Apres le deluge

December rain

Here's good medicine for waking up on the wrong side of bed (because every side of the bed is wrong at 4:30 a.m.).

Henry (opening the back door and looking out onto this bleak, bleak December morning): "If you listen carefully, you can hear the music the rain makes!"

The last gasp of November

Yesterday:

Two boys in a boat

Today:

What are you doing, James?
"Us working!"

Thanks giving

I admit that the idea of a self-conscious "gratitude practice," much touted as the secret to happiness, has rubbed me the wrong way since I heard of it. I won't go into why, but you know what? I'll get over it.

Without further ado or apology, here is the working list of what Henry, James, and I are thankful for this week (I leave it to the reader to sort out the authors of specific entries):

1. Babies.
2. Food: Fruit! Turkeys! Chicken with pizza sprinkles!
3. Henry and James and Peter and all the other parts of the family. (Henry would like to note especially that this includes Grandmama. Auntie too.)
4. Knitting! Knowing how and being able to afford the yarn.
5. Flowers! In the yard and right here on the kitchen table.
6. Good books, and the ability to read and understand them.
7. Good shoes, and feet that don't hurt any more.
8. Dreams and mysteries.
9. Good places to go, like Griffy Lake, Lake Monroe, Wonderlab, and Banneker.
10. Places we haven't been to yet but can hope to go someday, like the Ocean, Afghanistan, Gary, Kotahoka (it's in the south and has a lot of oceans in it), Chicago, and the North Pole.
11. Friends: old ones, new ones, nutty ones, nice ones.
12. Friends: Isaak, Willa, Ida, Graedan, Josh, Oliver (except when he's being too rough).
13. A warm and safe house to live in. Not only that, but a second house that will also one day be warm and safe. Relatedly: big windows, tall ceilings, southern exposures, and pawpaw trees. And paint chips to dream over.

Brother to brother

Henry just took this picture of James, with the instructions: "Make a funny face."

Mission accomplished, as they say.

A learned herpetological dialogue

Me: James, do you want to tell Henry what you did this morning?

James: My went poop! In the potty!

Henry (not yet impressed, but willing to keep an open mind): How big was it?

Me: It was big!

James: Like a boa constrictor!

My new favorite book

"So," I say one day last week after lunch. "I feel like drawing a picture of a gnome."

"Great idea, Mommy," says Henry, leaping up. I bring in a basket of crayons and paper, and he gets busy.

By the time I am ready to sit down, he has produced a picture of a one-legged gnome with googly eyes, a tripartite beard, and a properly pointy hat. I am delighted. Henry's usual subjects when he sits down to draw are monster trucks and Army tanks, produced by the score, and I will admit that to my eye they lack the human interest that reels me in.

I propose to color Henry's picture in, while he works on more gnomes.

"Now you make one," he says, offering suggestions for my composition as I work. "How about another gnome there? How about a gnome family?"

"Mommy! I know!" he says after a bit. "Let's make a book!" He runs out of the room and comes back with a stapler. We assemble our pages, and he staples them together.

"Let's call it Gnomes Book," he says. I tell him the letters, and he writes them down.

"Now we need letters for each page." I suggest he tell me what he wants each page to say, and I will write it down. We disagree slightly about the humor and interest of nonsense words, but once we're done, I have to admit that he was right. He suggests that I come up with my own words to go with the picture I drew, and I think we can all agree that this is where the story really flags. Still, Henry is so pleased with the idea of a tree stump house that he doesn't mind the dullness.

When we're done writing, he decides the plain back cover is wasted space, so with a practiced hand he sketches a gnome car. To avoid confusing the reader between the two covers, he also suggests adding "FRONT" where indicated. Finally, he wants the authors to sign their names.

"Mommy, I am so so proud of myself!" he says. We dance around the living room, and read the book three times in a row. James wakes up from his nap and comes to see what the fuss is all about. We read the book to him, and he laughs most gratifyingly at the right parts.

***

In other news, during my long blog silence, we have bought a house, and Henry has started preschool. And now I think we are all caught up.

