Cannot Get Enough

-of Cloe's jokes e.g. Knock knock. Ketchup. Ketchup who? Ketchup on your head.
-of Clara's feats of athleticism--our friend, John, who is Gary Barbera's personal trainer, was flabbergasted at her climbing abilities. That's right, Clara, scale that wall!
-of Boys'Camp. They made backpacks out of Trader Joe's bags and binoculars from tp tubes. To them they are completely functional and useful for "survival skills."
-of eating homegrown basil, mint and now RASPBERRIES!
-of cat's cradle. Ask Manny about making Eiffel Tower, soldier's bed, cat's whiskers.
-of Benicio's "versus" queries. As in, "Who would win if a viking versed a native American?"
-bathing suits. Church on Sunday was the first time Cloe covered her midriff in two weeks.
-the movie UP. In my opinion, the best Pixar film to date. Best story-telling, best pace, best characters, most subtle, least merchy.
-Lisa Loeb's summer camp CD.
-biking. Just got a seat for Cloe on my bike and wishing mamacharis were legal here but waiting for a little front perch so I can ride with both girls via mia bicicletta.


Countdown with us as we prep for Providence, less than two weeks til we live in Providence on Hope Street!!

the centering effect

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset have been formative films for me and in Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke describes his marriage as "feeling like he is running a small day care with someone he used to date." It is a battle to fight this feeling. Geoff and I are both working at counselors at the kids'camps. We both worked as camp counselors in college at the same camp. We would wave to eachother at meals and try to synchronize our break periods. It is not so different now. We have to carve out time to be at the same place simultaneously. "Let's meet in the kitchen at 9 to pack lunches together." Or "Meet me at the dryer after you do show him how to do that cat's cradle trick."

Having taken that trip, which has been a few weeks ago now, has seriously had a centering effect on things. We'll be discussing something stressful and we'll joke, "Hey, remember me, I hung out with you in Puerto Rico?" It seems to have this effect that when we ARE together, there is this giddy and illicit joy. All six of us napped this afternoon. I woke first and went to cut tomatoes in the kitchen and when Geoff descended the stairs, the two of us alone in the silence, it simply took my breath away.

STAY TUNED

My blog is under construction. . . .

Geoff is helping me realize blog-programming is more complicated than I thought. Trying to decide:
if after 7 years of doing this if I want comments
-what it should look like
-would I actually twitter?
and other stuff I don't usually think about

Aguadilla Shout Outs

Our trip would not have been possible without the following:
Maggie and Jeff- They told us where to stay, how to get there, and promised that we COULD in fact leave our kids and that they would survive.Ne plus ultra, you guys.
Ahmad-There is no airport shuttle on this planet with so much sanity and style as that ride to and from Newark that he drove us. Odwalla and Pikes Place included.
Mema and Aunt Joanna-Prevented the lynching of Hello Kitty, read my 3 pages of instructions without resenting me, and generally held down the emotional fort.
Extra Shout Out to Mema-who should be sainted for riding a bus back home after 2 days of babysitting.
Mymom and Big Dad-for totally "getting" each of our kids and their nuiances from the "de-stabilizing" to the requisite theology lesson and extra visits to the Blessed Sacrament.
Shess and JP-guardian over sane bedtimes and smooth transitions and equality all around
Wanette and Ron-for shuttling our kids from Strawberry Square and for having their kids be Siamese twins with my kids
Mike and Abby and their kids-good buds, leadership, and child care all rolled into one family
My West Coast Aunties-who when I cried to them about leaving my kids just patted me and said "You need this. You need this sometimes."
To Becky-who cried with me when I thought this trip wasn't going to happen.
To my knitting group and Andrea in particular- who were unwavering, "You NEED to do this."
Amy and Peter-Gave us our tour books, which were invaluable.
Manny-Who taught me, "Como se dise?" best exemplified in, "Como se dise Whac a Mole?"
Russ, the waiter-Bon Apetit, my people.
the rental car-whose excellent tire traction got us out of rainforest mud and the sand at Jobos
Marney, our neighbor-who promised "holy hell" would be raised if anything happened to our house.
***there are probably more but at this hour, I just can't remember. More later, stay tuned.

Puerto Rico, My Heart's Devotion

Celebrated 10 years of marriage:
-floating in the Caribbean, seeing to the bottom
-knowing our kids were in great hands
-surfing where the Atlantic meets the Caribbean
-making friends with lizards
-driving into the rainforest
-paddle surfing around the cliffs and caves
-having the view take my breath and leave me jaw-dropped and speechless
-got in touch with my "inner Polynesian goddess" on the surf board
-ate empanadas the size of our faces, which cost exactly one dollar
-walked so much beach
-ate only for fuel
-had a daily siesta-timed thunderstorm
-caught the Caribbean sunset
-checked out tide pools
-saw baby sharks
-swam morning, noon and night every day
-called the kids every morning and every night
-http://premium.caribe.net/~aquatica/menu2.htm
-learning from guru Jose Rafols at Aquatica
-had our clocks reset
-talking to Craig from the airport who said, "Oh, honey, you'll get to moon your honey again."

