Because Mara Told Me To

Mara reminded me that my blog doesn't need to be cool, hip, pinterest-worthy.  At this point just an online journal would be fine.  And that is true, and so I will try better.

I visited Mara in New Hampshire over the weekend.  It was so, so fun to spend the weekend with just Mara, not with other siblings (love you guys!) or my kids (you too!).  Just a sister weekend.  With her boyfriend and dog, too, but they were, respectively, our event coordinator/meat-griller extraordinaire and, I don't know, lap-warmer/scrap-eater/court jester.

New Hampshire is a lot more like Alaska than I could have imagined.  There were mountains and snow and lots of lakes and quirky little small towns with gun shops and gift shops and tiny organic food restaurants.

Mara and I cooked a lot of good food, which was one of the highlights of the weekend for me, no surprise there.  We made a caramelized onion and butternut squash galette that was amazing and an oh-so-good sweet potato pie.  Also gnocci in tomato broth and cheddar swirl buns.  Mmm.  I'm still dreaming about it.

Speaking of meals, I'm trying to be really good about meal planning lately, and I'm also trying to make food my family will eat but that will stretch the kids' palette's as well.  Here is the plan for this week:

Mon: Craig bought pizza since I wasn't home yet
Tues: black bean soup with chips and cheese/veggie plate
Wed: lasagne and salad (they eat salad now!  except Henry, who eats the carrots and cucumbers out of the salad.  thank you ranch, the gateway drug)
Thurs: burritos with the leftover soup/apple pie for pi day
Fri: white bean soup with potatoes and bacon/cheddar swirl buns
Sat: that galette I mentioned above (we'll see how it goes over with the kids)
Sun: thai yellow curry with potatoes and tofu (I predict Luke will eat only the rice)

So we will see how it goes!

Cliffhanger

 I just found this beginning of a story that Henry wrote this morning:

After the pants were soakd  in the anti bakterea germ remoover 

What?  WHAT HAPPENED after the pants were soaked in the anti bakterea germ remoover?  Perhaps he will finish the story and give me permission to post it here.  Until then, you will have to use your imagination.

P.S. We got a cat!

Snakey the Rootbeer and His Magical Miniature Ice Cream Cart

I'm back, and I'm going to try to keep up with the blog a little more.  Poor Silas deserves that, right?  I mean, the kid doesn't even have a baby book.  He should get a few blog posts at least.

Silas is an incredibly creative guy.  He's always crafting and drawing.  Like, constantly.  He insisted on writing his own letter to Santa.  I couldn't touch the thing, and Henry told me that it would be okay since Santa is magical and could read Silas's writing, even though we can't.  Here's what Silas told us the letter said:

Dear Santa,

I would like a jack in the box.  Also, two dragons from Target.  I also want a new scooter because mine is almost broken.  Ho, ho, ho!

From Silas David Jens Jackson

Silas has imaginary friends.  Lots of them.  Neither Luke nor Henry ever had imaginary friends, so this is new for me.  For a long time Silas had a baby named Billy the Builder.  Now he has a lot of friends.  Snakey the Rootbeer, Billy the Backpack, Rootbeer the Snake.  He pushes them in the swings and puts them in his pocket.

Silas also says totally bizarre things out of the blue.  Sometimes they make no sense whatsoever, but sometimes they are really funny.  The kid has a great sense of humor.

"I wish I had an ice cream truck," he said the other night.

"Oh yeah?  That would be fun," I answered.

"An ice cream truck in MY BUTT!" he went on.

"In your butt?" I asked.

"Yes!  Then I could poop out ice cream!"

Future sitcom writer?  Stand up comedian?  Avant Garde art installation maker?  The world is your oyster, kid.

Three Months This Time

I'm going for a no-posting record.  I have thought about closing up shop, seeing as I'm not exactly a writing machine these days, but my two fans are demanding a post.

What can I say?  Life is pretty busy.  Henry kept active all spring with soccer and gymnastics.  Luke isn't one for organized sports/activities, but he does want to hang out with friends all. the. time.  He is a social guy.  Silas demands his weekly story time and preschool playtime at the local rec center.  And have I mentioned that I'm now teaching four Zumba classes a week?  Life is full.  And good.

Henry had a wild birthday party with a lot of little boys.  They screamed and jumped around.

Summer has been slower in some ways, but with the three kids home all the time it feels busy in a different way.  We joined the pool and go there a few times a week.  Henry did a week-long basketball camp.  Luke is taking guitar lessons.  We are going on a vacation/family reunion for ten days or so.  Luke will be going to summer day camp with one overnight in August.

As much as I have my moments of frustration--mostly with the fighting between children and the messy house--I realize that these are the glory days with our kids.  They all play together.  None of them hate us yet or roll their eyes at spending time with us.

