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

Seventh Heaven

Polka dot princess

My sweet baby turned seven months old this past week. So hard to believe. This has been a month of smiles, sits, swings, and now, sand. What lovely transitions we have been seeing. Mostly we've been learning more of her sense of humor. The joy she typically exudes has has sprouted into laughter. It is always awesome to see just what is funny to a baby and to remember that so many things they are seeing for the very first time. She laughs at her brothers, (mostly at their jumps), at faces reappearing, at bouncing, at others colliding, at swinging. She laughs at being startled and she laughs when I admonish Cris for sucking her toes.

Thursday's child, has far to go, but she can now sit up

 The other day as I was holding her facing out by the armpits, she leaned to far forward and did an actual front flip in my hands. After a few seconds of tears she laughed at the feat. Then she reached out her hands together admonishing me to clap for her. I do clap for you. Go baby go! Take risks, be brave, Smile at your falterings, find those reasons to laugh in every situation. I applaud your little words for mamama, ta-da, (dad) and momomom (grandma) and your need to know. I applaud your gentle spirit and how you seek to comfort as well as be comforted- your little snuggles and the way you always rub my arm and my face when I am holding you. And I applaud how you can use that little thumb to make yourself so content.

I love that trademark tongue; perhaps because it is an inherited trait you get from me. I love how you stick it out for slyness, for sillyness; and if you are always trying to stretch it to something you just can't reach. You sticks it out to concentrate, when reaching and when plotting just how you are going to reach every beautiful thing in the world before you.

She has perfected the art of sitting and has the most perfectly poised balance. She focuses on every tiny detail and can find the most minute objects before her. She always seems to make a plan before deciding where she is going to go next. She scopes things out in a 360 shuffle and then does a lovely side stretch to show off how far she's come.  And if you are not looking, somehow, she shuffles about three little feet from A to B. Slowly to all fours and then down. But if you are looking, she stops.

Starbright

Cups are something she begs for. Water is super fun from a cup and she does a pretty reasonable job of drinking it if someone else holds the cup. We have been introducing some new foods. She is skeptical of the mushy things and only eager for us to give her authentic food. Sugar snap pea pods, fresh from the farm, are currently her favorite thing to gnaw on. She gives up great protest when it is time to take it away.

Pea pods!

Yesterday I sat her down in a sandbox. The uncertainty made her cry the first few minutes. Then an apprehensive taste. She was shortly, one sloppy little sister. We would expect nothing less...

Sandy smiles

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