Last night we returned from a lovely short trip to South Lake Tahoe with Frostee and her handsome beau, Master Tate. It snowed quite a lot on Saturday and then sometime in the night, the temperature warmed up enough to change the snow to rain. When we arrived, there were lots of big bare patches of ground sporting pretty beige autumn leaves. When we left, six to eight inches of slushy wet snow covered everything.

The 30-hour weekend was just about perfect. We played in the snow, beaned each other with sloppy snowballs, made Splenda cookies, played Apples to Apples and Life, and ate yummy carbs. We chatted late into the wee hours of Sunday morning. I slept in while my lovely man got up with my early rising son. We spent time together: something we haven’t done with these good friends in a long, long, too-long time.

Even the slow drive home over the summit and down the mountain wasn’t a disappointment. Lucas slept, thankfully, ’til we reached Placerville. A stop for pizza there rounded out the trip. Thanks for dinner, darlings!

On Friday evening and Saturday morning, before we embarked, I was feeling a little frazzled and doubting the wisdom of using the last precious weekend before Christmas to go out of town. There’s so much still to do to get ready for the holiday! But you know? It reminded me that the holiday isn’t about getting everything done. It’s about enjoying time with people you love.

So, Frostee and Master Tate, dearest husband, and Lucas: Thank you. And Merry Christmas.

Is it the eleventh? I don’t know; I’ve lost track. Anyway, please feel free to join us here at Chez Wilson on the evening of December 25, anytime after 7 pm.

Good friends + good family = The Good Life

That’s exactly what we have and this is our chance to get you all together. So please come visit, detox, and let your hair down. Escape from the holiday insanity and stress. Kick off your shoes, hug your neighbor, and toast to the happy and hard times of 2005. Know someone cool with no place to go? Bring him or her along.

Much love and light,
Sara, Ian, and Lucas

Groove is in the heart

Inside-my-head stuff follows.
Sometimes my kid makes me nuts. Have I mentioned this before? Have I also admitted already that sometimes I don’t like him? I mean–I love him; he is the most spectacularly spectacular person ever to arrive on this good green earth, IMHO of course. But man! Lately we butt heads all the fucking time

Other people’s kids have taught my son lots of annoying new tricks, words, turns of phrase. I’ll mention just a couple here:

“Guess what? Chicken butt!”
“Guess why? Chicken eye!”

This type of thing, I can handle. And it doesn’t surprise me because he’s always thought weird words and rhymes were hilarious. The following statements, however, are harder to handle:

“I hate my dad.”
“Shooting is good; it’s fun.”
“I can push you down, mom. I can! I can hurt you.”
“I’m going to stab you in the eye until you bleed and then you’ll be deaded.”

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

Except they can and they do. And lately, they hurt me all the time. The behaviorists say put this on “extinction.” Ignore the behavior and it will go away. I have successfully made this work on Lucas. He gets really loud for a while and it’s impossibly awful, but then he stops.

I feel obligated to teach him that such words are hurtful, and yet, I don’t want to infuse too much power into them by making a big deal about it. We are currently having a lot of discussions about using only gentle hands and gentle words with our friends, and that we must must always be respectful of others; using ugly words is disrespectful.

My fuse is really short these days. I’m very quick to get angry with him. I don’t like it. I feel like a crappy mom because of it. Where did my sweet baby go?

Busy day today. Lucas has dance class and the Advent Spiral celebration to go to today. After that, we’re taking him to Kimberlee’s house where he’ll stay with her and Gordon while we go to TAC’s Christmas party downtown.

What follows is rather mundane.

So, I sent Lucas off with Dad to go to dance class a couple of hours ago. He seems to enjoy himself more at dance when I’m not there. I think it’s some kind of performance anxiety or something. Last week I sat and proofed while he and the girls danced with Miss Bethany. He was suddenly super clingy and stopped participating about half-way through the class. Something about doing the caterpillar-to-butterfly dance freaks him right out.

