First Day of School

It happened.  It came.  No turning back now.  Austin started kindergarten today.  Full-day kindergarten.  The schools out here only have full-day kindergarten.  There was no easing in.  We plunged right in and it took my breath away.  I made it, barely. 

Austin, on the other hand, thrived.  He loved every minute of it.  No anxiety or timidity, just bounding off into the newness of school and a life of his own. 

I was so proud of him.

He catches the bus at the high school where Joseph works.  Most days he will just walk with Joseph in the morning and catch the bus on his own.  But today, I needed to be there.  For me, not for him.  We walked to the school and Joseph came out and took pictures and said goodbye.  Fortunately, there is a girl we know who offered to help him on the bus and figure out where to go once he got to school.  I was so relieved.  Alanna helped ease my worries, even if Austin didn't have any worries to begin with. 

Austin and Alanna

Usually Austin will ride the bus back to the high school at the end of the day and go to Joseph's classroom to walk home with him.  Today we all met him when he got off the bus.  The bus driver is a friend of ours and he just smiled knowingly as I took picture after picture while he got on and off the bus.  I didn't want to miss a moment.

But I did miss a moment.  I missed the whole day.  I didn't get to go into his new classroom with him.  I didn't get to sit down in the desk next to him.  I didn't get to work on assignments or sing the "Days of the Week" song with him.  He went to recess and lunch without me and started to make friends who I've never seen before.  And he did marvelously.  I could not be happier for him, but the ache inside grew and pressed on my heart as I watched the bus pull away this morning.  When he arrived home, leaping off the bus platform, I knew that it would never be the same. 

"A dinosaur in a cave, and some letters."

But that is good too.  We are supposed to grow and change.  I just wish it didn't hurt so bad sometimes.

To help ease our pain (Matthew missed Austin so much today!) we went to the park for awhile.  Elizabeth kept looking away whenever I tried to take her picture and she was not being very cooperative in general.  But she ran all over independently and went down the slide over and over again.  I only got a picture of her going down backwards, but she went down forwards as well. 

I revelled in the beauty of the moment since I had a vivid reminder that before too long, they too would be venturing forth into the world without me constantly by their side.



A wonderful day, a bittersweet day.

Good job, my Austin.  I love you!  

Planetary Commentary

Around our house the last little while we have had quite a few snippets of conversation relating to the solar system.

Uranus

The other day the boys were watching a video that introduced the planets and then showed some pictures of each one.  After they introduced Uranus and then started showing pictures of it, this is what proceded between Austin and Matthew:

Matthew  (pointing to one of the pictures on the screen) Anus!
Austin  No, not anus! YUR-anus.
Matthew  (trying again) Anus?
Austin  No!  It's YUR-anus, YUR-anus, YUR-anus.  Say it right!
Matthew  YUR-anus?
Austin  Right.  YUR-anus.

(I'm sure you can figure out which pronunciation the video used based on the humor I found on that exchange.)

Jupiter

On a sweeter note, every night when the kids go to bed they come and give me a hug and a kiss and tell me that they love me.  Some time in the last month or so Austin has started finishing this routine by saying, "Mommy, I love you all the way to Jupiter and back!"  Then in the last few nights he has elaborated to say, "Mommy, I love you all the way to Jupiter and back and back and back and back and back!" while pointing his finger back and forth between an imaginary Earth and Jupiter.  Matthew, who doesn't have it quite right, has started saying, "I love you to earth and back and back and back!" while pointing back and forth as well. 

I love these boys!

Earth

Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime?

Here in Wendover, we have had some HOT weather for awhile. The temperature outside already approaches 90 degrees at 10:00 each morning and the highs all week (for several weeks) sit just between high 90s and low 100s. Unfortunately, the heat in our apartment feels oven-like as well because we have no cooling system.

So to survive over the last month, we have made frequent pilgrimages to the local pool. The kids have swimming lessons weekday mornings and then we return as a family after naptime in the afternoons. The kids have had a great time and we have managed to stay reasonably cool for a portion of the day!


When we get out of the pool and are cold from the wind chilling our wet skin, we all lay down on the cement to dry. Even the girlie drops to the ground as soon as I wrap her towel around her shivering limbs. I love seeing my sweet family lined up on the concrete to dry. The damp cement smell fills my mind with memories of swimming with cousins at Grandma Jody and Grandpa Ray's house years ago.

Swimming lessons have been wonderful for the boys. They have been in a class together during both sessions and this session they are the only kids in their class. The close attention has really helped them progress and become more confident in the water. Once in awhile I worry that they are a little too confident in their aquatic abilities when they appear as though they might drown, but they assure me that they are swimming and are just fine.

Elizabeth just loves the water and has learned so much in her aqua-babies swim class. For this class, a parent is in the water with the child and is the one helping them bob under the water, blow bubbles, kick, float, and jump in. Joseph participated for the last session and I am the one participating this session. The reason we really love these lessons for her is the one-on-one time we get for swimming with her while very few people are around. Our own children and other children often make that difficult when we swim in the afternoon.

