"Fanx". A lot.

Somebody else had a birthday. (Um, it may have even been in the fall. That's what happens sometimes. Sorry buddy. I wrote about you then, but didn't get to publish it.)

On the day before you turned 5, amidst a great deal of giggles and birthday pancakes, I recounted in my head the day you were born and how I worked with such intensity to get you with your sideways turned head here. The way that you greeted the world with such calmness and keen observation, not even crying.

These days you are not always calm. Things change pretty rapidly for you. But you do take in everything.

All year your art has really developed. Your pictures, like your life,  are filled with great details and voyages and heroes and quests. Your horse teacher is right that someday you may write a very complex book.

Bastilla: The girl elf

Your gratitude for the world around you is always near the surface and just hearing your simple "fanx" always makes me more energized and generous. Also you very astutely have discovered that, "magic isn't real; except when it's in yours heart." So, in you my darling, never forget that it is actually overflowing.

 

Music also is slowly opening itself up to you. You surprised us all when suddenly you love to do your own funky dances, especially to Latin rhythms, and, unlike so many other times, do not even care if anyone is watching you.

Your humor has developed and as you remind us, can be a great coping mechanism for all of us. Sometimes we meow together when you are upset (I have no idea why this works, but it does), or your toothbrush has to talk, or you and I play a complex game where I am you as a grownup and you are me as a little girl. I get to give you permission to be a lot less serious. And through it all, you remain a small man of great mystery.

Before you turned five you had the firsts of learning to ride a horse, singing in front of an audience, the two of us starting Tae Kwon Do together-- that thing you have "waited for your whole life." You also make some pretty mean pancakes.

Lake Ft. Smith

And some pretty silly faces. You are trying to be a good brother, going along with crazy exploits, enduring being dressed, positioned, and frequently bossed. However, you are also starting to take on new roles as director and crafter of stories. And you stand up for yourself. Fiercely. With your toddler sister you are more willing to indulge, occasionally adore, and even collaborate with her.

You are exacting and careful. Few adults notice or care about all of the details that you do. And you also have the artistic gift of thinking non-linearly and in multiple directions, dimensions, and story lines. Your giggles are amazing and I am so thankful for the quiet mornings when we are up before anyone else in the house. And that you still have a Dragon, who grows and that you make nests for. Dragons, are after all, sometimes very delicate. You help me to learn about patience and living with intensity and completeness. How I love you and your daisies that fill my days.

-XOXO Mama

Thinking about a boy

...A boy who's lean limber body is always a knocked arrow ready to fly, a spring
ready to bounce, a kite ready to fly. A boy who had a birthday recently! He moves with gaiety and speed. He never walks, but instead prances, climbs, and cavorts- everywhere. He knows lots of funny buttons- and he pushes them all simultaneously. Sometimes, I want to be more like this boy. I want to act fearless, even when I am not. I want to see the world as mostly friendly and entirely open-handed.

I wish that I could fabricate out of nothing a world where only my favorite things and selected people could live. I wish that I could take on any new challenge unabashedly, and, even, at times, foolheartedly. And I want to find the hilarity that you see in the world through it's quirks. I want to feel humor without embarrassment.

I wish I could see a world that said yes to my heart, even when no echoed in my ears. I wish I could stack numbers and make them dance. I want to see your magic in discovering new words. I want to learn new things, whole languages, any instrument encountered; just because. To be able to soak up stories how a tide pool catches the tide and then to see their reflections completely mesmerized.

I want to seek out stars and feel undaunted by the universe and the tinyness of my place in it.

I want to make everyone feel cherished and welcomed and friendly.

Oh, to be unfatigued and undeterred and, no matter what, to have your drive to press on! I love you dear boy and am glad you had such a wonderful birthday!

Love,
Mama

Ninjas do not want to be noticed

Recently I have participated in several discussions related to the appropriateness of children dressing in costume that is not necessarily part of their cultural heritage. My friends asked thoughtful questions. Is playing ninjas culturally insensitive? Do cowboys and indians reinforce harmful histories and stereotypes? Do we cheapen or exploit traditions by trying to act them out before we know them fully or when we recreate them out of gleaned artificial and often cheaply made materials? Does multi-gender role-play nurture identity confusion and foster ridicule? Are we learning empathy or permitting mockery? For how long should we, as parents, allow the lines of fiction and fantasy to blur with often painful historical realities?

Playing indian. Oh wait, I actually am two kinds of indian.

