from their stems. Whew! A close one. I'm not ready yet to try to explain nature's cruelty to Henry. Hell, I'm the woman who feels anxious every morning when approaching the fish tank for the first time of the day!!

Fishcapades

Welp, I missed another weekend of blogging last weekend, and for no good reason. I am physically unable to cast my memory back over more than seven days at a time to retrieve details, so week before last will have to be gone forever. I'm pretty sure it was fun, but we'll never know for sure. Man, sometimes I wish I were afflicted/endowed with that condition that causes one to remember the details of every day of one's life. I forget what that is called. Ha. Hold on, Googling..."autobiographical memory." That's it.

This past week was hot, and it's had me in a bit of a funk. My resting temperature is several degrees higher than that of the average human, and as a result, summer is my least favorite season, and I mean by far. (Visitors tend to wear a jacket or sweater in my house, and I think once when my Mom was here I found her nosing around for a ski suit and parka. She definitely brings like gloves and a scarf when she comes.) When I feel hot, I feel angry and peevish and other similar unpleasant adjectives, so I tend to try to stay indoors during the summer. Up until this week, that is, when I discovered that I can successfully manage both boys at a pool, provided that the water is no deeper than two and a half or three feet. Friday we went to a friend's house for a play date, and Henry and Charlie had such a good time they didn't want to leave. It was a little embarrassing, really, especially when coupled with the fact that Henry also invited himself inside for a snack just as everyone was leaving, then when we were inside, kept pointing at various food and asking if he could have also have some of that. Repeatedly.

On Monday we went to the FMC with friends and had the usual fun, except I enjoyed it more than usual because it was so cool inside. On Tuesday we received the exciting news that our friend Christina had had her baby boy, and this was definitely the highlight of the week. That night I went with Cindy and Kristin to visit them at the hospital, and holding baby Alex, who is about the most gorgeous newborn I've ever seen, gave me a feeling I did not expect. A feeling like, "Uh oh, I thought we were only having two children, but...." !!!! I believe it has passed now. Yes, it definitely has. Definitely. Definitely.

Wednesday morning, the boys and I ventured out to the pet store, just to look around. We started out with the cats, browsed through the dog treats (why, oh why is this Henry's favorite part of the store when there are real live animals?!), then wandered over to the fish tanks. That's when I remembered: our goldfish, Pokey, needed a new aquarium! I feel intense guilt pangs each time I pass his one gallon aquarium (yes, they make one gallon aquariums) and see him crammed in there, especially since I read online that one should provide at least three gallons of space for "each one inch of fish." Pokey is easily an inch and a half of fish, and although he never complains, sometimes he glances at me reproachfully just after I've fed him (any other time he is too busy begging me for food, food, please woman, give me some of that fish food there). So anyway, we picked out a nice three gallon tank for him and some plastic plants, and we were just about to head up to the register when we passed a tank full of plecostomus, known to the non-fish enthusiast as "those ugly black sucker fish who clean the scum from the tank," which Henry loves. He asked if we could buy one, "as a friend for Pokey," and I, having just consumed a fully caffeinated grande iced coffee from Starbucks and temporarily forgetful of the "three gallons per inch of fish" rule, said, "Sure!" So off we went to pay for Pokey's new home, and his new housekeeper. The employees at the pet store assured me that this three-inch long plecostomus was not an aggressive fish and would be fine housed with a goldfish in a three gallon tank. We left feeling excited about our purchases, and when we met our friends Megan, Sarah, and Logan at Chick-fil-A for lunch, we had to take the plecostomus inside because of the terrible heat. He was a good conversation piece.

Thursday morning, when I went to check on Pokey and "Genie" ("Jeannie"?), as Henry named him, Pokey looked a little piqued. He was holding what I believe to be his dorsal fin (the one on top?) in a peculiar way, and I immediately blamed Genie/Jeannie. I happened to think maybe I should double check online about placing a goldfish and a plecostomus in the same relatively small tank, so I did just that. Fish enthusiasts online provided anecdotes that terrified me and sent me running back to the tank to fish Pokey out of the new tank and put him back in his cramped old one-gallon tank: apparently plecostomus are relatively docile, except that the slime coat that covers the goldfish is delicious to them! Delicious. Once they notice this fact, and it's only a matter of time until they do, the goldfish is in a bad situation. The ensuing attack is unexpected and gory. Thursday evening, we sent Genie/Jeannie packing, back to the pet store, where we purchased a tiny white goldfish as Pokey's replacement roommate. Henry named him "Teeny," and they seem to be getting on well, although Teeny is a bit of a nervous type and seems to think his reflection is another tiny, white, jittery little goldfish.

