The Tomato Guardian

There is an enormous spider living in our tomato plant. He never moves. He just sits there, in his web, mysteriously growing bigger. I am a human, and I am intimidated by him. I look at the tomatoes nestled behind his web and think, “Those don’t look quite ripe yet. I’ll just wait for one more day.” If I were a bug, I would be absolutely terrified.

Goals

We (the parents) recently set some goals.

For Coriel, the day is finally here. We are all at least vaguely interested in ending the diaper era. Yes, I do realize this is older than many children. Yes, I am feeling a little teensy bit defensive about it. Yes, that is largely because I feel like a slacker. C’est la vie.

For Addra, perhaps she might like to sleep a little better? That would be nice. That is our goal for her. (Her goal for herself is probably to run a marathon next year.)

My goal is weight loss. I admit this was a default goal because I wasn’t feeling particularly creative on the day we set goals. I’m only about five or six pounds off from my pre-pregnancy weight, and even if it is a little bit differently distributed these days, it would still be nice to get back to that. (But how can you expect me to lose weight when our neighbor gives us fudge?)

Brice’s goal is to finally get involved in some ground-level poverty reduction and public policy work. We’ve been planning that ever since we moved here, but what with moving and a new baby and a mood-swinging wifey, he hasn’t had the chance to do it yet. However, he’s started contacting homeless shelters and food banks to do some volunteer work, so things are moving forward.

Perhaps I’ll post again on the progress of these goals. But given my rather random approach to blogging, don’t count on it. (We might as well be realistic, after all.)

The Bunny and the ROUS

At first it was only a small rabbit* that had taken up residence in our backyard, apparently considering our watermelon patch his summer home. We have sprayed this incredibly aromatic** anti-critter spray around our garden, multiple times. Once, I entered the garden the day after I had sprayed profusely. And there was that cursed little bunny, hopping around and laughing at me.

The bunny is an annoyance. My brother suggested having him for dinner some time, and if I were absolutely positive it’s not illegal, I’d possibly go for it. However, the bunny has not caused some of the depredations I expected. Our carrots have been safe, our lettuce untouched. Our broccoli… well, in a matter of one or two days, our broccoli leaves have entirely disappeared. But that’s not too bad, since it wasn’t producing much anyway (who knew that spring/fall crops really won’t grow in 100-degree weather?).

But then came the ROUS. The first time we saw him, he was far away in our neighbor’s yard. Brice said, “Wow, check out that huge bunny.” But that night, when I headed out to the garden to get some tomatoes, I saw him trundling out of our yard and discovered he was something far more sinister: an ROUS.***

We haven’t seen him back since then, but I suspect he’s been around. I suspect he’s responsible for the half-eaten apple that magically disappeared from our compost pile and reappeared on the ground fifteen feet away. This actually worries me a bit because I don’t understand how—without defying the laws of physics—this fat rodent reached up approximately four feet, over the very strong black plastic tube surrounding the pile, to grab the apple in the first place. An ROUS that ignores gravity? I live in fear.

*I refer to one rabbit, but I suspect that rabbits are much like icebergs, and for every one I see, there are actually ten.

**Shockingly, this aroma is actually quite pleasant.

***Yes, he’s probably just a groundhog or something, but if I can’t pretend he’s an ROUS, I’m going to pretend he’s a wolverine because those things are scary.

Why? (version 2)

On a less patient day, the conversation goes more like this:

Please don’t drop that toy in the toilet.

Why?

Because I said so, that’s why.*

*Yes, I really have said, “Because I said so, that’s why.” Argh. It burns me.

Why?

Please don’t drop that toy in the toilet.

Why?

Because then we’d have to throw it away.

Why?

Because it would get germs on it from the toilet.

Why?

Because toilets are where poops and pees go, not toys.

Why?

Because that’s what toilets are made for.

Why?

Because someone invented them so that we could use them for poops and pees.

Why?

Because back in the olden days, people had to go to the bathroom outside, even when it was cold or dark out.

Why?

Because everybody eats, so everybody poops.

Why?

Because that’s how God made us.

