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And watching a DIGGER KNOCK DOWN THE GARAGE ACROSS THE STREET!
Thursday, March 3, 2011
A few scenes from our week
Drinking smoothies...
Hanging out in bed...
Hanging out in bed some more...
And watching a DIGGER KNOCK DOWN THE GARAGE ACROSS THE STREET!
And watching a DIGGER KNOCK DOWN THE GARAGE ACROSS THE STREET!
Monday, February 28, 2011
More from the archives
A photo of Dad's parents, Jane and Andre, circa 1941-42. This would be after they were reunited in the U.S. following their separate--both harrowing--escapes from wartime France.
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Random Monday
1. The Rural King ad insert in Monday's paper is a toddler treasure trove. Wheelbarrows! Tractors! Tillers! Boots! It keeps Henry busy for about twice as long as it takes me to read the rest of the paper. Which on a Monday really isn't that long, but still.
2. Tornado sirens sound a LOT louder when they go off at 1 in the morning. We all woke up except James. Henry & I watched Peter go down into the crawl space to get it ready, just in case (this may have involved mouse traps... and some long defunct mice). Henry didn't know the words he needed to say his teeth were chattering, so he came up with this: "My cheeks are bumpy."
3. Currently on my bedside table (i.e., the floor beside the mattress): This and this.
4. I'm grateful to my friend Aubrey for reminding me of these guys, who are so much preferable to Barney when I am using YouTube to buy myself a few minutes' writing time. Relatedly, if Peter were English and liked dogs and stinky cheese, I'm not sure you could see daylight between him and Wallace.
5. Speaking of writing time, I'd better get on with it.
2. Tornado sirens sound a LOT louder when they go off at 1 in the morning. We all woke up except James. Henry & I watched Peter go down into the crawl space to get it ready, just in case (this may have involved mouse traps... and some long defunct mice). Henry didn't know the words he needed to say his teeth were chattering, so he came up with this: "My cheeks are bumpy."
3. Currently on my bedside table (i.e., the floor beside the mattress): This and this.
4. I'm grateful to my friend Aubrey for reminding me of these guys, who are so much preferable to Barney when I am using YouTube to buy myself a few minutes' writing time. Relatedly, if Peter were English and liked dogs and stinky cheese, I'm not sure you could see daylight between him and Wallace.
5. Speaking of writing time, I'd better get on with it.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Please don't hate me when you're grown, James
I feel a little guilty about the unreasonable amount of pleasure I get from dressing my children. It verges on exploitative, really. But there it is. And I think we can all agree that I have outdone myself today, right?
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| Why yes, that is the February Sweater on Two Needles in merino from Montana! |
Thursday, February 24, 2011
A day in the life
Wednesday:
The day began, as usual, with Henry popping into the room to say "Good morning, Mama. I found Baby James! What Henry eat?" After breakfast (for Henry, a bowl full of raisins, and some banana chunks he arranged like Stonehenge on the edge of his chair instead of eating), I took the boys out to the back yard and sat in the cold for as long as I could stand it. Henry played in the mud. I cried.
Shivering, muddy, AND weepy was too pathetic, even for me, so I decided to pull myself together and try A Craft Project--the sort of organized child-enrichment activity I don't do nearly as often as I intend. And it was a success! Last fall, in a spasm of maternal ambition, I made fingerpaint, but Henry, who is erratically fastidious, hated having goop on his hands. Three months and/or brushes made a big difference:
After lunch, instead of napping, Henry alternated between sitting on my head & walking on my spleen, so I just shut him in his room and left him there for a bit while James & I had a tete-a-tete.
Mid-afternoon, Molly came over and we bundled everyone up in the stroller & went around little 9th Street park until we were dizzy. After our walk we snacked on leftover cheese from my cheese-of-the-month club: a Christmas present from Dad. (The FedEx lady looked pretty taken aback by my expression when the February delivery arrived.)
Peter came home, gave Henry his bath, we all went to bed and I cried myself to sleep. Yep, it's really that fun over here these days.
Thankfully, there are bright moments too: Notes from my brothers (honoring our pact to exchange inconsequential e-mails more often); conversations with Molly about Middlemarch and Chinese poetry and the complexity of families; hilarious diary entries by long-dead British folk chronicling the aftermath of World War II for posterity; gossip magazines supplied for therapeutic purposes by Peter and rich with the raw material for Schadenfreude.
And of course, my boys. Henry has been trying to share his knowledge of the world with James, lately, so he holds stuff up in front of James's face and tells him about it, e.g., "This is a purse, Baby James... purse," or, while approximating a yoga pose, "Here's an elbow, Baby James." And James beams.
The day began, as usual, with Henry popping into the room to say "Good morning, Mama. I found Baby James! What Henry eat?" After breakfast (for Henry, a bowl full of raisins, and some banana chunks he arranged like Stonehenge on the edge of his chair instead of eating), I took the boys out to the back yard and sat in the cold for as long as I could stand it. Henry played in the mud. I cried.
Shivering, muddy, AND weepy was too pathetic, even for me, so I decided to pull myself together and try A Craft Project--the sort of organized child-enrichment activity I don't do nearly as often as I intend. And it was a success! Last fall, in a spasm of maternal ambition, I made fingerpaint, but Henry, who is erratically fastidious, hated having goop on his hands. Three months and/or brushes made a big difference:
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| Full disclosure: This is actually today's painting, not yesterday's. The palette is different, but the vernacular's the same. |
After lunch, instead of napping, Henry alternated between sitting on my head & walking on my spleen, so I just shut him in his room and left him there for a bit while James & I had a tete-a-tete.
Mid-afternoon, Molly came over and we bundled everyone up in the stroller & went around little 9th Street park until we were dizzy. After our walk we snacked on leftover cheese from my cheese-of-the-month club: a Christmas present from Dad. (The FedEx lady looked pretty taken aback by my expression when the February delivery arrived.)
Peter came home, gave Henry his bath, we all went to bed and I cried myself to sleep. Yep, it's really that fun over here these days.
Thankfully, there are bright moments too: Notes from my brothers (honoring our pact to exchange inconsequential e-mails more often); conversations with Molly about Middlemarch and Chinese poetry and the complexity of families; hilarious diary entries by long-dead British folk chronicling the aftermath of World War II for posterity; gossip magazines supplied for therapeutic purposes by Peter and rich with the raw material for Schadenfreude.
And of course, my boys. Henry has been trying to share his knowledge of the world with James, lately, so he holds stuff up in front of James's face and tells him about it, e.g., "This is a purse, Baby James... purse," or, while approximating a yoga pose, "Here's an elbow, Baby James." And James beams.
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| Visits from Virginia are bright spots, too. |
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
And one from the archives
"The Past, then, is a constant accumulation of images. It can be easily contemplated and listened to, tested and tasted at random, so that it ceases to mean the orderly alternation of linked events that it does in the large theoretical sense. It is now a generous chaos out of which the genius of total recall ... can pick anything he pleases."
--Vladimir Nabokov (from Ada, which I have not read; I'm just cribbing William's erudition here)
--Vladimir Nabokov (from Ada, which I have not read; I'm just cribbing William's erudition here)
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| October 1972 |
Monday, February 21, 2011
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