Twelfth Night, or As You Will

Harper has, to this point, rarely had strong opinions about her clothes, but that has begun to change. She has begun to change, in fact, several times a day, to the point that I've had to reprimand her because the laundry, it overwhelms. She was so excited about the Arrival of Fall that she dug around in her closet until she found a garbage bag full of fall and winter clothes from last year, which she greeted like long lost friends who are all just a touch short in the stride. She has been wearing them, ninety degree weather notwithstanding. Here are some samples of her burgeoning sartorial sensibility. Be forewarned that she is bold in her assertion that polka dots and stripes can, and definitely should, be worn in perfect harmony. And that floral gardening gloves are a perfect accessory:
A little Degas pose, a kicky knee sock, a little sister wielding a tiny plastic container:


Knee socks are factoring large in her overall look. We found some cute ones on sale at Target that are conveniently polka dotted and striped.

In completely unrelated news, I've had four friends have babies in the last couple of weeks. Everett, Clayton, Lauren, and Crowley...you are a beloved bunch. The miracle that is a newborn baby gets me every single time.

As You Like It

For the last week I have had a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich for lunch almost every day. Except yesterday, because we were out of bread. And I thought about just having peanut butter and Nutella with no bread, but that seemed a little desperate and sad.

No, I am not pregnant.

No, the kids do not get to eat peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches. They have almond butter on Ezekiel bread with some raspberries on the side. Or something similarly healthy and decidedly not infused with hazelnut chocolate spread. We have, as a family, been going to Paciugo for gelato once a week for the past three weeks. It is the kids' first taste of ice cream that isn't soy or rice-based. They are, as you can imagine, Big Fans. Both Hudson and Harper have chosen chocolate (or "chot-yet" in Hudson-ease)each time, and Helena has had mango.

I saw "As You Like It" in London many years ago. Outdoors in a park. It's a silly play. Confusing. A girl pretends to be a boy for some very complicated reason that I can't recall. But I do like the names Rosalind AND Celia, and remember presenting them to the husband as possibilities when we were naming Helena. I believe he gave them both a resounding NO, for some very complicated reasons that I can't recall.

Speaking of comedy that isn't particularly comedic, the kids are in the phase of taking normal words and pretending they are hilarious. A few weeks ago it was the word 'toe'. I would say, "Hudson, what would you like for lunch?" and he would answer, "An almond butter TOE sandwich!!" and he and Harper would just about pass out with the laughing. The hysteria-inducing phrase for this week is "NOBODY NOWHERE!!" Harper will say, "Hudson, you are NOBODY NOWHERE!!" and he will say, "There is a NOBODY NOWHERE in the bathroom!!!" and then there will be giggles a million and I will sigh because it is so loud.

I've just finished The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham, and for the first time ever, I think the movie might be better than the book. The book isn't bad, it just isn't as deeply redemptive as I found the movie to be. I like restoration. I need restoration.

The husband has been watching "Man vs. Wild" with Harper and Hudson, and yesterday I had to tell Hudson, "Yes, but when Bear Grylls is home with his family and not trying to Survive In The Wild, I am CERTAIN he puts his pee-pee in the potty and NOT on the ground." I thought it was really cute that Hudson introduced himself to a new friend as "Hudson Bear" on Monday. And then they chased balls around and tried to figure out who was taller.

Harper was trying to get Hudson to help her pick up a few days ago and she said, "Hudson! Use your BIG MUSCLES to go put the blocks up in your room!" I did not teach her that. It worked, incidentally. He's also gotten pretty good at feeding Helena her yogurt:


To celebrate the last day of summer, we went swimming this morning. It's supposedly going to get a bit cooler here this weekend, so this may be our last splash of the year.

We've had Sasha for around 8 months now, and for 8 months she has slept in her little crate in our room. And in the past month, for unknown reasons, she decided this was a wholly unsatisfying state of affairs and had begun to whine. So we got a water bottle and squirted her in the face when she whined. Which she found unpleasant, but not enough so that she stopped whining. And I found groping for the spray bottle at 4 am to be quite frustrating. So I did something I said I would NEVER DO. I gave her a Silkwood-style scrub down and then, can you guess? We have a dog in our bed. Actually, after the first night when I slept very little because Sasha seemed to think that curled up in the general area of my womb was her own personal heaven, I insisted she stay on the husband's side. And now she does. She and the husband are quite pleased with themselves.