Invisible Spiders

Do you ever wonder what your children do when you're not watching? Well I do. And the other day I found out. I was working in the office when I heard the following vocalizations coming from down the hall and around the corner:

"Sniff . . . Sniff Sniff . . . Sniffffffffffffffff!"
Austin's voice: "I sniffed one up!"
Matthew's voice: (giggling) "let's get him!"

Then I heard the sound of an exaggerated exhaling of breath, much like what you hear when someone is blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

I decided that I had to see this, so I crept down the hall and peeked my head around the corner into the kitchen. I got there just in time to witness a repeat of the process.

"Sniff . . . Sniff . . . I sniffed one up!"
"Let's get him!"




Much exhaling of breath

Me: "What are you guys doing?"

Boys: "We're sniffing up spiders and then blowing them!"
Me: "Oh"

Why didn't I guess that from the beginning?

How can you tell that you have a Raggamuffin for a child?

She looks like this

I'm just saying . . .

Poems, anyone?

The other day we were all driving in the car, meditating upon our own private thoughts, when the silence was broken by a dreamy sigh from the back of the car, followed by Austin's wistful voice - "speak poetry."

After our laughter subsided, Audrey and I just had to ask where the inspiration for this most recent non sequitur came from. It turns out that we have A. A. Milne to thank for this one. Check out "Winnie-the-Pooh," chapter VII, some time.

To Be a Child

I love how childrens' minds work (not that I pretend to remotely understand them - it's just that the outward manifestation of whatever is going on in there is often so amusing). It's better than television.

For example, consider this scene . . .

To the mind of an adult, especially an overwhelmed adult who is in the middle of a move (this is from 6 weeks ago), this might appear to be just an 11' by 7' room packed wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with moving boxes filled with our stuff, for which there is not enough room in our apartment. If that's what you thought it was, don't feel too bad, because that's what I thought it was too. We were both wrong.

To be sure, I knew that there was a tiny empty space in the middle. But that's all it was to me - an empty space, created so we could squeeze in there and hunt for boxes on occasion.

To the mind of a child, however - a mind unfettered by such mundane concerns as "where are we going to put all this junk?" - it is evidently much more.

Apparently what this space really is is a home appliance repair shop . . .

and a library, complete with easy-chairs. Who knew?

Matthew has clearly learned home-repairs by observing his father's technique - first you select the proper tools for the job;

then you carefully measure the item to be repaired;

gently take it apart;

and lovingly attempt to put it back together.

Finally you bang it with a hammer in frustration!

(I love that throughout the entire "repair" process, Austin remains thoroughly engrossed in his Mother Goose poems - heedless of the racket going on at his elbow)

As I stand here and contemplate these towers of our preoccupation, my frenzied eye falls upon my children, obliviously absorbed in this world that they have created out of our junk-heap. Today it is an appliance repair shop and a library - perhaps tomorrow a pirates' cove and a castle rampart. For just a moment I am transported back to a long-ago time when I, too, could effortlessly create magic out of chaos, untouched by the cares of the day.

Now don't misunderstand me - I love being an adult, and life with my Audrey just gets better and better each day. However, there are infrequent moments when, just for an instant, by a word, a touch, or (as in this case) just a glimpse of their quiet absorption in their own unreachable world, my children wrench from me the brief petition - "oh to be a child again!"

The Land of Pokey Things

As you can see, one of the great things (or not so great things, depending on your perspective) about living in Wendover is that a 5 minute drive in any direction will place you beyond the limits of civilization and in a rugged wilderness.

Take, for example, this view from the street next to our apartment. Austin had been begging me for days to take him "into the hills" (his new favorite pasttime). So, I did, yesterday, along with the rest of the family. We drove up around the back side of this peak and went for a walk.

This is what we found. We walked up the road at the bottom of this picture and up over the area in the foreground.

Throughout, the boys diligently put into practice my instructions that they whack boulders and bushes ahead of them in their path with a stick. This precaution is to give rattlesnakes (who like to hang out just under the lips of boulders and wrap around the stems of bushes) the opportunity to announce their presence before the boys walk by.

Speaking of boulders - we found a lovely one that we all climbed and perched upon.

It was upon sitting down on said boulder that we discovered that we live in . . .

. . . The Land of Pokey Things! Ouch! (Behold the surface of the boulder that we were all sitting on)

It turns out that every rock surface out here is painful to the touch, thanks to the erosive action of the lichen that are slowly turning these mountains into dirt.

It did have a nice view of the salt flats, though.

But who cares about some dumb view when there are rocks to be thrown, right?

In fact, why don't we take this rock-throwing business seriously and get down to where all the good projectiles are?

Ouch! Pokey things!

The ground is no safer a place to be, though, as it is armed with its own pokey things (in this case, "spines," as the boys call them).

And finally, the most pokiest thing of them all!

Matthew had the misfortune to squat down in search of throwing rocks right on top of this pokey thing!

Ouch!!!

No matter - rock throwing goes on regardless

And every crevice in the rocks must be explored

Meanwhile, the girlie got left behind with the Mommies

But she didn't seem to mind too much

After about an hour of being poked in every possible place by every possible surface (sitting, walking, even just standing, it didn't matter - poking happened), most members of the party were ready to go home.

What a glorious sight . . . our ride home!