Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Summer!

From reading some of my favorite blogs, it seems like a lot of people are having a great summer - and so are we!

We've been really busy. For the last week, A's sister and her fiance have been visiting from CA. We get along great with them and have been having a lot of fun. Tonight, on our way to drop them at the airport, we took a few minutes to check out some of the Tall Ships that are in Boston for the next few days. We watched tug boats maneuvering one ship from Chad in, and another one from Russia. As we stood on the pier, one of the tugs came right up to us, and the captain yelled out and asked us if we were from one of the fishing towns on the North Shore of Massachusetts (which was weird because we had just visited one of the towns over the weekend). Then, a big, burly sailor came out on deck and said to R, "Someone told me that you like popsicles" and tossed up two popsicles to us. It was so nice! Then the captain came out and said that if security wasn't so strict because of the Tall Ships, he would let R come on board.





The skies opened up at that point, along with a lot of scary lightning, so we high-tailed it back to our car. We found out that A's sister's flight was delayed significantly, so we decided to have dinner at the nice restaurant right on the pier so we could keep watching the ships come in.

Over the weekend, we went to our friends' house for a huge 4th of July BBQ that was also the birthday party for their one-year-old twins. It was a gorgeous day - after weeks of rain and gloom. We saw so many friends that we haven't seen in ages. It was really nice. Then we headed into Cambridge to meet up with A's sister and her fiance. They were staying in a hotel very close to the Charles River, so we grabbed them and walked down to the river to listen to the Boston Pops concert and to watch the Boston fireworks. It was AMAZING. This was R's first Boston fireworks experience, and he was blown away. It was a little rough because the fireworks didn't start until 10:30, so he was up WAY past his bedtime, but he held out for the whole thing and didn't fall asleep until 12:30 am in the car on the way home.

It was so incredible being there with hundreds of thousands of people, singing patriotic songs (and Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" - a tradition at Red Sox games), dancing, and then clapping and screaming and sighing over the fireworks. A and I had been to the "show" before, but we had always watched from the Boston side of the river. We discovered that the Cambridge side is the place to be -- not only did we get a perfect, clear view of the fireworks, but they were against the beautiful Boston skyline. I don't think I can ever watch them on TV again. It's just not the same.

On Sunday, we had no plans, so we headed up to Gloucester and spent the afternoon exploring the beach. R and I were in heaven - we found tons of little, tiny crabs and snails in all the tidepools. We looked for shells and sea glass. When we finally pried R away from the beach, we found a seaside shack that sold ice cream. We each got a cone and sat on the beach wall and watched the waves while the ice cream dripped all over us (well, mostly all over R). I've decided to add Gloucester to the list of towns we'd like to live in someday when we win the lottery. :-)

So far, despite the long stretches of wet, chilly weather, we've had a wonderful summer. I know it's going to go by fast, but at least we'll have made the best of it!

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Weekend o' fun

I am EXHAUSTED. Happy, but exhausted. Now, it's probably mostly because I stayed up all night on Thursday night to finish reading "Pride and Prejudice." Because I got to Darcy's declaration of love for Elizabeth, and how could I put it down then?!? :-) But, we also just had lots of big fun this weekend, which wiped me out.

On Friday night, we went to see one of our favorite ska bands. After work, we picked up subs at our local deli, met up with our friends and their babies, and had a picnic at the outdoor show. We danced a little, bounced the babies in time to the music, and watched R climb on railings and stairs and rocks.

Yesterday was our first truly nice day in a long time, so A mowed the forest that was our lawn while R and I cleaned out the car and went to the park so R could ride his bike. Our town turned on the water at our neighborhood spray park this week, and R enjoyed riding his bike through the puddles. Later, we ran errands. And then, R and I had mommy-son time while A met up with his ancient coin club buddies. Then I stayed up way too late hanging out with A and watching silly TV.

Today, we went to visit my dad. We took R around the corner from my dad's place to the Blackstone River, where we did a little fishing and had a lovely BBQ, courtesy of my dad. R was in his element - finding sticks, throwing rocks in the river, looking at bugs. He tired quickly of the actual fishing part, but that was okay.





