Hello, Seven!

So the craziest thing happened on Monday.

William turned seven. Seven years old. SEVEN.

See that? That's what a seven-year-old looks like!

I can't quite grasp it in some ways. I mean, I remember being seven pretty well. I had a birthday party in our yard, and we played in the sprinkler. We borrowed one of those funny jobbies where the sprinkler resembled a clown face, and the force of the stream of water from the hose made his hat rise up in the air. Then I entered second grade, and my teacher's name was Mrs. Munson. We learned the song "Eidelweiss" in her class that year. I had a navy blue backpack with a big red strawberry patch on the pocket. See? See how much I remember? Seven wasn't that long ago for me!

Except, well, yeah, it was. This is what seven looks like in my world now:

So a belated happy birthday to my sunny firstborn son! You've always been so full of life and laughter. You're so friendly and warm and encouraging toward others. You ask such thoughtful questions and come up with the most amazing answers. You're reading chapter books, like The Magic Treehouse series, and you're a master at Legos. Yep, you're seven all right. I'm not quite sure how we got here, but it's been a pretty fun ride!

Easter photos

Here are my boys, all cleaned up on Easter Sunday. Actually, I should admit that in this photo, Andrew's arm is not raised so that he can hug his big brother. No, I managed to snap this photo in the nanosecond before Andrew hit his big brother. In the church. Lovely. 

After church we went home, where we managed to get a few slightly more angelic photos of the two:

Aw, I am going to miss those sweet little outfits like the one Andrew is wearing. He's just about to outgrow them. Look how grown up William looks in his button-down shirt with his grown-up front teeth!

I thought that it would be easy to get good pictures of them by this time. Ha ha! Well, William is finally old enough to sit still and smile on cue, but Andrew cheerfully disregards any pleas to smile and look sweet for the camera. I'm not actually sure how we managed to get these last couple of photos, come to think of it. David's camera has a faster shutter speed than mine, which may have been key. 

Diane did manage to successfully capture the whole family in one good picture, though! 

Don't look too closely at the way I'm clutching Andrew's legs to keep him from diving out of my arms.

Honestly, though?

This is what Andrew and William are really like:

I mean, what else can I tell you? They're nuts. I adore them, and they are so incredibly silly. 

Kairos Time

Sometimes I'm just so tired because parenting is so exhausting. How many times in one day can you take it when your three-year-old keeps taking off his shoes while asking "why?" over and over and over again in an increasingly louder voice? Or when both your kids insist on wrestling each other on the hardwood floor, and then scream when they inevitably bash their heads into it? Or when you have to scrounge up food for nutritious meals to serve to your kids three times a day but they whine that they don't want to eat more vegetables? Did I mention the never-ending stream of requests for snacks? Don't get me started on the whole production that is making William do his homework. 

Sometimes I just have to say, "Oh well." For example, on Sunday after church, a woman stood in the doorway with a disapproving look at on her face while my children raced noisily through the door. But I was so tired of keeping up with them and with everything that I have to do that I just let them be rowdy. (Don't worry, I didn't let them knock anyone over. Other than themselves, that is.) I just didn't have any more energy to police them for something that, by that point, didn't seem like a very big deal. 

I've also had those days when I've been so freaking busy, with deadlines raining down on top of me, that I have just pushed my kids away from me constantly, with increasing frustration...only to hear the strains of "Cat's in the Cradle" echoing in the back of my brain. Argh. Argh. Argh. I've thought, while I flipped through journal articles and double-checked academic credentials of expert sources, "My kids are going to grow up and only remember the woman frantically trying to write six articles at once and batting them away from her while she typed furiously. They're going to remember the woman who yelled at them to be quiet all the time." 

I want us all to be able to find those special, magic, sacred moments in our lives that make it okay to still live with the rest of the craziness that we kind of have to live with. I want some kairos time sprinkled in among my chronos time.


The Peevish Mama has written about the precarious balance of kairos and chronos, and so has Glennon at the Momastery. Glennon wrote one particular paragraph in her blog post about kairos vs. chronos that leaped out at me:

"I used to worry that not only was I failing to do a good enough job at parenting, but that I wasn’t enjoying it enough. Double failure.  I felt guilty because I wasn’t in parental ecstasy every hour of every day and I wasn’t MAKING THE MOST OF EVERY MOMENT like the mamas in the parenting magazines seemed to be doing. I felt guilty because honestly, I was tired and cranky and ready for the day to be over quite often. And because I knew that one day, I’d wake up and the kids would be gone, and I’d be the old lady in the grocery store with my hand over my heart. Would I be able to say I enjoyed every moment? No."

Oh boy, that hits me where I sometimes live. I love my children. I love them deeply. But sometimes, the daily wear-and-tear of parenting is just...well, I'd be lying if I said that I loved every  minute of it. 

