On the Town with Four

We Need to Talk

I've hit it. I've reached the point at which I am no longer just blogging about my life but doing things so that I can later blog about them. This is not a healthy thing for me. I think it is time for me to take a blogging sabbatical. I did a reading this past weekend, and you could read anything of your own. I chose two blog essays and when up there, I just felt like my first-word, best-word style was kind of stale. I missed having tight, polished poems. I felt the incongruity of my blog-voice and my own voice.

I am concerned about my attachment to my blog-identity-- a preoccupation with how I seem. I want to take more time and really "be." I find myself dodging out on real live interactions with friends and then thinking, "Oh, well, they'll read my blog and see how busy I am." While I absolutely believe that the work of mothering is noble work, it is work that I do not want to hide behind.

I am making for myself what I call, "My Summer, Unplugged." I want to pare back my use of all screens (tv, laptop, cell phone). It is one of my aims to try to slow down my thinking and have more intentional interactions with my man, with my children, also my friends.

I think I can return in the Fall, when we start our homeschooling adventure. I love the blog entries where folks document a definitive event or project. Maybe I'll post some photos especially of Calliope (who rolls over both ways now.)

I'm not breaking up with my blog, I just think we need some time apart.

Limitations of this Medium

How do you take a little thing you've always done and continue doing it when time marches on and you begin to see that in so many ways it could be better? Being married to the "god of digital media" (as Geoff was described in the credits of one of the senior films), I understand this is normal-- you want things to be user-friendly but to be slick and cool and beautiful at the same time.

I remember sitting in our coat closet-turned-Mac desk on St. Rose St. Geoff was presenting this idea of the "blog" to me. He set one up for me as a First-Mother's Day gift. Living in Boston, I had folks I wanted to update about our babies. I had so much to tell, my whole world was changing with the transition to motherhood. I used to send out these "baby mails," emails about Manny--rambling musings about all of his firsts, gushily grieving about the end of our honeymoon phase, and how I was finding my footing in the neighborhood parenting-scene. When I read these posts, I have to laugh. I was a little myopic and diva-esque, qualities I struggle to shake.

He transferred the content of these emails into a web log and showed me how simple this was all going to be. I embraced that folks could visit the blog when they wanted to, hoe my own little row and not worry with hit counts, counting on faith that my college roomies and my mom and sibs would faithfully check my posts. And mostly, these folks are for whom I write-- but also, that drooly baby I used to prop up on pillows and endlessly photograph, can now read. And soon he will be able to read my posts. For goodness sake, he will be able to post himself!

It occurs to me that I can write so that my kids will read my words and trace my path into motherhood. Whatever they choose to do, and the timeline they choose, they can see themselves and identify their mother finding her sometimes struggling, sometimes managing, one crazy day at a time. Hopefully, they will see that the whole time I was just holding dixie cups at the fountain of God's grace, trying to catch some for me, trying to catch some to give.

All this to say that there are so many slick and beautiful and elegantly-designed blogs in the ether. I'm just going to keep going as I can, trying to get it all down.

Prescription Playdates

The play dates are working. A few weeks ago, we had a five year-old on our hands who was sullen, moody and dreading his friends at school. Is it about the new sibling? Is it because he has been here for three years now? Is it his diet? Is it his rest? I was a pinball bouncing between these questions. I observed that when he is at home, he is my right-hand man, "Manny, please make sure Clara doesn't leave the porch. Manny, would you hold this bag of produce while I unlock the door. Manny, will you tell Benicio to unhand his sister?" I have all these expectations that he be a leader, a lot of responsibility for someone all of 40lbs.

While at school, he was unable to break from his role at home into being a peer among peers, a five-year old with simple cares like shoe-lace tying and rhyme-pairs for "Down by the Bay." So at school, he became a bit of a menace-- barking at kids for not sitting boy/girl and even hit his good friend. He took on the role of monitor and really lost his footing when it came to free play. So his teacher recommended we set up play dates with kids who were second born, less moody so he could be a "kid in a kid's world." She named two kids and we have had four dates so far. I was skeptical, I like my family cinched tightly around me. I pray the prayer, "Hem them in, behind and before." constantly.

But I saw a fruit today. His teacher was right. I can't tell you how deeply satisfying it was to see Manny take a friend's hand so naturally and have them not just laugh at his jokes but augment them. Or to hear him say, "You stir this until your arm hurts and then it will be my turn." I picked him up at his friend's house and he showed me his sun-print. I could see that he had been lost in play.

As we get ready for homeschooling, I can see that I will be unable to go it alone. That he will need his friends. That Geoff and I will need other adults who know him and whose hearts break for him when he struggles and who jump to their feet when he succeeds. Let this be a lesson to me.

The Mighty Small Ones

Benicio has informed us that he is "the baddest kid in the whole family." He has said it numerous times and each time I am caught flat-footed like, "Is this a self-proclamation? Is this a guilty suspicion? An aspiration?" I still don't know. When we started having kids, we always asked for spirited and interested kids. This, my goodness, we got.

Geoff has begun an epic consisting of the adventures of D and T (for Day and True, but the boys don't know this). D and T are the Mighty Small Ones. They are a cross between the Littles with their domestic inventions like acorn cap helmets and also the Justice League with their death-defying attempts at having truth and beauty win the day. In Geoff's stories, they defend Margalo, the baby sister, by rescuing her from physical near-misses. In mine, they ride around on firefly's backs and have arguments with killer whales.

I wanted to post about Benicio because I haven't in a while. He's so adaptable and hasn't made many waves since Calliope's arrival. In the sibling dynamic, he can be the subtle instigator who quietly wears down his brother's patience until he is sweating with rage. OR he can tenderly sing to the baby and select the softest toys as bedside offerings. Also, I've seen him shove Clara within the same game where he has also made her a cozy bed with couch cushions. He totally has my bugging-gene, which is the gene that is prevalant in the younger sibs of my family. It's this insistent almost compulsive need to tease. I don't think "tease" is the best word, it's sort of endearing and certainly motivated by affection. For example, following someone around offering evolving nicknames over their shoulder. Or finding a clever rhyme and exhausting everyone by repeating it ad nauseum.

This is, however, who has mastered the "to the moon and back" theory of love. He told Geoff that he loved him "up into space, up up up into space on top of that and breathlessly added up into space on top of that." Also he says names his best friend at school but then quickly adds that Manny is actually his best, best, best , best (he raises his voice pitch and adds several more bests) friend.

A few recent quotes from BTB: Using a a half-shoe box full of paper they had torn, they made a sushi factory using Clara's wooden slide. They called it "their Chinese Kitchen" and made sushi rolls called "chinese rice rolls.": : "Mom, I'm writing the signs for cents and cash in my ketchup." : : "Dad, before Cloe was born, was she just only made of sky?" :: "Cloe is getting lips like me." :: "When I was a baby, my name was Boone. Now I'm a big kid, my name's Benicio. I have another name I'm also going to have besides Benicio---- it's Rocket Boy."