San Diego Revisited

Check out these two giddy kids on vacation, sans small people!

We went to San Diego last week and left William and Andrew at home with their grandmothers, who gamely agreed to watch them, feed them, and chauffeur them around to their many important engagements. 

Traveling without the boys was the weirdest thing. I only had to carry my own stuff. I only went to the restroom if I had to actually go to the restroom myself. There were no interruptions at mealtime or showertime or any other time. I never had to hunch over my plate to keep small hands from snatching any of my food. I was able to decide to take in a yoga class or go for a run or head down to a nearby bar for happy hour without making any other arrangements. I just went! And when I sat down to work on my laptop while David was attending a session, I never had to get up and wipe someone's tushy or fetch him a granola bar or find someone's missing shoe or referee an argument. I just...got work done. It was a little disconcerting, actually. 

Of course, we did miss the boys. We wondered what they would have thought about dipping their toes in the icy-cold Pacific.

David, right before the water washed over his feet and instantly froze his toes. Del Mar, CA.

And I feel reasonably confident that they would have looooved the food.

Shrimp burrito and fish taco at El Zarape. Oh my God, so good. University Heights, San Diego, CA.

But we knew that their grandmothers were taking good care of them. And we knew that it was good for us to get away for a little while.  David enjoyed the educational sessions that he attended, as well as seeing some old friends, and I did, too. I even ran in a race...on vacation! Aren't you proud of me? I even ran really fast (okay, so "fast" is a relative term here).

It was a really nice trip. But as always, we were glad to get home. And glad to hug and kiss Andrew and William and tell them all about our trip. As we predicted, Andrew was interested in hearing more about how we rode on a train and a trolley, while William was interested in the food. Love my boys.

Couple of quick October photos

Okay, just a couple of quick photos before I leave town for a few days.

Here's one of William and me at the new Zaxby's. Andrew was the one eagerly awaiting the opening of the place, so we took him there the day it opened. I promised William that we'd get him there soon, and so today, that's where the two of us had lunch.

At Cheekwood with Andrew a week or so ago. Love taking him there. We often take a picnic lunch at eat it by the ponds, and then I let him play Julie the Cruise Director and lead me all over the place. 

For example, he took me on a tour of the scarecrows. It wouldn't be autumn in Nashville without a visit to see the scarecrows at Cheekwood, after all.

Oh, and you know how I mentioned that the boys are both playing soccer? Guess who scored his first goal this past Saturday? This guy!

And it was even on purpose! First, I was in total disbelief, and then I was so excited that I was literally jumping up and down. A very red letter day for Andrew and his dear old unathletic mom who's never scored a goal in her entire life. 

Early October Update

How is it that I have gotten so woefully behind on this blog? Ack. Well, I did write a nice little post featuring William and Andrew on my other blog a month or so ago, if you want to go check that out sometime: The Joy of Small Stuff

What can I tell you? We've been busy this fall, per usual. Both kids are playing soccer, and William is busy with a blue streak of other activities, namely piano lessons, church choir, Scouts, and tennis lessons. Andrew gets to tag along to many of those. It can be exhausting sometimes, but they're the kind of kids who thrive on Doing Stuff.

William started the third grade, which is utterly amazing to me, given that I remember very clearly being in third grade myself. He is reading up an absolute storm. He finished the entire Harry Potter series this summer, read the first few Little House on the Prairie books, and now he's happily reading his way through a series called Fablehaven. He's my little bookworm. Er, or my not-so-little-anymore bookworm. I love love love that he's become such an enthusiastic reader.

Andrew started his....get ready....last year of preschool this fall. Gulp. I know! As one of my friends remarked in disbelief, "But he's your BABY." I KNOW. It is utterly astonishing to me, too. He loves his class, loves his new friends, loves his teachers, and is having a ball. His classroom has a bulletin board with a calendar, and a weather chart, and other information, and Andrew is recreating all those things on his own bedroom wall, next to his beloved world map.  He is also making sign-in lists for the entire house, since he signs in each morning when he gets to his classroom. So don't be surprised if you come to our house and see purple pieces of paper taped all over the place. Just sign your name, right underneath where Andrew has signed his own name. It's very important to him. He's so earnest about it, and it's so, so adorable.