Perhaps your house too is frequently filled with the antics of ninjas, indian braves, historic soldiers, and knights of the round table who parade as anachronisms (in the wrong time) or anatopism (in the wrong place) alongside dragons, leprauchauns, mermaids, greek gods, and fairies. Perhaps you too find yourself correcting and saying frequently, "but wait...let me tell you about this other part of the story", or "actually the way it really happened was...", or "let me tell you about the Geneva Convention and why you should not be allowed to openly torture your prisoners" (Okay, maybe that one was just me). But at some point we have to stop moralizing play. S-T-O-P.

It is generally so much simpler and paradoxically infinitely more complex then we grown ups assume it to be. Some of the loveliest things about childhood are the abilities to imagine ones-self to have the strengths or character of any persons or creatures past or present. I think having a broad base of imaginative allows children to build empathy by imagining life through a different lens.  As parents we can expose them to as many lenses as possible. Read big and broadly, celebrate cultures and differences, nudge a bit, but only gently, and then respect their abilities to develop and formulate their own compassion and empathy for others.

Bastilla, the girl elf

A lighter cultural satire that my family has enjoyed is Wink, The Ninja Who Wanted to be Noticed. When the directives are to be silent, bland, and unmoving he is opposing, floral printed, and acrobatic- and a far cry from culturally sensitive.  Wink wants nothing more than to stand out and go against the flow. (Interestingly, my five year old Connor changed the title of the book to Wink, the Ninja Who Always Did Not Want to be Noticed. Despite my silly grown-up attempts to try several times to clarify the differences, I think he said exactly what he meant. He wants to be able to assume different identities but to be noticed and scrutinized less. To him, acting out identities is not morality play. It is not a statement about colonialism, or racism, or gender identity. It is trying to make sense of a multitude of stories and cultures and having no preconceptions about how they should be interpreted; or interrupted. As Antoine Saint Exupery's Little Prince so poignantly says, "grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to always and forever be explaining things to them."

We have an aunt who is Japanese, dad, and grandma have traveled to Japan and taught cultural awareness classes of this culture, and my sister is living there for 2 years. My husband has also studied martial arts and Japanese history extensively. So while we are far from experts, there is always the urge to explain and enlighten. But for now, sometimes there are three ninjas living in my house and their names are Sodan, Wink, and Shadow.

Ichi, Ni, San...Ready or not here they come!

Of cabbages and kings!

This week was the Medieval fair, and indeed,:

"The time has come...

[the family said],

to talk of many things. 

Of shoes--and ships--

and sealing wax--

of cabbages and kings."

[And while the sea is boiling hot,

Oh! -Hear the mermaids sing!]

-Lewis Carroll The Walrus and the Carpenter

Slice a cabbage the most thinly or
"plummet" (a.k.a. pummel) the opponent to win.

After chasing knights down, sometimes one is just speechless,

OR must undertake a quest of their own.

Presenting: Sirs Cristopher and Connor.

Baby "dragons" require great gentleness

That mermaid gave her a shell!

["O Children," said the Parents,]
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
[They're snoring, every one.]

Happy birthday to my maniac man on the move!

Dear Cris,

What an important year it has been! You my dear are learning so many things like how to unlock the secrets of letters and to have big aspirations, such as being a practicing ninja when you are 100. On your first day of kindergarten your biggest aspiration was to learn to be a spy. I have no doubt that you could have physically done it, you would have already engineered a pathway to the moon.

You have left the shadow of babyhood behind and now stand straight like a knocked bow string. You can still curl yourself into my lap, barely, but mostly I spend time looking at the back of your head as you dash to complete your next brilliant idea. You push ahead past naysayers, dream droppers, and road blockers, and sometimes even advice givers. Sometimes, sadly, even when that well wisher is me.

You take the world at full throttle and are utterly captivated by it. And you create curious and marvelous things- a periscope out of a rain gutter that stretches in a tree over our back fence (and thankfully wasn't quite long enough to reach the power lines above), custom holsters, trap doors, booby traps, propellers, catapults, bridges.

You have spunk, in abundance, and frequently lead the dance raves or the party, test your boundaries, and, completely shocking to me, even occasionally moon me. Your favorite things are bold and brassy, so it was completely fitting when you begged to join band this year to play trumpet. You were completely undaunted at being the youngest student that has ever been in the program. Yet you had to learn some valuable lessons about the power of persistence, team work, and humility. Keep coming back to those.

I hope you will continue to be undaunted by learning or paradigms of knowledge and know that it is awesome to keep learning about cosmology, and meteorology, and Gaelic, and knighthood- right now- because they are interesting to you and because only through our questions can we unlock the world.

I hope that you will let this world keep spinning you around and never ask to get off until the ride has come to a complete stop.

I hope that you will remember just how much love you have to give out from that very big, all be it, very crazy, heart of yours.