But Glennon pointed out something else that pierced my heart and gave me hope. You can't live in kairos time all the time, obviously. You have to go to Target. You have to clean the bathroom. You have to do all those chores of daily living and parenting. But you can look for those kairos moments folded into the chronos time. And you can savor them. She wrote,

"These kairos moments leave as fast as they come- but I mark them. I say the word kairos in my head each time I leave chronos. And at the end of the day, I don’t remember exactly what my kairos moments were, but I remember I had them. And that makes the pain of the daily parenting climb worth it. ....If I had a couple Kairos moments during the day, I call it a success."

I'm going to work on that. I'm going to work on being more deliberate about looking for the kairos in my life. In the meantime, here's a picture of some kairos time with my family yesterday afternoon...

We just went out in the yard for a little while and kicked the soccer ball around. We weren't out there a really long time, and yes, there were other things that we probably "should" have been doing. I say "should" because David and I both had work to do that we ended up working on that evening. I probably should have been making dinner and washing clothes. But we put it aside for a little while just to get outside and play with the kids. 

Because these kinds of moments, the ones with the soccer ball in the backyard on a windy Sunday afternoon,

are the ones that I hope that we all remember.

Three is the magic number

From this....

    

to this, in just three short years!

See how he's holding up three fingers? That's so you'll know that he's three years old now.

Happy birthday to my beloved second son, Andrew. You are such a wonderful, funny little boy, sometimes shy and sometimes exuberant. It has been quite an adventure, my sweet, sweet boy. 

As most parents do, we tend to mythologize the birth story of both of our boys. The stories are true, of course, but there's a certain way of telling them that makes them into Stories, if you know what I mean. Andrew's birth story always starts out, "It snowed the day you were born!"

And it did. I remember watching the snowflakes drift down from the sky from my hospital room. I remember fretting that I'd sent William off to school in a Red Sox baseball cap, instead of a warm stocking hat. I remember bringing along a bag full of fleecy warm baby clothes and blankets because we were planning to bring home a new baby(!) in that cold, cold weather. 

Today was a sunny day, cold but not bitingly cold. We went to church, then came home for lunch. Andrew took a nap, while I threw together his little birthday party. The only thing he requested was chocolate cake, and by George, we had ourselves some chocolate cake tonight. Pizza and chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. It doesn't get much better than that when you're three years old. 

Three years old. No longer a baby, but a little boy. A little boy who loves Corduroy and Super Why and cats and dogs and yogurt and strawberries and, yes, chocolate cake. A little boy who stubbornly refuses to potty train but who so desperately wants to be a big kid like his brother. A little boy who puts crayons underneath all the doors in the house and when asked why, explains "They help the doors feel better." (Because that makes sense to him, somehow.) A little boy who will very soon (I promise, sweetie) get his long-awaited big boy bed. A little boy who still loves to be carried by his mama...until he's ready to be put down so he can run, run, run. 

My precious little boy, Andrew. 

Happy Groundhog Snow Day

Snow! A Groundhog Day Snow Storm!

Okay, so "snow storm" is a bit of an exaggeration. It would be like calling a VW Bug a giant car. We got enough of a dusting of snow last Thursday evening that William's school was closed on Friday, and then it snowed again that night and we woke up to a winter wonderland on Saturday. The 9 am basketball game was cancelled (yeeha!), and I began scouring the house for weather-appropriate attire so we could venture outside and play.

We had a short-lived snow-handful fight (too loose and powdery to make good snowballs)

and William made a snow angel or four

and Andrew got in a few last tossed handfuls of snow

and then we went inside and guzzled down some hot chocolate, as God intended for snow days.

It's a good thing that we did our playing in the early morning (all of these photos were taken before 9 a.m.) because the snow had completely melted by early afternoon. It was if we had dreamed it.

Every time it snows, I reminisce about how it snowed the day Andrew was born, and how I was so relieved that I was actually in the hospital, safe, when the snowflakes began to fly. I fretted that whole winter that I would go into labor in the middle of one of that winter's frequent snowfalls, stranding me at our house. This year, I just worry about whether everyone has a hat and mittens and the right shoes. Much better.

Lessons Learned from an Overscheduled Weekend

Lesson No. 1: Don't ever do this to yourself again. Three birthday parties, a basketball game, a dinner meeting, a church meeting, and church is a lot to pack into one weekend. Too much. What on earth was I thinking? William the Extrovert loved it, but Mommy the (Much Older) Extrovert is getting too old for this kind of pace.

Lesson No. 2: Grandparents really do make the world go 'round. Without my parents and my in-laws, there is no way I could have gotten everyone to their appointed and respective events this weekend. Not unless I cloned myself or acquired a time machine (or ideally, both). Since David was down with the flu* this weekend, the grandparents were even more of a godsend. (*Apparently we needed another challenge.)

Lesson No. 3: Eggs are good. Everyone in my household ate eggs on Saturday, and we were all remarkably cheerful after that. I guess the protein gave us some much needed energy and fended off any hunger-related meltdowns. Note to self: if you forget Lesson No. 1, at least make sure to remember Lesson No. 3.

Lesson No. 4: Do as much as you can in advance. Make sure the car's gas tank is full. Buy birthday presents in advance, wrap them and have them ready to go in advance, pack changes-of-clothes and backpacks in advance. Store things in the car so you don't forget them. Don't plan on "picking anything up" along the way because there is just not going to be any time to do this. Okay, I actually already knew this lesson and had all the birthday gifts and cards ready to go, but sure enough, that proved to have been a Very Good Idea.