I kind of expected the boys to be home by now. I have busied myself while they’ve been gone by doing a bunch of stuff that is just plain easier to do when no one else is around: I showered and shaved my legs (for tonight’s little black dress), I swept the floors, I picked up toys and reorganized Lucas’s room a little (in anticipation of the Great Christmas Tsunami of More Toys), I wrapped some Christmas presents (scissors, tape, and sharpie pens laying around on the floor while I wrap are just too good for a 3-year-old to ignore!), and posted in my livejournal. Now it’s 1:15 and I’m hoping that they’re bringing me back some lunch, or else that they’re out buying me cool presents for Xmas.

A couple of days ago, I culled Lucas’s bookshelf of “baby books”—board books, simplistic things-that-are-in-baby’s-world books, chewable cloth books, etc. I had no idea how many books that might be, but then look who his parents are. There’s now an entire, rather large gift bag full of books that will be placed out in the garage on the mountain of baby stuff that’s already threatening to evict everything else. Since I’m pretty sure we’re going to have another baby someday, we’re keeping loads of this crap: clothes, carriers, high chairs, bouncy seats, toys, blankies, mobiles, and assorted baby equipment.

My superstitious personality says that if I keep all this boy stuff, I’m sure to have a girl next time (you know, when I actually get up my courage to do all this again). I wonder if there’s also some kind of birth-control magic at work too. If I have all the baby stuff I might need, maybe I won’t ever get pregnant. Hmmm.

And no, I’m not.

December 10, 2005
This isn’t new news, but I don’t think I’ve written about it here before. My chiropractor, Dr. O’Brian has told me my back is all f—ed up because I carry Lucas. He’s a whopping 36 pounds now. So, since I injured myself carrying him in July, I’ve had to make him walk a lot more and climb up into his car seat himself. This is a good thing, but he resents it bitterly and we consistently run 15–20 minutes late wherever we go because he is a master at dawdling.

Yesterday Lucas had a checkup with Dr. Kuhn. Although we always had great care with Dr. Vigran at Kaiser, I’m happy to be back at UCD with John W. Kuhn, M.D. He’s a friendly, down-home kind of guy and he was our first pediatrician. We took Lucas to see him when Lucas was only one day old.
Anyway, the kid is very healthy (except for the occasional cold). He’s growing. His spine is straight. He’s 38.5 inches tall and about 36 pounds as I mentioned above. That’s the 35% in height and the 50% in weight. I was told that if he doesn’t want to eat, I shouldn’t make him, but that his weight is fine. Lucas was poked and prodded in a friendly and fun way. Dr. Kuhn checked his ears for bunnies. I was asked whether he separates OK at school (yes), how high can he count (29), and does he know his colors (since 20 months). I was also asked if Lucas has any language issues: “Is his language clear?” (Abundantly, yes.)

Warning: This is a silly thing to write about.

OK, today I bit the bullet and went to Macy’s to find the perfect cheap holiday dress for tomorrow night’s company Christmas party. I was reminded how stupid it is to go shopping alone for something as important (ha!) as a holiday party dress. I sorely missed the company of Fosseelovechild and Kimkimkaree–the kind souls whom I’ve dragged along to the mall with me in past years.

I happened to know of a big sale and had an extra 10% coupon with me. I went first to the juniors section ’cause sometimes when I cruise by on my way elsewhere, the dresses catch my eye. I can tell you, everything seems to have extra flash this year: sequins, hulking rhinestones, and ruffles that really belong on a male flamenco dancer’s sleeves. I thought, well, maybe I can do flash. Who knows? The first six dresses I chose to try on were stupid, ludicrous, too young, too flouncy, too roomy in the chest, etc.

I gave up and went upstairs to the women’s department. There, everything is old! Billions of beads on every garment, and anything with beads on it is in the hundreds of dollars. This is, of course, entirely out of the question. What’s more, I can’t shake the feeling that some poor old woman in Taiwan or Indonesia went blind sewing these beads on. Even the “little black dresses” with little ornamentation were like $150! And really, I think I only saw a couple of racks from which to choose.

I dejectedly rode the escalator back down to juniors. I decided I’d wander through the racks again looking for the simplest of frocks. I found a couple. I guess they were so simple they didn’t catch my eye when I went through the first time. Tried them on. They fit. I couldn’t decided between the black one or the gold one.

