First days

Ethan, aged 4, started preschool on Tuesday morning.  He attends the same preschool Elias did with the same teacher, Ms. Marie.  Even so, we visited the school several times throughout the summer to reintroduce Ethan to Ms. Marie and his classroom.

He was nervous, of course, asking me if Elias was going with him to school?  Was he riding the bus with brother? Am I staying with him the whole time?

I stressed that he would have fun.  Learn to write his alphabet and numbers.  Learn to identify his colors.  Make art stuff.  

Elias is a seasoned first grader now, so he seemed to transition back to school with ease.  We visited with his new teacher on Friday before school started.  He seemed excited to see his friends again.  Come Monday morning, he quickly waved prior to climbing on the bus and he was off without a backwards glance.

Come Tuesday morning, preparation for school sailed along nicely.  Both boys were cooperative.  This time, Elias didn't even pause to wave or say goodbye prior to bounding on the bus.  He's a seasoned pro now.

Ethan, on the other hand, when I dropped him off, clutched his teacher Ms. Marie, his beautiful face scrunched up, crying as I left the room.  I pasted on a false smile, told him to have fun and I'd be back later to pick him up.  I quickly left the room so he wouldn't see the tears gathering in my eyes.

Tears because he was upset.  Tears because my boy is growing up, learning to be independent from his mother.  From his brother.  From his father.  All of us.  It's a contradictory, tender, doughy place in your heart as a mom on the first days of school.  On the one hand, you cheer that you start to evolve back to your autonomous self when the kids go back to school.  No little hands clutching at your legs as you try to vacuum.  No knocks on the bathroom door when you're peeing.

And yet, there is that silence.  The absence of little voices laughing and calling out MOM!

I went off to work that day, trusting that Ethan calmed himself down within a few minutes of my departure.  That he had fun.

And of course, he did.  According to Ms. Marie, he behaved as exactly as I trusted he would.  He calmed down and got to playing.

This morning, Elias woke up in a temper, declaring that he didn't want to go to school.  That he couldn't endure another day.  It's Elias's third day of school and already the attitude.

I just asked Ethan how he liked school yesterday, and he said it was boring.  Already the attitude.  

Kids!

Time for Prayer

I have a monkey mind.  I can't even focus long enough to finish a prayer in silent meditation.

This is how my mind wanders as I attempt mindfulness:

Deep breath.  Feel the breath fill up my lungs.  Feel my chest expand.  Feel my chest deflate as I slowly exhale.  Focus.

My lungs hurt. Burn a little, actually, from the humidity, which triggers my asthma.  Only in Maryland (ok, maybe all of the southeast, too) can you actually feel the air, it's so thick.)  I really hate humidity.  Is there any place to go without humidity that isn't 110 degrees in the shade?  Probably not. 

Oh, yeah.  I was praying.

My right knee is screaming because I'm sitting on the floor criss-cross applesauce style.  (Or Indian style but that's politically incorrect to say these days).  I'm too old to sit on the floor like this.

Oh, prayer.  Right.

Jesus.  What do you want me to do? Seriously.  Open my heart so I can learn my purpose.  Hear your calling.  Recognize the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

Maybe I should use my inhaler?  Where is my inhaler anyway?  I think I need to get that perscription renewed.  Ack.  That will mean a trip to the doctor's office.  Dumb, waste of time.  Just give me another inhaler.  Please and thank you.  It won't be that easy.  It never is.

Oh.  Back to prayer.  Focus.

I read Psalm 1.  Seems like as good as any place to start, followed by more prayer.

What else, Jesus?  I've resisted you for a very long time.  Apostasy.  Christian atheism as Craig Groeschel calls it and rightly so.  What more do I have to do to learn to trust you? To learn to trust in the Power of the Holy Spirit?

Does writing count as prayer?

"Mom!  Mom? Are you up there?" Thump, thump, thump.  Little feet pound up the stairs.  "You have to come see this.  Mummies are infecting the noses of the clone troopers."

Wait.  What? "Do you mean worms?"

Elias shakes his head vigorously.  His chest is heaving from rushing up the stairs, from excitement.  "Yes.  Worms.  They are crawling up the clone troopers noses and effecting them." (He means infecting but he says effecting.  It's cute.)

As Elias launches into a detailed explanation about worms infecting clone troopers and possessing them, I notice that he is pale.  There are dark circles around his eyes.  He's tired.  He is an early riser, my first born.  (He didn't inherit that trait from me.)  It's time for bed.

Prayer time over.  

Why my life should have been more like the movie Sixteen Candles, but wasn't

You know the iconic '80s film Sixteen Candles, right?  Molly Ringwald plays the character Samantha whose family, preoccupied with her older sister's wedding, forgets Samantha's sixteenth birthday.  She has a crush on Jake Ryan, Mr. Popularity, Captain of the Football team who is dating Caroline, Miss Popularity, Prom Queen.

It's all coming back to you now, isn't it?  Samantha with her individual style that is just left of center but not weird either.  She isn't a fashion plate.  She isn't a cheerleader.  She knows she will never be Prom Queen or Miss Popularity.