We went to Highbanks last week and Craig and I sat in the shade on a log with our feet in the river while the three boys played in the water together, happily, for over an hour.  The wind blew through the trees, sunlight filtering down onto those three messy heads of hair, and I had one of those moments where I realized just how great I've got it.

It's a lot great.

After Two Months, A Short Post About Poop

"I will never dook in the woods," said Luke on the walk to school yesterday.

"I will always dook in the woods," said Henry.

"Dook, dook, dook," said Silas.

I just looked up dook at this awesome website to make sure I was spelling it correctly. It seems my boys have coined a new verb for pooping.

And all of these things say so much about each one of us.

P.S. If Craig had been there, he would have started singing a catchy little ditty about dook. I'm sure it would have featured Luke.

Straight Into the New Year--With a Wimper

Well, there went six weeks--boom!--and not just any six weeks. Winter vacation. Christmas Eve. Christmas day. Craig's birthday. Silas's second birthday. New Year's Eve. New Year's day. The dreaded/beloved return to school. (Dreaded by children, beloved by parents.)

Winter break involved a lot of fighting between Luke and Henry. Between a few viruses, we didn't get out enough, and everyone was crabby. We tried to go to an open gym and it had been cancelled. We tried to go bounce at a trampoline place and it was sold out. We went to the art museum on New Year's Eve afternoon for our big celebratory outing, and it had closed early for a wedding. Silas was super sick on his birthday, and ended up insisting on sitting beside his turtle birthday cake on the couch while watching Barney, screaming at anyone who asked nicely for a slice of chocolate with buttercream.

I wanted to have a few pictures as a consolation prize at the very least, but our camera battery charger is nowhere to be found. The only pictures from the past six weeks are in my mind.

But you know what? It was enough. There were enough good moments during all of that. I remember how sweetly Luke and Henry thanked us for all of their gifts. I remember our sunny family walk on Christmas day. I remember that we drove back to the art museum right when they opened on New Year's day, stopping for breakfast first, and enjoyed ourselves at a nearly empty museum.

This is parenting for me. And come to think of it, life. There is a lot to slog through, I'm not gonna lie, but those good moments? They really do make it better. And those bad moments? They always seem a lot funnier when I write about them on the blog.

Christmas Card Photo Fail #3

What's going on here? Why are you being so nice to me?

Christmas Card Photo Fail #2

Is that comfortable, Silas?

Christmas Card Photo Fail #1

I made him cry. Those are actual tears.

Mom Evans

Henry loves breakfast. This makes me super happy, because I love breakfast, too. Craig, however, doesn't eat breakfast at all, and Luke eats it reluctantly. Neither like breakfast foods, and the thought of breakfast for dinner disgusts them. But Henry. Oh, Henry. I am revisiting my love affair with breakfast with Henry, making pancakes, dutch babies, omelettes, waffles, poached eggs. We had a six day long pumpkin pancake run. I needed to perfect my recipe, and Henry was game. One morning that we went all out and had pancakes, sausage, and scrambled eggs, he said, "It is like Bob Evans! Mom Evans! And you can eat in your underwear!" High praise, indeed.

The pumpkin pancake run was about as festive as I got this Halloween, though. We usually put up decorations, but instead I made about 30 different pumpkin dishes. I seem to only have figured out how to be the cooking version of Martha Stewart. We did carve jack-o-lanterns from pumpkins that Henry grew himself. It was very exciting. True to form, Luke wanted to buy his pumpkin at the store. "Store bought things are just better!" he proclaimed. So Luke's pumpkin (the roundest one in the picture above) was from the store. I couldn't spoil his Halloween, after all.

This Halloween was so much fun, and I realized that I finally hit that perfect phase where Silas is getting very excited about all the "big kid" activities--he loved trick-or-treating this year--and Luke is still young enough that he enjoys many "kid" activities. We don't have many of these years left, so I am trying to really take the time to enjoy them. Both Luke and Henry are at the same school and we walk nearly every morning, and they both still hang on me, one on either side, and chatter away--yes, it is often about video games or pro wrestling, but I'm taking what I can get.

Here at Mom Evans, we'll serve you in your underwear, so long as we get to eat breakfast together.

They have spent hours—days even—building their tree fort. They have worked together, usually nicely. They’ve recruited neighbor kids to help them. And even though I cringe every time I look at it, I think of how much they love it and how many hours of joy it has given them, and I can’t help but like it despite itself.

“Can you believe that we made that all by ourselves?” they ask. Yes. Yes I can. But I reply, “No! It is amazing!”