Also Thursday morning, we had some friends over to play in the sprinkler in the front yard, where we still have a decent amount of shade in the morning, despite the loss of one of our Bradford pears during a storm a few months back. Coincidentally, at precisely the same time our guests began arriving, the man we hired to replace the Bradford pear showed up, blocked the driveway, and commandeered our hose (the hose we were supposed to be using to run the sprinkler and to fill up the kiddie pool and the water table). I forgave him, though, when I saw the gorgeous tulip poplar tree he'd brought to plant in the pear tree's place. It's really beautiful and about seven feet tall (or maybe more). The tree guy advised that I should water the tree every morning and night for a week or two, and I actually laughed out loud when he said this because I can't even find time to replace the filter on our water filtration pitcher, which was supposed to be changed in February. However, our friend Megan loaned us a sort of skirt that goes around the tree that you fill with water, and it releases the water slowly to the roots of the tree. This seems to be keeping our new tree happy, and I feel a thrill of pleasure every time we drive past our house and I see it standing there, all tall and healthy. The play date was a hit and ended with Henry and his friends opening up our box o' musical instruments and forming an impromptu band. Henry's friend Parker was especially enthusiastic about the trumpet, which was adorable and hilarious.

I already covered Friday. Saturday was our friend Claire's fourth birthday party. It is so fascinating to be able to watch our kids grow up with kids we've known almost their entire lives. The party was lots of fun, though a scary/hilarious moment came when Charlie, fully clothed, plunged headlong into the foot-deep kiddie pool. I was on Charlie duty but was busy snapping pictures of Henry whacking a pinata, so all I heard was a splash (F- on the mothering, there, Jill). Kristin snatched him out just in time, and he was scared and mad, and rightfully so. Cindy snapped a picture of the moment.

Charlie: Charlie's vocabulary is finally expanding. He has his own Charlie versions of ball, banana, water, bottle, up, dada, and mama. Russell and I were discussing his sweet little personality yesterday, and Russell said (and I agree) that the image that best captures his personality is him strutting along, smiling, head held high. He also has a habit of leaning his head way back, smiling, and exclaiming, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" when he is happy. Charlie is Daddy's boy right now, and he cries when Russell leaves the room or leaves for work. He is experiencing some pretty intense separation anxiety right now, and I can't really leave him with anyone but Russell, or hysterical screaming ensues, and that's not really fun for anyone. I don't mind this, because I know it means we are bonded, and I know it will pass.

Henry: Henry's most frequently used phrase right now is, "I can do it mySELF!" and that makes me so proud. He is fully, fully potty trained now, and that is more liberating than I realized it would be. Often he shuts the door and reminds me, "Mommy, I need my privacy!" He can also fully dress himself now (also liberating). He has picked up the habit of saying, "For real, Mommy!" when he is trying to convince me that he is earnest about something. I'm not sure where he got this, though I did hear Russell say it a few minutes ago. He also asked me recently, "When I grow up, will I still be Henry?"

Dealing With It

Ugh! Ugh, ugh, ugh. What a crummy few weeks our family has had. I am not even going to dignify them with description; they were that bad. Words like "amputation" and "massive pulmonary embolism" and the like have no place in this blog, anyway. I'm just moving forward, and after this week I will get back to documenting every fun experience we have with the boys. For now I am only going to focus on what the boys are doing developmentally.

Charlie: I gave Charlie his first hair cut a few weeks ago, because the mullet/wings he was growing in the back finally became intolerable to me. Russell didn't want me to cut it, but I finally did it anyway one afternoon while he was out with Henry somewhere. I saved the hair for his baby book (which is hilarious, because while I am good at saving items for the boys' baby books, I am terrible at actually placing anything in the baby books; it's all just deposited in boxes for that mystical, magical day when I have nothing else to do and can carefully complete the baby books. Of course I'll be so old then I probably won't even remember I had babies). He looks adorable! Charlie is walking everywhere these days; I can't believe a few short weeks ago he wasn't walking at all. He is also a professional stair climber. He can now spin around and around while standing, so he has a veritable spinning repertoire, having mastered the seated spin months ago. He still isn't talking much, except for "Dada" (of course!) but he understands lots of words. Charlie has a quick smile, and he uses it often. It seems like he is going to have a little bit of an overbite, or at least I hope so, because there is no physical trait that is more attractive to me than a slight overbite. That sounds weird, so I don't usually tell people, but it's true! Charlie's favorite thing is to be picked up and carried around while he points at various objects. The carrier is then obliged to hand him whatever item he points to, after being prompted by a commanding "Eesh!" He especially loves to be outdoors, and often he stands at the front door, pointing. I am trying to get them both outside at every possible opportunity. Currently we are experiencing a wave of thirteen-year cicadas, so that adds an extra element of interest to going outside. Finally, Charlie has become quite the eater. He'll eat pretty much anything you place in front of him, provided that: (1) it isn't baby food and (2) he is allowed to feed it to himself; he insists on this (fine by me!). This has not yet improved his nighttime milk demands, as I had hoped, but HE CANNOT WAKE EVERY THREE HOURS FOR HIS ENTIRE LIFE, so in your face, life! I'm waiting him out.