The sweetest of sweet things

Although it hasn't been a nice week, I realized this evening that Henry and James each said things to me that are surpassingly, maybe superlatively sweet during it, so that at least is worth remembering.

Henry:
I was showing the boys baby pictures of themselves in knitwear. We looked through quite a number, including several in which I was holding one or the other of them. In a very offhand manner, which is what made it so dear, Henry said, "I like what you look like, Mommy."

James:
I was crying. Both boys hate it when I cry, and I usually try not to do it around them. (Not that I cry all the time! But it was a bad week, as I said.) James reacts by trying out his battery of winning ways. We play a game sometimes where he says "Bad Mama!" and I pretend to cry and when he doesn't like that anymore he says "Good Mama!" and I grin fatuously. So he will say "Good Mama!" or kiss me or say "I yuv you," all of which is of course exceedingly sweet and devastating. But this week he said something I say to him when he cries, and it just about overset me. "I here, Mama," he said, patting my hair awkwardly, "I with you."

Tales from the apiary

I am engaged in a half-hearted campaign lately to ensure that Henry is dressed before he goes outside, at least in the front yard. Our back yard is insulated from the street by the fenced in area for the dogs, which is waist high in dock and surrounded by scrubby trees, so is quite private, but in the front there's no hiding. I'm torn, because I don't want to offend against community standards, nor or course do I want him to catch anybody's creepy eye, but on the other hand nudity is the natural next step now that I have fully embraced barefootery. Also, there are so many other more important questions to put my foot down about, and I really love our easy indoor-outdoor life at home in warm weather and do not want to take on monitress duty at the door.

Nor do I know quite what to say to justify the rule. I have been telling Henry that now that he's four and a half, he needs to wear pants in the front yard, which makes no sense at all, of course, but he has been surprisingly accepting.

So I was a little surprised today to catch him heading out the front door in the altogether. I was on the sofa. He was hovering behind the sofa's high arm.

"Henry!" I said. "You need to put on some pants!"

"I really, really don't want to," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "But you do. You're just too old now to go out without your pants."

"No, Mommy!"

"Why don't you want to wear pants?" I asked.

"Because I am pretending I am a bee." His face flushed with delight at his game. "And this is my stinger!"

He turned around, revealing a lacquered yellow chopstick, business end out (thankfully), protruding from his bottom.

June days

Watching Henry

Monster-walking

Mulberrying in the rain

Heavy

Henry is in the bathroom. I hear a murmuring and think he might need me.

"What is it?" I call out.

"Oh, nothing, Mommy," he says. "I'm just sitting here talking to myself about gravity."

Gnomes on a car

I am always curious about how families develop their distinct family cultures. At the moment, I'm thinking more of the trivial things--the catchphrases, the inside jokes, the family rituals--than of the deep questions of values and roles.

Why of all the cultural and literary references of the mid-1970s was it "Have a popover, Froggy?" that stuck with Mom? Why was it so super-duper important to Dad not to eat dinner before 7? Why did the Rosenfelds not really celebrate birthdays? Why did the Arkushes always pronounce vulgar as "wulgar"? When did the Gleesons start singing their skol song, and did they plan for it to become an institution?

I like how all of these little ways become artifacts for everyday use, like heirloom china that can't be chipped. But mainly I just like them, in the same way I like old furniture, books annotated by other people, and words with very specific and limited meanings, like petrichor and oxter; often, when Henry finds an interesting object--a speckled rock, say, or a broken mechanical gewgaw--he holds it up and cries triumphantly "Aha! A clue!" which is close to how I feel about these things, although I don't know what mystery is to be solved.