Henry VIII

We went to the zoo today and there were some new meerkittens (which reminds me of the book Life of Pi, which the husband and I read aloud to each other back in the Days Before Kids) and a zookeeper told me that it had been a bit of a Meerkat Scandal, because the mother of the kittens was not the dominant female in the mob (I just looked that term up on Wiki, so it might be incorrect, but it fits the story quite nicely) and usually this means the dominant female will dispose of the babies. Which is just so horrible. There is so much that is disturbing about animal behavior, really. Anyway, the zookeepers managed to spirit the babies away and gradually reintroduce them, and the dominant female had accepted them. Though while we were watching, the poor mother (Hagar?) was trying to nurse all six babies at once, which was so exhausting apparently that she folded over and fell asleep on top of them, and then three of the other adult meerkats came over and started intruding and nibbling on the babies in what I really hope was a gesture of goodwill and grooming, and not a taste-testing.

In other disturbing news from the animal kingdom, the husband stepped out into the backyard last week to smoke his pipe, and a beheaded bird came flying off the roof and landed right in front of him. He looked up and there was some sort of Bird of Prey (a peregrine? a falcon? it was BIG.) peering down, irritated that the decapitation had been interrupted. The husband calmly walked back inside and got the camera, quietly telling me that under no circumstances should the kids walk outside. In an odd twist of fate, I had, a few nights before, watched "The Other Boleyn Girl" and had spent some time feeling incredible revulsion and sadness that humankind ever (and still does!) used beheading as a form of punishment. There's really just the one story, told over and over. Fallen, fallen, fallen.

Clearly I am still in my blue phase.

Last night at dinner Helena was having bow-tie pasta with eggplant marinara, and about halfway through, she got a twinkle of recognition in her eye and begin placing each piece up on top of her hair. Like a bow. Which was very cute, and necessitated a hair washing. I didn't get a picture, but this is another funny thing she does lately. Because carrots are for ears, apparently:Yesterday I asked her if she wanted a piece of toast and she emphatically DID, so I popped the bread into the toaster and she burst into tears. I tried to explain that the bread would be right back, all warm and toasty, but she would not be convinced.

I have some more swirling thoughts about sovereignty and Sovereignty and how I think Harper's cranky demeanor over the past couple of years can be directly traced to the moment she realized she was not the sun, and how Henry and all the earthly kings who came before him and after him got so angry when they realized that they, for all their power, were not the sun. I am not the sun. I did not make the sun. I am to the point where that does not make me cranky. Though I would like some absolute allegiance from these two, who have managed to play together without bickering and screeching for about 15 minutes total out of the past two days. I got pictures:

Love's Labour's Lost

The title would have been cuter if I had actually managed to post this yesterday. Ah, well. There was a terrific episode of "ER" in the early days called "Love's Labor's Lost." It was about a woman who delivers a preterm baby and then the unthinkable happens. I won't spoil it in case you ever come across it on cable and get drawn in. Speaking of heart-rending television drama, I came across "Saving Private Ryan" a few nights ago and said to myself, "Only an hour and fifteen minutes left. I seem to remember the really hard to watch stuff is at the beginning when they storm Normandy. And, gee, I can't remember, DO they indeed Save Private Ryan?" And with that, I broke an important personal movie watching commandment: DO. NOT. EVER. WATCH. WAR. MOVIES. I carved this particular commandment into stone when I was in college and watched "Glory" for extra credit in a history class I was taking. It took me weeks to recover; possibly months. Perhaps I have yet to recover. Then my roommate persuaded me to watch "Platoon" and I couldn't even finish it and still thought I might need to be hospitalized with the trauma. And it seems every couple of years I would think that maybe I could handle it: "A Midnight Clear" which I thought might not be quite AS excruciating because it's about an act of surrender--nope, heart torn to shreds. And the Kenneth Branagh "Henry V", which managed to devastate me in iambic pentameter. Then there were movies that pretended they weren't war movies. "Legends of the Fall" comes to mind. One minute you're watching these glorious vistas of Montana, and the next there's poor Elliot from "E.T." all tangled up and dying in the barbed wire in France. Or "Schindler's List" which I of course knew was going to be terribly upsetting, but I watched it anyway, because I just felt as though I should. Speaking of Schindler, there's an olive tree planted in his memory at Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial outside of Jerusalem. Now there's a place that will cleft your heart in twain. There's a huge pile of shoes. Shoes that belonged to actual people and their actual children who had no idea they were on their way to their horrific end of days. And there is this black cavern with a single candle reflected in thousands of tiny mirrors, the names of the children killed being intoned quietly in the background. My heart is physically aching anew just thinking of it right now. This, my friends, is a very cheery post. So, back to Private Ryan. It turns out there is lots to destroy me in the last hour and fifteen minutes. And yet I couldn't stop watching. I was able to pinpoint what it is that is so terribly upsetting to me, other than the obvious theme that war is a horrible horrible hideous horrible state of affairs. I get incredibly stressed and anxious and horrified in the battle scenes when it's so loud and chaotic and smoky that you can't tell who the Good Guys are. And I really could have lived my whole life without realizing that in the heat of battle, it's as easy to shoot your best friend as it is to shoot the enemy. So then I haven't been able to get past that metaphor and I lie awake in bed imagining what it would be like if we had never been to war ever. Would the world have been destroyed long ago? Would we be speaking Russian? German? French? Arabic? Cherokee?

Now, let's have some happy news. Well, Harper read two books all by herself today: Snow by Uri Shulevitz (she even sounded out 'Shulevitz'!), and The Yellow Ball by Molly Bang. Helena likes to wear Harper's bike helmet, which is much too large.
She's also gotten proficient at pushing her baby in the stroller while holding a tympani mallet.
Baby is pronounced "bubby", which is also the pronunciation for puppy. My kids talk funny, all three. Hudson has been doing lots of actual vacuuming, after first checking with me to make sure that army men do indeed vacuum. Of course I wanted to answer, because of my current bout with war melancholia, that sure, army men vacuum as long as they aren't being shot to bits in a bell tower by a Panzer tank while Edith Piaf softly plays on a victrola.

The Tempest

Yesterday afternoon we were playing out in the back yard when a storm blew in. We were speculating as to why the cicadas crescendo in unison--are they excited? angry? reading the same sheet music? Then I had this weird sense of foreboding, which isn't like me really, (unlike the Husband, who is Mister Worst Case Scenario)and as I pushed Helena in the swing, watched Harper frolic in the sprinkler, and cautioned Hudson that it might not be entirely wise to leap from the top of the slide whilst holding his wooden knife AND his Nerf gun, I found myself wondering what would happen if I got struck by lightning. I suppose we need to have a little 911 tutorial. I'll try to do it without terrifying them. "If Mommy should be struck dead by lightning, DO NOT TOUCH ME! and instead find the phone and dial this number and then a bunch of strangers will come help you. Probably firemen, Hudson! So that part will be fun for you!!" Too much? Probably. Anyway, we came in when the rain began in torrents.

What else? Harper has had a big week. She finished up her summer ballet class and I got to watch the last class. She performed admirably, I thought. That's her new friend Isabella, who is from Australia and likes to giggle. Harper came home from class a few weeks ago and had this little exchange with Hudson:

Harper: thump, thump!
Harper: Hudson, say "What was that?"
Hudson: What was DAT?
Harper: MY WIND!!

Apparently, Isabella had let loose a little wind in class and Harper had inquired as to its source. You can imagine how many times "My WIND!"has been gleefully proclaimed in our house since I told Harper what it meant, and since, instead of saying "thump, thump!" they've actually been able to recreate the authentic Wind. It's so much funnier than a knock-knock joke.

Harper and I also finally finished Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It took us about a year because we were pretty leisurely about it. She has really enjoyed it and is reading pretty well. The next goal is to wean her off Reading Lessons with black underlines and familiar words. I was pleased to hear her sounding out almost all of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish all by herself yesterday. However annoying one might find Dr. Seuss, (and I confess that I do find him rather annoying) they are good for phonics practice because there's no sight word memory that's going to help with "Gox" or "Zans" or "Zeep".