Lesson No. 5: It's okay if you have to yell. Sometimes you get frustrated. We're human, after all. This morning, I felt terrible after I screamed--literally screamed--at Andrew this morning when he shut the locked door in my face, leaving me in the garage and him in the kitchen. With the clock ticking and us becoming increasingly more likely to be late to church. I'm trying to yell less these days, and while that's a good and noble approach, sometimes someone does something that really necessitates a good honest-to-God yelling. I apologized for it afterward. For the screaming and yelling. Not for the being-frustrated part. I'm still trying to yell less, but the world didn't collapse when I did have a bad moment.

Lesson No. 6: It's good to have at least a few moments of downtime in between all the activities, if there's any possible way to swing it. I managed to take William to eat breakfast at Bread & Company after his crack-of-dawn basketball game on Saturday, and it was seriously the best part of my weekend. William and me and a plate of eggs. (See Lesson No. 3.) We really weren't there for that long but it was long enough for us to just relax and be together. We talked about the recent video made of the reclusive giant squid and all sorts of crazy stuff. Afterward, William asked if we could have another breakfast date again together soon. Heck yeah, I told him. It was awesome.

So we survived our hectic weekend, and we lived for me to tell the tale on my blog. Not too bad. David's on the mend, and no one had a meltdown all weekend long, save for my little garage yelling episode. But I'd say that we're all pretty glad that our busy busy busy weekend is behind us.

Now...off to bed with me!

The tumbling tot

It's lousy to be the second kid. Or the third kid, if you have three, which I don't, but it's the same concept.

When William was a toddler, we did Gymboree and Kindermusik classes together. We went to the children's playrooms. We did storytimes at bookstores and libraries. We went to the zoo, to the botanical garden, the science museum. I earnestly took him anywhere that I could think of to entertain and enrich him.

Then I had another baby. Immediately, that baby, who will turn three next month, got dragged along to soccer games, and t-ball games, and swim lessons and church choir practice, and preschool performances and, yes, storytime and trips to the zoo or the farmer's market or Monkey's Treehouse. He went to birthday parties in the Baby Bjorn at five weeks of age, and he went to family camp out in the boonies of central Tennessee just a couple of weeks later. He got passed around at church dinners and Bible studies .

Our busy lives went on, and we just brought Andrew along with us.

Andrew will begin his very first activity today in about an hour. I signed Andrew up for a seven-week parent-and-child Tumble Tots class at the YMCA near our house.

I told him about it the other day. He couldn't quite believe it. "I go to Tumble Tots? You go to Tumble Tots with me?" he said, opening his eyes wide. "You be in class with me?"

Oh, yeah, that sound you just heard? That was guilt piercing my heart. This poor sweet child has gamely attended so many soccer practices and birthday parties for his brother's friends. But he's never gotten to do much of anything that was intended for him and him alone.

Well, I have done one thing. Back in the early autumn, I did start taking him to the downtown library's story hour-puppet show on Tuesday mornings. But unfortunately, the demands of my freelance writing career have sometimes taken precedence. We go often, but not all the time. I wish we could go every single time, as Andrew loves it. He may even love it more than William did at the same age. And William really loved it.

So David suggested that I look into a tumbling or gymnastics class for Andrew because he's always been pretty physically agile. And he adores doing his version of yoga whenever he overhears me talking about going to a yoga class at the Y. (He's got a nice downward dog. Tree pose could use a little refining.) It sounded like a good idea.

I had no idea how good an idea it really was. Oh, that face when he grasped that he's finally, finally getting to do a special activity--and not just a special activity, but one with Mommy and not also for or with his big brother. It was like he'd won a major award. Mom's still holding on letting him join a soccer team (I've seen teams of three-year-olds playing soccer, and while the humor value is off the charts, I don't think it's something we need to add to our already busy schedule just yet.) but she's letting him do Tumble Tots.

It doesn't matter if Andrew can tumble. It doesn't matter if he ever learns to tumble. It doesn't matter if he pays attention to the instructor or loves the class. It matters that he knows that he's getting to participate in an activity that was chosen just for him. With his mommy, no less.

Let's just hope that the instructor doesn't ask me to do any tumbling, though.

Sunday Morning in the Balcony

When William is gleefully and noisily slurp-slurp-slurping his little cup of grape juice during communion, I have to remind myself that God really does love him just the way he is.

Boy, though. If sitting through church with a squirmy six-year-old boy doesn't test one's ability to be calm and in control, I don't know what does.

Our church is beginning to have a conversation around what a family-friendly church looks like. What kind of services does it have or should it have? Do we need to make any changes to our services? If we did, what would they look like? Would it be worthwhile to make changes, though, if it alienates some people? What if it bothers the parents of those children who have deliberately chosen to attend our church the way that it is now because of the way that it is now (we presume)?

I think it's worth having the discussion, to be sure.