It's easy to not notice incremental change, but then sometimes I look at them carefully and really notice them. And I think, "Wow, they really are getting so big!" I recently cleaned out a bunch of old clothes from Andrew's room to sell in a consignment sale, and he's already wearing clothes that William wore in kindergarten. It doesn't really seem like that long ago that William was in kindergarten, and yet....

Hope you are all having a good October! I adore autumn and Halloween and so do the boys. I'll try to get some good autumnal photos to post soon.

40 Candles

So this happened a few days ago:



Yep, I turned 29 again!



Okay, fine.

29 plus....11.

(Sheesh. You made the old lady cry. Are you happy now?)

As those of you who have seen me at all recently know, I kvetched and moaned for the better part of the month of July about turning 29 plus 11.

David took me out to dinner at a lovely local restaurant on the night before the Big Day, and at one point during the meal, I said, rather dramatically, "This is the last night of my youth!"

David calmly took another bite of his grilled catfish and said dryly, "And tomorrow morning, you're going to wake up, and you're going to be... exactly the same."

Yup. I was. I am. And my parents , especially my dad, took great delight in honoring the grand occasion. Check out the cane and the tiara that I'm wearing in the photo above. What you can't see in the photo, however, are all the "I'm 40!" and "Happy 40th Birthday" decorations and the giant massive bunch of helium-filled black balloons that filled my front hall. Mom and Dad had a lot of fun at Party City, clearly.

At any rate, here I am. A former coworker of mine posted a happy birthday message on my Facebook page and asked if I remembered the old show "thirtysomething" and how it was always about drama and how messed up people's lives were? "Now you're past all that!" James wrote cheerfully. (He's over 40 himself, so he can say these things.)

It's all a state of mind. Well, mostly. But I really can't blame 40 for the gray hairs I'm starting to get. The blame should and does rest squarely on the shoulders of the Wyckoff Brothers.

Not that I don't love them, of course.

I mean, come on. How could I not love this?



Or this, my two sweet boys and husband, gamely posing for me for yet another picture at Turner Field during our recent trip to see the Braves play?

I like my treats to be chocolate

Okay, I have to share this little anecdote, which I also recently posted on Facebook, but it still makes me giggle, so.

Some background: Twice this year, I managed to land a Groupon for the local Sushi Train restaurant, and we've taken a lunchtime field trip there to spend it. This is a guaranteed big hit. The boys love...I mean LOVE....sushi. Andrew can easily eat a dozen pieces, and William can probably put away twice that amount. They don't do raw, yet, but that's about their only limitation at this point. They also adore the concept of a place where they can pick out the little plates of sushi themselves as they cruise by on the conveyor belt. That's big-time awesome when you're eight or four years old.

At our most recent trip to Sushi Train, the boys were finally, finally hitting their limit on sushi, and I spotted a bowl of steamed salted edamame on the "train." I quickly grabbed it and began digging into it with gusto.

"Look, Andrew!" I said. "When you pop open the pods, you get some of the salt from them on the beans and they taste all salty and delicious. It's such a nice little treat."

Andrew remained unconvinced, but I guess he was trying to be as tactful as a four-year-old can possibly be.
"I like my treats to be chocolate," he said.

And suddenly it's late June

Do you ever feel like time just got away from you? No? Yeah, me neither. Never happens. 

whistles innocently

Okay, so, yes. It often does get away from me. And it did again this time. Two months have somehow passed since I last posted here. Both boys have gotten taller, eaten a metric ton of food, had haircuts, needed another haircut, performed in school programs and finished second grade (William) and three-year-old preschool (Andrew). 

William also performed in a piano recital (quite admirably, I might note, and he didn't even use any music, unlike every other kid there), and we all attended his Cub Scout Packnic when he was promoted from a Wolf Scout to a Bear Scout. Both kids finished up their soccer seasons. There's been some day camps in there, we've been to the pool and various playgrounds, and last week, we even went to Memphis for the day. 

We were busy, to put it mildly.

What else can I tell you? 

