It was a lovely day. Much thanks to everyone for the cards, calls, emails, etc. Got to have lunch out with Thaemos, and dinner out with my three boys. Will catch up with Mom, Dad, Ro, Nana, and possibly Jonathan tomorrow night. Received a gift cert for Capital Nursery (yay for garden plants!) from Ian’s mom.

I’m 35 today. I’m very, very glad to see 35. Happy new year to me.

Asher and I went to the pediatrician’s office today. At 15 weeks, he now weighs 17 pounds 8 ounces! Holy cow! The doc said that’s the 96 percentile for weight. He is also 23.5 inches long.

Everything about him is healthy and fine. I was congratulated on my super-nutritious milk. Poor Asher got a shot (a combo of five vaccines) and an oral vaccine. I didn’t let them give him the other two injections they wanted to give him today. I think eight new substances is too many for a 3-month-old person to have to deal with. Sadly, we’ll have to go back in a few weeks for more shots. I hate this part of being a parent.

He’s doing ok but he’s definitely not his usual sunny self today,

My grand-aunt, Mary Graves, passed away last week. She was 91 or 92 years old. Her death seems to have brought out the worst sort of behavior in the part of my dad’s family that I have never liked. The rift between the good and the evil relatives has widened considerably.

I never really knew or loved Mary. She wasn’t the least bit warm to me (or any of the kids) while I was growing up; she wasn’t well-liked by my father and uncle. I only went to her home one time. I think I was about 10. Even my grandmother says Mary was always a loner who didn’t get along well with others. But my grandmother and my other grand-aunt, whom I do love very, very much, will miss their sister. I am saddened to see that one more person they’ve known their whole lives is dead. For the last several years, their social calendar has been overflowing with funerals and memorial services.

Mary supposedly said she didn’t want any kind of service when she passed away. I say “supposedly” because the evil side of the family has been lying and manipulating the facts throughout Mary’s rather short (as far as we know) bout with bone cancer. Information has been heavily managed. Loved ones were prevented from seeing Mary in her final days, all, ostensibly, for Mary’s own good. We’re not buying it.

But blocking my grandmother and Nana from seeing and then saying goodbye to their sister is about as evil as it gets. These two women whom I love and admire seem a little frailer for it.

So, the best I can say about Mary’s death is that we think she didn’t suffer long. And we hope that those who were with her during her final days were loving and compassionate and provided her with care that eased her pain. We do not know for sure that this was the case.

Thank you, thank you, darling baby, for being so cooperative at my Very Important Client’s Office for the last three days! I take Asher with me for the few days a month that I have to spend working in the Client’s office. So far, he’s been terrific! No fussing, no noise. I’ve found a comfy storeroom close to editorial that nobody goes into and have set up baby camp there. It’s working out great. I’m getting my work done. Client is happy, even exclaiming, “I haven’t even heard that baby!”

So, let’s hope tomorrow goes as well. It’s our last day working at Client’s office until June.

Keep it up, baby. Mama needs the paycheck.

Asher is turning out to be quite a character.

He’s jolly and fat and extremely mild-mannered. He is growing so quickly. Everywhere he goes he is met with exclamations such as “My, what a chubby baby you are!” and “Oh my God. Look at those cheeks!” Fortunately, he is not nearly as sensitive to these remarks as I am when people comment on the size and shape of my body.

He’s getting sturdier all the time, too. So now he’s really huggable. This naturally leads to nicknames such as pumpkin, blumpkin (Ian came up with that one), teddy bear, and bear cub.

Although Lucas is often too loud, too fast, and too in-your-face for Asher’s comfort, nevertheless, Asher often responds to Lucas’s antics with smiles and drooly grins. Lucas is always gentle when touching Asher, but sometimes doesn’t realize just how much of his 5-year-old weight he’s leaning on the baby. He is learning how to turn down the volume and move a little more slowly around Asher.

Asher’s head is covered in blond fuzz now. Eyes are still dark blue. At first I expected them to turn brown, but now I’m not sure that they will. We will have to wait several more months before we can be certain of their final color.

When he was born, Asher’s hands were long and lean. He had the most graceful fingers I’ve ever seen on a baby. Now his hands are plump little paws. Where he used to have delicate bumpy knuckles, he now has dimples lined up in a row. His hands are more often open to the world, which is a sign of the physical and emotional unfolding that newborns do. He can now hold a small toy if you place it in his grip, but he usually drops it after a moment. Sometimes the toy makes it into his mouth. More often, his thumb and index finger are found there. When he sucks on them he makes the loudest kissy smacks.

So far, Asher’s favorite toy is mommy or daddy’s fingers. He watches them move, tries to capture them in his grip, and gnaws on them whenever possible. In a pinch, my pinkie finger makes an excellent substitute for the pacifier.

Asher has not yet discovered his own toes, but he probably will in the next month or so. He does get a funny look on his face when I tickle his feet or play “piggies” with his toes.