The Adventurer

Everyone always says you can tell the personality differences between your children pretty much from Day One. Not me. I have three possible explanations for this:

1. My children have fairly similar personalities.

2. I am unobservant.

3. The parents who see their children’s different personalities from birth are delusional.

No matter the reason, I have not seen many differences until recently. Yes, Addra drools far more than Coriel ever did. And she also has a giant tongue (Coriel is a bit tongue-tied, so she can’t stick her tongue out as far as Addra can). But these are minor differences. Generally they are both cheerful, sweet, badly sleeping, laughing, smiling, gorgeous girls.

And then came crawling. The Addra-pie is quite the crawler. She is an explorer. Coriel was more of an observer. She liked to be where I was and watch me. Not always so with Addra. One day the three of us were on the floor in the living room, playing. Suddenly Addra crawled away. She went down the hallway, looked around for a bit, and came back. I was absolutely floored (handy, I guess, that I was already sitting on the carpet). Never, never, never do I remember Coriel doing that. But Addra does it on a fairly regular basis. She just likes to check things out.

This means, tragically, that I’m going to have to babyproof far better than I have thus far, since she won’t always be near me to check up on.

Addra has also clearly become disenchanted with crawling. “Bored now,” she says. She is determined to be up and walking. Just as soon as she can get her muscles and balance working right. Darned muscles. 

So now I can wear my badge of motherhood proudly and say, “Of course I can tell the differences between my children’s personalities. Can’t you?”

Flotsam and Jetsam

The time has come, gentle readers, to provide (you might want to sit down for this) actual news. I know, it’s astonishing. I myself was surprised.

Just don’t get used to it.

However, given my propensity for long-windedness, I’m breaking the updates into little relatively tiny posts. That way you can read whichever things you actually want to read and ignore the rest.

Enjoy. (Or don’t enjoy. Whatever makes you happy.)

Choices, Sacrifices

Getting a haircut the other day, I was confronted with a statement I cringe at: “You must sacrifice a lot to be a mom.” It’s not the statement itself that makes me cringe, but the attitude and tone of voice that go with it. What my hairdresser was really saying was, “I can’t believe you want to be a mom. What a waste of time.”

No matter how often I am on the receiving end of this attitude, I have yet to succinctly, clearly, and politely express exactly what I think of it (if I didn’t want to be polite, I would probably say “grow up”—or, if I was feeling nasty, “I can’t believe you want to be a hairdresser”).

You know what I wish had happened?

“Dear sir,” I say, “What exactly do you think I’ve sacrificed?”

I imagine him floundering to say something polite. “Ummm… your career. What were you before you were a mom?”

“I was a copyeditor at a university.”

“Yeah,” he says, feeling on safer ground, “So you don’t do that anymore, right? You just stay home with your kids.” (I note that he tries not to emphasize the “just.” But he fails.)

“Yep, that’s what I do. No more nine-to-five job with a paycheck.”

“So that must be a lot to sacrifice,” he says, clearly thinking he’s summed things up nicely.

“I suppose you’re right. What about you—what do you do?”

“Ummm… obviously I’m a hairdresser.”

“Oh yes, I see. And what did you do before you were a hairdresser?”

“I went to school for a few years to learn how to do it.”

“And before that?”

“Mostly just hung out, lived at home with my parents.”

“You must have sacrificed a lot to be a hairdresser. No more just living at home with the parents. All that money you paid to go to school.”

“Nah, I like doing hair.”

“What about business school? Ever think about business school? Or college? Or writing books? Or working in a store? Or running for political office? Or running the local homeless shelter? Ever thought about any of those things?”

“Nope. I’m doing what I like.”

“Ever wonder if maybe I’m doing the same?”

Perhaps he pauses for a moment to consider this idea. Could I possibly enjoy being a mother?

“Yeah, but you already had a career that you liked,” he says.

“I still have a career that I like.” (Note how polite I am to refrain from slapping him upside the head.)

Now I think he is stumped. But he probably laughs a bit and says “sure” to appease me.

Or better yet, perhaps he had considered some of those other careers before deciding on hair:

“I actually thought about art school for a while,” he says. “It was hard to choose between the two.”