We attend a big Presbyterian church that has what you might call a "high church" bent to it. And I personally love that. I love High Church. I love the liturgy, the processional, the way that someone carries the big Bible into the church at the start of the service, the hymns, the hymnbook, the responsive recitations. I love the way that the words are worn smooth on the Lord's Prayer, and I love the thundering notes of the pipe organ that I can feel in the bottom of my stomach and in the marrow of my bones. I love it when the choir sings a complicated piece of music written by Haydn or Bach that makes me feel like I've just attended a professional choral concert. I love the way the children's choir members wear floppy white robes and line up on the front steps to sing like the little angels that they weren't behaving like just a few minutes earlier in the hallway.

I love that my child experiences these things each Sunday (or often enough). I love that he will grow up with this as his experience of church. I love the way that he can stand at front of the balcony and look down on the choir members as they process into the sanctuary. I love that he can page through the hymnal and find songs that I remember singing as a little girl, along with newer songs that I sang at Montreat youth conferences and much, much older songs that my grandparents sang in churches far away.  I love that he is participating in the life of a church that wants to nurture his faith by encouraging him to ask hard questions, examine his faith and ponder the possibilities.

But I know that I am not everyone.

And even I admit that it can get very tedious, sitting in the balcony with my child as he wiggles around during the Scripture readings. Our church doesn't have a children's time, so there's little opportunity for the kids to get up and move around during the service. I actually look forward to the times when they serve communion by intinction because we get to walk down the main aisle to receive the elements and then walk back up to our seats. Even better are the weeks with a baptism. William gets to go down front with his friends and see the babies up close. I don't even flinch when all the kids race back to their seats, with William and a few other children pounding up the balcony steps like they're doing wind sprints at a football stadium. They're burning a few calories and burning up some energy, and they're having a positive experience in church at the same time. That's a win-win, in my book.

Would it be good to have more of those interludes? Would other adults find it annoying? Does it matter if they find it annoying, since the children are every bit as important to the church as the adults are--and maybe more? Is there a way to make (almost) everybody happy? Or honestly, is happy not the point? Is the point more about making people of all ages feel included and welcome, and if there are some pounding feet in there, isn't that sort of, well, just fine? Wouldn't it be just fine with God, since He really does love all of us, just the way we are?

Even if our faces have juice stains and our patent Mary Janes are a little scuffed? Even if we're a little hard of hearing and have to use a cane to negotiate the walk from the parking lot to the pew? Even if we're flustered from shepherding a rowdy group of kids and just sort of want a few moments of peace to rest? Even if our kids are grown and we've had a good night's sleep and today we're looking forward to a soul-piercing sermon? Even if we're glad to be there but still have a hard time sitting still and being quiet for 75 minutes? Even if maybe we're not so glad to be there but Mom said we had to be there so what are we going to do about it?

Gearing up for the Big Boy Bed

This morning, a giggling Andrew bounced up onto my bed and crawled under the covers with me. "Mommy," he announced. "I want a big boy bed. Like William's.

This is the second time in about four days that he has made this announcement. I think he's serious.

William never tried to climb out of his crib, so we kept him in the crib for an unusually long time. In fact, he got his big boy bed about a month before his third birthday. We actually kept the crib in his room for another nine months or so because we didn't want to get rid of it but didn't know where else to put it. But he got to sleep in a twin bed on the other side of the room. And oh, how he loved it.

Andrew doesn't exactly try to climb out of the crib, but he throws his leg over the rail so that William can easily tow him over and out. They started this little routine about a month or so ago. Mr. Social Butterfly gets up fairly early each morning, but apparently, he gets lonely. So he started venturing into his little brother's room and helping Andrew get down from his crib so he'd have someone to hang out with. Andrew now expects this.  David reported that this morning, Andrew wasn't messing around. He was issuing a royal demand, calling, "William! William Wyckoff! Come get me! William Wyckoff!"

I think the boy needs a big boy bed of his very own. I've notified him that he has to give up his nighttime binky once and for all when he moves into a big boy bed. I don't know if that's really sunk in. And I've told him that big boys also use the potty. I know that he knows that, but he is cheerfully content to stick to his own agenda on the potty-training front. Which is to say that he will do it on his own time. Whenever that may be. (Insert resigned eye-roll here.)

I'm totally fine with getting him a big boy bed, but there is a complicating factor at work now. When William gave up the crib, we knew we needed to hold onto the crib. We were planning to eventually have another baby. But Andrew is it for us. No more babies. We don't need to hang onto the crib anymore, but it's going to be very hard to get rid of it. It's a drop-side crib that we ordered from Albee Baby in early 2006. A few years ago, after William was finished with the crib, the Consumer Product Safety Commission began to ban drop-side cribs because of a series of infant deaths. Ours was never recalled. It was and is very sturdy. But the facts remain. We can't sell it or donate it. We basically just have to throw it away. And it's huge. How do you throw away something so large? (And also so nice. It really is a nice crib. I just hate to toss something that never gave us any trouble.) We investigated the possibility of getting a conversion kit, but apparently it's not so easy to procure that sort of thing seven years later. So, oh well. I wouldn't want someone to take a chance on it, obviously, so we will get rid of it.

