Another milestone

Matteo stood himself upright today, unaided by any surrounding stationary object, such as a chair or table. He was sittiing atop a pillow-topped mattress, actually--not the most stable surface under the feet. Still he managed to slowly maneuver himself into s freestanding position and stay there for a good 20-30 seconds before lowering himself back down as his legs shook with the effort. We are proud moms.

Nature Hunt

We had a wonderful day with the boys today. I made Tina get out of bed, even though she really wanted to sleep in. She was a good sport about it, though. I wanted to get her to a wakeful state without ticking her off, which is not easy, and which means no tickling. So I scratched her back vigorously, but she said that was just putting her back to sleep. Then I started doing goofy things that I thought might be invigorating which she thought was funny so she laughed which turned out to be invigorating. At one point I held Teo (who had a very stinky diaper) up and tried to hold his butt near her nose, which was VERY invigorating and proved less mood damaging than tickling, believe it or not.

So we all got up and dressed and out of the house in a hurry, which is nearly impossible with kids. First I grabbed Luke's binoculars, found a small plastic bug catcher I gave Luke a while ago, and poked holes in the top of a bell jar. We had yummy muffins at Wild Oats and then headed over to W. Park, a very cool park which is a stone's throw from a very busy shopping district, but which feels like backwoods Vermont when you are there.

First, of course, we had to stop in and see the farm amimals. There were roosters and chickens loose walking around us which the boys got a kick out of. We fed hay to a very nice mare with a white stripe down her face and talked to a goose they have there who, if you say her name, will squawk at you. Her name, by the way, is Chesterina, which is not easy to say. In fact, she didn't seem to recognize her name when Luke said it because she would only squawk when Tina or I said it.

Then we headed off for the main event, our nature hike, which Luke kept calling a nature "hunt." W. Park is perfect for this, especially with young kids, because without walking very far at all you can see a farm, a woodland area, a meadow, and a small wetland. The first exciting thing we saw was a kite stuck up in a tree. It was pretty high up, but it had been such a good day so far, and I was feeling good, the kind of good where you feel like you can do anything, so I threw Tina the carkeys from my pocket and went over and started trying to climb the tree.

It wasn't long before I remembered that I only WANT to be, but am not actually, the kind of person who can easily shimmy up a tree that isn't a particularly easy climbing tree. So I attempted to return to the ground, only to realize that my leg and my shoe were both stuck in the tree. Tina found this very amusing and took a picture of me while Luke danced around and made fun of me and Teo pointed at me. They're a supportive bunch. Once I got unstuck (which involved a little loss of skin), we threw a bunch of sticks at the kite to try to dislodge it. After a few of the sticks became stuck up in the tree with the kite, I suggested (facetiously) using our car keys to try to get it down. That tree was hungry.

I had more luck with the bug catcher and ball jar habitat. First I caught a honey bee. She was definitely our least happy jar occupant all day, buzzing around like crazy and making it very hard to have a look at her. I tried to get Tina to release her, but after her run-in with the wasps at camp she took the boys and went about fifty feet away while I repatriated the bee.

Next we turned over a log in the woodland area and caught some worms, wood lice, and a few other creepy crawly things. Next we walked through the meadow, which was filled with wildflowers, and tried to catch some moths and butterflies and dragonflies but they were very elusive. We did catch a bright orange flying bug we coudln't identify, though it was very pretty. Then we went to the wetlands and caught a cricket, which we had to release almost immediately when I noticed a cute little green frog and caught him in my hands. While the others were admiring this latest catch, I noticed a big orange frog hopping on the path and caught him too. Later we found an area of path with so many of these frogs that every time you took a step you'd see out of the corner of your eye something hop away. We took a look at the orange frog for a while in the jar, and then released him too, and headed back to the park offices, where they have a small collection of animals in tanks and a very cool display where you can watch honey bees making honey behind glass.

I'm not sure if naturalists are born or made, but I'm not taking any chances. We had a wonderful day together, and in our own way, said goodbye to summer for another year. Tomorrow is Luke's birthday, but it felt important, somehow, to celebrate his last day of being three, too.

Here is a link to a slideshow of our "Nature Hunt."

Campfest

We spent five days at camp with the boys, my nieces and nephews, and my folks. The boys had a blast and did all sorts of good summer kid stuff. Luke jumped off the dock about 5 million times. He is not at all afraid to go under now and swims right back to the ladder by himself. We have been taking pieces of foam out of his swimmy periodically all summer and he really does seem to be learning how to swim that way. Now he is pretty fearless even when he doesn't have his swimmy on. I think next summer he'll be swimming without it all the time. He also went tubing three times, once with Sarah, once with me, and once with Kate. Like a kid on a ride in an amusement park, he looked like every nerve in his body was on high alert while he was in the tube, but said he had fun and that he liked the fast parts when he was in the boat. He's come a long way since the time two summers ago that he cried from inside the boat when I was tubing and fell off the tube and he thought I was gone for good.