My practical mental advisor said, “You already have a black dress. Why waste money on getting another one? Choose the gold.”

My frivolous mental advisor said, “If you buy the gold dress, you will have to buy new shoes too. Yay!”

Practical said, “That’s stupid. You have black shoes already.” Madame Practical seemed to be contradicting herself.

Stymied, I opened the door and asked the opinions of a group of four women who were also in the dressing room. They made me try on both dresses for them. I told them that I’m 33 years old and they shouldn’t let me pick something too young-looking. When I put on the black one, they all said “Aaah.”

I came home with another little black dress.

I’ve been quiet lately. It’s not that stuff doesn’t happen to me. It’s just that when I work super-late every night, I don’t have the energy to write.

Hopefully I’ve seen the back side of the current project. Hopefully they won’t come back and say change the A-to-Z order to a Z-to-A order, or something equally random and maddening.

I’ve been visiting my old cube lately. It still has a nice Roseville office-park view featuring some grass and some baby trees. From it I can see the smokers on the patio connected to the other building. It’s a strange feeling to be staring out the same window I used to stare out every day back when I had a “real” job. This week I was wishing the same old things: That I could be at home with my man instead.

Anyway, the whole thing is just way too familiar. Some of the faces are new. That’s cool. But the bologne is still the same old bologne.

A few nights ago, we had a little get-together here for a friend’s birthday. I hope he had fun. I know I certainly did. It was wonderful to see my friends in person and in a relaxed and easy kind of atmosphere. I really like being with my peeps.

November 28, 2005

We have been out of town the last two weekends. It was so lovely to escape our routine, our work, our deadlines, and our same four walls. Over the weekend of November 18-20, we visited Monterey with our friends Kelly and Ambrosia. Ambrosia is now 2 and a half years old and is cute as a bug’s ear.

We grown-ups finally spent enough time together to really get to know one another. The car time wasn’t very comfortable because we all squeezed into Kelly’s Prius (I was between the two enormous car seats in the back), but it saved us lots of money on gas! Plus we were able to socialize while traveling on the way there and back, instead of just meeting up in Monterey.

The kids really enjoyed the Monterey Bay Aquarium, as did I. I really love it there and think they’ve done a marvelous job on the exhibits. As usual, my favorites were the jellies and the kelp forest. Kelly is very fond of the sea otters. Ian enjoys the hammer-head sharks because they are so absurd. Lucas surprised me by claiming that the sharks and the tunas in the “Outer Bay” exhibit were his favorite animals. We happened to see a photograph of a shark caught in a net in one of the hands-on kids’ exhibits. Ambrosia seemed kind of stuck on that image and kept talking about the shark caught in the net. Both Lucas and Ambrosia enjoyed touching the animals in the touch pools. Outside, by the bay, Lucas enjoyed a long game of air basketball.

We pretty much spent all day Saturday at the Aquarium. The kiddos ate PB&J sandwiches that we brought from our hotel. Ambrosia crashed out and slept on her mom at around 3 pm, so she and Kelly just chilled for a while on a bench while Ian and Lucas and I continued on our tour. Lucas didn’t nap, so by the end of the day, after some pub food for dinner, he was exhausted and cranky.

The only bad part to the whole weekend was that Lucas had a hard time getting along with Ambrosia. He poked her in the eye on purpose once when he was mad; pulled her hair another time. Unfortunately, we didn’t have two of every single thing we brought for the kids to do, so each of them was extremely interested in whatever the other child had, and yet fundamentally opposed to trading. I found myself mothering in such a way as to protect Ambrosia from my kid’s temper and rough hands, which was new and rather unsettling to me. (I guess I identify more with the underdog–the kid who’s picked on, rather than the kid who picks on others, so I felt sort of at a loss about how to teach Lucas to control himself.) We kept telling him to walk away when he was mad. He managed to do it right a few times.