So the plan is to haul my mother-in-law's second twin bed out of storage, try to polish it up a bit, and then buy a new mattress and linens for Andrew. And I guess we'll take apart the crib and find some way to get it to the junkyard.

Andrew wants sheets "like William's." William currently has Pottery Barn Kids sheets on his bed; he rotates between the National League baseball sheets, the American League baseball sheets, and the Star Wars sheets. Guess I'll take Andrew shopping sometime soon and let him pick out something.

Two Boys, Two Front Teeth, and a Partridge in the Pantry

Merry Christmas from the Wyckoff boys!

Every year, I dream of the perfect Christmas card photo of my two boys. I  spend weeks, valiantly attempting to capture them on film (um, or the digital equivalent) with beaming smiles and perfectly spotless seasonally-appropriate clothing. Needless to say, these are my kids, and that is more than just a tall order; it's dreaming the impossible dream. 

So, this is what I ended up with this year:

Yeah, so they're wearing old sweaters and jeans, and Andrew's got cookie icing all over his face, but you know, it's okay. This is what they really look like. This is what they're really like. They're wild and happy and messy. Unless they're asleep, they're almost always in motion. They're opinionated and exuberant and silly, and while they pick at each other, they also adore each other wildly. This picture shows my sons the way they really are. And you know what? I love that. I love this picture.

Also, it's very last photo of William with his top front teeth!

 He lost one top tooth at a birthday party one Saturday evening about ten days before Christmas. The other one hung in there at a terrible, stomach-churning angle for several more days. We pleaded with him to pull it out already. I offered him bribes. I finally just dived in and tried to pull it out myself. Finally, on Friday morning, he woke up, and the tooth had given up the ghost and fallen out on its own. Hallelujah. It was a  Christmas miracle!

As I can't resist a good photo opportunity, even if it's long past the deadline for the Christmas card, I took lots and lots of photos of William and his new smile, usually as I hummed "All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth" under my breath. He was mostly a good sport about it. Mostly.

"All I want for Christmas is NOT my two front teeth," he finally objected. "I already have two front teeth" and he pointed to his bottom two front teeth.

And what he really wanted for Christmas was Ninjago Legos. If the phrase "Ninjago Legos" means absolutely nothing to you, you must not have any contact with boys under the age of 10.

As you might expect, Andrew also wanted Legos for Christmas. He called them "Andrew's Wegos," and he wanted "Andrew's Wegos, and a train, and a truck and a car." He got all of the above. And he got a new "pack-pack"* and a Grover toy. One grandmother gave him a classic set of wooden vehicles, and the other gave him an "Andrew's Wego" car wash set.

(*That's Andrew-speak for "backpack." I can't bear to correct him. I also adore that he calls the cape on his Batman jammies a "caper." Jumping jacks are "jumper jacks." And the water fountain is a "water mountain." Oh, and on the first day of Christmas, my true love game to me "a partridge in the pantry." See, I have to cherish these things. William used to say cute little things like that, and we'd all sigh and giggle, and then three weeks later, he'd be saying the real, correct name for something, and I'd miss his little spoonerisms.)

So here's one of my favorite Christmas Eve photos of the boys. They're wearing their wild Hanna Andersson jammies that William picked out.

They were nearly bouncing off the walls by the time bedtime rolled around that night. (This was after nearly setting a world record in garnering time-outs that morning.) But they managed to set out cookies for Santa and get in bed before it got too late. 

That left plenty of time for David and me to play Santa and Mrs. Claus while watching "A Christmas Story." Twice. It was a longer evening than we'd hoped to have. Poor David. I thought he remembered his vow to never put together anything on Christmas Eve ever again, after assembling the play kitchen a few years ago. But he was seduced by the Dark Side that is Costco and its colorful wooden train table. And so Christmas Eve found him surrounded by wooden pieces and screwdrivers and plastic bags and who knows what else. To his credit, he got it done. And Andrew was over the moon when he saw his train table from Santa the next morning. 

More photos to come soon. In the meantime, Merry Christmas!

A post-Thanksgiving musing

Do you ever feel like time is just FLYING by? I mean, yeah, yeah, we all know that "time flies" is a big old cliche, maybe even one of the very biggest cliches. But sometimes I look at my kids, and I think, "Whoa. When did this all happen?"

Case in point: I took William to the dentist earlier this week. The dentist and I were discussing how his permanent teeth were coming in, and I was asking him if I should be worried about how crowded his lower jaw seems to be with these big new teeth coming in. The dentist said no, he's still young, but then he noted that I should probably thinking about finding an orthodontist in another year or two. Braces. We're already starting to think about braces for my sweet little baby. Braces! For a child who just yesterday was standing in his crib in footie pajamas with tousled blonde baby hair and hollering at the top of his lungs, "MOMMY. Come open my DOOR, please!" It seems so close, so recent.

Hmm, perhaps that's because my other baby actually WAS doing that very thing just a couple of days ago. But then, Andrew has an ace in his pocket that William never had. He's got a big brother who is more than willing to come liberate him from his crib so he'll have someone to play with.

