We Love George

George in our house means two things - sometimes it means Curious George, as in the morning TV show on PBS that I actually enjoy watching. Other times it means Concert For George, as in Harrison, a DVD we rented from Netflix and watched a billion times over about 6 months, and now own.

This George is playing nice and loud in our living room while Henry snoozes. This is also the George that all my children really like to watch, presumably for the music, but probably more because of the Monty Python numbers, one including a great mooning of the audience ("Shake A Bum Bum" in our house, courtesy of Henry). If anyone ever does a concert tribute to me after I am gone, certainly a good mooning should be included.

I love that my kids like to watch this. It is lovely and silly and sad - gorgeous, emotional, and musical. I love that this will entertain them for a goooood long time, which will be put to the test tonight while Danny and I are rehearsing for a benefit show to raise money for my friend Christy (see below), a show that is really cool that both Danny and I are in - I sing some songs, he plays guitar on one or two - this George will babysit our cranky, stay-up-too-late-this-first-week-of-school children well, for which I am very very grateful.

Emma on the Edge...

Lily in Her Own Time

What I love about Lily is her amazing ability to time travel. One minute, she's freaking out about swimming in the deep end of the pool with her swimmies on, the next minute, she's realized that she really can swim and then she goes all out- cannonball into the deep end, sans swimmies. All in the blink of an eye. She's so cautious, but then when she puts her mind to something, BLAM, there's no holding her back. It's like the previous minutes of angst never took place. Miraculous.

A few moments from Lily's life the last few weeks:

• She became a reluctant kayaker
• She let me pull out her dangling-by-a-thread front tooth, and proudly posed for her official "toothless"picture
• The fashion girl strategically wore her pink skirt and shoes in her school play - a flash of hot pink in an ocean of blue-jean wearing kindergarteners

I love her kindness, her mother hen-ness, her ability to be brave, even when she doesn't want to be. One of her favorite books is Ruby in her Own Time. It's just so Lily - first a watcher than a doer - all in her own time.

The Adventures of Goggle Boy

How is it that someone so small can have such a commanding personality??? Sometimes a tyrant, sometimes a sweet thumb-sucking cuddler, Henry is currently prancing around the house with Lily singing the "Dark Vader" theme at the top of his lungs while Star Wars IV (or is it V? - I only know them by the Princess Leia costumes anyway) is playing in the background. He refers to Yoda as "The Cute Guy." He wouldn't allow us to address him as "Henry" this morning, only as "Firefighter Henry." Although sometimes he goes by "Baby" (if he and Lily and Emma are playing "Kitty Poo" - I still have no idea what that is), or "Pooka" - no idea where he got that either. He can name all the Beatles, but he favors George, though Ringo is creeping ahead because Henry really really wants to play the drums.

He LOVES his friend JJ, mentions him every day, almost as often as he swears, although luckily it's mostly just potty talk. He does however have an amazing ability to repeat most of the curse words that have flown out of my mouth over the last year or so (and it really hasn't been that many), with his current favorite being "jackass!," which he yells at any car he considers to be travelling at an unreasonable speed up our fairly quiet street.

He is also finally using the bathroom, with the exception being when we are outside, when he recently peed on a friend's son's crocs, without even thinking twice. The worst of it all is he is so charming, his pint-sized Ferris Buellerness gets him through. I have no idea how he will make it through school without multiple incidents and frequent calls home - Thank God we have another year before he faces the public!

Camping in Maine

This is a picture of our first night camping in Maine. Notice the strange resemblance to a motel room...

After one of our tents broke as Danny and I raced to set it up in coming darkeness and driving rain, we all packed it in for the first nightand drove straight to the nearest motel. It was so worth it for everyone's sanity.

This was the camping trip where everything broke or got lost or just stopped working, but it was still pretty cool. The kids were fun, funny, and up for anything. We kayaked, rode bikes, swam for hours a day, read books, played cards, Danny played guitar, roasted the token s'mores, and wished we could have stayed on two more weeks. Alas, maybe next year.

A Sibling Sandwich

Bittersweet

Ugh, just when you think that all is well with the world, grief comes up again to bite you on the ass.

Yesterday was Emma's first communion, a first in our family in that both my Dad and my Mom were not there. The events of the past week leading up to this weekend were potentially the most horrific we've had to deal with since my Dad died. But time moves on, our daughter grows, and family comes together anyway.