After my dad's, we headed to our friend's house for another BBQ because some of our California friends were in town visiting. We had such a good time! The three five-year-old boys played great together, there was lots of good food and wine, and it was just so relaxing to sit around and catch up with everyone. We were really sad to go. But work and school awaits tomorrow.

Hope you all had a great weekend, too!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Rockets!

I took the day off yesterday because our friend B was back from the Vineyard and he and my boys and a bunch of other friends planned a rocket outing. I didn't want to miss it!

We got up early, met up with some friends for breakfast, then crossed our fingers that the clouds would clear and headed off to our rocketing place. When we got there, the sun came out, and it was perfect. Low wind, not too hot, dry. Just lovely.


Unfortunately, my camera battery drained about an hour into our outing. So I missed some pretty good footage of some very interesting rocket launches. But, without having the camera in hand, I was able to help with rocket recovery - I made three catches! That was really fun. R made his first catch, too. He was so proud.





R has this two-stage paper rocket that he made himself, adorned with our club's logo (that A designed, too). A has launched that rocket many times. Yesterday, though, the pieces separated, and the nose cone ended up embedded in the field. It was funny watching A and R trying to pull it out of the ground. When they finally got it out, it looked like a rumpled blue carrot.

A's rocket on the launch pad




Pulling on the elastic to try to get the nose cone out of the ground

Surveying the damage

We had launches with a rocket that had an on-board video camera (but the footage didn't come out), one launch of an egg rocket (we didn't bring a real egg this time, so we used a plastic Easter egg with a rock in it), several launches of rockets with gliders attached, and launches of a mini Saturn V, a Mercury Redstone, and space shuttles. Two rockets were lost in the trees, and one landed on our car and made a dent in the roof. It's pretty small, so A and I didn't mind.

Everyone had a great time. R and his friend Z ran all over the place and played nicely. They even caught one of the rockets together - without arguing! Afterwards, we headed to this incredible pizza place nearby. I thought it was going to be the usual pizza slices, subs, etc., but the pizza and pasta choices were amazing, they use all natural/organic/free range meats and have a wood-fired oven, and I had a gorgeous and delicious spinach salad with warm, grilled chicken, gorgonzola cheese, walnuts, and cranberries.

I'm glad I took the day off. Although it made it that much harder to go to work today!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Calling

My devotional this morning was about knowing your calling. I had to laugh because, here I am nearly 37 years old, and I still have absolutely no clue what my calling is - in life, in my career, anything.

The devotional said that you'll know your calling by what makes you excited more than anything else, what interests you more.

I wish I knew what that was for me. There isn't really anything I can think of that makes me leap out of bed in the morning, that gets me all breathless and big-eyed from pure excitement when I talk about it. And, that makes me kind of sad. Because I used to be that way about some things. Now, I feel like a big blah about everything - except R, of course.

Recently, A suggested - and I agreed - that I should find a hobby. But I had the same dilemma. I cannot think of anything that I want to do enough that I'll keep at it. I love gardening, but I don't have enough time to devote to it to do a good job AND I get so discouraged by my yard because whenever I do get a burst of motivation, our soil is so saturated with roots from the trees and shrubs that I can barely get a shovel in more than an inch or two. Or, my plants get decimated by bugs.

I love baking, but I'm the one who ends up eating the results most of the time (A isn't big on sweets and we really try to limit R's sugar intake), and that doesn't quite fit into my recent drive to eat healthier.

I enjoy other things like canoeing and hiking, and we do those sometimes, but renting a canoe gets expensive and R gets restless and/or tired quickly.

Anyway, I didn't want to whine in this post. I'm just honestly stumped!

How did you discover your calling?

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Magical weekend

We spent last weekend with our friend B at B's family's house on Martha's Vineyard. B gets a couple of weeks each year at the house, and for years, A and I used to go. But then R came along, and it just didn't seem like he was old enough to go until this year. B's family's house is not one of those giant compound/mansions that the Vineyard is known for. It's very rustic. It's really more like luxurious camping. It's wonderful - a couple of cabins sitting on top of a marsh and overlooking the ocean. I've always loved it there, but I forgot just how much until this past weekend.


