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?