I walked out of my bedroom a couple of mornings ago and thought that I heard voices from behind the closed door of the playroom. And that's because I was hearing voices, and no, they weren't all in my head. William had somehow managed to get Andrew out of his crib all by himself. Later, when the boys realized I was awake, Andrew bopped down the stairs to look for me. "Hi, Mommy, hi!" he said cheerfully. Footie pajamas, check. Tousled blonde hair, check.

When William appeared a few moments later, I asked him in a mock serious voice, "So did you change Andrew's diaper for him?" William paused, thinking I was serious. "Welllllll, no," he admitted. "Why not?" I asked. William furrowed his brow and thought about this. "I can't do that!" he finally said, throwing up his hands.

At any rate, he is cracking me up these days. Six going on 26. And on a seasonal note, I was very very thankful this year on Thanksgiving for my lovely little boys. I'm so fortunate to have them and their daddy. I'm grateful for all of my family members. And how terrific was it that we had a big turkey dinner at our house this year, and my Grandaddy Bill got to come along? We had a 92-year age range, from Andrew to Grandaddy.

Here are a few photos....this first one was taken outside of The Meadows. William and I went to have Thanksgiving lunch with Grandaddy and my parents and brother, and then everyone came to our house later for dinner.

And here's one of Diane with William, after we had all stuffed ourselves.

This was the first year we had to have a Grown Ups Table and a Kids Table. The adults who sat in the dining room got to use my good china and the crystal, while the kids (and the adults) who sat at the Kids Table in the kitchen got stuck with the everyday stuff.

One little brother with another! Andrew showed his Uncle Mark how to be a turkey and gobble gobble gobble. William has been singing "The Turkey Trot" for days now, and Andrew has learned just enough of it to be hilarious.

The weekend after Thanksgiving is one of my favorites. We visited with some friends, and I took the boys to see Santa at the nearby garden center. Of course the day that Santa visited, it was about 35 degrees outside, and the Santaland exhibit was in a little uninsulated gazebo thing where you could see your breath. This picture was about as good as I could get under the conditions.

For the record---and I'm sure this will shock exactly no one--both boys want Legos for Christmas. I asked Andrew what he wanted for Christmas, in fact, and he said, "Wegos! Andrew's Wegos!" So I asked him what he wanted to get William for Christmas, and naturally the answer was "Wegos! William's Wegos!"

The Dynamic Duo

Love these super heroes! Batman and Wobin, here to save you from your trick-or-treat candy!

Of course, I keep having to rescue Batman's Halloween candy from Robin. Robin is a sneaky little super hero who keeps finding new and innovative ways to steal candy from his big brother.

Changing and growing

It seems like every time I blink, the boys either 1) get bigger or 2) do something new. Or both. At the same time.

William has two loose teeth right now. (Note to self: make sure Tooth Fairy has a couple of dollar bills on hand.) He has sworn off apples in his lunchbox because they hurt his teeth. I'm torn between wanting them to just come out already and stop doing that stomach-flipping wiggle thing, and doing the whole cliched my-baby-is-growing-up-too-fast routine. He hasn't lost a tooth since last fall, when he lost his first two. I guess it's time.*

William is also reading. Like, real reading. Not just a few words but able to read along in the hymn book at church. (Well, except for the rather large number of SAT words that you get in lots of Presbyterian hymns.) I'm eagerly looking forward to the day when I can have him read recipes and directions to me when I attempt to do something without, er, reading them myself.

He is participating in the Accelerated Reader program at his school, and he's speeding his way through books like "Dino-Soccer" and "Henry and Mudge and the Big Test" and "The Bully from the Black Lagoon." As his reading improves, he seems to enjoy reading more. Which makes total sense to me. The books get better and the stories get more interesting as they get harder. I wouldn't want to read boring old simple books about cats sitting on mats, either. There's never any character development. I just started reading "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" to him at bedtime, and I'm actually starting to worry that he might notice when I might not read every single word. Ahem. (J.K. Rowling could have edited down some parts here and there. Just sayin.')

However, even his reading skills couldn't help him with one particular question on his homework the other night. William came storming over to me and threw his homework packet at me. "What is this VCR?" he demanded angrily. "Veekayare? VCR? What is this??"

I retrieved the sheaf of papers and looked for the offending question. It read, "Can a frog use a VCR?"

Well, my six-year-old wasn't even alive the last time we had a VCR in active use in our house. So either the frog would need to be well-versed in the use of outdated technology or the teacher might need to rethink the vintage of the homework pages that she's giving out.

(*Editorial Note: As soon as I finished writing this, William called in here to me and asked if he could have a snack. One of his loose teeth fell out while he was walking out of the kitchen with a Go-Gurt. We just rinsed the tooth off and stuck it in a baggie so it won't get lost. William reports that he doesn't feel like writing a note to the Tooth Fairy this time. "She'll still give me money," he said confidently. Good grief.)

So then we have the little fellow.

Andrew definitely has a sense of mischief about him. The other day, he tried to convince me that David was Mommy and that I was Daddy. He knew we weren't buying, but he was tickled that we were so amused by him.