In our family, we seem to have developed a gnome tradition. I guess I married into it; it can be traced to Peter's mother, who called him a zwergl when he was small, and to Susan, who had given Peter several garden gnomes. Being both small and odd, Peter naturally draws comparisons himself, and the children are only smaller and odder, as well as constantly pursuing such gnomish work as digging and delving. When Peter built the kitchen cabinets, he filled in an odd space with a gnome niche, and I have contributed with a series of pointy knitted hats over several years. I didn't put it all together, however, until a couple of weeks ago, when Henry and James decided to assemble all the scattered garden gnomes in the kitchen. There are four, which gave rise to a lively discussion about which one represented which member of the family. After arranging and rearranging, naming and renaming them for a spell, James did a little flat-footed dance around the grouping and cried out, "It's Gnome Time!"

Which is, obviously, pretty much our new family motto.

Wait, what? Did that actually work?

For about a year now, James has taken charge faithfully, of his own accord, of one daily household task: bringing in the newspaper. About as soon as he could toddle, he began toddling out in the mornings to hunt it down. For the last two weeks, for no obvious reason, Henry has been contesting James's ownership of the job, although he never thinks of it until James has already started outside. James is understandably aggrieved.

Sometime last week, probably the day after our very bad morning, I started using one of the child-rearing  strategies I have been reading about for god knows how long without adopting. Instead of trying to adjudicate--a lose-lose approach that all former children, at least ones with siblings, know won't work, yet one that has proven incredibly difficult to drop, because it's so bloody obvious to me what justice demands--or ignore the skirmish, which has a lot of superficial attractions right up until the moment I'm daubing bloody wounds with hydrogen peroxide, I asked each boy in turn questions to help figure out what he actually wanted to say, then encouraged him to address his brother directly.

Because of their different personalities and ages, this most frequently plays out like this: Henry snatches something away from James, James howls, I say, "Henry, you want the car. James, you don't like it when Henry grabs the car. Henry, can you ask James for what you want," at which point Henry says, "Give it to me!" and I say, "Can you ask him nicely?" and Henry, in dulcet tones, says, "James, may I please have the car?" and James says, "OK, Henny," and hands it over. Then Henry is overcome with emotion and says, "James is so cute! James, I love you," and embraces him so hard it makes him cry.

It's been harder to make it work the other way. James manfully repeats "No like that, Henny!" when Henry mugs him or thumps him, at which Henry screams with simulated outrage, "I don't like you saying that! No fair!"

For reasons I might want to interrogate my own heart about one day, I have been incredibly pessimistic about the chances that I can intervene usefully--but not abusively--to change any of my children's habits that annoy or trouble me. So it was with considerable amazement, almost incredulity, that I listened the other day as James opened the door to get the paper and wailed, as usual, when Henry pushed him aside and ran out ahead of him. I paused in the kitchen, nerving myself to go deal with it without yelling or taking sides, when I realized that the tone of their conversation had changed.

"Do you want the paper, Jamie?" Henry was asking.

"'Kay," James sobbed. (What he says instead of "yes.")

"How about this?" Henry proposed. "I will put the paper down again, then I will get it again, and I'll give it to you, and you can give it to Mama."

"'Kay," James agreed again, happily this time.

And that was that! I almost thought I heard angels sing! Of course, nine times out of ten, we continue in our usual way, but it makes such a difference to know that what sometimes sounds even in my own ears like the rote utterance of a shibboleth might actually be teaching Henry and James (and me) that they truly can solve their own problems.

Schooled

We are trying something new at bedtime. Actually, we have just thrown bedtime out the window. Ever since Henry started sleeping more or less through the night, right after he turned one, we've had one sort or another of a bedtime routine, just as all the worthless sleep books advise. We've tried reading three stories, one story, no stories, unlimited stories, singing, CDs, starting late so he will be so tired he'll just have to go to sleep, starting early because probably he's overtired and can't sleep. We've tried a nice relaxing bath before bed, and we've nixed the overstimulating bath before bed. We've tried lying down with him, sitting up next to him, sitting outside the bedroom door. My conclusion is that this is mug's game. If I think there should be a bedtime, and Henry doesn't go to bed, I feel bad about myself because I failed, I become enraged at him for his contumacy, and I weep with frustration as I think about my precious minutes of time alone slipping away. And he goes to bed whenever the hell he is ready anyway. And in the end, I cannot really explain to myself why I don't make him eat if he doesn't want to eat, why I didn't force him to use the toilet until he was ready, why I try to let him test out his physical capabilities without help or hindrance, full of theories about him learning to listen to his own body--but damn it, when I say it's bedtime, you sleep, kid, and like it!

