This Little Child

There is a very creative child in our midst.  William Wordsworth said that children come to us "trailing clouds of glory...from God, who is their home." This child came to us trailing clouds of glitter and spools of ribbons.

This is the picture she drew on her whiteboard.

This is the necklace she made for me out of "Cheerios covered with glue covered with sprinkles" and the tabs from all the pop cans leftover from the party last night.

This is the bracelet she made for Ptolemy. "He can eat it."

This is the gym in the corner out of a mini tramp and couch cushions.  The other kids are now paying a gym membership to use this corner.

 This is her sand bucket on the kitchen counter with homemade potpourri in it, including cut up straws and fresh dirt.

This is one of the many things she can do with tin foil, sprinkles and Elmer's. Mind you, all of this was just today. Yesterday, she decorated the house with palm trees, set up a carnival in the front yard, made a 30-layer cracker and peanut butter tower and traded bedrooms with Freestone.

  This is Araceli.  If you were one of those people who can see auras, you would see a big, pink, sparkly, rainbow-colored light around her head with sparklers shooting out in all directions.  Sometimes the aura turns muddy and the sparklers go dark and we grit our teeth and we wait.  That's what makes it all the more fabulous when the lights go up and the creative juices flow out of this little head and flood our house with the detritus of a thousand little ideas.

She might look like she's resting, but she's only dreaming of what to do with an empty box, a pair of scissors, a magpie feather and a stack of origami paper.  With Araceli, the possibilities are truly endless.

Cream of the Crop

Ptolemy is a featherweight.  It's official.  He went to his 12-month check-up, and he had fallen off the bottom of the growth chart.  The doc says we should pump him full of heavy cream all day long, which sounds like a dream come true for me.  I love creamy dairy products!  (Whipped cream on turkey sandwiches, anyone?)  I distinctly remember asking my mom when I was eight, "If the Queen of England came to visit us, would we serve her cream instead of milk?"  Her reply was sortof noncommittal and perplexed.  I didn't understand how that question could have more than one obvious answer.  Of COURSE we would serve the Queen heavy cream instead of ordinary milk!  And now I can say I'll settle for nothing less for Prince Ptolemy.

He now drinks Half & Half out of a sippy cup constantly.  It won't be long before I'm soaking all of his food in bacon grease.  I really think he's such a shrimp because of his surroundings.  His world is not geared toward babies.  By all rights, a baby should be nourished while rocking in a chair in a quiet nursery, listening to soothing music.  Not dangling precariously from his mother's breast as she uses both hands to fill a cooler with ice and soda cans for the two dozen teens that are running through the yard practicing their primal screams.  The poor kid doesn't have a chance.

But, despite Tolly's waif-like, 18-pound frame, his verbal skills are up there with the best of 'em.  He can say the usual words, mama, daddy, uh-oh, go, izzit (what is it), diptaboo (peek-a-boo) and others like Golda, Star, Prestie, Scott, Coco, kitty kitty and gobble gobble.  His funniest word is "Mom," said just like the older kids.  "Moo-oom?"  He imitates inflection very well, even if his speech is still garbled.  He copies everything people say.  I know, all babies copy everything people say, but...it's so funny!  The doctor didn't come right out and say Ptolemy was the most beautiful, funniest, happiest, smartest baby he had ever seen, but I know that's what he was thinking.  It's what I was thinking, for sure.  We love this little featherweight!

Il le Fait!

The French Immersion program is working!  (Cue accordion music!)  I don't think I've ever been so giddy in my life!  Freestone speaks French!  How amazing is that?  I'm too elated to even apologize for bragging!  I've gone through several periods of concentrated effort to learn French, including three months in Paris when I was 14 and living with French roommates in college.  I did the same thing with Spanish.  Two summers in Spain, stacks of notebooks full of notes, a dog-eared English-Spanish dictionary, close friendships with the sous chefs at Lamb's, where I waitressed.  I think I ruined it all the summer I worked for a French man in Madrid.  Ostia and zut alors, I still haven't sorted out the mess.  My Spanish is only passable and my French is so rudimentary that French people I've tried to talk to just sigh and answer in English.  Like mixing gin and vodka, amateurs should never mix two foreign languages and expect anything but a babbling idiot as a result.  Last year when I took classes in French, I found that everything I translated had to go through a Spanish filter before French came out.  Sometimes in desperation, I substituted Spanish words and became incensed when the French teacher didn't understand.  It's a foreign language, isn't it?  Aren't they all the same!?  Highly ineffectual communication process.

But Freestone can speak!  Here's what he said to his teacher after school yesterday:

Est-ce que tu as presque sept ans, Freestone?
Non, j'ai presque sept and a half.
Ah, tu as presque sept et demi.
Oui.
Quel jour est votre anniversaire?
juin.  juin dix-neuf.
Tres bien.  En Francais, on dit le jour avant le mois.
Oh.  Le dix-neuf juin.
Tres bien.  Alors, tu dois faire votre devoir avant de jouer, d'accord?
D'accord.