Teo, meanwhile, was charming all the relatives and busy cutting two top teeth. Here he is playing in the faux play pen with his cousins Maya and Linnea. Why is it no child will spend even five seconds in a Graco port-a-crib without screaming, but if you throw him in an inflatable boat or a plastic turtle-shaped wading pool, he'll entertain himself for hours? Teo worked on pushing himself up to a stand while holding onto the sides of the turtle pool and is quite pleased with himself. He is going to be walking before we know it.

Luke came back from camp with a whole bunch of new teen-age expressions, like "Dude, that's awesome!" and "Bring it on!" More worrisome, today he said the word "assimilate" and then spoke what sounded like Klingon. Teo, fortunately, didn't seem to learn any bad habits from the extended family, although I do think he's picked up a little bit of hypochondria from my mom. Oh well.

The Thing I Have

So I called Teen during a lunch break from my work in NJ last week to see how the three of them were doing. Luke was coloring, and apparently had just said to Teen, "Mama, do you know who this is a picture of? It's Mommy." Then he looked at it critically and said, "But I didn't draw her penis."

Hello?! For the record, I do not have a penis, and my son sees me naked pretty much daily. Did I post about how recently he told me, "You should do this when you have a penis"? Anyway, today I was talking to him about it, and I said to him, "You know Mommy doesn't have a penis," and he said, yeah, but I didn't draw the thing you have." I said, "You don't know what that thing I have is called, do you?" and he said, "No."

I confess, this was the end of the conversation. We were with friends, and there were seven-year-old boys around. I know I have to teach him a word. I read Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid They'd Ask and I know that a much greater percentage of both boys and girls know the proper term for male sexual organs than for female ones. The thing is, it feels like it's so much more involved to decide what term to use. Do I use "vulva"? "Vagina"? The more modern and feminist "yoni"? The latter sounds a little too much like a children's music singer and the V words sound too clinical, unlike the friendly, almost dog-like, "penis." What I really want to do is teach him my favorite word to refer to what I have down there: "Ween". But that makes me feel only about ten years more advanced than our grandmothers who used "wee-wee," "woo-hoo," etc. It's a chic-er, cooler nick-name, one that sounds friendly, yet exotic, maybe foreign, like my sexual organs were some cool but down-to-earth foreign exchange student.

So I know I have to have the talk sometime soon. Pray for me.

We'll Always Have...The Spiderman Wall Stickers

Last week I pulled the crib out of storage and put it together for Teo. He's been sleeping in bed with us or in his bassinet in our room, and so hasn't needed it. He's a big crawling guy now, though. Last week he was up one night at 3:30 a.m. and I was so tired I brought him back to bed and proceeded to drift off back to sleep, only to wake one time to find him with my nighstand lamp in his lap, and another time about to crawl off the end of the bed. In the morning I found he'd knocked over a glass of water a couple of inches from my laptop and he'd taken my ipod, stripped it of its headphones, and dropped it down between the wall and the mattress, all while I drifted in and out of consciousness. So I put together the crib (after a decent amount of staring at all the hardware and trying to remember how it all fit together) and rearranged Luke's furniture to make room for Teo.

Now Luke knew he and Teo were going to share a room and he was very excited about it. He said, "Now I can talk to Teo in the middle of the night..." I rearranged the furniture a bit (with some brilliant help from my friend Christina) and set it up so that half the room is clearly Luke's and half Matteo's, with some shared spaces for toys and books. To sweeten the deal, I told Luke he could pick out some new wall stickers for his side of the room.

A couple years ago I bought Luke Thomas the Tank Engine wall decals that go right on painted walls and are like getting customized wallpaper for $15 and next-to-no effort. They're pretty cool and great for someone who is obsessed with trains one year and superheroes the next. I told Luke we could take off all the Thomas stickers on his side of the room and reposition them all on Teo's side, and I let him pick out new ones online. He decided to go with Spiderman II decals, and they came very quickly in the mail. Monday morning he helped me peel them off their wax backings and stick them all over his side of the room, and he was completely thrilled with them.

So Wednesday I'm telling him goodbye because I have to go to a training in New Jersey for five days; I'm hugging him and kissing him and telling him how much I'll miss him, and he says to me (and this is an exact quote), "Hey Mommy—if I forget about you, I will always remember my wall stickers."