I am officially losing my hearing. I know this because when I am watching a movie and there is no closed captioning, I start lip reading, and still I miss things. Another close family member, who is not my father, and who, if we lived in ancient Rome I would refer to as "Mater", has some Issues With Hearing, so it's not surprising that I would too. It's a world encased in cotton fluff. It could be worse. Maybe I'll get one of those little megaphone things to hold up to my ear. I've been watching and enjoying the Masterpiece Theatre production of Dickens' "Little Dorrit". I wait until everyone's in bed, put on my headphones, and turn the volume up to max. Little (Amy) Dorrit, in case you aren't familiar with the story (I wasn't) is a young girl who, after spending her entire life poor but hardworking, has a reversal of fortune and has to learn to be a proper lady of leisure. It's entertaining AND it's given me lots to think about. As much as I love the idea of taking Grand Tours of Europe and sitting around doing needlework and playing the pianoforte while wearing a lovely gown, I think, as my friend Melissa used to say to her kids when they grumbled about chores, "Our bodies were made for work!" What is that supposed to look like for us? We consider (or at least I do) loading and unloading the dishwasher to be work. Or loading and unloading the washer and dryer. Or loading our cart at the grocery store. Ma Ingalls would be amazed. So even though our "work" isn't really much work, we in the comfortable middle class still hire a housekeeper so we can do...what, exactly? Blog? Cart our kids around to activities? Volunteer? Go to Bible studies? I actually do not have anyone to clean my house. And my house is not clean most days. My body might have been made for work, but my heart leans toward leisure. I would like that to be different.

Five elements of a story

CHARACTER:


Harper really likes the Olivia books by Ian Falconer. For the uninitiated, Olivia is a pig who acts and dresses very much like a precocious 6 year old girl. There is also a television show based on the books, but we watch it rarely. Mostly I don't mind Olivia (the books are clever, even if Olivia can be a touch impertinent), but when Harper started referring to Hudson as "her little bother, and when I noticed that she was spending a fair amount of time teetering and sashaying around rather imperiously on her toes/cloven hooves, and to rather porcine effect, I decided that perhaps it was time to scale back a bit.

PLOT:

That's Hudson doing some karate on the deck. His other favorite thing to do these days is drum. A couple of days ago while I was brushing my teeth, he sat down at the drums (which are in our bedroom because I can close the door and go to the opposite side of the house and it helps my nerves) and began to do a little something that sounded kind of like a Beat poetry reading. It went like this:

Hudson: (in a hushed,rhythmic voice) Once upon a time dere was an ARMY MAN!
cymbal: tsh, tsh, tsh
bass drum: BOOM.
Hudson: And a HUNTER!
bass drum: BOOM. Boom.
snare: tatta, tatta, tatta.
Hudson: And they had their GUNS! (which is pronounced "DUNS")
(BOOM, BOOM, tatta TATTA, TATTA, tsh tsh tsh, TSH!)
Hudson: And the army man said, "I will put my PISTOL (BOOM, BOOM). In my POTTET! betuz I will SNEAT UP on a MONSTER! (BOOM!)
And then the HUNTER (tsh, tsh, tsh) said, "Yet's RUN to the ROTTET SHIP!"
bass drum: BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
cymbal: CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!


And that was the end. Apparently, the HUNTER is not as Sure About Monsters as the ARMY MAN.

Also, Harper has been asking for a while to have her fingernails painted. So, on Saturday, I complied:


They are very pale pink, which she found slightly disappointing.

SETTING:

Well, it is Houston in August. So, a touch WARM. But dry, which means the mosquitoes are mostly too hot to come out and play, which is something to be thankful for.