I have never heard anything so sweet.  He understands!  He speaks!  He is seven - and a half! - and he can do something I've always wanted to master.  I'm so proud of him.  After school, two of his friends came over, one from Madagascar and one French, both children of the French teachers, and I heard both languages spoken.  Best playdate ever!  Of course, speaking French pretty much guarantees that he'll go someplace like The Philippines or India on his mission, but hey!  Then I can listen to Tagalog or  Hindi.  For now, this mom is basking in the sweet sounds of an almost-seven-and-a-half-year-old voice en francais.  I'll have to ask him if he knows how to say, "Help!  I'm melting in hot lava!"  I bet he does.

Stream of Consciousness Vs. Homework

Homework.  I know all the rules.  Have a snack first , designate a certain place and time to do it, make sure there are no interruptions. Yeah, right.  Here's homework time with Freestone:

"Free, come here and bring me your folder."
.
"But I can't!  I can't reach it!  (It is inches from his face.)

"Seriously, bring it and let's get started.  When you're finished with your worksheet, I'll check it."

"But how am I going to get to you?  The wood floor is lava!  I can't walk on it!  I'll have to go to Iceland to cool off my feet!  I know what to do!  I'll travel by blanket!"

He then spends the next ten minutes traversing the wood floor by laboriously dragging a blanket under his feet. Nobody else can concentrate on their homework because of all the grunting.  It's Freestone's way or no way, because there are only certain methods of getting across lava fields, and moms don't know them.  When moms interrupt, you have to start over.  And then there's practicing.

"Free, now is a good time for me to practice with you.  Go get your violin."

"Mom.  What if a fly was in flying lessons to learn how not to be scared of flying and all his teacher did was yell at him the whole time?"

Is there a message in there somewhere for me?  So I say in my nicest voice, "I'm so excited to hear you play!  Let's get started!"

"Mom.  If I had a meeel-yun dollars, I would buy a private jet with a big pot of honey in it.  And a big pot of Nutella."

(If I had a million dollars, I would hire someone to do homework and practicing with Freestone.)

Freestone's ultimate dream is to fly to outer space.  I don't think that's necessary.  He's already there.

Gingerbread House Built for Eight

Being a parent of six is intense.  It's like being inside a life-size gingerbread house with very thick walls and having the task of chewing your way out.  You like gingerbread.  Love it, even!  You always wanted to live in a gingerbread house where the walls are soft and fragrant and decorated with creamy frosting and multiple kinds of candy.  It was your dream to feast on gingerbread every day.  Now that the gingerbread house has been built, though, it's turned out a lot bigger than you planned.  It's a big-a** house.  But chewing your way out is satisfying and delicious, and life is beautiful in a jewel-toned gumdrop kind of way.

It's just that sometimes, you get full and want to take a rest from eating gingerbread.  Well, taking a break wasn't part of the plan.  Your job was to eat those walls.  That was the plan.  People look at you and say, "Well, you chose to live there.  You built that house.  What's your problem?"  Oh, I don't know.  Have you ever TRIED to eat a life-size, metaphorical gingerbread house?  As jobs go, it's a sweet one, but it's sortof a Herculean task.

We had the fun idea tonight of the whole family visiting each child's room and listening to them play a song on their instrument before bedtime.  Yum!  Pass the gingerbread!  A half hour later and envisioning myself knee-deep in nauseatingly sweet frosting, I was pounding on the gingerbread door.  Let me out!!  Kids were jumping on beds, dogs were barking, instruments were being tossed around precariously, and videos were being made of all the chaos.

I thought:  "Quality family time blows!"

Now all the kids are tucked into their ginger-beds.  As much as I wanted to vomit up a pile of icing icicles while the kids were awake, now I feel almost like I could eat a sugar windowpane or two.  Life in this gingerbread house is intense.  It's love and loathing, joy and despair, fatigue and elation, gratitude and fear, and it's all mixed into one giant cocktail that you hope will wash down the mouthfuls of gingerbread that have become your existence.  Learning how to love and enjoy massive, relentless amounts of gingerbread is both far more wonderful and far more challenging than you ever imagined, and it takes patience, acceptance and dedication that you didn't even know you had and still aren't sure you possess.

Even when you've had enough, you keep at those walls because someday, when you've eaten up your gingerbread house, you'll move into a nice, sensible house where the walls aren't painfully delicious and exquisitely beautiful.  The walls will be bare and the house will be empty.

And you'll be hungry.

Garden Guitar Recital

While the boys were at Freestone's first soccer game of the season this morning, the girls attended a delightful garden guitar recital where Ruby and other celebrities performed, accompanied by a strong autumn breeze.  From the first note to the last piece of delicious quiche and mini macaroon, the recital was wonderful.  

Ruby went to a lot of work to prepare.  Here's THE PRACTICING and THE PERFORMANCE.  And the best part of any story, the bloopers!  Take One and Take Two.

Friday Night Lights

It was a beautiful night to live in a small town and cheer at a high school football game.  Look at that sky! 

Do you like my shirt? No, I'm not preggo. But thanks for wondering.