I see Emma, in the dress my Gram made for me (circa 1980) and my wedding veil, being so serious and thoughtful and joyful and proud. I will probably always be a conflicted Catholic, loving God but not always loving the Church, but the ritual and beauty and importance of the day were really lovely. Plus Henry looked damn cute in a shirt and tie. We were REALLY lucky he slept through most of the Mass. He woke up near the end, looked over my shoulder at the Stations of the Cross, pointed at Jesus and joyfully shared with the surrounding churchgoers, "Look, He's NAKED!" Gotta love that.

Time moves on. My Dad lives on in Henry, I see him in the shape of Henry's ears, in his face sometimes, in the way he looks off to the side. He lives on in Emma, in her stubbornness, temper, her sense of order. He lives on in Lily, in her steadfastness, her loyalty, and sense of family.

Time moves on and we move with it. I hope I can keep up.

Breathe

With the Amesbury PTA Science Fair over and done and the youngest scientists in the house (pictured above) resting their science brains, we took a break. This weekend was the first weekend in a looooong time when we had nothing to do. Our house is a disaster, nobody has clean socks, and we can't find a single thing in all the clutter. Our intention was to clean and put everything in order on this rainy weekend, but instead we got the gift of sun (or a least not rain), and all conscientious plans were scrapped.

We dug in the dirt, planted things, watered things. The kids made fairy houses with our neighbors and by themselves, hooking those lucky fairies up with tasty berries and flower buds. Henry just got plain dirty and walked around with his blue rain boots and a big grin. Sophie rolled around in the grass and hung out with our neighbor on her back porch, sunning herself like a starfish on the rocks.

Danny and I sat on our side porch drinking coffee as the fog rolled in.

Time just stopped and it was glorious. We really just needed to breathe.

Funky-Looking Earth Eggs

I really dislike Easter eggs. I used to like them growing up - the pastel colors, the funky dye, and especially the mess. This mess is what originally put me off - I always rationalized that the kids were too young and food dye too permanent to intermingle with each other. Now I have put them off long enough - this is really the year. Mostly because Lily has a passion and enthusiasm for all things Easter that I have ever seen (mmm...maybe because it's close to her birthday? Could it be the candy perhaps???) Anyway, I can't let the kids go through life without ever coloring Easter eggs, could I? Well, worse things have happened.

The primary problem with the eggs is that I don't know how to hard boil them. I can cook fairly well, create ocean, sun, and firetruck cakes, but I have no clue how to boil eggs. My first mistake was using the organic brown ones from the fridge (unfortunately we are egg snobs). I don't know what I did next, but one partially-cooked one blew up in the water. The others came out okay, with an occasional crack here and there. Then the dye issues began. We are an experimenting family, so we ended up mixing colors, and we never measured vinegar/water/anything we were supposed to (measuring is for sissies). It all evolved into some sort of twisted science project. We now have 4 brownish-bluish-green-speckled-funky-looking "earth" eggs. And we all had fun in the end, right?

Three Is The Magic Number

Henry turned three yesterday - really the first birthday he sort-of gets - and we had some of his buddies over for firetruck cake. I was thinking we'd have a sweet quiet afternoon with just a few folks, but I forgot about siblings...oops, I think we had around 12 kids over. At first, I was a little mortified, hoping to squish these lovely little (and not so little) people into our smallish house, with every small one just bubbling over with excitement - for at least the first half-hour. Then everyone got into a rhythm and it was lovely. Boys played with girls, smaller ones played with bigger ones, the biggest ones joined into conversations happening in all corners of the house, and I stopped for a minute to think about this time last year and how far we've come -

Henry's birthdays have all been bittersweet - his birth marked the beginning of an incredibly stressful time in the life of our family, we celebrated his first birthday in the Hospice the day before my dad died (complete with cake and everything), and his birthday last year was emotional because it was overshadowed by the one year anniversay of the death of my Dad (I know my Dad would hate that). So this was really the first truly joyful birthday for him. I still so miss my Dad but that immense sadness no longer creeps in and lingers. And there is so much more room for joy in our life now - I looked around yesterday amid the chaos and really loved the home and family we have here. I love our family and friends who are family who helped us all roll through the emotional rollercoaster of these last three years. Henry's birth and third birthday are now like the bookends to that snapshot in time that pushed us to make our lives simpler, better, happier. And I am grateful. Three really is the magic number.