I conclude that this is yet another case of me comparing myself (mostly unknown even to myself) to Mary Poppins, the Mary Poppins from the books, whom the children adore because she is magical but whom they fear because of her cold blue eye. Sometimes I play the hairy-backed Madonna, just one step removed from the forest canopy, but the truth is when you have been weaned as I was on Frances Hodgson Burnett and P.L. Travers, you may find yourself saddled with an inner Edwardian nanny who hasn't the slightest interest in evolutionary adaptations and just wonders disapprovingly why your children are so grubby and ill-mannered, your hair so frowzy, and your beds unmade.

Once I realized that my problem is totally imaginary, it became much easier to solve. A week and a half ago, after running it by Peter, I told Henry we'd do something different at bedtime that night. He immediately ran away to hide under a table. "No!" I said, "You should listen to this! You will like it!"

I explained that he would not have a bedtime anymore, that he would wash up and put on his pajamas, I would read a book to him, and then he could do whatever quiet thing he wanted for as long as he wanted until he was ready to go to sleep. He cackled with excitement.

"But I will stop talking to you and just do my own things," I said. He didn't care. I think he was lost in contemplation of some hazy vision of Liberty Hall.

Ten days into the new regime, I am calling it a success. Henry has gone to bed every night later than I would like, but earlier than his previous average. With reminders, he gets himself into pajamas and brushes his teeth, no manhandling required. I read one or two books, then he huddles at the nightlight and studies a book of Mickey Mouse cartoons for a while. When he's sleepy, he asks me to come lie down with him; he's usually out within two minutes.


**

The other night, I was tired and repentant, after a crabby afternoon followed by an emotionally restorative but physically draining Crossfit class, so I just lay down in the bed with him for story time and stayed.

He was keyed up and kept pacing around the room, saying "Good day!" with a decisive nod, over and over again, as in "What a good day!" This seemed to be a case of protesting too much, since at least part of the day had been notably stinky, thanks to my bad mood. I said something about how grouchy I had been, and how sorry I was now.

He came to lie down on his back with his head in my lap.

"It must be hard to be a Mommy," he said.

"It is hard sometimes," I said. "Although it's wonderful, too. It's hard because sometimes I still feel like a kid inside, and I get way too mad about things. Do you know what is especially hard for me? When I see you and James hitting and biting and taking things away from each other."

"But Mommy," he said. "Kids are like that."

Those Dang Kids, Butt Edition

The last couple of days have been more like summer than spring, and the boys spent most of them naked. James came in from outside yesterday morning in tears, showing me one of his buttocks, which was red and abraded, from where he had fallen on it.
"My butthole!" he wailed. "Mama, kiss my butthole!"

***

And then last night, Peter and I were deep in conversation that was not about the children (a remarkable circumstance in itself) when too long a silence became alarming. The boys were outside, and Henry did not answer when we called. I went out to see what was up. A trail of inside-out clothing led from the door around the side of the house, where Henry was poised in a strange stance, like a cowboy at the end of a long day, and I could see his face change from triumph to defensiveness as I rounded the corner.

Triumph overcame him, and he told me what he had accomplished. "I pooped! Standing up!"

A sweeter summer scene: the first outside nap of the year.

A very bad morning at home with the kids

Things happen sometimes--little, daily things--that make me feel like I am a bathtub full of water and someone has opened the drain and every, last, single drop is sucked away. Except the plumbing metaphor should really have more toilet in it, because I am left feeling like shit.

Take one morning last week. Henry was furious at me the first time because I didn't put enough jelly on his "cold toast" (frozen bread) and butter sandwich. He turned red and cried and called me "Bad Mama" a few times, punched his fist into the air in my general direction, then took his plate under the table and ate there. OK, so far, so good. He's 4, I'm 41, I can do this. The morning proceeded as usual. Henry snatched things out of James's hand twice or thrice, made him cry by roaring loudly in his face, but whatever. I sportscasted away, folded some laundry, took a quick shower. The boys built a train together out of milk crates, looked at some books. Then James asked for milk.