Developmentally, the two children are in rather opposite phases. Lucas’s imagination is so turned on right now that he shifts fluidly from one pretend-play scenario to another. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with who or what he is at any given moment. For Ambrosia, on the other hand, pretending is less pronounced and she stays in a particular scenario for longer periods of time. Lucas is used to playing with his friends at preschool, who assign each other roles all the time. So, he would assign a role to Ambrosia, such as “You’re seventeen, Ambrosia, and I’m eighteen.” But she would shout “No Lucas, I’m not! You stop it!” Heated arguments ensued. This really wasn’t any fun when I was in between the two of them in the car! Other things they argued about: The oil refinery we passed was a castle to Ambrosia but a light house to Lucas (it has lights all over it). The semi trucks driving on the highways were trains to Ambrosia but trucks to Lucas (who used to call them trains when he was 2 and a half years old, too).

It’s also disturbing to hear Lucas say loudly that he doesn’t like Ambrosia, well within her and her mother’s hearing. Kids can be so mean. What’s weird is that he seems particularly challenged by this little girl, in a way that I’ve not seen before with any other child. He gets along great with the other 2-year-olds he knows. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Ambrosia’s language is well developed, and she stands up to him verbally. I think the other younger kids he knows don’t do that, so Lucas is able to think fondly of them as his “baby sisters” and “baby brothers.”

Anyway, after a rocky start to Sunday, we went to the Lovers’ Point park (http://virtualguidebooks.com/CentralCalif/MontereyPeninsula/LoversPoint/LoversPointLawn.html) and played on the beach and in the park. The weather was perfect the whole time we were there, in fact, I forgot to bring shorts or bathing trunks/suits. Lucas got soaked by the waves in his sweatpants. The sun shone. The waves crashed. We played tag. It was great!

We are now home from a lovely long weekend in Eureka/Arcata. The ocean is still there. The redwoods are still there. It rains in the rainforest.

And thankfully, my home is still here. I blissfully slept the night away in my own comfy bed, while my son slept in a separate room.

I will post more about our recent travels later.

From http://www.bostonuk.com/names/
Sara = Princess, Hebrew
Peaceful, poised and understanding you do not let anyone or anything disturb your innate calm. You are tolerant of others no matter how their behaviours or beliefs differ from your own. Not attached to material or worldly affairs you are free to express your true self. Displaying great wisdom and serenity people are naturally drawn to you for guidance and counsel. Your courage and presence of mind see you through any adversity.

Sarabella
You are a visionary with courage and enthusiasm if a little hasty at times. Your ambitious nature can be satisfied when you apply wisdom, patience and self-discipline to your vitality and zest. You have wonderful way with words and may be drawn to the communications arena where there is the potential for great success. Your generous and warm nature attracts many friends and loved ones.

Ian = God is gracious
You have a charismatic and magnetic personality which others cannot help but be drawn to ensuring you of many friends. Very ambitious your keen perceptive powers and ability to absorb knowledge helps you to achieve your objectives. You are a strong willed and industrious worker who is prepared to earn all the material success and good fortune which comes your way. With a philosophical attitude happiness is assured.

Lucas = Light, Latin
Charming, witty, original and idealistic you have a creative and inventive mind with great intuition. Your broad vision, perceptive powers and compassion gives you an instinctive understanding of peoples needs. You are a natural leader who has a talent for inspiring and teaching others and always display fairness, honesty and integrity. You are always seeking a new challenge for your vast creative potential.

William = Resolute protector, Teutonic

Honest, dependable and practical you tend to have a fairly conservative but determined approach to life. Your intelligence and wisdom means that you are sought out for guidance and advice. Gifted in communication you are philosophical and intuitive and are usually a traveller both mentally and physically. People respect you for your patience, discretion and integrity.

Sydney = From St.Denis, France. French

Very much the individual you have enormous energy and vision and must find a suitable use for your talents. You have great potential for success in business if you can guard against indecision and worry. Your generous nature means that you are never short of friends and with cooperation your relationships can be very rewarding. Perseverance and firm decision making will ensure you achieve your objectives.

Jonathan = God’s gift, Hebrew
Very much the individual you have enormous energy and vision and must find a suitable use for your talents. You have great potential for success in business if you can guard against indecision and worry. Your generous nature means that you are never short of friends and with cooperation your relationships can be very rewarding. Perseverance and firm decision making will ensure you achieve your objectives.