Toes

It was a slow summer day with not much planned. Brixton was at preschool and Unity and I were trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. We went out to run some errands and I decided that we could get pedicures as a treat. Unity was over the moon of course. 

We had a great time and Unity even got some extra flowers on her toe as a surprise. When Brixton came home, Unity wanted to recreate the experience for him since he'd missed it. So, she got a bowl and a towel and gave him a pedicure, complete with soak and massage.

You know, sometimes they fight so much. Sometimes I can't even think with the bickering and the long hot days and it just feels like it will never end and Chris will never come home from work and I will be in this house that is 85 degrees despite all the fans and they will be yelling at each other forever.

But then. This pure sweetness will happen, this moment of wanting to share joy and do something for a sibling and really, it makes it all worth it. 

I had a playdate!

When Brixton was born, my younger brother told me "You have to make sure he has his own friends. He can't just hang out with Unity's friends all the time." 

It's good advice and I do try. But this season of life that we're in involves lots of playdates for Unity and fewer for Brixton. He does have friends, both the ones that I've chosen for him and the ones he made himself at preschool, but he often ends up hanging out with the big kids, when they let him.

Brixton and Baird are both the little brothers in their families, and even though they're two years apart, they are great buddies. They played together at the toddler gym and then at our house, and Brixton delighted in saying "You're my friend Baird. We're having a playdate right? Right?" 

To which Baird replied "Yeah!"

It was the first thing he wanted to say at dinner, during tell about your day time.

" I had a playdate!"

I'll have to work on helping him have them more often. 

the bunks

I don't think I've talked about this yet, how we put the bunks together. It's been a gradual  process, first putting the kids in the same room with the beds as singles and now putting them together as bunks. They still can't fall asleep in there at the same time, but that will come (soon I hope.)

I have lots of fond memories of sharing a bunk bed with my brother growing up. We played "radio station" where we sang a song until someone yelled "Switch" and you had to instantly sing a new song. We had stuffed animal fights, throwing them back and forth between the beds. Our bunks were also against the wall and I would slide down the wall until I ended up in his bed. Our parents would come up and tell us to go to sleep and we'd look at them with astonishment- "How did you know we were awake?" They must have had magical hearing we thought.

I might not tell my kids those exact stories, but I did tell them how much I liked having a bunk bed when I was kid, how I used to sing to my brother and when the storms came I told him elephants were bowling and he shouldn't be afraid. There's something about that kid space, the stories they create with each other in the dark when they're supposed to be sleeping.

Coming Home, or Spring Break part 1

oh hi there. Yeah, it's been a while. Sorry about that. We had a little bout of Noro virus and then we had a really fabulous amazing Spring Break. Last night we rolled in with sand in our toes and new freckles on our noses. And then this morning we had to find school clothes and pack a lunch out of thin air and my mind is still a million miles away. Or to be more precise,  about 800 miles away.

So, we went to Davis. and we were only able to be there for a couple of days but we had such a great time with siblings and cousins and parks and sprinklers and a parade full of marching bands. Yes, really. So that was great.

I woke up to this

and really, who could ask for anything more?


This Moment.

Portraits

When I Think

by Robert Creeley

When I think of where I've come from
or even try to measure as any kind of
distance these places, all the various
people, and all the ways in which I re-
member them, so that even the skin I
touched or was myself fact of, inside,
could see through like a hole in the wall
or listen to, it must have been, to what
was going on in there, even if I was still
too dumb to know anything—When I think
of the miles and miles of roads, or meals,
of telephone wires even, or even of water
poured out in endless streams down streaks
of black sky or the dirt roads washed clean,
or myriad, salty tears and suddenly it's spring
again, or it was—Even when I think about
all those I treated so poorly, names, places,
their waiting uselessly for me in the rain and
I never came, was never really there at all,
was moving so confusedly, so fast, so driven
like a car along some empty highway passing,
passing other cars—When I try to think of
things, of what's happened, of what a life is
and was, my life, when I wonder what it meant,
the sad days passing, the continuing, echoing deaths,
all the painful, belligerent news, and the dog still
waiting to be fed, the closeness of you sleeping, voices,
presences, of children, of our own grown children,
the shining, bright sun, the smell of the air just now,
each physical moment, passing, passing, it's what
it always is or ever was, just then, just there.

HBD you and me

                             My brother and I are three years and a day apart. So it's both of our birthdays!
                             I am beyond grateful for him and can't imagine life without him. Lots of love Guel.

Sibling magic

Brixton saw this picture and narrated it. "I fall on the head. I rock with Ti-Ti and I not sad."

There are times when they would fight over anything. Some old broken toy that no one's touched in a year. But they are howling with rage and need, clawing each other over it.

There are times when they spend the whole afternoon playing long elaborate games together, packing up possessions and paddling in their laundry basket boat.

The age and gender difference are so similar to myself and my brother that it gives some of us pause. When my parents were here for Unity's bithday, my dad caught himself calling Brixton by my brother's name. It does give me insight to what parts of my childhood were like, what it was like for my parents. Seeing it from the other side.

My first journal, begun when I was seven, is full of scrawled entries, messy with fierce anger towards my brother. He was my rival until suddenly he was my friend, my dearest. We've talked about how amazing it is to have a close friend who knows your whole life. The entire thing. How we can walk beside each other with that knowledge and that closeness.

I watch them as their game turns from screams to laughter and back in the space of a few minutes.
I can only hope.

baking and bus stop comforting

She was singing to him, to help him calm down.

Blackberry muffins- I love the purple swirls.

Uncle Michael

I've said it before and I'll say it again; three cheers for siblings. I can't remember life before my brother,  he is  my first companion and my oldest friend.

born that way?

one of the most facinating parts of being a parent is watching the interplay of genes and environment, the old nature vs nuture debate in action. Before I was a parent I was pretty firmly in the nuture camp. Now I see that it's not that easy. It's so interesting to watch my kids; who look like Chris and I, who share our genes, showing us the personalities they were born with. It's even more obvious with two kids because the differences are there from the very beginning even with the same parents, same house, etc. The first night that we brought Brixton home, he slept six hours straight. Unity didn't do that until she was six or seven months old. Obviously birth order has some role to play here (parents more relaxed, etc) but I know enough people with mellow first kids and more sensitive seconds to know that's not the whole explanation.

All this to say that I have learned my kids have their own personalities that they were indeed born with. It's not to say that we're off the hook as parents or that life experiences won't shape them, but truly each human is a beautiful and unique thing. You know those people who can find some strange pillowcase in a thrift store and cut a hole in it and make some fabulous dress that stops traffic? Suffice to say, I am not that person. Chris and I both wear the same t-shirts and jeans until they literally fall apart and consider something we bought two years ago to be the "new" shirt. Unity? Can pull her brother's vest out of the dirty clothes pile and make an outfit out of it. This is not parental influence. If she continues in this path, we'll have to find some kind of fashionable adult to mentor her later.