Henry: I don't know enough kids who are Henry's age to have much of a point of reference, but I'm beginning to think Henry is very advanced for his age. Of course I think that, I'm his mother! But really. The things he says to me could come from the mouth of a teenager. Are all three-year-olds this mature and world-wise? Maybe they are. But I don't think so. He is currently very interested in crafts, especially painting with water colors, cutting anything with scissors (only while seated at the table!), and Play-doh. We don't ordinarily let Henry watch much television, just "Sesame Street," but over the past few weeks, what with all the illness and horribleness in our family (not talking about it), he has watched a lot of "Caillou," which is by far his favorite show now. It's about a four-year-old Canadian boy, and the parallels between his life and Henry's are uncanny - the show's creators have definitely done their homework and may even have been spying on us in our home. I had a brief talk with him yesterday about how we can't just sit around watching television all the time--as Russell told him, "You don't see Caillou sitting around watching television, do you?"--even though we watched a lot while we were sick. For the past few weeks, up until this week, the only thing Henry played with was some of Russell's old Star Wars and G.I. Joe men he retrieved from Russell's parents' house during a trip to Morristown. This week he discovered these little Lego men at Target, and that is his current infatuation. Each one costs $3 and comes in a little aluminum packet, unassembled. There are sixteen of them in the collection, and you don't know which one you're getting until you've purchased it and opened it and put it together, although really just seeing which head is in there gives it away. So far we've gotten the sailor, the Viking (!), the surfer girl, and the skater. I'm hoping the next one we get (I mean Henry gets) is the rocker guitar guy with the mohawk, but you don't get a say, you just take what you get, an important life lesson, I think. So it may be the geisha girl, or worse, one we already have, and we'll just have to deal with that.

On The Road Again

Just as I did last week, I'm writing this entry in the van, but this time we are headed in the opposite direction: back toward Morristown. We received the devastating news yesterday that in a few days, Russell's dad is going to have his leg amputated below the knee due to a diabetes-related bone infection, and we are going back to be there with them.

Monday of this week was overcast, so we joined some friends for story time at Barnes and Noble. I have no idea what the story was, so clearly it didn't make an impression on me, but I do remember it was something about recycling because the craft the kids did afterward involved cutting, gluing, pasting, and applying stickers to various recyclables collected by the B & N staff. The snack I also remember: animal crackers and milk. Perhaps for our purposes we should refer to this event as "Snack Time" rather than "Story Time." Afterward we went for lunch at Qdoba with our friends, and it was nice to see Henry interacting with two boys his own age. I made sure to mention to Henry that they are both in school already, just like he will be in August. He looked uncertain but (I think) a little interested.

On Tuesday we went to music time at the Gallatin library, where we spent thirty minutes singing and dancing to a variety of kids' songs that are becoming familiar to us nowthat we've attended a half dozen times or so ("The Shaky Egg," "We Are the Dinosaurs," a trilogy of the ABCsong, "Row Row Row," and "Twinkle Twinkle.") Charlie particularly enjoyed singing and dancing to the music. Afterward we went to the Whippoorwill for lunch with friends. Things were a bit rough with Charlie (he had missed his morning nap), and by that I mean he screamed throughout almost the entire lunch. We had fun anyway, and I attempted to cheer the waitress up by reminding her when we left that the remainder of her day should be easier by comparison. And by tipping her nicely. As we left the restaurant for home, I got a call that a friend had gone into labor, and her baby girl arrived safely later that evening, so that made the day special.

Wednesday was supposed to be a terribly stormy day, and it was - in Alabama. Three hundred plus people were killed that day after the biggest freaking tornado I've ever seen romped the state. In Hendersonville, thankfully, we never saw more than torrential rain, some thunder, and lightning. We (well, Russell) dragged a mattress downstairs to our designated tornado hiding place, the bathroom, just in case, and there it sits as I type, three days later. Since Wednesday, I have taken Henry to use the potty approximately eight times a day with that double mattress propped up against the wall in the tiny bathroom, and it's really starting to get to me. I've instructed Russell that the bathroom must be returned to its normal state immediately upon our return to Hendersonville next week. Anyway, Wednesday morning, we got out in the rain