We love you so much.
X-O-X-O

Mom

A Weekend in Wichita

Two weekends ago while the daddies had to work, the mommies got to play. Thank you dears! We missed you, but had a truly delightful time. We met my best friend in Wichita. It was four kids, one hotel room, a whole lot of socks, immeasurable peanut butter, and a lot of great adventures. Wichita is really great, I am always surprised by just how much there is to do there. It has big city feel and small town charm.

We started out on day one at the zoo. We were told it was spring break but it was blissfully quiet and we probably passed less than 100 people the whole day. It was moderately cold, so I guess that helped. Here the littlest "whos" chased ducks, kissed goats, and looked for peacocks. Connor was bold enough, and cute enough, that when he asked if he could help the zookeeper feed the the barn animals he willingly said yes. It was pretty funny watching him try to throw alfalfa chunks that were nearly as tall as he was. There was lots of rock climbing, lion watching, Masi imitating. One particularly obtuse goose frolicked in the grass in the lion's cage and we were hopeful that the lioness would have five minutes of wildness coupled with delicious dinner, but, alas, her partner was too uninterested and her instincts too domesticated.

 

There were nights of star lights on the ceiling (which apparently is the most revolutionary toy ever if you didn't know) and mornings of little girls in snuggly jammies and pig tails. There was bed bouncing, naps (thank heavens!) and new Dr. Seuss.  There was hand holding and lots of laughing.

We loved driving down Douglas street and looking at all the charming statues. The day it was raining, some funny person had adorned the barefoot man statue reading a newspaper with some rain boots; which amusingly later disappeared. Exploration place gets our whole hearted endorsement as one fantastic kids museum. Here the girls saw mascots for the first time and Cali was both enthralled and completely apprehensive. She chased Scooby all over the museum, but wasn't quite sure if she should shake his hand; all the kids had fun playing tag and hide and seek with him.

At this museum there is a rather elaborate vertical medieval castle maze. It had been updated since the last time that we were there and there was now a catapult. Cris was the king and a random kid adorably told us he was Lancelot. Here they made potions, rode horses, started a garden, and practiced their welding. What great fun!

Finally we kept up our tradition of eating crepes together at a tiny warm place called Lotus Leaf Creperie. We were wrangling our children most of the meal, which made me feel a teeny tiny bit bad for the couple next to us who appeared to be on a first date, but I got over it.

On our last day, we were astonished when 1-3 inches of predicted snow turned out to be closer to 6! One final fun snow before spring decides to stick around. Pretty to look at, a little harder to play in since we had forgotten our snow boots and mittens (boo!) and Connor was crying from cold feet. A few lessons in broadening our horizons with some unusual people, and a day that went completely differently than planned, especially because nothing is open in Wichita before noon, but an enlightening and beautiful day none-the-less.

It was a weekend when we got to unplug and fully answer the sweet call of "mommy play with me" and we can't wait to do it again!

Greetings from planet Kutcha Kutcha!

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A number of months back, Cris told me that at night he never sleeps but that some aliens from planet Kutcha Kutcha come and get him every night and he goes with them. Oh yeah, and we are not actually his real parents. The aliens have brought him here to put him in our care. So in honor of his *SIX* year old birthday (and thanks to a great Groupon!) he got this book- from Planet Kutcha Kutcha, of course!

The secret lives of spies

In case you were wondering what we really do in our spare time- well I can tell you, but it is strictly confidential information.

Secret Agents "Lightning Bolt" and "Blow Up"

You will be sworn to secrecy. Any violations will result in going to the strictest of prisons where they tie you to chairs, don't even allow you to pee, and truly feed you only bread and water. Alternative identities are floating right under my nose, ahem, my knees. In actuality, my son's are two top notch, world traveling American spies known by the monikers of "Lightning Bolt" and "Blow Up" (subtly is not lost on us). They may be seen in the company of their baby sister "Mouse". These names were acquired because of one's abilities to run astoundingly fast and the other known for his marker of carrying bean sized bombs, which he uses "only to blow up the bad guy cities- mom" and his name in no way reflects his temper tendencies. The third may develop an affinity for cultured milk; still pending.

Stick with us and you also could be privy to the nuances of real spy vocabulary, like learning the difference between a password and a code. The former being something you speak to get you into somewhere and the later being something you write to find or unlock something else. Don't worry, our passwords are incredibly easy to crack, you just have to guess the one English word in the whole dictionary they are thinking of... (*Hint, it often rhymes with Bo-bistopher*). And our codes are totally legible and orderly. They often look like a cross between Hieroglyphs and Ugaritic; should you have any difficulty, consult grandpa. Should you ever have a super secret mission, call us, we are experts, about everything.

Private eye(s). (Be weary of what lies behind that door...)