William has finished reading Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, as well as The Lost Heroes of Olympus series, and now he is deeply immersed in the 39 Clues series. He loves the show "Cosmos," and David has successfully converted him into a Doctor Who fan. He's still taking piano lessons, and he's writing his own piece of music. It's, um, interesting. (However, he knows exactly what he wants to do, and the fact that he understands how to go about doing that actually is impressive.)

Andrew is obsessed with maps. Every time he goes to the Y or preschool or anywhere with paper and crayons, he draws a map. Sometimes it's a treasure map. Sometimes it's a map of Nashville. Sometimes it's a map of our neighborhood. They all look sort of the same, except for the colors, but he is confident that he has managed to capture the essence of whichever place he's drawing. He always knows exactly where X should mark the spot and where he is. "Look!" he crows, displaying his artwork in front of him as if it was the original copy of the Declaration of Independence. "I made a map!!" And I agree that it is a marvelous  map, and he is deeply satisfied. 

They both talk incessantly, and they both ask lots of questions. Often at the same time. 

Sometimes their questions make me sit back in my chair and exhale with wonder. This morning, on the way to Westminster, Andrew asked, "So it's nighttime in heaven right now, isn't it?" as if heaven was Australia on the other side of the globe. "Hmm," I said, forgetting to change lanes. "Maybe it is." I don't know where he got that, but I kind of like it. William then chimed in, "It's probably whatever you want it to be." I like that, too. Those moments when suddenly I am challenged to stop thinking linearly are sort of magic. They shimmer there in front of me like a soap bubble, and I think, "I must remember this."

Eight is Great!

Check out my big wonderful happy kid!! William is eight today!

I mean, look how grown up he looks. Eight years old. Somehow eight just seems so much older than seven, doesn't it? I'm not sure why. I remember thinking that when I turned eight back in...oh Lord, do I want to even admit what year that was? 

So it wouldn't be a birthday without an "eeee, look at the new baby!" photo. This is one from when William was 13 days old. Looking back at his earliest photos, he was a little jaundiced there for awhile. But it went away fairly quickly, leaving him looking pink and marvelous. Man, it's almost hard to believe he was very that small. But I was there, so I can say for sure that he was. 

And here's another photo from this morning. I managed to cook a hot breakfast for the boys AND take birthday photos AND still get William to school on time. Booyah! I've learned something in eight years. (And that is...it's much easier to get out the door in the morning when at least one of your kids can pretty much do everything for himself.)

Little brother wanted in on the act, and it was his idea to hold up eight fingers. Of course, he isn't actually holding up eight fingers in the photo--but William is, so there you go.

William has requested bacon and eggs and waffles for his birthday dinner, and I figured, hey, that's as good as anything. So we'll break out the breakfast-for-dinner food here in a little while and then eat cake. Bacon and cake. It doesn't get much better than that. 

A few more Easter photos

Another set of Easter photos from the Wyckoff brothers!

Check it out. They're clean. They're smiling. Their hair has been combed. There are no milk mustaches. They're looking at the camera. Even the background (my tree!) is pretty. I love the big-time miracle that we celebrate on Easter, but I have to say that I also love these little domestic miracles, too.

Whenever they drive me crazy, y'all remind me that they can be as sweet as pie, too.  

Oh, and if you're wondering why someone is always holding Andrew or holding onto him in every photo, it's because it's the only way to get a family photo that includes him. He'll take off, otherwise. In fact, not long after these photos, he darted off to run around under the giant magnolia trees in front of the church and came back dirty and bleeding. Yup. This is why I carry around band-aids in every bag I own.

Happy Easter from our house to yours. 

Happy Easter

Nothing says Happy Easter like two boys wearing their Easter baskets on their heads, right? Well, then, it's a good thing I've got you covered!



Or hey, if you need more, how about blissfully rolling around in the grass?



We're all about the authentic here.

Happy Fourth Birthday, Andrew!

Andrew is now officially four years and two weeks old.

"But, but, but....he's your BABY!" a friend gasped the other day. "How is he FOUR?"

I know. I KNOW.

He's 41 inches tall and nearly 39 pounds. He is eager to hit the 40 pound mark so he can use a booster seat. This works out well for us when we're trying to coax him to drink some milk or eat more vegetables: "Don't you want to be 40 pounds, Andrew?"