I have a problem, which is that my fantasy of raising children doesn’t align with the reality. My phantom children really aren’t much like the flesh and blood and bones, the real little people that stand before me every day. The family trip to the cabin in the woods doesn’t involve the cartoon network in my head. Video games never figured prominently in my imagined family life. We didn’t eat so damned much plain pasta.

But here it is. I have these three little boys right in front of me, and they are three people with thoughts in their own heads. One loves video games. One loves meat. One hates meat. All three wrestle with one another every time I turn my back. There is a little blood most days. There is a lot of blood some days. They say bad words. But, too, they tell me they love me soooooo much. I couldn’t feel the spine tingling joy of that in my fantasies.

So maybe it's not a problem after all.

We have plans to cut the tree down. That is why we told them they could do whatever they wanted to it in the first place. But once the tree is gone, that is one more part of these little boys that is gone as they lurch toward adulthood. I think we’ll keep it around for a while longer.

A New School Year

Luke and Henry started school last week. Luke now attends Henry's school, the school that we are zoned for. Luke had been open enrolling into the school where he started Kindergarten since we moved right before his second grade year. He loved his old school. Last year, Henry didn't get in to Luke's school through open enrollment, and so they attended different schools. That wasn't much fun for me, since I felt like I didn't know what was going on anywhere. In any case, Luke hasn't been happy about this change, but I was really proud of him last week. He had a good attitude, all things considered, and he seems to be giving it a fair chance. This morning--their first Monday morning since they started mid-week last week--was a different story. But I have to remind myself that Monday mornings are never easy, no matter which school Luke is at.

This is the first time that I can remember that I have had to make Luke do something major that he hasn't wanted to do. The first time that he has been grown up enough that I feel like his concerns and worries are 100 percent justified. And I have to say, it is hard. My heart hurt for him every time he told me that he wanted to go to his old school with his friends. Every time that he told me he didn't have anyone to talk to. It was hard to watch him line up at the beginning of the day and awkwardly try to make conversation with the boys in his class. Because the thing is, there isn't much I can do. It is up to Luke to make his way at this new school, up to him to find his place and make new friends. And I can only watch from a distance.

A few nights ago I had a dream where Craig and I decided to take a road trip while Luke was in school. He was our only child. We had to be home by 9 pm to pick him up, but we were still in Georgia at 8 pm and realized that we wouldn't make it. I tried to call a friend to pick him up, but my cell phone died. I didn't have any phone numbers that I needed because they were all in my cell phone. Craig was frantically googling phone numbers and I was trying to remember the numbers of my friends, all while desperately punching them into some antiquated phone that looked like a singing greeting card. It was crumbling in my hands with each wrong number that I tried.

It is this helpless vulnerability that is the hardest part of parenting, I think. The knowledge that you can't always make it all better, that you often can't dial a number and fix the problem. That you can't alway be there to pick your child up.

Little Vacation

We had a really wonderful little vacation last week to a state park a couple of hours from our house. We did a lot of canoeing and hiking and it was the most perfect weather we could have wanted. We swam at the sandy beach every afternoon, and we cooked over a fire every night. We stayed in a cabin perched on the edge of a hill, and the bedrooms looked out into green foliage and felt like we were staying in a treehouse. It was lovely. Yes, there was the fact that Henry was a total spazz every night and screamed and cried and wouldn't go to sleep. Yes, we got a million bug bites because our bug spray wouldn't work. Yes, Luke and Henry went on a bike ride and decided it would be funny to hide and write "help" with sticks on the ground. But I'm choosing to remember everything else. The magic. And besides, all that other stuff seems kind of beautiful and silly now that it is in the past. Memory is funny like that.

Birthdays

I'm slowly catching the blog up to my life. Clearly this space is more of a site to document my life for posterity/grandparents these days than a place to express myself artistically. But I feel it returning, that itch to think a little beyond the everyday survival. I've read more books this summer than I had in a long while, and books that have required a bit of brain power. For the first year after I have a baby it is all about magazines, Maeve Binchy, and TV shows. But I'm making progress. I've watched some movies. That is nearly two hours of my life. I've read a few books that required some thinking. I had a great conversation about books with a house guest during which I think I might have sounded sort of smart. (Courtney, ask Ryan if I sounded smart at 5:30 am over babies and toys and coffee.)

Henry turned six in June. Luke turned nine last week. Again with the time speeding by theme. I love those boys. They are both pretty much crazy and intense and lovely and themselves in every way.

P.S. Luke doesn't like shirts very much.

4th of July Trip

This summer has flown by faster than any other. I wake up in the middle of the night breathless because I see this trend: each month goes by faster than the last. I wonder if the next time I wake up my children will be grown and gone.