Fuss O’Clock (between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.) is getting easier. We’ve learned some techniques that help him cope during this time. As much as possible we try to help him sleep at least some of those two hours. He likes being in the sling or carried; whatever you do, don’t set him down and expect him to stay content in the evening. That works fine at other times, but not during “Happy Hour.” For this reason, I almost never even try to make dinner, but instead wait until Ian comes home from work at around 6. It is possible to go out during this time. Somehow, a change of scenery can sometimes stave off a meltdown. As I’ve said before, this is all relatively easy to cope with given how content he his most of the rest of the time.

On April 28, at around 7 a.m., Lucas peeked out the blinds and exclaimed, “Daddy! The shed turned into a play structure!”

So, at 7:05 a.m., we all trooped outdoors in our pjs to play on it for the first time.

Ian had finished the whole project the previous day, while Lucas was away at the Bs’ house. Instead of bringing him home at 4 p.m., we kept him away all evening until after dark, so that he wouldn’t see it until the following day.

The reveal was a glorious moment. Ian really outdid himself on this project, and impressed the hell out of me. The Domi Lama’s still got it!

We are really grateful that we have the play structure now. It was very expensive, possibly the most expensive b-day present I’ve ever heard of, but worth every penny, I think. (RoRo and my parents all pitched in to help pay for it. Thank you, family!!) I think Lucas and Asher will both get tons of good play out of it. And it has an attractive design, so I don’t mind looking at it in my back yard.

So, thank you, Super Dad. You’re the BEST!!!!

Here’s the picture from Adventure Playsets.

Lucas enjoyed having six friends over on April 29th to celebrate his fifth birthday. The party was three hours long. We played on the new play structure, organized an impromptu game of “baseball,” beat up a pinata, ate cake and icecream, and generally behaved as silly as possible. The mommies and daddies of Lucas’s school buddies trusted us with their kids and split. It was loads of fun after tons of work. The healthy carrot cake I made from scratch out of the Waldorf-friendly Birthday book pretty much sucked, but it was pretty and the kids didn’t seem to notice. Lucas was sufficiently impressed by the decorations, which included a hotwheel race car and a trophy, that he later bragged about his birthday cake.


Left to right: Maximillian, Andrew, Arwen, Samuel, Devin, Lucas, and Charlie, with Daddy in the back.

See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.

“Mmmmm. Carrots,” says Arwen.

Devin’s usual antics.

Sweet Andrew.

Playing baseball.

Charlie wacks the pinata.

Lucas’s usual antics.

Maxi.

Mommy and Asher.

Charlie playing.

Present time!

Andrew again.

Arwen peeks through.

Samuel up high.

Lucas LOVES baseball now.

“The museums in children’s minds, I think, automatically empty themselves in times of utmost horror, to protect the children from eternal grief.”

–Kurt Vonnegut, in the prologue of Slapstick, which I read and enjoyed yesterday.

Actually, Lucas was completely fine yesterday. But Mrs. Klocek told me to keep him home, so I did. A child with a fever is supposed to be given a “day of rest” before he goes back to school.

It was a hard pill for me to swallow. I was so disappointed to not be in his RRK class with Ian; I’ve been looking forward to it all year long. He, however, was happy as a clam to be home.

“Mommy, am I really 5 now?”
“Yes, starting today and for a whole year!”
“I’m catching up with Natasha!”

Lucas must have asked me if he was “really 5 now” at least a half-dozen times yesterday.

I realize I was in a funk because his birthday didn’t go the way I wanted it to go, and because I didn’t get to do the things I had planned. I was mad, but not at Lucas. And I spent a fair amount of time inwardly trying to adjust my attitude. It was, after all, his birthday. And it’s no fun to have your mommy pissed off at you on your birthday, especially when you didn’t do anything wrong.

He spent part of the morning outside hitting balls off his new T. I resented that he was outside having fun instead of being “sick.”

Gradually, though, I came to see the fever he had the day before as a manifestation of the birthday. Lots of excitement, lots of anxiety, lots of pressure. Truly, he was most comfortable spending his birthday at home, in his own space, with me and Asher. I asked him if he was sad to be missing school and his friends. He said, “No. But I do miss my dad.” Perhaps his body coped with the pressure by running a fever, effectively engineering the perfect birthday: one that was low-key, quiet, and safe. Perhaps he needed some time to make the transition from 4 to 5, to let the knowledge that he’s “really 5 now” sink in.

We made banana muffins together from a mix and added in dried fruit. Then we made frosting and frosted them and added all the sprinkles we could find in the cupboard–stars, green sugar, and multicolored balls. It was fun. He stuck with the project from start to finish and even helped me clean up. We dipped strawberries and bananas in the leftover melted chocolate too.

He also worked happily and quietly in his new “homework” book (a preschool skills book we gave him for his birthday). He played outside on the new play structure. We ate leftover shrimp tostadas for lunch. He was perfectly well behaved the whole day.

When Ian got home, we went out to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory and finally got to eat in the dining train car! They serve ice cream there, ya know.