arts and letters

wow, i'm very behind on our activities.. it's been a busy month!  i'll start with something simple:  a reading/writing/drawing update...

c has come so close to reading lately that i keep expecting it all to click all of the sudden.  she can pick out most of the consonants that she hears in words, though she has a harder time with vowels.  she can make all the sounds to read words when prompted, but she still has a hard time stringing together 'duh-ah-guh' by herself.  she does do a pretty good job of spelling out words though, so it can only be a matter of time -



she also loves to write.  this might have been her first unassisted note:

the final product read 'I LOVE LUCY FROM CHLOE'

we've also worked a bit on reading music.  she can label notes on the staff by working out their relative position to notes that she knows, then play it back on the piano or violin (in a limited range of course).  i find it interesting that she prefers to actually 'read' the music (the letters anyways), i.e. following along note by note, as opposed to memorizing.

one of the most fun things though, has been the evolution of her drawing skills.  she's always loved to color, but in the past six months or so, she's started drawing on her own.  her favorite subjects are generally people, and they're quite charming =)  here's one from last august:

one from december that she put in her present to Jesus box:

we moved from egg to insect around february:

with a stop in surfer-land:

i think this is my all-time favorite to date.  the artist describes it as 'mommy and daddy when they got married, and that's lucy watching in the corner':

a rare non-portrait of 'a building with lots of different bunk beds and a window.'  reminds me of madeline =)

and finally, we have the 'family on a path by the river', marker on packing paper ;-)

play by play

for those of you wondering what exactly we do all day, here's a day in the life:

07:00 - girls wake up just in time to see daddy off.  this is the early end of the spectrum for them.  they've been known to sleep in till 9 or even later.  one of my favorite moments:  waving and blowing kisses to daddy from the balcony.  i start some pizza dough for tonight.
08:00 - breakfast and obligatory 'amelia bedelia' reading are over, and i've caught up with last night's dishes.  the girls break into our new supply of foam stickers from the dollar store and commence various 'projects' (their favorite word).  i test out a new pinterest idea of making stamps from foam stickers on soda caps (works great)
08:45 - approximately 56 sticker backings cleaned up off the floor and wondering what to do before a 10:00 work call.  a gust of wind and a gift of a kite provides the answer.
09:00 - we head out to the small square on the next block, kite in hand.  it's almost too gusty, and the wind is too erratic to fly well, but it easily pops up and bobs around like a deranged bird before crashing back to earth.  c is delighted and can handle the kite herself.  l is more interested in collecting woodchips in a container she smuggled out with her.
10:00 - an hour and a half on the phone with my now former boss in a crash course on what i might need to know.  the girls do a fantastic job of entertaining themselves in their room, and later in ours.  when i go to tell them so, i'm told this is the 'hotel' and that i should go away (quickly transformed into a request to read all the books they've brought with them on this 'vacation')
11:30 - we pack up to run errands.  dry cleaning, vacuuming out the car, car wash, post office.  rounded out by a trip to the playground for a picnic lunch
1:45 - playground time curtailed by nature calling.  restrooms are locked, so we head across the street to the ice cream shop, which, as it turns out, has a half-price special on the 8th of every month.  a mango-pineapple and a lemon italian ice for $1.08.  score!
2:45 - back at home for another work call.  girls in their room, supposed to be resting, no such luck.
3:30 - leotards on, shoes packed
4:00 - cutest little dancers greet their little friends enthusiastically and take their places in class.  parents are banished to chat in the lobby.
4:45 - we reluctantly bypass the playground and head home.  l falls asleep in the car, and continues her missed nap on the couch.  i get some things ready for dinner.
5:45 - skype with our bestest buddies from cleveland.  yay for technology!
6:30 - daddy comes home, unexpectedly early.  i'm grumpily fixing the pizza dough with two helpers on the counter.  usually, i love their participation, but we're having an ant problem and the prospect of cleaning up flour from every nook and cranny was not exciting
7:30  - dinner is served.  the girls do a good (and relatively speedy) job on their dinner, having been denied after-nap snacks due to lousy performance last night.  they choose 7 jelly bellies apiece for dessert.
8:15 - an unusual evening bath, followed by the requisite cleaning up, mostly in the 'hotel' room tonight.  last night, i crawled into bed to find a bead bracelet under the covers.
8:45 - bedtime story followed by lambies, lions, coopers and pandas duly located and tucked in with their mistresses, prayers, hugs and kisses, indication of 'how i want the door closed'.  final exit just after 9pm.  that's about as early as i can seem to make it, but as you can see, i'm a night owl too ;-)

rinse, lather, repeat =)  this was a particularly eventful day, in the sense of reportable doings, but every day finds us busily occupied with our small goings ons.  i can't always tell you how exactly the time goes by, but you very rarely see the girls uninvolved in some private plan of their own, and even more rarely hear a complaint of boredom, so i'm satisfied that they are day by day growing and playing and learning to order their lives into useful pursuits (though the adult eye is often blind to the particular 'use' ;-) ).

luxury, part I

in the last couple weeks, i've felt the meaning of luxury in a way no millionaire could understand.  well, no millionaire who hasn't been a mom =)

two weekends ago, we dropped the girls off at my godmother's and headed down to staunton, va for our first event with the dartmouth alumni club:  a showing of Richard III at the Blackfriars Playhouse, complete with pre- and post- performance discussion, wine-tasting, dinner, and breakfast buffet.  oh, and accommodations at the fantastic Stonewall Jackson Hotel next door.

it sounds great, doesn't it?  and it was - the introduction of the play (which i'd never read) by one of dartmouth's premier professors made it accessible and even entertaining.  the show was amazing - the troupe was doing a special series simulating shakespearean era performance, i.e. the players staged the whole production with no director in just 30 days.  the company was good - even though we knew no one, at every table we sat down to, we had no trouble joining in on a friendly, lively conversation.  we're both introverts, so that is fairly unusual ;-)  i don't know if it was the common experience or the college connection, or if there really is something about dartmouth people.  maybe a combination thereof =)

it took me a few hours to realize why i felt like i'd stepped into an alternate reality.  a semi-intellectual (by which i mean comprehensible to lay people; to be distinguished from pseudo-intellectual) literary discussion is probably not most people's daily life, but it was more than that.   it was the first time in a long time, i'd say oh, about 4 years, that my primary definition wasn't mom.  at dinner and breakfast, the kids came up in conversation, but as a piece of the puzzle, not the theme.  we talked about places we'd lived, about the middle east, about ben's research, about interviewing dartmouth candidates, and a few times about how the kids did away from us and such things.  it wasn't just that they weren't there, it's that they weren't front and center.  this was probably not a strange thing for ben, but for me, just about every situation i find myself in, whether it's church, friends, grocery shopping, and obviously playgrounds/ballet/bike riding/zoo/library/crafts (you get the idea), i'm mom.  work is a possible exception, but i think because there's so little social aspect to it for me, it doesn't weigh much into my relational consciousness (yes, i just made up that phrase).

i don't mean this to be a complaint; there is nothing i'd rather be right now besides mom.  it just felt like a flash to the future (or a blast from the past?), reminding me that, while mom feels all-consuming now, it is a role and not an identity.

which leads me to part II.. when i get to it.. next time i put down my mom hat ;-)