The Law of Gaya-Gaya

In Tagalog, "gaya-gaya" mean copycat or the act of copy-catting. Clara left for school a half hour ago. Immediately, Calliope found the dress Clara wore yesterday, promptly put it on and donned Clara's purse.

It's like she's the new Heather or something.

What I love is that she refuses to cite her source. She never admits that she is trying to be like her sister. I love that.

Manny Update

If you look at my Inbox, you'll see emails entitled: counseling for Manny, occupational therapy for Manny, coping strategies for Manny. I am in a bad cycle: From--I should be grateful for this otherwise healthy, kind and lovely child. But I am frustrated with his shortcomings: why can't he be just like a regular first grader? But then-- are his teachers really on our side or do they represent institutional learning and all its conventions? AND then I grieve all the plans I had for him like prestigious college or even just having a close bud in his class. AND BACK AGAIN.

And it is a sermon that I preach to myself repeatedly that this would not all be tidily solved if I homeschooled again. After the year it's been, I can see that he is like Max Fisher from Rushmore. He loves school, he embodies the school's gestalt, enjoys the trappings and the culture of school. But the grindstone, the academic nuts and bolts, he could completely leave. The homeschooling was really isolating with regard to his issues. While I feel like I know him well, and I have my honed gut instinct, his learning challenges were just nothing I was prepared for. And like with the yard help, I do feel like when I put out the request of help, with the help comes tons of air and light on the situation. His teachers comb through the minutiae of his personality and look at it with their decades of experience. AND they have fun with him! These are things, I have to admit, I could not juggle.

This year has brought air to Manny's frustration, sometimes his rage. This sense that he was contained and safe so that you could take a deep breath. Also, it has brought levity to the shortcoming that he is unable to focus on his tasks. We can laugh at his inattention because he is oblivious to things that weigh all of us down. Many of the social ills just don't register on his radar. The Lord's mercy prevails! School has offered us windows onto his mind like his performance in the school talent show. Manny did Cat's Cradle. No, he didn't sing the classic rock song. He demonstrated handwork skills with yarn for 45 seconds. He was acutely focused and as a performance, was incredibly transfixing and effective. There is no way I could have created that for him. He got up in front of the whole school for Pete's sake!

Are all of our firstborns this way? I read back on blog entries where I say that your firstborn is like your first love, you so want to KNOW them, to get into their mind, to impress them, to WIN them. Whereas the second is more like your buddy, your sidekick, your confidante. This child is mysterious to me, and why shouldn't I accept that? Why shouldn't I walk with that, that lurking sense that okayness and peace is just around the corner for him? Who said that this parenting journey promises to be formulaic or simple? May I walk better with the mystery. May I find some rest in it.

if church is home then

its members are family. I wish I had photographed. In the almost 4 years that we've lived in this house, parts of the yard and porch have looked like Pompeii, and not in a good way. I guess our predecessors broke up a bunch of concrete not only in the basement but in the backyard itself. Anyway, this past spring one of our home group-members suggested we all take turns working on eachother's houses. We installed ceiling fans and painted baby furniture for a family whose second baby will arrive this summer. There were plans to assist in basement purging for friends who have moved many times. Our chosen task was to take down the fence at the back of our property and to do rubble removal.

On Saturday, our friend, a softspoken and industrious lawyer, shows up at 6:30 am sharp to load concrete rubble into 15 steel buckets. He did this before heading on vacation. I stood on the deck, with bedhead in disbelief, completely heart-warmed. He helped Geoff load the buckets into the van so we could, at last be rid of the rubble and reclaim our yard! One by one, our kids and I joined the effort. Each in our own way: Manny lined up the buckets. Benicio dug in with his shovel. The girls and I watched while we made bagels and coffee. The morning went on like this, Geoff making another trip to the dump. The purging was restorative-- Geoff would say, "Our property is 1 ton lighter now!" I raked weeds off of the old tetanus-laden fence, rotting iron, slumped and broken. I filled bags with insistent and ubiquitous weed growth. Just when I was flagging, longing for water and a professional landscaper, I see Calliope's God-parents, their toddler in tow. Gamely, Nate says, "I hear you need a fence taken down!" Jess, hair in bandana a la Rosie the Riveter comes bearing an axe, a saw, and various steel blades, is light hearted too.

It can't be said enough, we could not have achieved it alone. I busied myself with more cooking, biting my lip and peering out into the yard. I come down later to see the iron thing neatly folded like so much laundry, and metal posts lined up next to it like hairpins. All this, and they found two garden snakes that ended up busying the kids up until even yesterday. It wasn't just that they found the snakes but Nate gave an impromptu lesson about how they really only nip you and how they are defenseless babies and why don't we find them some food. The kids outfitted a habitat for them complete with a shade leaf, rocks to keep them cool, and enough ants and spiders to eat forever.

At one point, the snakes were mating, we think. Benicio said, "They're fighting, no they're hugging. They're doing their own dance." Awesome observation.

You should come see the yard, especially if you can remember from before. It is as if we prayed, like Jabez, "Lord, increase my land." It's probably only 3 or 4 extra feet but it's cleared and it's not dangerous. The sky's the limit now,the next fence, do we want white picket, do we want privacy-style, or restored Germantown wrought iron? Who knows, but I know for sure that whatever we do, we are not in this alone.