Candygate

Valentine candy has been the bane of my existance this weekend. It has been swiped, snatched, snooped, and scooped up somewhat underhandedly. All the kids were guilty of it, but Lily seems to be the one with the almost-pathelogical addiction to it.

The worst thing you can do in our house is to be dishonest - our standing rule is that if you mess up then fess up, you will be in far less trouble. Poor Lily, with her eyes blinded by candy-love, had a great deal of trouble with this. I got a call at work last night from Danny (which never happens unless someone has lost a limb or something) looking for clarification, as I was implicated as some sort of accomplice in what has become known in our house now as Candygate.

I keep thinking of the time I took a dollar from my Dad's dresser (without asking) to get ice cream from the Hoodsie Truck - I was just about Lily's age. I don't remember him yelling, just sitting me down to talk about it, and him being really disappointed. Uggh. That was rough, but it worked for me - I always remembered that. We did the same with all the kids, then just with Lily. She finally fessed up, but it was so hard for her - her worst nightmare is disappointing us and getting in trouble. I'm proud of her that she chose to finally be honest, we'll see how she does with the temporary ban on candy in the house - it is really her first love. As I write this, she is currently making paper Easter Eggs - her favorite holiday, presumably because of all the Easter candy. Oh well. So much for Valentines.

Other adventures with candy - our 2nd attempt at a christmas gingerbread house

We Got Ourselves a Puker Here...

I myself have never been a puker. Not really (at least post-college). But I have a great respect for people who can just upchuck on cue. Emma, for instance, came home yesterday from school as happy as can be. Then moments later, she's sprinting to the bathroom to loose her lunch (or her snack, as the case may be). She is actually a very pleasant puker - all business. And then she sleeps. Really sleeps. Really-most-sincerely sleeps. For hours. And BAM! She's up and wide awake at 10pm, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and no longer sick. How efficient. I wish I could be like that.

We spent some time post-puke-sleep last night dreaming of vacation - not this Febrary break coming up, but camping during the summer. Our camping trips in recent history have been far from heavenly, but the kids don't seem to remember this. When the mention of camping comes up, their eyes twinkle and sparkle. There's talk of swimming and s'mores and sleeping (of you want to call it that) in the big tent. Now I'm guessing that each year it gets a little easier, and truly the toughest part has been camping with a toddler (who shall remain nameless), so this year must be our year to not pack it in early. I'm just guessing.

Henry is now running around without pants, so this is my cue to go. Where is that nanny??? She should be fired.

Survival of the Sickest, Among other things

Sunday Morning, 11 AM

I love Sunday morning, especially this Sunday morning that feels like new, after a really old week of feeling under-the-bus (AKA worse than under the weather, not bad enough for the hospital). Our house is demolished, even after I spent last Friday in a rare cleaning frenzy. I guess it isn't bad really, except for the vaguely sour-milky smell in the kitchen that we think is either coming from the three or four unwashed vanilla coffeemate bottles overflowing from recycling, or just some nasty old milk that spilled on the floor over the course of the week that we neglected to wipe up. Oh well, time will tell. Maybe we can pass it off as science.

Finally a respite from feeling crappy, although every one of us hovers around the edge of sickness still. This is the time of year for it - but I love the cozy calmness of this time of year too. Everything wrapped in a blanket of white, the crunch of snow under boots, the smell of snow in the sky. Everything waiting, hovering around the edge of spring.

Well, enough about that. I am grateful that the kids we have are old enough to occupy themselves this week while I hunkered down upstairs. No major mishaps, no broken bones, stitches, or CAT scans. Success! Sort of.

Lily leaves home, Emma has a date, laundry holds a caucus event in our living room

Lily spent the night a couple of blocks away at her friend Alanna'a house, a first for her if you don't count staying over at Auntie Kathy's and Uncle Jack's with Emma and Henry. It was a big deal and not a big deal at the same time. She is so like a flower, carefully blooming and growing but not wanting to get too far away from her roots. I wonder if she will still be like that later in life, although she has a steely toughness inside her that shines through in the most surprising places. She is the most tenacious of the bunch.