Essential spy gear- used on most missions:  

• notebooks and files
• magnifying glasses
• walkie-talkies
• watches you can speak into (I always wanted one of those!)
• ear pieces that glow and allow you to read in bed
• spy detector gear (that beeps like a dying cat and scares the bejeebas out of their mother every time she walks by)
• multiple disguises- (Kudos to grandma for her development of the removable changeable Scotch tape mustache!!)
  
• a single glove (this one still baffles me, I guess if all else fails perhaps someone will mistake you as a Michael Jackson crony).
• multiple flashlights
• a suitcase
• a jar of peanut butter
• And NEVER, EVER, forget, the parachute!

Prisoners, Princes, and Patients

Perhaps one of the most perplexing, but also amusing, things about little boys is their need to be using their power to conquer evil. They are constantly at war, or running down hall screaming in capes and masks to ward off bad guys. Lately they have taken to tying grandparents up. First they strapped grandma to a chair and then last weekend they had my grandparents in handcuffs, which they told me was the direct result of him robbing a bank. Geesh.

Connor with Grandpa Dewey in handcuffs, March 2012

For the longest time I tried to eradicate this kind of play. It just seemed too violent, too domineering, too gory; too embarassing. Since I consider myself more of a pacifist this is particuarly distressing. But no matter how I drew the boundaries my kids still found/ needed creative ways to include this kind of play. We'll just use rubber bullets mom, Cris says. This is my spy detective equipment it shoots: bombs, dirt, bullets water, love, silly string, and everything else. Connor is not quite as creative. His pursuits still often begin with chop head off and then he completes them by coloring all over himself and tell me it is blood. Gross.

A nanny friend of mine reminds me that to the children it is not real. They know it is a game and feel exasperated when adults are constantly trying to get them to dumb down their pretend. They know that they can't actually shoot anyone. Sylvia, you are quite wise. It reminds me much of a marvelous quote from The Little Prince by Antoine Saint Exupery: (If you have never read this book, do yourself a favor and start it tomorrow.) "Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours et toujours leur donner des explications. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

On the flip side of the war and gore play one of my favorite things is when little boys take on the task of being sweet caregivers. Especially when they are gushing with demonstration. Then they are constantly bringing me little trinkets of affection- flowers for my hair, locks of their own hair! (Ahem, Cristopher), love notes, and objects/junk they have found around the house to wrap. Equally charming is when they play doctor. Cris has been playing doctor a lot after they had doctor week at school. We all get to be his patients.

Dr. Cristopher gives Calyn a checkup

Apparently these skills can also be transferred to animals. Last week they had taken all their stuffed animals out and bandaged them all over with masking tape. They informed me that they were doctors and that these poor animals had all been in a fire. They even wrote them lots of prescriptions! How I love these samples of sweetness!

So this is what happens when you have brothers...

You get to be a Zombie. You have to eat brains. You are given the opportunity of being re-homed. You also live on a racetrack. You have tire marks on your head. Frequently you have to duck to avoid flying arrows and other projectiles of war. The world is loud. The world is fast.

On the other hand, you have ninja powers. You will enjoy mud pies. Our home now revolves around you. You live in a castle and wear many crowns. You will have knights who will fiercely protect you. Already you are rolling over to keep up with the action. This world is boisterous. It has momentum.

You might get to be the elf princess, but you will also be a dragon slayer.

You are adored. Every toot is esteemed. We compose anthems in your name- like Joshua you fight battles (of Calico). You know the songs. You know the music. You're a rock star.

You will NEVER be bored.

Your world will be boundless. We will teach you to be strong. To fly.

And when things get too big you can always crawl back in our cave and be our little mouse. We will have tea together. Oh and by the way, we'll bring the meat.

Sand surfing

Sand- that tiny gritty stuff that runs through your fingers when you close your hand. It is the moments of everyday that we try so hard to keep forever, to remember individually, but they blend together with all the thousands of others. However, cumulatively we pack these memories together and build a house. Or we climb on top of them to gain perspective. They are what boost us up and make us feel like we are on top of the world. And sometimes they are the most important thing in that world.

Over Christmas break my family went to visit some relatives in Texas on their 85 acre cattle ranch. The property is bordered by a little creek that runs through some old cottonwood and red oak trees. There are ponds, prairies, horses, and newborn cattle. We walked around the perimeter and checked it all out and the part that enticed my kids the most was the large sand piles that were created when the pond was dredged out this summer to deepen it during a severe drought. To them they really are mini- mountains and nothing makes one feel more triumphant than climbing a mountain- or putting the last finishing touches on a sand castle.

Michael, Cris and Connor on the sand piles

I think children and striving artists understand the need to "create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists [and children] from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be.” -Anne LaMotte from Bird by Bird: Some instructions on Writing and Life