We've been talking a lot about the days and weeks surrounding his birth recently. We've had a radically cold winter this year, and four years ago, we had a lot of snow and ice, so there's that parallel. I also remember watching the Winter Olympics from my position as a beached whale on our family room sofa, with my huge belly in front of me as I waited impatiently to go into labor. This year, we also watched the Winter Olympics in the family room, but this time, Andrew was playing with his toys on the floor and asking what those people in those funny suits and masks were doing (skeleton, maybe? Or luge? What's the difference, anyway?)

At any rate, Andrew really is four. We had a big birthday party for him at the YMCA on February 23, and we invited all his pals. He had a blast. They put up a giant bouncey house, so he bounced and played, and then we had cake and ice cream. The perfect kind of party for rowdy four year olds.

Side note about the birthday cake. Andrew insisted on ordering a chocolate cake with white icing and red flowers. So that's what he got. I asked him if he would rather have a cake with Monsters Inc. characters or maybe Thomas the Tank Engine. Nope. He went with the red flowers. We showed him the cake at the beginning of the party, and I asked him if that's what he wanted. He beamed and said, "Oh YES!"

They also wore birthday hats, as Andrew insisted that birthday hats were imperative to the success of his fourth birthday party.

And you know...he was on to something. All the kids were all about putting on birthday hats. Even, ahem, his big brother.

Now that Andrew is officially four, he is also finally a Soccer Player. His first practice was last Friday afternoon, and his first game was Saturday morning. It was a hoot. He was so proud of having his own uniform (red! his favorite color, Mommy!) and getting to be on a team.

He mostly just trotted around after the other kids on the field during the game. But I mean, come on. It was his first game. He's only four years old! Funny how four can be so Big one moment and so Little the next, huh?

Anyway. Happy belated birthday to the Doodlebug. We love you so much!

Cold with a Capital C

This has been something absurd like the coldest winter ever for Nashville. Or maybe one of the top three coldest winters ever. Whatever the history books show, I can tell you that it's definitely been the coldest winter in my history in Nashville.

In November, I signed up to run the Boulevard Bolt, the annual Thanksgiving Day 5 mile run to benefit homeless ministries in Nashville. At race time, it was 17 degrees. Every time I took a breath, I could feel little ice crystals forming inside my nose and lungs, like an animated graphic for a spearmint chewing gum. I ran the whole race without stopping because I was afraid my joints would freeze into place if I stopped moving.

But hey, I thought, that was an anomaly. Nope. We have had a whole string of frigid weather here, including a handful of days and nights when the temperature dipped way, way down into the low single digits.

Brrrr. That's practically Laura Ingalls Wilder weather. I started to tell William the story of her book "The Long Weather" and then got halfway into it before realizing that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to tell a seven-year-old about how a bunch of people froze to death on the prairie, except for the author and her family, who only merely nearly starved to death.

After our years in the desert, I actually don't mind winter. I'd rather be bundled up in a coat and scarf for a few months than spend a few months burning the top three layers of skin off the palms of my hands on my car's steering wheel because it's 120 degree outside. But single digit temps are nearly as bad as triple digit temps. Just in the opposite direction. They all burn.

I've been known to grumpily instruct William to put on a sweater or another sweater because I was cold.

"Mom, I'm okay," he'll protest. "We're inside the house. It's nice and warm in here. I'm fine."

"No, you're not," I'll retort. "You're freezing cold. Put that sweater on right now. Here, maybe you should wear two."

Don't even get me started about Andrew's habit of pulling his socks off when he comes inside. Or the way that he'll try to put on his Crocs when it's time to go outside. Crocs without socks, natch.

It's been so cold that I've actually seriously considered going around without a coat on, on the few days when it's gotten as warm as 40. Because it seems warm, you see.

At any rate, we're nine days in February now, and it's still cold. We haven't had much snow and ice this winter, fortunately, although William's school was cancelled a few times anyway due to extreme cold. The boys, however, are jonesing for some real snow. They're tired of the sweet flurries that we tend to get on a regular basis--the ones that float gently from the sky before disappearing on contact with...well, anything. For their sake, I do hope we get a Real Snow at some point this winter. I nearly bought a sled on massive clearance for five bucks at Target a few days ago before deciding that would jinx their chances. Just one snow that's deep enough for some sledding or for one good snowball fight. That would be fine.