I can see her struggle with growing older - one minute, she's nervous about a situation and the next she's grown more confident and sure of herself. It's a whirlwind the emotions she deals with, sometimes gracefully, sometimes not so much. Danny went to pick her up this morning and she asked to stay over longer. I am so glad for her that she didn't let her fears get in the way of her being happy and having fun. Such a small thing, but such a big lesson in that.

While Lily and Henry played a few blocks away, Danny and I took Emma on a date for Indian food at Mr. India in Newburyport. It was gloriously delicious and satisfying to sit and enjoy a quiet meal without Henry standing up in the middle and meowing and dancing the bum bum dance.

Emma was being adventurous, at least culinarily speaking (is culinarily even a word???). We ate mango ice cream and garlic naan and shrimp pakora and chicken korma. We talked about where she wanted to travel (Western Europe), what languages she wanted to learn to speak (Italian and French), and what she wanted her career to be if she had to magically time travel to the future right now (science teacher for older kids). What a treat to have a date, just the three of us.

Fat snowflakes fall from the sky as Jack Johnson plays in one room, Spongebob in the other. Sophie sleeps at my feet next to a Jabba the Hut pile of boots and snowgear and dirty/clean laundry, stacks of books and papers that call to me to actually work some today. Ahh, another Sunday. Beats laundry or doing dishes.

Holy #@!&, What a Superbowl!

I cannot claim to be a football fanatic, but being raised a Giants fan by my Dad and now living in the Patriots-Are-Gods Boston area sure made for some schizophrenic and expletive-filled Superbowl watching. I don't think I have ever seen a better-played, more suspensful Superbowl (unless you count the one in 1991 when the Bills lost to the Giants, which was yet another expletive-filled game when I watched in my dorm room in NY). I was only half-interested in watching it really, but the game just grabed you by the shirt and pummeled you into submission. Even the kids were glued to the TV.

So Emma, being Pop's Best Girl, fretted about rooting for the Giants when everyone within a 100-mile-radius rabbidly rooted for the Pats. And me, being Pop's Second Best Girl (I know I got bumped as soon as she was placed in his proud Grandpapa's arms), sat there screaming and cheering in every big play, alternately for the Pats and then the Giants. It was a little bittersweet - I wish my Dad could have been there. I am secretly thrilled the Giants won - perfect record be damned. So sue me.

The Superbowl game was like a primer in football basics for the kids - 1st downs, extra points, sacks, and field goals were broken down and fed like crumbs into their sports-curious minds. Lily was quietly outraged that women don't play football professionally. Her injustice radar was piqued, though we soothed it with the reassurance that she could someday play professional soccer. That seemed to balance the scales in her mind.


Henry was mostly interested in the double-necked guitar one of the musicians played during the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers halftime show. I think he recognized Tom and the gang from their appearance on the Concert for George DVD. He played air guitar with each song, then "took off" his guitar, bowed, and then said into the "microphone," - "Thank you. Thank you much! Bye!" Over and over again, much to the amusement of all of us in the room. He is good for a few laughs, that one.

Lily fell asleep in front of the TV Sleeping-Beauty style, and Henry and Emma finally fell asleep around 11, up in our room after the game. So much for getting the kids to bed early on a school night. Who the @#!% needs sleep?

Blocks and Bowls

It's Superbowl Sunday, which I would be more excited about if everything hadn't been analyzed to death and shoved down my throat for the past two weeks. Will the Patriots have a perfect season? It would be cool if they did. Will what Tom Brady had for lunch have anything to do with it, probabaly not. I can't watch TV until 6:18 pm or I will hurl something at it.

The fact that the Patriots are playing the New York Giants is actually really cool. Danny asked Henry last week if he wanted the Giants or the Patriots to win the Superbowl and he grinned at him and said, "The Giants!" I swear my Dad had something to do with that.

Right now Henry is sleeping ("I don't want to rest any-moe!"), Danny has mercifully gone to Market Basket to get something to feed our hungry brood, and the girls have been building long trains of block dominoes (that I temporarily swiped from the museum) on the kitchen table. Going on two hours now. Peacefully. Where can I get a billion boxes of those??? One of the many benefits of working at the Museum of Science - you can bring your work home and pacify your kids...