The Ladder Herald

The Three of Them

Holidaze

Jonah demands to know, "Why don't we have Santa Claus give us presents at our house? Why do we just give them to each other? Santa Claus is REAL at Eli's house."

Wishing that we had our compelling, fun, spiritual-atheist alternative to Christmas, (and all the religious holidays) all set up and ready to dazzle our kids with meaning and giddy excitement.

It's hard to decide how to modify it all and make it ours: I don't want to do too many gifts, but I want it to be special and warm and fun, and I want there to be some gifts. I want to have rituals and traditions, but I am not sure which ones, or exactly how to get new made-up ones to stick.

I like the pagan part of getting an evergreen tree. I like lighting the menorah. Gabe and I did a winter solstice program at Buen Dia last year and we'll do it again this year. He played guitar and sang "Jump for the Sun" and all the kids jumped over the (fake) fire and wore hats with the sun on them.

Maybe when the boys are older we can all be disaffected together and get Chinese food and go to the movies some years. Or we can go to the cabin in Colorado and play the haiku game. Or we can go to Mexico and lie on the beach. I am glad we are not traveling this year...

So. We mostly forgot to light the menorah. We don't have a tree yet. Gabe's Mom and Randy will come late next week and that will make it festive. We'll make Christmas veeb bread and have a Christmas morning stockings exchange. It will be calm and sweet.

Hope it's going well for all both of you out there!

Empirical Evidence that Men are More Involved in Child Rearing These Days

Sign posted in exam room at pediatrician's office:

"Please Do Not Blow the Sterile Gloves Up Into Balloons. Thank You"

Boy Fun

Nor Cal

Went to the beach today. It was so mild and pretty. A nice calm morning after a wild Thanksgiving weekend.

We saw: dolphins, herons, horses, and pirate ships! Can you see this silly picture?

And we tried to fly our new kite (but there was no wind!)

Guess who?

Cryogenic Freeze

Sometimes I want a break from my kids. But sometimes Gabe and I say, "if only we could put them in a cryogenic freeze!" Meaning, we want to do grown-up things, and we want rest, but we don't want to miss anything with the boys, and we don't want to send them off to anyone else.

Rye woke up at 5AM, bit me on both sides while nursing, and we started the day. We were all lying around on the living room couch (which is the place G and I are sleeping these days, due to bizarre nighttime logistics) and Gabe asked me what I'd do if I could have the kids in the cryogenic freeze. I said:

Sleep.
Sex.
More sleep.
Movies.
Go to Paris, all of Europe.
Sleep.

I think I'd like about three weeks. but I could not stand to leave them for three weeks. Maybe not even one week, unless it was leaving them with Gabriel, and the whole point is I want him with me!

Boys in the Christiana

I heart them:

Gone Barfing!

That's what our bumper sticker would say. We've been a family that barfs together...yuk.

Days and days of sickness, all blending into one another: runny noses, stuffed-up noses, ear infection, barfing, the bad poop, shivers, sweats: it's like the plagues around here.

Sleep disturbances, crabbiness, missed school, missed work, behind behind behind...

Gotta get the flu shot—this can't happen anymore. One bout of sickness and I am monumentally out of step with life.

I remember staying home from school as this sleepy, dreamy, sweet little time. I would stay in my bed with my ginger ale and saltines on a plate, the little black and white tv on a chair and Sesame Street/Mr. Rogers/Zoom (after these two nothing was on and I slept some more). My Mom would come and check on me and put her cool hand on my forehead. I looked at books and colored with crayons. All from the coziness of my little bed with the Raggedy Anne sheets.

This is nothing like what happens when Jonah stays home from school. There is an inordinate amount of belligerent ordering me around, ultimatums, shrieking, tantrum-ing, whining, and a flat refusal to have any "quiet time" or "rest". I am completely sacked from dealing with him. And I feel some kind of silly disappointment that his days of staying home are so rough, instead of nurturing and calm, like they were for me. Why doesn't he want to lie quietly in bed looking at books? Why is he not me?

He is Jonah. And he has too much energy to be cozy in bed, even when he is sick.

Brothers: Jonah and Rye

Rye's the one on the left.

Jonah hasn't ever drawn people much before, but suddenly he is inspired--and he can do it! Eyes, nose, mouth, arms hands, legs, feet, torso, and what looks like a lions mane, for my fierce little lion boys.

What's Really Real

Been noticing lately how blog writers often seem so cool, their writing is just a catalog of wonders. They write about the smart/funny things they said and did, parties & events they went to and the amazing friends they have and the beautiful things they bought. At times I end up feeling sort of diminished, instead of inspired. Although I am often inspired, too. I want to write here in a way that is interesting and fun, but also authentic and vulnerable.

The truth is that tonight I am very tired. I was alone with kids all day, and I feel this weird weakness-feeling that I only seem to get after being with my little ones. It was a normal day, which means there was lots of

crying
screaming
feeling guilty
not acting how I intend to
frustration
loneliness
doing the wrong thing
disappointing each other
tantrums
time-outs
crabbiness
cajoling
explaining
encouraging
hurrying
whining
hollering
sighing
spit-out bananas
spit-out butternut squash
poop
pee
boogers
dirty clothes
messes
broken toys
taping things together with masking tape
untaping things mummified inside masking tape
phone calls
worrying
anxiety
feeling sorry for myself
and Other Things even Some Good Ones which I will decline to mention here.