Of course, I say that, and watch a blizzard roll in the day before Andrew's fourth birthday party, which he's been looking forward to for weeks. Can I amend that wish?

Bidding farewell

Well, here it is again, New Year's Eve. I know that our family will be more than glad to bid farewell to 2013.

Oh, the whole year itself was not bad. We had some wonderful times. A few highlights...Our family went to Pensacola again and had a ball. The boys are both enjoying school. David retook and passed his boards and remains a Fellow in the American Academy of Pediatrics. I worked hard at building my freelance writing business and did pretty well. I ran in my first five-mile race on Thanksgiving Day. William had his first piano recital, which went very well (he bowed at the end of his piece, which brought down the house), and Andrew sang with the preschool contingent in front of the whole church on the Children's Sabbath. William is reading on a seventh-grade reading level, and Andrew is eagerly looking forward to playing soccer this spring. And of course, David celebrated the Red Sox winning the World Series again this year.

But this was also the year that my father-in-law Aaron was diagnosed with lymphoma for the third time in less than four years. Cancer takes a lot out of a guy. So does the treatment. And we worried. Worried but hoped.

We worried over him, as he began chemo in November. We missed him on Thanksgiving, but we knew that it was better for him to stay home and rest and steer clear of us and our germs (between David's line of work and two little boys, we are always germy). We resigned ourselves to not getting to celebrate his birthday on Christmas Eve with him this year, too. But we all told ourselves that we'd look forward to celebrating the end of chemo with him sometime in January. We held out hope for a bone marrow transplant after chemo, hoping that it would be the cure, the cure. We told him that we couldn't wait for him to see Andrew play his first soccer game. And maybe see William play a few basketball games later this winter, like he did last year. We looked forward to eating burgers and drinking Coca Colas with him when he felt better.

Unfortunately.

Unfortunately, Aaron's body just couldn't make it that far. On Christmas Eve, on the day of his 71st birthday, he went into cardiac arrest at the oncology clinic. It was over, almost before it began.

We were all shocked. No, surely not, I thought. No. The chest pain that Aaron had been experiencing that morning was supposed to be reflux. Or perhaps a panic attack. Something. Not a heart attack. Not a fatal heart attack.

Unfortunately.

Unfortunately, it was true. Aaron was gone. And he is gone. And yet, I can still hear his voice in my head so clearly. I know, and yet somehow I don't know.

As I wrote on Facebook, in the shocked days after his death, Aaron was a devoted grandfather to William and Andrew. He adored them, and the feeling was mutual. He attended soccer games and basketball games and read stories and served giant (seriously) bowls of ice cream and defended "my clients" when they got rowdy and caused trouble with their mom or dad. They had code words that they said back and forth to each other ("hooty hoot!").

I will always be so glad, so grateful, that the boys got to spend so much time with him. William, especially, has so many terrific memories of his Grandaddy Aaron, and he will always cherish those. David and I will, too. One of my favorite Aaron-and-William memories is from when William was almost three. Aaron went to the preschool to pick William up one day, and a couple of the teachers spotted the two of them walking down the hall, hand in hand. "Ah ha!" one said. "Now we know exactly where he comes from!"

Two of a kind: William and Aaron.

There is so much more I could write. I could ramble on and on here. But the most important thing is this: we loved Aaron. David loved his daddy so, so much. I loved my father-in-law. The boys loved their grandaddy.

Oh, yes, we will miss him so much.

Merry Christmas 2013

Merry Christmas from my house to yours.



Peace on earth, and good will to all!

Smile for the camera, boys!

A few years ago, I used to start worrying about taking the perfect Christmas card photo before Thanksgiving even rolled around. We had always received armloads of cards with pictures of beautifully dressed children who posed and smiled perfectly for the camera, and I always wanted to be able to create one, too. 