"Just give him a little, and save the rest for me," Henry suggested, as we were running low. I checked Henry's cup, which was still two-thirds full, and poured the last inch of milk into James's empty cup.

"Did you save the rest for me?" he asked.

"No..." I began, in the light and reasonable tone of certain defeat.

His face broke apart like a kaleidoscope and he crouched down, yelling out sobs and imprecations. "I hate you, Mommy. You die, Mommy. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die!"

And I fell apart. "I don't have to listen to this! I don't want to hear you say that!" A big hot gust of anger blew out of me and I knocked over a kitchen chair, which scared James and made him cry. "Don't you say that! Do you know that if I died, you would NEVER EVER see me again? Never talk to me? Never touch me? I would never hug you or kiss you again? You can tell me you hate me, you can tell me to go away, but DON'T TELL ME TO DIE!"

I was crying, and both boys were obviously scared. Henry came over to me to pat me and kiss me, and I said, "Look, I know that you love me. I know you don't want me to die. I'm OK. I'm sorry I got so upset. But it's really hard for me to hear you say that." By now I was crying because I was so ashamed of my tantrum, ashamed of frightening them into comforting me. I went into the bathroom to try to collect myself. When I came out, Henry was drawing a picture that looked like Snuffleupagus and which he said was a heart, "to make you better."

I know. We sound like the yokels in Cold Comfort Farm, all rumpuses and unbridled passions. This is NOT the kind of family I intended for us to be.

I don't understand why this is so hard, and the God's honest truth is that it feels unfair to me. I know it isn't. I know fairness doesn't enter into it all, and if it did, I would in fact be riding the howdah of privilege on top of the broad elephant's back of great good fortune. And what's more, I believe that when it is hardest is when I can learn and grow the most. I mean, as nauseating as that sounds, I really do believe it: My children have more to teach me than I do them.

And I want them to be mad, to be sad, to be scared, to be aggressive, to be selfish, to be dumb, all of it, right under my eyes, so they know that none of those feelings or ways of being can't be borne, that I love them through it all, and that all of it passes and changes, too. But oh my God, I didn't expect that there would be so many of them! And that they would be so very heartfelt! And that they would pass and change so many times a day--an hour! And above all, I didn't anticipate how incredibly difficult it would be for me to listen to. Henry is 4; when I was 4, my family was falling apart, my safety was gone, my dad had moved out, my mom was frantic with grief and rage and fear. I think--I think--some vestige of my 4-year-old self just can't take it, that this kid with his world intact, with his beloved Daddy coming home every night, with his mother (mostly) OK, present, trying to make room for his big, fierce feelings, is so bottomless. They just go on and ON. Don't I get a reward for trying so hard? For thinking so much about what he needs? Shouldn't he just be made whole all at once by my good intentions and be fine? Ridiculous, when I put it into words. But I think it's what I've secretly been thinking.

I am lucky. I know that. And I know that my knowledge of it is incomplete. I don't really, really get it, except in brief flashes. It's like every other thing I thought I knew, knowing it intellectually, but when I finally really get it, I realize I hadn't known at all before. Things like: having a new baby is hard; my parents are just people; the thing about death is ...  it's final; I really am going to grow old, with wrinkles and gray hair and everything! I might even die myself! and meanwhile, this is it, my actual life.

This and that

A frequent conversation-starter in our house is this: "Henry? What are you up to?"
The other day I followed up with "Are you getting into mischief?"
Henry bounded into the room. "Yes! I am!" he said, beaming. "I opened the refrigerator door and was looking inside and I whispered to myself, 'It's mischief time!'"

***

The dialogue I am listening to right now:
"Dammit, Jamie!"
"No! Dammit HENNy!"