This morning, I walked into Andrew's room to get him out of his crib. He handed me one of the two binkies that we still let him have in the crib at night. He watched me put them in the top drawer of his dresser. Then he said, "Andrew take binky to school?"

I laughed and said, "No, you can't take a binky to school, silly."

And with a gleam in his eyes, he said, "Graci has binky at school."

The little rascal, trying to persuade me! Wonder what he would have said if I'd responded, "Well, if Graci jumped off a bridge, would you jump off, too?"

He's taller than ever, too. I buttoned him into a darling little outfit--size 3, so not even something old--for church yesterday, and his long legs just hung out from the shorts. When I pick him up, I almost always let out an involuntary "Ooof."

And every time I turn around, Andrew has managed to get something down from a countertop or shelf that I truly didn't think he could reach. He walked up to me one morning last week, casually munching a plum. "Where did you get that?" I asked, and then realized that I had left a batch of unwashed plums sitting in the middle of the kitchen island. Sigh. Hope they weren't covered in too many pesticides and bacteria.

Between his long legs and his even longer sentences, I am slowly coming to terms with the reality that my baby isn't really a baby anymore. He's a strong-willed, hilarious, loving, occasionally exhausting boy. A lot like his big brother in that regard.

But I love them both more than ever.

First Day of School for Both Boys

We have had two big First Days of School here recently.

William started first grade with a flourish on Aug. 1. Which is absurdly and ridiculously early for a first day of school, but whatever. He requested a new turquoise shirt for the big occasion, and of course, I acquiesced. This picture was taken after he got off the bus at the end of the first (half) day.

Then Andrew had his big first day of school in the Jungle Room at Westminster on Aug. 31. He has William's former teacher from the same classroom, so we are all really excited about that! I snapped this photo when I picked him up after the first (half) day.

William's first day went incredibly smoothly, which was wonderful. William sometimes frets in advance about not liking something new, but he always does great when he actually gets there. This was no exception. He walked right into the classroom with a smile and was delighted to see some pals already there. His classroom was bright and sunny, and his teacher seemed relaxed and cheerful. What a nice way to start the first grade! No tears, no fretting, no hanging back, nothing to worry about.

Of course, he's been that way his entire life. Someone once commented to me about how well-adjusted he was. I laughed at that because I can't take any credit for it at all. Even when he was just 15 or 16 months old, his approach toward a new mother's day out class or a new Sunday School class was always to walk right in with a big smile, check things out and not look back. I've always joked that he just waves me off and says, "Bye Mom, see ya later!" But it's pretty much the truth. He does always give me a big hug and kiss, too, though.

Andrew, on the other hand, is not William. Which is fine! He doesn't usually rush right into new situations with a smile on his face. He tends to hang back and cling to Mommy for awhile, as he takes in the lay of the land. But I figured he'd do just fine this year in school because he knows his teacher--and it's his second year at the school, and he's used to the place. Also, he's been talking about the Jungle Room for weeks now, and I truly thought he was excited about it.

But then he had a major freak-out during his classroom visit last Wednesday, which took everyone by surprise. Screaming, crying, climbing up and clinging to me like a monkey climbing a tree. One of the staff even handed me a handout on minimizing separation anxiety. "We usually just give this to the parents of the one-year-olds," she told me. "But maybe it will help you, too." I felt a little abashed but what can you do?

So I was a little, er, nervous about Friday, which was Andrew's first day. It started inauspiciously when I walked into Andrew's room on Friday morning and he announced firmly, "Andrew NOT want go to school." But I, um, might have bribed him--relax, it was just apple slices from McDonalds'--and talked up the exciting things about school on the drive to the church.

To my shock and delight, Andrew determinedly walked right down the hall, hesitated for a split second at the door to the classroom and then headed right in. No crying, no tears, no fussing. Did I mention I was shocked? Even one of the teachers told me that they were prepared for him to cry. He willingly went with me into the bathroom to wash his hands and then found two puzzles. He also seemed very pleased to see his friend Lizzie arrive a few minutes later.

I kept my phone right beside me all morning, waiting to get a phone call from the school. But I never got a call. When I arrived to pick him up, Andrew was all smiles. What a relief!

So now my two boys are both back in school. Here's to a good year....

A few recent photos

Happy birthday to me! I can't believe I'm 28...again. :)

So, I'm just going to post a few recent pictures of the family having fun this summer!

Here's William with his longtime friend Leland at Cheekwood. We asked them to pose for the camera, and well, I guess you could say this is a pose...

Go to BEACH!

We got home from Pensacola on Friday night. It was a terrific beach trip.

I mean, seriously.

Look at this, for proof:

We all had fun, no one ended up in the emergency room, the weather was great, and we got home safely. A big win-win....um, win-win-win-win, all the way around.

I'll post more pictures soon.

I Scream for Ice Cream

I think I tend to have the opposite of "hindsight-is-20/20."

For example, I have found myself saying recently, "There is no way that William was ever like this." "This" as you may have guessed is the way that Andrew has been acting recently, as he is firmly in the throes of the Terrible Twos.