Unlike Samantha, my high school style wasn't just left of center.  It wasn't right of center either.  I had no style.  Like Samantha, I knew I would never be Prom Queen or Miss Popularity.  The likelihood of either of us capturing the heart of the Captain of the Football team was near impossible.  We both pouted over this.

Like Samantha, I nursed a serious crush on Mr. Popularity, Captain of the Football team himself: Duane K. Like the actor--Michael Schoeffling--who played Jake Ryan, Duane had an uncanny resemblance to the real Jake Ryan.  (I mean Michael Schoeffling.)

Like Samantha, I obsess over Duane like a "lovesick puppy" to quote Molly Ringwald's character.  I think half the girls at my high school obsessed over Duane; he was that hunky.  Just ask my friend Nicole.  

I wished. Hoped. Daydreamed that Duane would declare his unwavering love and affection for me in the halls of South Carroll HS.  Although I think he noticed my lovesick puppy ways, I think he was weirded out by it.  One day in study hall, he spit gum into my hair.  

That wasn't in the script.  

That minor setback didn't deter my affection, though.  After all, I was a lovesick puppy.  

In the movie Sixteen Candles, Samantha endures a series of embarrassing antics but ultimately gets Jake.  Although I endure a series of embarrassing antics, mostly perpetuated by my losery self, I don't get Duane in the end.  

Once Duane graduated, I never saw him again.  (I think he was a year ahead of me.  Maybe two.)  The last I heard he went off to college on a football scholarship. 

Fast forward twenty years later, it's 4:50 AM and I can't sleep.  I'm remembering my pathetic lovesick puppy ways and Duane and wondering whatever happened to that guy?

I gave into temptation and searched for him on Facebook.  (I know, I know.  I've reverted back to my lovesick puppy ways despite being happily married to Joseph for fourteen and half years. I'm pathetic.)  I don't find Duane.  I google him.  The only thing I find is his name listed on a national football foundation.  Well, duh.  He was the captain of the football team.  Beyond that, I've no clue what else he's accomplished.

A part of me doesn't want to know what he looks like now or whether he's building rockets for NASA or crunching numbers at a desk.  I want the hunky recollection from high school, not some aged guy married with kids.   (And I'm certain that he'd want me to keep my distance.  They have anti-stalking laws now. And rightly so.)

Why am I embarrassing myself, sharing this?  Because this little anecdote has the makings of a novel in it.  A love story twenty years after high school.  

I'm feeling inspired.   

Persistence

On Sunday afternoon, I went to the locally owned garden center.  All plants were 30% off.  Yeah, oh yeah!

I restocked my basil and rosemary, since I killed the rosemary.  The basil is limping along.  The original plant that is.  It's not dead.  Yet.  But it isn't thriving either.

So two new hearty basil and rosemary plants.  I also bought thyme.  The boys helped me transplant these babies in organic potting soil, which was also on sale.  The herbs are neatly arranged on our deck table, soaking up the sun.

While I was in the gardening mood, I transplanted a sweet chocolate pepper seedling.  Then I decided to get adventurous and start two more tomato seedlings and one more pepper seedling.  So far, the existing tomato seedlings are thriving.  I'm looking forward to home grown tomatoes for caprese salad and homemade salsa.  I have a recipe for peach tomato salsa that I'm eager to try.

In the process of transplanting, I managed to get potting soil all over my legs and arms.  I'm not sure how I managed to do that, but there it is.  I managed to get four mosquito bites despite wearing repellent.  That's so not fair.

Finally, I rounded out my purchases with some red impatiens and a dragon wing begonia. Very pretty.

I've taken some losses on my herbs, radishes, and onions but have had success with the tomatoes and pepper seedlings.

With gardening persistence is definitely a necessary trait or so I'm learning.

Growing my own vegatables

I still don't have any.  Vegetables, that is.

I bought tomato, radish, purplette onion, and a chocolate variety of sweet pepper seeds in the spring from Johnny's Selected Seeds.  (Love them!)  Oh and lettuce.

I thought I had the makings for a pretty nice salad.

My seedlings got off to a nice start.  This time around, I even took the time to harden them off--a step I usually skip.

After all that, my tomato sprouts are thriving.  That's about it.

Since the spring was unusually chilly, I didn't want to put out the radishes or lettuce for fear the chill would kill them off.  So I waited for warmer weather.  Turns out, I waited too long.

The intense heat from our deck fried the radish and lettuce sprouts to nothingness.   Even though our deck has great dappled morning sunlight, by 3pm, it's hot as hades out there.  The tomatoes love that but not much else.

I have one pepper sprout and one purplette onion hanging on.  I need to transplant the pepper seedling and see how it goes.  I have a basil plant limping along.  The mint is slowly growing.  The rosemary?  Long dead.

In the fall, I'll try planting radishes and lettuce again since they seem to like the cooler temperatures.  In the meantime, I'm gonna germinate another batch of tomatoes since that seems to be the only thing I'm capable of growing.

I'm imagining the bountiful harvest of sweet tomatoes right now.  Good thing I love a caprese salad.  

A trip to the zoo!