R fell in love with it, too. He had the most amazing time. It was the quintessential boy's summer experience: he rode a ferry, he hiked, he canoed, he fished, he climbed trees, he carried firewood, he used a hammock as a spaceship, he peed in a brook (the men have to do that so the septic system doesn't get overloaded - luckily for me, the women get to use the bathroom!), he collected shells, he slept in the top bunk, he showered outside. Most of all, though, he had freedom, and he was surrounded by nature.



The epitome of the weekend was when we let R stay up late and told him we had a surprise. B grabbed flashlights, we tiptoed in the dark through the wooded path down to the nearby dock (where Jaws was filmed!), and we shone the lights into the water to see giant fish, crabs, horseshoe crabs, and other sea life. I think B is R's new hero. :-) We watched the fishermen board their boats and head out for their nightly catch.

Of course, we also headed into town during the day and took rides on the old-fashioned Flying Horses carousel to try to grab the coveted brass ring and win a free ride. We ate lunch at a little seafood joint with the most incredible coconut shrimp, made to order. We had old-fashioned ice cream at Mad Martha's.

It was very hard to leave the island.

Being on the Vineyard made me realize that life there is the life I've always dreamed of for myself. I even love the stereotypical house style - with the weathered gray shingles, white trim, etc. - and accompanying flowering gardens. It's the look I've always wanted for my own house. The quiet, easy-going feeling, the friendliness of everyone you meet, the nearness of the ocean, and the constant humidity in the air (despite its effect on my hair) - all of that is part of the experience, and I would love to be able to live there year-round someday.

But R's reaction to the island and to the back-to-basics life at B's house made me want all of this for him, too. I would love for him to spend his summers in a place like this, where he could explore the woods and the ocean and have this sense of freedom that is lacking when growing up in a major metropolitan area.

I don't think R will ever forget this weekend. Hopefully, we'll be able to take him to B's family's house a few more times before B's dad finds a buyer for the house. :-(

I'm going to start saving money wherever I can so that maybe when I'm 85 I can afford a little cottage on the island that I can pass down to R and his children. In the meantime, I'm going to look for ways to give R that freedom and experience with nature closer to home. (We've already promised him a fishing rod and tackle box as a present for his graduation from preschool.)


If you're ever up New England way, definitely spend a weekend on Martha's Vineyard! It's amazing.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Fears

With kindergarten looming on the horizon for R, I've been having a lot of fears and worries and struggles about his school experience and about how to be the best mother I can be to a boy. Our vacation with A's parents poked at some of these fears a little bit because of the way that A's dad was with R. He kept yelling at him and expecting R to sit still, not climb on anything, not touch anything, not explore. I got really frustrated because A and I try to be very open about letting R explore, climb, exert energy - within reason, of course.

Growing up with three sisters didn't really prepare me for raising a son. Luckily, having two nephews come along before I had R helped a little. I've learned as R has grown that he needs to run, to climb, to jump, to test his physical limits on a regular basis. We try to make sure he has time at the playground or riding his bike every day when it's nice out, and when it isn't we take him somewhere where he can run or climb - like a playspace or the Museum of Science. We even encourage him to run laps in our house, which he loves.

When we were getting together regularly a couple years ago with another couple who has a girl the same age as R, we noticed how their daughter could sit and do craft projects or art for two hours at a time. R loves crafts and painting and drawing, but his spurts of those things last more around 20 minutes. For a long time at preschool, he would only bring home crazy scribbles, and I could tell that he took a crayon and made a quick mark on the paper so that he could get up to do something else. I was so excited when he started doing big Lego kits because it was the only time I saw him sit and do something intently for more than an hour.

