a rare weekend

My weekend was so amazingly rare and enjoyable--a hot day with a breeze that kept the humidity from squishing us, kids playing in the riverwater pool, throwing a hatchet at zombies wooden targets, washing the cat, shooting at things, walking by the river in bare feet (was that a snake?), forging through the ferns and forest in sandals, fireworks and mosquito bites, parades and grilled food and running races and bicycles and family.  And sun, so much sun.  I still feel a bit lightheaded.

A butterfly in my mother-in-law's garden had all of us snapping photos and consulting guidebooks. 

I was fascinated all day with this tipping tricycle that just sort of epitomizes the headlong way in which Monkey approached everything he did all weekend long.

David's mom wanted to arrange the kids into a posed picture--a shot of the three of them being "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil"--and of course Monkey, being a willful 3-year-old, completely refused to pose.  We did eventually get a shot, which I won't post in case she's got plans for it, but Monkey spent some time sulking in the daisies with  me.

The next day was full of parades and barbecues and baby cousins, but our personal photographer abandoned us for his day job, so you'll just have to trust me.  And now I should stop procrastinating and get back to editing!

Three Funnies, or Three for the Baby Book

A big part of why I started keeping this blog was so that I could capture some of these fleeting moments, allowing me to go back and look at them years later and remember the joys and tribulations of this period of my life--things I won't remember because honestly I'm pretty much exhausted all the time and anyway, I can't really remember yesterday.

Except that's a lie; all three of these events happened yesterday, but I actually TOOK NOTES in my little notebook so that I would remember to write about them.

I spent the majority of the day hanging out with Monkey, since Jabber spent the day with Dad. Monkey and I had our last swimming sessions, and he really wiggles like a little minnow. Afterward, since we didn't have to pick up Jabber right away from daycare, we went to a nearby coffee shop for some lunch. He's a fun lunch date because he talks to everyone he isn't giving the stinkeye stare to.

Aside: Monkey divides the whole world into two groups: people you talk to and people you glare at. It doesn't really seem to have any rhyme or reason. My sister-in-law: total stinkeye stare. One of the news anchors David works with? Also a stinkeye. Swimming teachers? (to keep this slightly on topic) Stinkeyes one and all.

Random guy in line at the coffee shop? Monkey decides to call him Daddy. "DADDY! THERE'S MY DADDY!" he yells, so that everyone in the coffee shop can hear. The guy looks nothing like David. It is confusing.

It is all resolved, but not until everyone in the vicinity is paying attention. All of the people in the coffee shop are people you talk to, I guess.

Later, after a non-existant nap. Elissa at the edge of collapse. Monkey insistently repeats the same, unintelligible phrase, over and over.

"POPPONDAWAH! POPPONDAWAH!"

I am clueless. He stomps over to the stereo and pushes the button to open it, growling in frustration and cranky fatigue. "POPPONDAWAH!" He points at a CD that has a bunch of kids' songs on it. I push play.

The first song is "100 Bottles of POP ON THE WALL." Gotcha.

And last night, Jabber and I are bonding over some Ramona the Pest. I ask him if he would like to be Ramona's friend. He gives me this incredulous look. "But, MOM," he says. "Why would I want a friction friendship?"

What? Well, nobody wants friction in their friendships, really. "But what do you mean?" I say.

"A friction for a friend! Ramona Quimby is...friction." He starts to look uncertain.

"OH! FICTION!" Haha, yes. "Good job on the genre," I say.

"Lasagna?" he says.

Jump Right In!

So we got to Jabber's first swimming lesson early. Too early, I guess. The lessons themselves were running late, so when we got there, apparently the older, bigger, more experienced swimmers were still in the pool. Which caused us some drama, but I'll get to that.

First, we arrive and check in, and we are told that adults of the opposite gender cannot accompany children into the locker rooms and that kids over four (actually it says kids who "look four or older" as though if you have an uncommonly tall toddler, he is automatically a pervert or something) can't be in the opposite gender locker room. Okay. So this means I have to drop Jabber off at the door to some weird, labyrinthian locker room, clutching his little bag of stuff, and have him enter alone, get himself changed into his swimming suit alone, take a shower alone, and find his own way to the pool.

"Oh, but there's a locker room attendant, don't worry," she says, beckoning to a boy who might be sixteen. I restrain myself from asking for a copy of his background check. I mean, I'm trying not to be a helicopter parent, but there's also the fact that he's only five years old. He doesn't go into men's rooms alone, and he can't really find his way out of a paper bag by himself, much less find his way through a crowded locker room. (At the restaurant where we ate breakfast, I sent him back to put the tip on the table, and he couldn't find it. It was three tables away from where we were standing at the time.)

Anyway, so I get him dressed in the bathroom instead (in the girls' bathroom, omg I'm such a rebel), and it was a good thing, since he didn't remember that underwear need to be removed first. Then I bring him to the door of the locker room and luckily, a kind grandfather with a small boy of his own offers to help Jabber to the door of the pool. I figure to hell with a shower; do they understand that the child has to be bribed to let us pour water over his head to wash his hair like twice a month?

Then I have to walk all the way around to the other side of the pool and in through the girls' locker room. I find my way through my own labyrinth and emerge in the pool room, only to see my son being taken by the hand toward the water, where those aforementioned bigger kids are splashing away.

"This is Jabber," I hear her say. "Go ahead, Jabber. Jump right in!"

So my son, who is cautious and hesitant about everything in life, jumps right in. And goes right under. And has no clue that he could just stand up, because he has never been alone in that much water before in his life.

(edited to clarify: she did help him to the ladder, and she didn't mean this literally...but he didn't understand how to use the ladder and jumped off the ladder. The pool lady was very sincerely sorry and said that Jabber just seemed so confident, but still. It was scary for everyone.)

At this point, people who have seen me take Jabber swimming (Mary? Ellie? Remember that?) might recall that even when I walked into the water with him, he scrabbled at me like a barnacle and nearly strangled me with his frightened grip and screamed in a way that made me nervous the spectators would call Child Protective Services when I tried to get him to enjoy the water.

Yeah, I was actually pretty proud of him for doing little more than blinking back some tears when the pool lady hauled him back out of the water and set his shivering little self back up on the edge. But in the next fifteen minutes, while we waited for his real beginner lesson, he began to cry and told me he didn't want lessons after all.

In the picture up there, you can see the way he was *supposed* to be introduced to the water, surrounded by two licensed adults who are being careful and supportive. Even so, once his toes hit the water, he latched onto the side and clung to it, shaking and crying, for much of the first lesson. They were really good with him, and got him relaxed and talking, but he still would only go in the water attached to one of the trainers (like a barnacle, with a stranglehold). Now he says he doesn't want to go tomorrow.

I don't know what to do, really. It seems awfully callous to say, "Too bad. I paid forty bucks for this, and you're going." We talked and talked about how he can touch the bottom of the pool (he can), but he doesn't believe me. I asked him one thing he was proud of about today and one thing he wants to try tomorrow, and then I told him six or eight things I am proud of about today and one thing I'd like him to try tomorrow. Right now I'm not even sure he will get in.

On the positive side, he did manage to get himself dried, dressed, and out of the locker room, unlike the other little boy with an opposite-gendered adult; he got lost for a little while. (His mom, carrying a toddler and an infant in a car seat, handled it much better than I would have, I'm sure.)

Yikes.