Yesterday, we gathered ourselves and drove down to the Smithsonian National Zoo.  We left just after 9 am, so traffic wasn't too bad.  It took us just over an hour.

Joseph is the picture taker in the family.  He didn't waste any time.  You meet this triceratops very quickly entering the park, and we needed a picture.  (It's not everyday one meets a triceratops).  I don't know what Ethan is looking at off camera.

The weather forecast called for a partly cloudy sky and little humidity.  They got that wrong.  The humidity was stifling and the sun was full on bright.



Joseph got some really good pictures of the lions, especially of this young one frolicking in the pool that surrounded their habitat.  There were four lions altogether.

 

 

 

There is a female lion in the foreground and a male lion against the wall, though it's difficult to see him since he blends into the concrete wall and the spotlight of sun.  Joseph didn't get a picture of the fourth lion.

A tiger looking regal.  

 


Both boys emerging from the water misters.  Believe me, it felt so good on such a humid day.

When we emerge from the Small Mammal House, we saw this:

 

Those are two orangoutangs walking on those ropes above the trees.  There are platforms at strategically placed intervals for the orangoutangs to climb on before moving along the ropes to the next platform.  They can access the platforms and ropes from their habitat.  What isn't pictured is the way both the orangoutangs helped each other.  One of the orangoutangs reached a platform first, he (maybe it was a she?) reached behind him to help the other one get onto the platform!

We were at the right place at the right time to catch this.

 

Here is another orangoutang inside her habitat.  She is playing with pooh in case you are wondering what she is doing.  That's the back of Ethan's head.  Like most of the kids surrounding him, they were enraptured with the pooh playing orangoutang.

In the same building, there were gorillas, although they were in a different room.  The gorillas were being fed by the zoo keepers.  One male ate very quickly, gobbling down banana slices one after the other.  I guess he was afraid someone was going to steal it.  Another male gorilla took his meal up to the tallest part of a tree and gobbled it down.  He seemed quite particular about not sharing it with the other gorillas.

By the time we got to the cheetahs, it was mid afternoon.  The sun was sweltering.  The humidity oppressive.  The cheetahs were sprawled on the grass of their habitat, napping in the shade.  Then, one gets up and trots over to the shade in another part of the habitat (pictured below).  Two others follow that cheetah.  Their bodies are so sleek and slender.  Did you know that a cheetah's stride is 23 feet when running at top speed during a hunt?  Yes, 23 feet!  (I know, right?)  

We tried following the cheetahs, moving along to another side of the habitat.  By the time we got there, however, the cheetahs were hiding in either tall grass or a den.  We weren't sure which.    But, we were still in for a nice treat.  In the next habitat over was another cheetah by himself (or herself?) pacing around.  Joseph caught it on video, although I'm having difficulty uploading the video to this blog.  (I'll try posting it to FB instead).  

A elephant house and the surrounding habitat was under re-construction.  We got a glimpse of one elephant hanging out amidst the construction.  No giraffes.  No rhinos.  No ostriches.  Not sure if those savannah animals were displaced during construction or what.  

We saw two giant pandas, one male and one female, in different rooms.  Both of the pandas sat with their backs to us gawking humans, noshing on bamboo.  

We skipped the bird house.  By this time it was late afternoon.  The heat was sweltering.  All of us were tired.  The boys were perilously close to a temper meltdown, so we decided to leave.  

Elias's favorite thing about the zoo was everything!  Ethan's favorite thing at the zoo?  Nothing!  I think he inherited the contrarian attitude from his mother.  

We had a good day all in all.  We'd like to return to the zoo once the construction is complete.  And I have a new family rule: no zoo visiting during the summer. It's just too darn hot.   I'd like to go back in the fall instead.  

Summer Vacation

On the second official day of summer vacation, we visited the Smithsonian Aerospace Museum near Dulles Airport.

Seeing the space shuttle Discovery was awesome!

Here is another picture for perspective.

Aside from the space shuttle, there were all sorts of planes and helicopters, ranging from early models to a stealth jet and a Concord.  The Enola Gay was there too.  It's so massive.  It's difficult to imagine that hulking plane ever getting off the ground.  Some of the early versions of helicopters were little more than a seat attached to rotors and a mechanism to steer it.  The person who flew that was seriously brave. 

Later in the afternoon, we went up to an observation tower, which was a former air traffic control tower.  Since it was raining, we could barely make out the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Unfortunately, we didn't see any planes coming in for a landing at Dulles Airport.  

We also watched an IMAX film about the Hubble Satellite, seeing pictures of the furtherest reaches of space known to man.  Some of these pictures were simply amazing.  The film also revealed a little about how astronauts train for space flight and showed actual footage of an astronaut crew repairing the Hubble.  

The boys had fun.  They were fascinated by all of the planes.  Ethan wanted to take some of the planes home.  He said Daddy could fly it home and then we could keep it in the living room.  (Oh sure, no problem.)  

Getting home was a headache.  It took two hours to drive 50 miles.  We got stuck on the Capital Beltway.  I'm glad I don't have to drive that everyday.  

Next week, it's the National Zoo.