***

Henry is drawing when a question suddenly occurs to him. He stops in mid-petal, chewing on the end of a turquoise crayon. "Mommy, who did Eleanor pop out of?"

***

This is an old--but good--one.
Peter was talking some months ago to Mr. Gleeson about the imponderables Henry presents us with. He gave these examples: How big is electricity? and What are people for?
Mr. Gleeson later reported recounting this conversation to his son-in-law, a first-grade teacher whose son at the time was rising two. Mr. Gleeson told me that Reuben thought the first one would stump him, but that he could handle the second.
"And Peter told me just the opposite," Mr. Gleeson said.

L'apres-midi d'un faune

I mean, right?

Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie isn't all that epate:

I will admit, however, that the laundress was a little shocked, when she realized that what appears to be the sodden pelt of a mountain goat in that last photo was in fact a pair of Hanna Andersson sweatpants, which will never be the same.

Addendum

This. And this.

Chip off the old block

I like reading around in the more accessible anthropological literature about primate and hunter/gatherer childhoods; I find it useful when I have drilled myself down into a dark child-development hole to have a few notions in my head about all the extraordinarily different ways the human animal has dealt with its young.

So, knowing about those one-year-old babies who wield machetes, I was at least slightly prepared.

Peter and the boys were doing outdoor chores on Saturday morning. When I stepped outside, here is what I saw:

"WHAT are you DOING?" I cried.

Peter shrugged. "Making artisanal wood mulch," he said.

Composed

The following pieces were composed by Henry, spelled by Peter, typed by Henry (and here transcribed by me):

I. 

FLOWERS IN THE EARTH AND RAIN.

WHEAT IN THE RAIN AND THE ICE AND THE SNOW.

BEES IN THE LEAVES

HENRY

II.

PIGS IN THE ARK OF THE ZOO.

PEAS OF THE WORLD.

RABBITS OF THE LAND.

HENRY

PEAPOD

I adore these. I am a firm adherent of Alfie Kohn et al. with respect to the dangers--impudence, really--of praise, but I received these with so much delight that I'm afraid Henry will keep Peter at the computer all day as he dictates lists of gobbledygook names, which is where he goes when genuine inspiration fails.

apropos des bottes

And in the midst of his labors this morning (lining up trucks under the table), Henry stopped to say, thoughtfully, "Mama, I'm not so much interested in the fronts of statues. I'm interested in the behinds of statues."
I know that the quaint sayings of children who aren't your own aren't necessarily all that delightful, but this one in particular captures a certain Dada quality in my daily life that I would like to remember.

Good Morning, Moon

James and I are up alone this morning, sitting on the sofa. I've been reading, and he's been rearranging stacks of books, pretending to nurse his stuffed kitty, filling and emptying a packing envelope with puzzle pieces, etc. The sky has lightened, but it's still early morning dusk, and James, who has paused in his labors a moment to stand on the sofa looking out the window, notices a faint fingernail sliver.
"Love moon," he says. I start to nurse him, and he pauses every minute or two to look out the window again and make his report. "Moon still there!"
I woke up this morning on the wrong side of bed, thinking angrily about a lot of unsolvable problems.  I wanted to be alone for half an hour before the boys got up, so I could keep on thinking angrily without distraction. I don't mean to suggest that angry thinking isn't a worthwhile pursuit, within reason, but the combination of a very small child and astronomy does make it dwindle down into something pretty small and postponeable.

Do you really want to know?

Henry would like us to have more children. He brings it up several times a week. I think he thinks a baby would give more scope for his kindness than his 2-year-old brother seems to, and he is at least theoretically interested in developing his kindness chops. I have explained to him that we are unlikely to have a third child, and that the five or six more he wants are definitely out of the question.

So yesterday he came up with this modest proposal."Every time you get too old to have another baby, we can get another mama to make a brother for me. How do you like that idea, Mama?"

A few things about James

1. James has started saying his own name. He pronounces it "Wame." The other day Henry (or Ha, as James calls him) was chiding him for making a mess. "Bad Wame," agreed James, making my heart ache.