with our friends Susie and James, Chiara and Eva, for a tour of the Hendersonville Police Department. Henry seemed a little intimidated by our tour guide, Corporal Something Or Other (Lloyd? Floyd?), a forty-something female officer whose demeanor jived perfectly with my past career experience with law enforcement officials. She seemed, shall we say, not terribly comfortable with children. As a sort of inside joke with myself, I thrust Charlie into her arms when I needed to lift Henry up to see something, and she became flustered, which I inwardly found hilarious. He of course began to cry immediately, which she attributed to all the guns and other weapons and tools on her work belt poking him in the side. She did a fine job of showing us around the police department, though. Henry and his friends learned about the importance of not talking to strangers when parents aren't around; wearing a seat belt; and knowing how to dial 911 in an emergency. (I am hesitant to teach him this last skill just yet, because I know he inevitably will dial it in a non-emergency, and local police departments in recent years have launched an ad campaign emphasizing the importance of only using 911 for emergencies. "For urgency without emergency, call eight six two, eight six oh oh..." I'm not sure I can teach a three year old A) how to distinguish an emergent situation from an urgent one, and B) how to dial 862-8600. I may live to regret this decision, or, more frighteningly, I may not live to regret this decision, but there you have it.) After the tour, we went out to eat with our friends at Backyard Burger. (Wow, we ate out a lot for lunch this week, oops.) Wednesday evening, as the storms that had earlier hit Alabama moved toward East Tennessee, I repeatedly called my parents each time I received notification on my iPhone of a tornado warning for Morristown. They sounded increasingly annoyed with each call, but I didn't care...better annoyed than dead or maimed, I say! I later found out that both of my sisters were also calling them to alert them of each warning, so they were getting three calls per warning and there were like six warnings, so...eighteen calls? I understood their annoyance a bit more at that point.

On Thursday, the boys and I had nothing planned. Nothing! It was fantastic. We did zero rushing - we just did things on our own schedule. I love an occasional day like this. Charlie got his morning nap in, then we all went to Publix to do some grocery shopping. The only thing of note during our trip occurred while we were in the makeup and personal hygiene aisle, Henry's new favorite aisle. Henry was doing his usual, opening up lip glosses and deodorants and such and smelling them. (I've previously written about his olfactory fascination.) Our rule is that he can only open the ones that aren't sealed up with plastic, so he's not removing the wrapping and opening them or anything. My thinking is that if they didn't want them opened, they would put plastic over them. How is a person supposed to select a fitting deodorant if she can't find out what it smells like first? I don't want to buy a deodorant smell-unsmelled, then get home only to find out it smells like Pinesol or Drakkar Noir or something. So anyway, Henry has very innocently removed the lid from a deodorant that called his name, with my approval, when the only unpleasant Publix employee I've ever encountered - she's in charge of stocking this aisle, I've seen her there before - walks right past me, bends down to Henry's level, snatches the deodorant from him and replaces the lid, and very sternly looks him right in the eye and shakes her head, "No NO!" over and over. Henry quickly backed away from her and came to my side, and I could see he was about to cry. Ordinarily I would have said something sort of passive-aggressive about her to Henry - "What a grump!" in a loud voice. However, in an effort to control my temper and teach Henry about respect for others' emotions, I just said, "Come on, Henry, let's go on to the dairy aisle," then I told him that the lady was probably nice but maybe having a bad day, and that he hadn't done anything wrong. (I recently read in a parenting book that in order to teach children about the emotional complexity of humans, parents should use unpleasant people as an opportunity to point out that others have bad days sometimes, too.) We'll probably go back later and rearrange the makeup section anyway, though.

On Friday morning, we went to a friend's house to watch the coverage of Prince William's marriage to Kate. It was a great theme for a play date. The little girls wore tiaras, and we had tea (well, I had coffee) and lots of dainty goodies, including crown-shaped sandwiches. We had a great time playing outdoors, and while we were there, Charlie began taking the most steps I've ever seen him take! Later that evening, as he walked around the kitchen to the applause of our whole family, we pronounced him officially a walker. Our friend Kristin took these pictures of Charlie outside at the royal party:

What the boys are doing now:

Henry: Well, on Easter, the Easter Bunny came and went, and, as promised, he left chocolate and took away all the "big boy diapers," which means that Henry has been forced to do all of his business in the potty. For the first few days, he didn't do a certain type of business anywhere, but finally, when things became urgent, he used the potty, and has been doing so every day since! Henry is very helpful around the house now, and just now he set the table for us at Grammy and Grandpa's house. He continues to be nicer and gentler with, and less jealous of, Charlie, so I'm hoping the troubles we had a few weeks ago were just a bad patch.

Charlie: I already mentioned that Charlie is walking. Often, when he does, he holds his hands above his head in victory, mouth open wide and smiling, going, "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" He is very proud of his new skill, and I am even more proud of him!