As awesome as the Davis High football team is, we were really there to see the halftime show:

I think those are the Jr. D'Ette girls, anyway.  The D'Ettes ran a clinic for the girls all this week at 4:00 every afternoon and our talented friend, Libby, invited the girls to participate.  Heatstroke notwithstanding, the clinic was great fun!  Don't you see Araceli and Xanthe out there on the field?  I stuck Xanthe's hair in a ponytail right on top of her head so I could spot her, but I still had a hard time.  I did see Ari do some great moves!

Aren't they adorable dancers?  Ruby was impressed by the real D'Ettes' performance and inspired to work hard and try out someday.  On the way out of the stadium, we ran into Ptolemy's BFF.  Camden tottered right over to Tolly and hugged and kissed him!  Too much cuteness for one football field!

So...the first week of school, despite a few glitches, went out with a smile.  Ain't life grand?

This is Your Big Chance to Be Hypnotized and Contribute to Society at the Same Time!

THIS is a GREAT opportunity to support one of my favorite people in the whole world, my nephew Jackson.  Don't tell me you have plans Saturday night at 10 PM.  Whatever you had planned, this is better.  Hope to see you there!  Even if it weren't a benefit for an amazing new non-profit Jennie is spearheading, it would be a great show by a hypnotist.  When was the last time you were entertained by a hypnotist??  I haven't been hypnotized since my high school graduation party, where I was chosen to go up onstage.  Under the spell of the hypnotist, I acted like I was Scott Dopp, strutting around the stage talking about the tennis team.  The crowd went wild.  Had I been conscious, it might have been one of my most embarrassing moments ever.

By the way, Happy Birthday, Jackson!  We love ya!

The Tooth Bat

Freestone's front tooth only got to attend one day of second grade before it fell out.  Too bad, tooth!  Just as Ptolemy is getting the most adorable front teeth ever, Freestone is losing his!  (Notice the cookie dough in Tolly's mouth.)

Free came to me with his tooth in his hand late last night and we chose a Love Box to put it in under his pillow.  As we were walking back to his room, we saw a bat outside, hovering around the window.  Free thought it was cool and said, "That's my tooth fairy."  A bat?  Yep.  Boys' tooth fairies are bats.  Didn't you know that?  I'm not one to question a Tooth Bat who leaves a dollar under a kid's pillow!  Plus, Free went right back to bed when I told him the Tooth Bat would fly away if he wasn't asleep.  Frankly, The Bat is more on the ball than the fairies who are supposed to leave money for the girls at our house.  Some of those tooth fairies are pretty flaky.  The Bat got the job done the first night, so he definitely has my vote as Best Tooth Fairy Ever.  Here's Freestone's version of the story.

Kinder Monster

And then there's Xanthe.  Thank heavens she had ballet this morning after we waved good-bye to the other kids.  The one excruciating hour between ballet and kindergarten almost put both of us over the edge.  While I worked on a violin, Xanthe managed to watch ten minutes of Curious George, moaning and fretting the whole time and finally turning it off, saying, "I WON'T watch it!  I'm hungry!"  I fixed her some French toast and she screamed for the duration of the 30 seconds it took to microwave it, "It's done!  It's done!  It's done, Mom!  Take it out!  It's done!"  She had a fit trying to open the peanut butter, then another fit when I helped her.  Next item on her agenda:  crying about not being able to spread the peanut better, then trying to wipe it off the French toast when Mom spread it.  I'm not kidding, I was thinking, "What's 18 minus 5?  Thirteen?  Only 13 more years until she leaves home."  That seemed like a big number, so I focused on eleven, the number of minutes until we could leave to walk to the school.  You're probably thinking, "Oh, poor Xanthe, she's just scared about the first day of school and her mean mother has no patience."  Yeah, have you ever actually spent an hour alone with Xanthe?  I literally thought she was going to have a stroke.

Like magic, Xanthe was all smiles as soon as she put on her backpack and started up the street.  She was still nervous, though, as evidenced by the barrage of questions.  "Where is my desk?  What does my teacher look like?  What if you're not there when I get out?  What if I get lonely?  Do I need crayons?  Who will be there?"  As soon as Scott and I dropped her off, I bolted home to finish my work, but ended up making chocolate chip cookies instead.  I'm a chocolate chip cookie junkie and I needed a fix!  As soon as I had wolfed down five big spoons of dough and inhaled a dozen cookies, I could almost think clearly.  Clearly enough to look at the clock and calculate that I had to be at the school in 4 minutes to pick up Xanthe.

"I  have a picture in my backpack and my teacher gave me a nametag and that kinnergarten was weally short and I'm weally hungry where's my snack and what should I do now and what are you going to do are you going to watch me have my snack and I want the windows rolled up and I want to listen to the 'cital music and when do the kids get home are they having lunch now where are we going?"  She's baaa-aaack!

Five minutes after we walked in the door, a mom from up the street called wondering if Xanthe could play.  Can she EVER!  I nearly sprained an ankle running for the car, dragging Xanthe by the arm.  We squealed to a halt in front of the friend's house and I shoved Xanthe out the door with a bag of cookies to share.

They say childhood is fleeting.  I'll tell you what's fleeting.  An hour of kindergarten, that's what.