2. He comes capering out of the bathroom after his bath each night exclaiming "Nakey! Nakey! Nakey!" If pushed, he will add, "Hay clo" (hate clothes).

3. Although James has very little interest in movies or TV, he has spent enough time watching his brother watch to pick up a thing or two. He now delights in prancing back and forth across the room singing "Hot dog! Hot dog! Hot dig [gity] dog! Mi[ckey] Mou[se] Clu[b] Hou[se]!" To my great surprise, this, along with Henry's passion for the program, has for the first time ever softened my heart toward Walt Disney.

What not to read

So, suppose you have your third cold of the young year, your period is about to start, and you have spent the previous night waking up every 45 minutes wondering if you are going to throw up, then have spent the morning holding your 4-year-old's head over the sink while he unambiguously does--you! with your vomiting phobia!--but then, surprisingly, everyone turns out to be in a mellow and easygoing mood and you find you have both the time and the inclination to start reading a novel. Your excellent husband, say, has given you a gift subscription to the Persephone book-of-the-month program, and the satiny gray paperbacks have begun piling up faster than you can get to them (because you have been devoting your precious reading time to books with interchangeable titles and subtitles like "Becoming the Parent You Want to Be" and "How to Stop Yelling"). Being realistic, you pick out one of the slimmer volumes, with a whimsical horsehead endpaper and something about princes in the title--sort of makes you think of Kate Middleton and the lighter side of Trollope, exactly the sort of escapist British fizz to hit the spot, as you lie curled up at the foot of the bed where the baby is napping,  a toy helicopter at your feet, and the pessimistic stainless steel bowl left over from last night gaping at your head.

And then you read this:

"But what's the use of spring to me, thought Patricia. It'll be light after tea and, as I go down to the garden to eat the eggs, a blackbird will sing in the holly; the chestnuts will flower in Christ Church meadow, and Magdalen will have her fritilleries, but I'll have a beastly dental plate... I'm old... Hugh's old. God! what a struggle it's been, she thought, remembering monthly nurses, sticking-out teeth, tempers, nametapes, rows about dirty necks, rows about tidying up the nursery; and now that I've finished with it, she thought, now that they're grown-up, wash themselves, feed themselves, don't quarrel any more or drop egg down their fronts, now that my work's done, I've just got to grow old and feeble and ugly..."

Yah, that hits the spot, all right. 

It's Princes in the Land, by Joanna Cannan, in case you want to make sure you don't read it when you are recovering from the stomach flu. 

The letters of H. Patrick Thomas McCobb, vol. I

Peter and I have taken a big step. We've started having a babysitter spend three hours with the boys most Sunday afternoons. We're not going on "dates" or anything like that; Peter spends his time in the workshop whittling a sarcophagus head, while I go on long walks and think about the novel I would write if I ever write a novel. Not romantic, but restorative, which is where we're at right now, as they say.
We're delighted with Sophie, and after her first stint, Henry dictated a letter to her that mostly consisted of the single-word sentence "Love" repeated over and over, with any leftover space filled in with hearts. He was so pleased with the reception this letter got that he cooked up a scheme this week to dictate to Sophie a letter for her mother.
Here is how it went:

Dear Jana,
Hello. Nice to meet you. From Patrick Thomas McCobb.* And from Sophia [Redacted Redacted]. We are at Henry and James's house. They are eating a snack. And we are inside because it is rainy. We wish it was summer so we could make a garden and go swimming. I don't know how to swim. I need swimming lessons. The problem with a big hole is that you'll get muddy. We like summer so we can dig holes in the ground. Dear Jana, I wonder what your whole name is. You know your whole name? 
Love, Henry and James. Goodbye.

*Apparently Henry told Sophie that this is his real name. Henry is just a nickname.

The bleak midwinter, with anecdotes

At bedtime the other night:
Henry: James is cute, Mama.
Me: Yes, he is.
Henry: I'm cute, too.
Me: Yes, you are.
Henry: You're not cute. Daddy's not cute.
Me: No, we're not.
Henry: You're not like us.