Today, for example, Andrew threw an epic tantrum. We had to wake him up early from his nap because we were going to the big annual Miss Martha's Ice Cream Crankin' event at First Presbyterian. We go every summer. It's tradition. And it's an event focused entirely on ice cream. What's not to love? But Andrew needs his beauty sleep, so anytime you have to wake him up early, you do so at your own risk. So we woke him up...he was okay for a minute or two, and then he remembered, "Oh yeah! I'm two!" and proceeded to go nuts. The thrashing, the kicking, the screaming. Oy. It took me, William and David all holding him down in order for me to buckle him into his car seat. He was like a rabid dog or a mad tiger. As we drove off, he howled. And howled. And howled.

Finally, he grew hoarse and tired, and he stopped howling. Then he was cheerful. And he was cheerful for the rest of the day. Whew. We arrived at the Ice Cream Crankin' and then he discovered that we had woken him up for a good reason: ice cream.

Yes, there is a method to our madness, dear son.

And yes, of course William threw tantrums and became ridiculously unreasonable when he was a toddler. Now, granted, this happened closer to age three for him, but it still happened. It's just that it's easy to forget when Andrew is the one tantrumming wildly and William is the one standing next to me, with a furrowed brow, trying valiantly to hold both of his brother's arms down so he won't hit me with them. William's a good kid, have I mentioned that recently?

For comparison's sake--because who doesn't love to do that?--I'm also posting a picture of William at the same age, devouring ice cream like his life depended on it.

I remember that day so vividly. We handed William a cup of ice cream and a spoon, and his eyes lit up. Then we did the unthinkable: we actually encouraged him to get even more ice cream when he finished the first cup. You could practically see him thinking, "Oh my God, do they know what they just gave to me? Quick, give me more ice cream, so I can eat as much as I can before they realize what they've just done!" William ate tons of ice cream today, too, just so you know. Some things never change.

Side note: I really do love comparison photos. Here's another set from the Nashville Zoo:

Just walking

I have to say, I had the most idyllic hour with the boys on Thursday.

I took them to Edwin Warner Park, where we leisurely walked along the greenway before dinner. I spotted a huge patch of clover right after we got there and decided to do something I haven't done since I was a student at H.W. Gwin Elementary about 30 years ago. I tied a string of clovers together and made a necklace for William, who promptly asked for a matching bracelet. Then I made a matching clover necklace for Andrew. He wants to be just like his big brother, after all.

And as the sun began to dip lower in the sky, we just...meandered. We look at the bees buzzing around in the grass, and we watched airplanes flying over our heads. Yes, Andrew chased after a few dogs, which necessitated my sprinting after him a couple of times. But other than those few bursts of speed, we mostly just ambled and talked and enjoyed the nice day together. In fact, both boys wanted to hold my hand for long stretches of the walk, and that was just fine with me.

We walked, we meandered, we ambled. Together. Shamed by a recent article making the rounds on the Internet about not living in the now because of the smartphone distraction, I kept my phone in my pocket. Well, except to snap a few shots of the boys in their clover necklaces. And as I held both of their hands, I thought, "This. This is what I want to always remember."

So yes, there are still--and will continue to be--plenty of times when I'm trying to do five things at once. There will be phone calls I really do have to take, and there will be times when I can't devote every single molecule of attention to them. But there are times when I am making myself slow down and live in the here-and-now. Those are such precious times, and when I make them a priority, I am always so glad. I hope that the boys will remember them, too.

Now we are six

Happy sixth birthday to my son, William.

Six years ago today, at 6:35 a.m., William was born, with his eyes wide open so he could take in everything happening around him. He's still curious, inquisitive, and eager to learn, six years later. In fact, those are some of my favorite qualities about him.

I just asked him what his favorite aspect of himself was and he pondered that for a little bit. "Maybe that I like to learn about things," he volunteered. "Like the ancient Egyptians."

I can get on board with that.

I typically do a photo retrospective each year on William's birthday, but I find that I tend to gravitate to the same old pictures every year. So I tried to choose some different one this time, ending with a picture of him at his birthday party yesterday. Behold, William through the ages (if six years can be considered ages):

A belated Easter post

Wow, so April is more than halfway over, and I'm just getting the chance to get back to the blog here.

I don't know why I'm surprised. April is always a crazy month for us. Between Easter (most years) and William's birthday and soccer and other assorted activities, it seems like April fills up faster than any other month.

And speaking of William's birthday, it's this Sunday. He's going to be six. Six! Insanity. I have to say, though, that five has been a good year, and I think six will be even better.

Anyway, in the meantime, as I gear up for that, I'll leave you with a few Easter pictures. We didn't get any great ones this year, but you can get the gist.

The boys at the church Easter Egg hunt on Good Friday:

















David and me with William in front of the congregational cross. That's a tradition at our church; they have baskets of flowers available for you to put on the cross.


















Andrew and his Grandaddy Aaron. Andrew did not intend to pose for pictures, so we had to get action shots of him.


















But at least I got this sweet picture of Andrew at home on Easter morning: