here comes the sun

one of jacob's more straightforward spelling assignments





we're midway through the week before thanksgiving. the twins have minimum days all week this week because of parent-teacher conferences.



can i be honest? the thought of sitting down with the teachers and the boys is slightly terrifying to me. i feel disproportionately anxious about it. mostly, when i have to go to the school, i feel like a raw nerve. i feel exposed and emotional... easily hurt or angered. i feel like the teachers are always about to deliver bad news, the other parents are going to judge our family or say something insensitive, the other kids in the class are going to ask us a lot of questions about why the boys do the things that they do.



and it will hurt. all of it.



and i will react badly. and say something harsh. or, sometimes worse, i won't say anything. and it will get the best of me. and i won't enjoy spending time with my boys at their school. and marvel at their progress. enjoy their expanding independence. or mirror their enjoyment.



it seems like after all this time in the mainstream classrooms, i should feel a little more at ease, but i still feel like a visitor. like we're just pretending to belong there. and that feels like a huge weakness. and i have to overcome it because it is a luxury that i cannot afford.



so, in the spirit of thanksgiving, i will say that i am thankful that everything changes. that while all these past days i have been a coward, crying in my car after someone says something lame to me--- my boys have been going to their classes and smiling at their teachers, aides and classmates. and i can learn to smile, too. and risk the hurts. because everything changes. and tomorrow, there might be fewer hurts and the sting of those hurts might be less and less until it doesn't even register a flinch.

tricks or treats

in keeping with our grand halloween traditions of dreaming big and then, procrastinating, i give you halloween 2010

months ago, isaac told us that he wanted to be killer moth from the lego batman wii game. i had to give him some serious points for creativity and a willingness to appear completely random. he also mentioned that he wanted to look like a lego minifigure... our visions might have diverged a little on this point, but we attempted a compromise.

meanwhile, jacob gave us a sketch of a skeleton costume, complete with hood and cape. fully aware that there are a million skeleton costumes in the world, i decided that i would still make one completely from scratch (enter grand domesticity delusion). i clung to that idea until we were less than a week from halloween and i still hadn't produced a costume and jacob had seen one at target and stood in front of it, saying rapturously, "it looks just like him." we conceded and bought him the costume, but replaced the ugly rubber mask with a paper mache skull.

lucas couldn't seem to care less about costumes in general, and had given us no real idea what he might want to be. for several weeks, we insisted that we were going to make him an orca costume. we sketched it. we debated its finer points. we acquired some felt. we gave up with 2 days to spare. (sorry, lucas!) the little man seemed more than happy with his storebought costume and adhesive moustache (parental guilt mildly dulled).

isaac as lego killer moth: at most doors, he was addressed as "alien" at which point
he would say, "i'm killer moth, and i'm here to throw in."

jacob as a semi-spooky skeleton. his grin was meant to make him seem friendlier, but from a distance and in most photos. the teeth look like stitches-- like his mouth is sewn closed. the spookiness was further enhanced by his deep and scratchy sounding "trick or treat".

lucas as mario. he surprised us by repeatedly posing with one arm and leg up (a la mario) and keeping his sticky moustache on. like many moustache devotees, he actually seemed preoccupied with straightening, smoothing and grooming it.

in spite of the multiple revisions and costume delays, our halloween was pretty awesome. all three boys loved trick or treating. they were pretty reliable about saying "thank you" and "happy halloween". and, as a bonus, they haven't inquired once about where their halloween candy disappeared to...

warm-ups

couple of things.



first, it's october. wow.



second, the walk was last weekend(!).



third, i haven't started making any of the halloween costumes.



fourth, i think you might know what the rest of my october is going to look like...

schmonday

i'll post later this week about how k and i were on the radio this morning. did you miss it? it was (kind of, but not really) awesome.

what i really want to note is that during bedtime prayers tonight, isaac asked for a blessing on dad and a blessing that "we will never have homework again".

can he get an amen?

miscellaneous

2008 valentine's day picture that i found on mom's laptop.

it is a rainy sunday morning and i'm sneaking in a few hours on a borrowed laptop...

this past week has been long. long, as in, it required two boxes of le petit ecolier cookies to get through it.

the long bits are boring. and, well, long. the interesting bits are as follows:

one night, while straightening up the boys' room, isaac asked me if he could smell my hair.

"it smells like hair," he pronounced.

ok. so far so good.

"it looks like sprouts," he continued.

"what?"

"it LOOKS like sprouts," he said matter-of-factly and staring straight into my eyes as though forcing me to face a very unpleasant truth. i submit. my hair does look like sprouts.

jacob asked to call ragain during a break of his tutoring session. he almost never asks to use the phone, but i dialed it for him, not really sure what he was going to say. it turned out that he was going to make a very tearful plea for ragain to come home. it was a toss-up between whether it was more sweet or more heartbreaking. the jury is still out.

lucas was running around like a maniac the other night after the twins were in bed. he was shrieking and shouting and going in circles. i felt in desperate need of semi-silence so i said, "lucas, shhhhhhhhhh!"

he whirled around, extended one arm toward me and said, "mama, be quiet!"

it was so imperious. i laughed for a minute. then, i kind of just sat there and wondered if i should have done something differently...

my brother-in-laws, ryan and robert, came to town on wednesday night. ryan lives in texas and does not pretend to have a texan accent. at least, not in front of us. he makes me laugh and is in the market for a little girl's name that has three syllables and ends with an "a". his third daughter is due next month. don't worry, we made him a pretty good list.

robert, also makes me laugh, and is fun to shop with. i know we get each other because we can have a very impassioned conversation on how important it is to like the feel and weight of your everyday silverware. i can even forgive him the time he forced me to try a (truly) atrocious vegan cookie. love you, robert.

ragain and i went to our niece, alyssa's wedding last night. i realized i was wearing a bib of graham cracker crumbs on the way there (luckily) after isaac had stroked the embellished neckline of my shirt. wardrobe mishaps aside, we had fun, danced on the sloped dancefloor and ate all of the strawberry caramel favors too quickly. oh, and they played the REO speedwagon song that i wrote about last time. how meant-to-be is that?!?!?!

*notes for the future: steph + too much hairspray = super big hair. like mandrell-sisters-big.

monday loves r.e.o. speedwagon

although i will be (am, right now) typing this on monday. i am actually writing it on sunday night. our laptop is still broken, so i am going old-school and writing in a spiral bound notebook.

it feels remarkably nostalgic. and, i can almost imagine my teenage self sitting in a classroom filling notebook after notebook with very intense musings. the trip down memory lane runs abruptly off course when lucas, wearing buzz lightyear underoos, requests more texas toast.

and, zoom. we're back to present day. i'm eating leftover mashed-potato-and-bacon pizza. it

needs some salt, but it still pretty amazing.

the weekly ads are scattered around me. reminders of where i do and do not want to buy produce.

the twins are in bed and presumably asleep as there is no sound from their room.

lucas is sitting, surrounded by his schleich animal collection, humming and making sound effects. in his daytime clothes, he's looking more and more like a little boy... but in his skivvies, i can still see traces of baby. and i'm glad.

on the off-chance that he's tired enough to want to be cuddled like a baby, i lean in and tell him i love him when he walks by. he raises his eyebrows at me and allows me to kiss his cheek. i laugh at his primness and decide to wait out his cool-customer routine.

i start to delve into the things that i want to write about... because they're the things that i want to remember when i look back and wonder where the time went. and there are a lot of things. but lucas, has come back around. he holds his arms out and says, "hug". he's never asked me for one. i pull him into my lap and put down my pen. i'll remember the other things later...

*** the above title is in no real reference to this post. the past couple of weeks have been challenging. and the bright spots have been a little harder to come by. but i keep thinking of this moment that i had while i was driving alone and r.e.o. speedwagon came on the radio. i can't say that i'm a real fan... but for whatever reason, this song ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-mw1HGJjdA ) spoke to me in that moment and i sang along. loudly. (badly.) and drummed the steering wheel. and loved it. what do you think? mid-life crisis?

letter to future steph: 1

dear future steph,

greetings from the past! you might be reading this on some sort of screen, or having swallowed a large, gel-filled pill, this message might be projected just behind your eyes. and in that case, wow.

whether reading or ingesting this message, here is some potentially useful information:

- never buy herb-flavored popcorn. it is wretched and not unlike chewy gobs of bad breath.

- sparkly band-aids ARE cute. but they're not for you. they also abandon ship at the first sign of water.

-you shouldn't rate someone's likeability solely on whether they refer to you as "miss" or "ma'am". in other words, ix-nay on the death glare and coquettish giggling. it's not charming.

- you like b.l.t.'s a lot. maybe too much. they fill you with hope and satisfaction. don't get all fancy with them, though. think classic. and go make one.


with deep affection and
zero knowledge of your future follies,
past steph


p.s. if you still own those grey striped pajama bottoms with the hanging-by-a-thread (literally) drawstring... give them my love.