Well. Getting the perfect Christmas card photo of our two boys was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Sometimes, I'd get a good photo of William, only to catch Andrew looking away from the camera. Or Andrew might finally smile for the camera, only for William to be groaning for me to hurry up. Or the picture would be blurry. Argh.

I usually wound up cobbling together my favorites, even if they weren't perfect, and made a card with those pictures. At least they made me smile, I reasoned. 

This year, I knew I wanted to use a favorite beach photo for our card, so I wasn't even concerned with trying to get a good Christmas-themed photo of Andrew and William to use for a card. So when we recently made the rounds of Cheekwood and Santa's workshop, I brought along my camera and mostly just snapped photos for fun. No wheedling with Andrew to just please look at the camera, please please please? No asking William to please settle down and stop dancing around. 

And wouldn't you know it? I got some terrific pictures of the boys! They're just being themselves. This is what they're really like. 

And you know what? These make me smile...a lot. Hope they make you smile, too....

Brotherly love

They fight. They tussle. They argue. They get sent to Time Out for fighting, tussling and arguing. They also look at each other, touch each other and take each others stuff.

Pretty normal, I'd say. I might remember doing a few of those things myself, once upon a time. I'm sure David would probably make a similar admission.

They also look out for each other, and they do nice things for each other. Two recent examples. William wrote that Andrew was his favorite person on a poster they made together. And at Target last week, Andrew asked if he could pick out a special snack to give to William after his piano lesson.

They really do love each other. It just happens to sometimes involve arguing over who gets to play with Mommy's iPad or who gets to open the door first. Sometimes it involves loud screaming and door slamming and "ow, he pulled my hair"-ing.

But it also involves William volunteering to read bedtime stories to Andrew ("I read really well because I read with lots of expression," he told me confidently) and it involves Andrew putting his little head on William's shoulder and listening intently, while they snuggle up together in Andrew's bed.

Some photos of brotherly love, at a good moment:

Busybusybusy

OMG, I can't believe it's been this long since I updated this blog. (OMG, I can't believe I just used "OMG" and wasn't even being ironic.)

So we've had a busy fall. Insert usual comments here about busy school calendars, extracurriculars, church stuff, etc. Yep yep and more yep. We've been busy. 

We went to Cheekwood....

....and to the pumpkin patch at Gentry's Farm in Franklin....

...and I tried to get photos of both of my lovely boys looking at the camera and smiling at the same time, but well, you know how that usually ends up...

....oooh, and we petted the kangaroos at the new exhibit at the Nashville Zoo! (That was so, so cool. Can I just add here that this kangaroo just sat there and placidly let hordes of eager kids and their parents pet her? For a long time? Amazing.)

And William has been playing soccer and piano, and he's also a Cub Scout. Andrew's been begging to play soccer, so we've decided that we'll register him for his first soccer team in the spring. So this is the last fall that he'll officially be on the bench. 

Tomorrow is Halloween, and I'm not sure who's more excited: William or Andrew. Or, er, maybe me. But the weather is supposed to be horrible, so we may have to delay the trick-or-treating by a day. Fine by me. Friday night trick-or-treating, even with a Saturday morning soccer game, is always the best!

First day of preschool for Andrew

Guess who started three-year-old preschool today?

This guy!







Here's Andrew walking up the sidewalk to his school. I didn't get any good shots of him once he got into the classroom, though. He was totally focused on getting into his new routine, although he did stop to give me a big hug goodbye.



The reason his hair is a little crazy is that he finally consented to taking off the duck hat that he's been wearing nearly non-stop lately. You know. This hat:



All bets are off, though, as to whether he'll agree to not wear it next week to school. He will tell you that he's a duck and he HAS to wear the duck hat. To hammer home his point, he then walks around, quacking quietly. Quack, quack, quack.

So anyway, back to the first day of preschool. Andrew had a great day today, and I have to tell you, I'm so glad. He freaked out on the first day of school last year, to everyone's surprise. And I was half-worried he'd do it again this year.

But nope. He's been looking forward to going back to school ever since William started school, and he was READY. I mean, READY. What's not to love? Today, on his first day, Andrew got to eat Teddy Grahams and bananas for snacktime AND play on the Big Kids playground AND go to music class AND see all his friends. It doesn't get much better than that when you're three years old.