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."

Christmas family picture outtakes

Which one would YOU put on YOUR Christmas card?

Overheard in my kitchen

Henry, to James, at the breakfast table, while I was out of the room: "Are a lot of the people you love in Bloomington?"

Buddhism for beginners

We had a busy--too busy--pre-Thanksgiving Wednesday, visiting Lesley and Paul, then the Gleesons, then Mom's, so it was no surprise that by the time we were driving away from Ballantine Road at dusk, Henry was cracking up. Still, the actual breakdown happened in an unexpected way.
"Mama!" he called excitedly from his car seat . "I saw two fawns!"
"Oh!" I said. I need to mention that Henry's car seat still faces backwards, so we don't really have the same view when I'm driving.
"Did you see them?" he asked.
"No, I didn't, but---" He correctly read this as the introduction to a little maternal soft-soaping, and immediately lost his shit.
"Turn around!" he shrieked. "Turn around! Turn around right now! Mommy, turn around!!" We'd driven another three or four blocks and he was already stopping between "turn" and "around" to suck his breath in hysterically.
I murmured pointless, placating things for a few more blocks. By then he was full-on screaming. "Turn around! Turn around!! My penis hurts! I have to pee! Stop this car!!!" We were half a mile from home, and I told him I was going to keep driving.
"No! No! No! Turn around! Mom-MEEEEE! I can't stop something unintelligible."
"What did you say?" I asked. "You can't stop shivering?" This seemed likely, because of his near-hysteria.
"NO!" he roared, repeating his cri de coeur. I still didn't get it. Once more, he mustered all his passion and will to make me understand.
"I (gasp) can't (gasp) stop (gasp) suffering!"
Oh, my love.

November doings

We harvested the first and the last of our carrots. They tasted wonderful.

I made hats.

James built a poppin' hole for two.

The boys dressed themselves.

Henry wondered whether if we scanned herbs from the garden,
the computer would smell good. 

Sweets

This morning, I left the boys to play together while I cleaned the bathroom. When I came back into the kitchen, James was about to spade into the end of a pint of ice cream, and Henry had disappeared, although the chair in front of the open freezer door revealed more, perhaps, than he realized. When I took the ice cream away from James, he burst into noisy tears, which brought Henry out of hiding in the bedroom.
"Why is James sad?" he asked, with a conscious look.
I offered to hold James, to console him. He shook his head and said, "No!" Then he climbed down from his chair, sobbing, and staggered, sobbing, over to Henry, butting his head gently into Henry's chest, wrapping his arms around his waist. Henry bent down and, with exaggerated tenderness, put his arms around James too, patting his back. After a few moments, he looked up at me and said, in a tone of delighted wonderment, "He wanted ME!"