The kindergarten teachers told us that they have recess twice a day to help with the energy levels of the kids, but that it is still a hard transition for some children to be sitting for the school day, which is full day in our town (8 am - 2 pm). And that, even physically, kids don't have the gross motor and muscle development to sit that long. That worries me. R often tells me that he doesn't like school (his preschool) because it's boring and that his favorite time of the day is playground time. (Luckily, his preschool has three outside times for his age group.) Of course, he tells me this in the mornings when we're trying to get ready. Once he's there, he barely acknowledges A and me to say goodbye, and usually we can't pry him out in the afternoons without a major struggle.

I've been reading Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, and it talks a lot about how the basic way that schools and classrooms operate doesn't work so well for many boys. I don't want R to have a bad school experience. I'm afraid that if he doesn't like kindergarten that that will basically blow it for him for the rest of his education. I don't want his beautiful, inquisitive nature to be crushed by the school environment. He's so interested in so many things - especially science-related, and I want that to be encouraged and to blossom through school.

I know these are fears that probably all parents face. I guess part of me is freaking out because here I've just been blessed with this one child, and I've only got this one opportunity to do it right. Not that if I had other children and things went badly with one of them, I'd just give up and focus on the others, but (hopefully) you know what I mean.

I'm comforted partially by the fact that I didn't have a particularly good school experience either, yet I ended up at the top of my class, went to a great college, and have had a decent career. I definitely had traumatic moments throughout my school years, beginning in kindergarten when my teachers got mad at me for being able to read. They sat me down in front of the entire first grade and handed me a book to read to them. I was too shy and scared to read with 54 kids looking on, so the teachers grabbed the book away and said, "See?! You can't read!" and then took me back to my classroom. So, I had many bad moments like that, and I don't remember particularly liking school at any point in time, but I made it through okay, I guess. (Of course, that moment is burned in my brain and I do think that many of my bad school experiences are what turned me into a very shy person.) Huh. Now that I've written that, maybe my fears about R entering school are more about my own bad experiences?

Anyway, I will say that yesterday we had to go for the new parent orientation for R's after-school program, and it made me feel a lot better. The program has a lot of kids in it, and it's definitely a bit chaotic at times, but they give the kids LOTS of time outside or in the gymnasium when it's cold/wet. And, there are many young men who work as group leaders in the program. We've been so lucky that R has had some male teachers at his preschool. I know that has been wonderful for him. The director of the after-school program is a guy, and there were at least two other 18+ guys there yesterday playing games and taking care of the kids. All of the group leaders and the director also work at the Boys & Girls Club as lifeguards and swimming instructors, and that's where R goes for swimming. (One of his swimming teachers - a woman - will actually be one of his group leaders at the after-school program, so that will help him feel more at home. Plus, he already knows one of the boys who will be attending the program with him.) So, even though the kindergarten teachers are all women, at least he'll have some other male role models around in the afternoons.

I think my greatest fear is that he will have a terrible time in school and that we won't be able to provide him with an alternative, like a private boys' school or homeschooling. We just can't afford financially to do either of those things, especially the private boys' schools in the Boston area. I do think that A and I do a good job of exposing R to learning and to new things, and R has been like a giant sponge in absorbing all of it, so I'm hoping that that will carry him through even if school isn't so great for him. He is very well prepared for kindergarten academically, I think. He is reading when he wants to, he can write his letters well and he's started to write words without asking for us to spell them out for him, and he's recently improved his math skills a lot. Numbers used to frustrate him, but he seems to have gotten over the mental hurdle there. So I'm not worried that he's going to lag behind in that sense. It's more that I'm worried that the basic classroom environment won't work for him and that he'll end up getting in trouble for it, and then he'll lose his motivation and interest in learning.

So, I'm praying about it and learning as much as I can about how to raise R in a positive way that encourages his boyhood without letting him run completely wild. And, I'm hoping that R's teachers will be kind and encouraging and creative about how to teach both girls and boys. And, I'm going to enjoy this last summer with R before I send him off into the unknown.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

As seen on TV

Does anyone else find this ad disturbing? It gives me the creeps. Especially the purple box that says "You're Better Off" inside!

Apparently, my exes were cheap weenies because I do not have a cache of expensive jewelry to hock in their honor.