CONFLICT:

We ventured out for a little bike ride this morning at 9:30, to avoid the Siren Song of the Television, and it was going fine until Harper got hot after about 6 minutes and began to have some issues with her bike. "My bike is TOO HARD!! And this helmet is VERY HOT! And something is NOT RIGHT with my PEDALS!! AND URGHARGH I CAN'T GET IT TO GO FASTER THE PEDALS ARE STICKING AND THE BRAKES AREN'T RIGHT AND DADDY NEEDS TO FIX THESE BRAKES!! THIS BIKE IS....TRASH!" It was a very impressive display. I told her to stop yelling and that we were going to have a talk about her attitude as soon as we got home. I've just started reading a book that advocates delaying formal education (it's titled Better Late Than Early) and keeping your kids home in order to spend the majority of your time with them building their character through household work, unstructured play, lots of reading aloud, and community service. It seems pretty intuitive to me, but it is the reality of the actual doing of it that is hard. I get exhausted being as counter-cultural as we are as a family (hey, everyone--here come the vegan homeschoolers whose kids don't go to Sunday school!!) that taking on one more thing, even if it seems like the best thing, is a little daunting. I've been waffling about whether or not to "start kindergarten" with Harper this fall, and have decided (I think) to do so. Mostly because it seems foolish not to take advantage of the two hours she and I get to ourselves when the other two are napping in the afternoon. I'm trying to commit to a curriculum.

THEME:
Joy, mostly. With some irritation and fatigue at intervals far more frequent than I'd like.

Eighteen months

Today is Helena's half birthday. I'm going to write down her day today because at some point, I might find it interesting.

7:30am She wakes up. Harper goes in and gives her a couple of wooden puzzles to work on while I'm drinking my coffee and getting their breakfast ready (a very labor intensive activity which, this morning, required me to pour their cereal into a bowl)

8am After having thrown all of the puzzle pieces out of her crib, she begins to chant, "Ma-MA! Ma-MA! Ma-MAA!" I change her size 4 diaper and nurse her. Then she has her breakfast: oatmeal mixed with a jar of baby food (apples and blueberries this morning) and then an entire banana which I have to cut into slices or she would shove the entire thing in her mouth at once.

8:30am Down from the high chair and she is off. I really need another baby gate that isn't being used as a doggie gate. She can run now and she darts from one room to the next, smiling and babbling and not minding at all when a certain brother or sister yells, "NO HELENA!" or, "NO UHYAYNUH!" when she gets all into their stuff. She is still very disposed to put everything in her mouth, especially very hazardous things like marbles just the exact size of her esophagus. Thankfully, she spits most things out after a brief taste.

9:30am If we're staying home, I put her down for a morning nap. Today we went to Target. It was pretty empty, so I let Harper and Hudson run races down the aisles. Helena watched from the cart and squealed her approval. Hudson performed some very impressive karate moves on aisle 9.

11:30am Lunch. Today it was yogurt and some peas and brown rice. Usually she has some grapes or cantaloupe or watermelon or blueberries too.

12-3:15pm A nice, long nap. In her sleep sack, which she calls her "sleezak" which makes her sound kind of like a little Polish baby.

3:30-5pm Play time. This afternoon we tried out the new pool we picked up at Target for $14.99 today, which seemed kind of expensive until I realized it's still five dollars cheaper than the $20 we paid to go to the new West U. pool a few weeks ago.

5:15-6pm Dinner. Tonight she ate a large bowl of black beans, some diced tomatoes, some quacamole, and then applesauce. Then the rest of Hudson's black beans because she cried a little when I mistakenly assumed that surely her stomach must be about to explode and tried to remove her bib.

6pm Bath. And teeth brushing, which she really enjoys.

6:30pm I nurse her and put her to bed. In her sleezak. I put her down, she pops in fingers index and middle on her left hand and, I assume, falls asleep. I do not hear from her for 13 hours. It's beautiful.

She is saying lots of words, sometimes on cue. I don't know how much she weighs--maybe 20 pounds? She is mostly wearing size 18 months clothes, and size 5 shoes, I think. Her hair is really curly in the back and I had the husband do a dread-lockectomy on a couple of tangled beyond repair ringlets yesterday. She is finally discovering books, but I have yet to read successfully with all three kids. Helena wants to interact with the book by grabbing it and turning 3 pages at once and maybe tasting it a little, which tries the patience of Harper and Hudson. Hudson gave her a little coloring lesson on Sunday:


In other big Hudson-related family news, there is this: I'm doing as well as can be expected. A little frayed, perhaps. But the boys in this family just love to drum. So the girls in this family just have to embrace the rhythm.