We went to visit Craig's aunt and uncle for the 4th of July. They live near a pond, which was one of the highlights of the trip. The kids went swimming and fishing. We went for walks and looked for bugs. And here's a little parenting tip for you (since I know that is why you read this blog): If you have picky/finicky eaters and you want them to eat better, don't feed them snacks. Who knew? It only took me nine years to figure this one out. The kids ate most of the food set before them, some of which they refuse at home, mainly because they were so very hungry. Oh, and also because we told them we would take them to McDonalds on the drive home if they were polite at meals. A little well-played bribery never hurts. Bonus parenting tip of the day.

Dirt Biking

Like Sand Through the Hourglass . . .

Three months. Poof! Gone! I don't know where the time went. The boys had a busy spring soccer schedule, the end of the school year was as hectic as ever, we had a lovely two week visit from Grandma Jane. Now summer is half over, a summer where we don't have much planned and where some afternoons stretch on for hours and hours, but the days and weeks are speeding by.

Craig and Luke are heading to Alaska for two weeks on Saturday. Luke will stay with his two sets of grandparents for ten days while Craig is up on a glacier, and then they will have a few days together before they fly home. I've only ever been away from Luke for five days, and he's never stayed away from both parents for more than a night. I'm a little nervous but very excited for him. My baby really wants to spread his wings. Where exactly have the last nine years gone, anyway?

Pre-Easter Stuff

After the spring break/kidney stone chaos, I was happy to have the boys going back to school last week. Except that after one happy day, everyone came down with the barfing flu. Everyone. It was not a nice, quick 24 hour thing, either. We were basically all languishing around, moaning and dashing for the bathroom for the the whole week. I'm still catching up on laundry.

The barfing flu also converged with the beginning of soccer. I've not had my kids play soccer before, and I don't know what I was thinking. Henry has one practice and one game per week. Luke has one practice and two games per week. They are all at different times and at different places. And you know that I now drive a mini van. So guess what that makes me?

It is also Holy Week, the week before Easter, or what we call Pascha in the eastern orthodox church. Usually this does not coincide with western Easter, but this year it does. We go to a blessedly small mission that only celebrates a few services, so that makes me feel less guilty about not attending church much, but even if we go to one or two extra church services, that is a huge deal for us. Last Sunday I attended the Palm Sunday service by myself with all three kids. Craig was still sick with the yucky stomach, and for some reason neither Luke nor Henry wanted to stay home and "take care of Daddy." I was really sad about that, but I pretended I was glad that they all wanted to come to church, since I'm a good mom like that. All I can say about taking my kids to church all by myself is that it is really good that we pray "for those we find it difficult to love" during the great entrance. Because you know who I'm praying for.

Speaking of church, I don't know if I've talked at all about how Luke now says that he doesn't believe in God. It makes me sad, but I try not to make big deal out of it. While he was sick, he said, "Mom, I don't believe in God, but if I did, why does he make sickness?" Clearly he thinks about these "big issues," which I guess is good. One thing Luke does that I don't like at all is say "Oh my God!" Again, I try not to make too big a deal of it, because honestly, anything that I make into "an issue" with him just takes even longer to resolve. Well, I guess some kid at school didn't like that Luke said this, because he followed Luke around for a few days saying, "You took the Lord's name in vain!" Luke just kept saying, "Be quiet! Leave me alone!" Luke reports--and take this with a grain of salt, because he is prone to exaggeration--that the kid finally came up and said, "You said God's name in vain!" and punched Luke. But Luke told me, "I knew you would get mad at me if I punched him back, so I just taunted him and dodged his punches." Not exactly turning the other cheek, but at least it's something.

P.S. This picture shows their latest fashion obsession. They are not allowed to wear these out of the house. I refer to these as undershirts but think of them as something that rhymes with life eater. Or strife heater.

Spring Break, Day 7

Spring Break

Spring break happened--is happening. Kids are home all day. This is actually not quite as challenging as I had imagined. Yes, there is a little more chaos and a few more messes, a lot of bedhead and not many clothes, but I must say, Luke's attitude has been much better. He needed a little peer detox, methinks. I have promised the boys that since we couldn't go on a trip for spring break--somehow Luke got it in his head that one is supposed to take a vacation during this time--we could instead do something fun each day. So we have gone to the zoo, to the movies, to McDonald's playland. We are planning a trip to the swimming pool and to Chuck E. Cheese. We are going to rent The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and buy a pizza on the day that it is released to DVD. We are having a lot of fun around here.

Except for a brief but intense kidney stone interlude. That was when the boys got to watch all three Lord of the Rings movies. Yes, they are rated PG-13 and probably too violent, but when mama is writhing on the floor, sweating and vomiting, even while all hopped up on morphine, it's desperate times. And that's nine hours of free babysitting right there, folks.

The Lord of the Rings and morphine. It's the new beach and pina colada.