***

James has developed a little shtick that is somewhere between fantasy play and an extended joke. It involves a little gray stuffed cat that he has grown attached to. "MY kitty-kitty," he says. When he wants to nurse, he says, "Kitty nuh (nurse)" and holds the toy to my chest before he takes a turn. This tickles him greatly. But last night, he didn't have the cat at hand. "Meow," he said. "Kitty nuh." He started to nurse, then pulled away to say again, "Meow," to make sure I got it.

***

We are sick again. Peter and I were knocked off our feet for the better part of a week, and James is awake 10 or more times each night, coughing. We were sick this time last year too, for weeks. I used to love winter, but right now, it feels like little more than a season of sickness and sorrow. I'm looking forward to spring, and also to one day loving winter again.

Fun with language acquisition

James is learning new words all the time, so he is full of surprises. Take yesterday, when I was reading one of his current favorite books, Each Peach Pear Plum, in which the reader hunts for hidden nursery rhyme characters. He found Mother Hubbard, who is bending over in her cottage kitchen so only her fairly voluminous backside is in view.
"Dere-ya-go, Mama!" crowed James. "Butthole!"

A good thing

When we went out this morning to take care of the dogs, Henry and James picked up a trowel and a hammer and started hacking away at the patches of ice left in the yard as the big snow melts. After a quarter of an hour, and with very cold hands, they were ready to come in.

"It,s a good thing there's ice for us to break up," said Henry. 

He seemed to find that wasn't quite what he meant to say.

"It's a good thing," he tried again, "there are people like me to keep the neighborhood safe."

I'll take it

The other morning, Henry asked me, "Mama, doesn't no sometimes mean yes?"

I have been spending too much time on Facebook lately looking at articles about rape culture, and thinking--well, no, thinking is not the word for it--that this was an opportune moment to teach my four-year-old a valuable lesson, I said reflexively, "Oh, no, sweetie, no means no." 

"No," Henry said, "I think no sometimes mean yes. Because when I asked James, 'Do you love me?' he said 'no.' But I think he does love me. So no might mean yes."

Tonight we revisited the same topic, and Henry had clearly been thinking about it in the meantime. "I think that no sometimes means yes," he began again. "I asked Jamie if he loved me and he said no, but I think he does love me. I think sometime he just doesn't want to tell me he does."

That nuanced assessment came at the end of the first really nice day we've had since Christmas. Whether it was the excitement, the irregular schedule and diet, my own tensions spilling over, or just the spark of Tonka trucks applied to the tinder of a child's bottomless desire, Christmas seemed to unleash a monster in Henry: he is not, in the ordinary way, an easy-going boy, but he has always regulated his aggressive acts--he may make James cry, and like it, but he clearly is capable of inflicting real injury, and doesn't. Except that for the week or so after Christmas, he did. Certainly not life-threatening, but it was real violence, and he was turning it on me, too, kicking with all his strength, and once or twice biting me--things he has never done before. I was, frankly, in despair. Peter's patience and sense of humor, which are usually my touchstone when I am frayed after long, difficult days, were more or less absent (it didn't help that he had come down with pink eye). My efforts at connected, respectful parenting seemed risible, and I was screaming, threatening, or bursting into tears almost as often as Henry. 

By New Year's Eve, though, I could see he was settling back down, and for the past week he has been back to his old passionate self--still volatile, and sometimes aggressive and demanding, but once again moderating the extremity of his reactions to James and to me, and lavishing us with sweetness and occasional acts of heroic generosity ("Look! I'm letting James play with my crane. Doesn't that make you happy, Mama?"). 

Today, though, was pretty much great. I don't think anybody screamed once, at least until bedtime (and that was Henry, not me!). I said to Henry as we were settling in to read a chapter of Farmer Boy that I had enjoyed the day with him very much.

"Yes," he said, "I was very friendly with James all day today."

"Yes, you were," I said, "And it was so nice! We were all so happy. Why did you decide to be friendlier with him?"

"Because it makes grownups happy. And it makes James friendlier with me, too."