My body aches and my shoulders feel like enormous craggy boulders. My brain feels like it is inside of a thick San Francisco fog bank. I want to cry but I am too wacked. I want to lie on the floor and groan but I am too crabby. I want to go to a hotel room and shoot heroin, but I am too chickenshit.

So what do I do when I feel this way? Alone and cranky and victimized and kind of miserable? What is the clever advice that my bloggy persona will now enlighten you with? Deep cleansing breaths in a certain pattern? Eucalyptus bubble bath & candles? A small, tasteful ritual offering to the Goddess of Nurturance and Compassion?

Um, no. I have no advice. And I can't think of what to do to help myself. I'm just flailing here, feeling sorry for myself, eating too many snacks, getting distracted, doing my homework, and wishing wishing I were somehow healthier.

So I am telling you. So, hello—from the real me.

Nature-Lovers

We also went camping this weekend, just for Saturday night, at Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Four families, each with two kids. During the first dinner shift for the little ones there was so much intense racket from eight kids whining, hollering, tantrum-ing, yelling out with general pickiness plus loud parental scolding that at some point most of the parents just began to laugh. "This is not what I pictured when we talked about going camping," one Mom said, "I don't know why—of couse this is what it's like!"

Claire and Ben and Rye and I left after dinner and drove back to city to sleep at home. Between the 25 degree weather at night, and both babies having colds, it seemed like a good idea. The next morning when I picked up the phone for G's call, I heard Jonah in the background, "Tell her I threw up!!"

He also peed all over the tent and their sleeping bags in the middle of the night. Poor G. Golden Star Fathering Award for him.

Today Is The Greatest Day Available...

No school for Jonah today. No justice, no peace.

I took the boys to see friends in beautiful Sonoma, and endured two marathons of whining on the drive up and back ("I want a treat, I want a toy, can I watch Charlie and Lola?"). We had a great time out in the country, with sweet, sweet people—and I was so glad to see that white city skyline over the shoulder of the Golden Gate Bridge. I took a bunch of very dangerous photos while driving...but I kind of love them (don't tell my Mom!):

Ok, I'll stop, I'll stop! Sorry.

Here are a few from the day. My favorites are from when Jonah masking-taped his legs like a Gladiator and then posed for us like our Governor.

Friends.

Rye hardly napped at all.

Playtime

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." Plato

The following arrived in my email inbox today, after a day of wrassling, crowing, goo-gooing and getting silly with two boys. Rye is laughing suddenly and it makes me drunk with love when I can get him to chuckle. Right now my shirt is covered in a huge collage of stickers that Jonah plastered me with just before his bedtime.

"Play creates joy, but play is also how your child will develop skills essential to future happiness. As she gets older, unstructured play will allow her to discover what she loves to do — build villages with blocks, make "potions" out of kitchen ingredients, paint elaborate watercolors — which can point her toward a career that will seem like a lifetime of play. Play doesn't mean music class, organized sports, and other structured, "enriching" activities. Play is when children invent, create, and daydream."

—Parent Center

Then I found this nice quote:

"Play may in fact be the highest expression of our humanity, both imitating and advancing the evolutionary process. Play appears to allow our brains to exercise their very flexibility, to maintain and even perhaps renew the neural connections that embody our human potential to adapt, to meet any possible set of environmental conditions."

—Psychology Today

There are some cool images of polar bears and other animals at play located at: Play Foundation.

Also a recent NYT piece: "Putting the Skinned Knees Back Into Playtime"

Have fun!

Jonah & Rye

Two recent good ones:

 

 

What Are You Masking?

Jonah's obsessed with masking tape. He used an entire roll today, making sculpture, toys & necklaces for Rye, boats, water pipes, bridges, houses, scones, wheels, and crowns.

When I asked him why all the tape he said, "because when I try to draw it doesn't come out like what I see in my mind."

He calls them his "projects", as in "I can't give you a kiss! I'm too busy working on my projects!"

He's inspired me to remember my old paper tricks: fortune tellers and newspaper hats. It's fun to make stuff. It's incredible, actually.

Here's a link to a good explanation of how to make a fortune teller out of paper:

Enchanted Learning

Some of the fortunes we've written are:

1. You will eat trash soup at Yukky Restaurant.
2. If you turn around quickly, you will see the invisible Splorgak. Too late!
3. Sneakers will soon be edible.
4. Your robot's name will be Zaza in the year 2040.
5. You will find a secret cave where you can hide your treasure from the pirates.
6. A guinea pig will follow you home.
7. You will invent salad ice cream.
8. You will go camping on the moon in the year 2050.

If this seems adorable or precocious in any way, let me just add that he is also farting continually, really stinking up the apartment. This includes times when he is sitting on my lap.

Babies Who Wear Glasses, Are Gasses.

Also kind of wanted to call this: Rye-Colored Glasses.

Wry Rye.

Here is Rye in my favorite picture ever. Wearing the pipe cleaner glasses that Jonah and his teacher Miho made for him. They made a pair for everyone in our family. Mine are yellow and pink. Maybe we'll all wear them for a Christmas/Hannukah card photo.

I think it is so cool that Jonah includes Rye in our family. He's new, but he's already one of us. When we get glasses, he gets them too.

I am sure I am going to learn about rage and destruction in my Human Development class at CIIS when we study siblings, and I certainly have memories of my own, as the older sister of two younger girlies. BUT, it is still a blessing when your kids love each other, in addition to the other feelings they may have or will have...