“So you sacrificed art for hair,” I say. “And you probably still occasionally miss the idea of art school. Maybe you even sometimes wonder if art school would have been more fun or easier or something. But here you are, happy with your choice most of the time.

“Look,” I continue, “I realize that being a mother is a sacrifice. I am indeed sacrificing a number of other career paths that I could be following. And sometimes, yes, I miss the things I left behind. But that doesn’t actually make me any different from anyone else. Every choice you make rules out hundreds of other choices. Say you go to college—that means you’re not going to beauty school or traveling the world or watching tv in your parents’ basement. You take a job as a waiter—so you’re not an office assistant or a dog walker or a salesperson. You choose something, you sacrifice something else. That’s the way it is.”

I’m not sure he believes me yet; he probably thinks religion has brainwashed me. So by now I hope my haircut is over because I am fed up with this man who cannot seem to accept that I made this choice. I am not a victim.

I pay for the cut before I leave (and I hope I’m not too stingy with the tip).

See, every choice we make is also a sacrifice. Some of those sacrifices are just plain hard. But in most cases, we decide to focus on what we chose rather than mourn what we gave up. Even when we give up things we really wanted, if we want to be happy we learn how to enjoy what we got instead. (And note that when we choose to be happy, we sacrifice being sad.)

Some choices are harder than others, and some choices have greater consequences. Some consequences are obvious immediately and some appear only years later. But every day we make choices and, by extension, we also make sacrifices. That is life.

So yes, of course I’ve sacrificed a lot to be who and what I am today. So did Donald Trump, the president of the United States, Nobel prize winners, Albert Einstein. And yet nobody mentions their choices or sacrifices with disdain or contempt.* The question is not whether you’ve sacrificed something—everybody has—but whether you’ve sacrificed the right things.

What have you sacrificed today?

*Well, except for the minor technicality of Donald Trump’s hair, but you get the idea.

My ship is on fire and has dangerous cargo.

One of our favorite indoor places to play is in Baltimore at the Maryland Science Center. It’s got lots of fun stuff for all of us. Irresponsible science experiments, little motion exhibits, sensory exhibits, exhibits about the body. All sorts of good stuff.

I find this system bizarre. What drunken sailor decided

that these flag patterns would suggest anything
even remotely close to what they apparently
mean? Since when did blue and 

white stripes communicate imminent danger?

It was at the science center that I first learned the meaning of the word “synesthesia.”*

Here I first saw this nifty optical illusion with spinning spirals, and it was definitely funky (I experienced it while looking at my brother’s face. Whoa.). Here’s a link so you can do it online (although it’s better to have a huge one right in front of you in real life): 

http://dogfeathers.com/java/spirals.html

There’s also a kids’ room with things like a green screen, a skeleton and some x-rays, a water play area, and a Baltimore-themed section complete with a submarine, “fish” you can catch, and assorted sailing gear.

On our latest trip, Coriel particularly enjoyed being a sailor. She and a group of other children bounced around yelling things like, “Ahoy!” and “Watch out—danger!” Coriel was particularly insistent that the ship was on fire and she was going to save everyone.

Good times, baby. Good times.

*This is when one sensory experience causes a different sense to fire. For example, apparently the most common is people who experience numbers and letters as inherently having certain colors. One of the most rare is people who hear certain sounds or words and can actually taste them. Weird stuff, huh?

Hangin' with the underwater critters

Ahoy there, matey! (Har har har.)

There’s something that draws human beings to delight
in destruction, I think. Very few people watched for
more than a few seconds as this woman painstakingly
made a 12-foot tower of cups. But we gathered in droves to
see her knock it down. (And I must say it was pretty cool.)

The aftermath, cleaning up the spilled guts.

 

Addra playing the laser harp (pardon the length of the clip; I am not yet technologically literate enough to be able to edit my vids)

The Science Center is on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, so we often go 

out and eat afterward. Brice is so in love with Rita's custard, 

I think she may secretly be his second wife.

I didn’t think to remember; I didn’t think I’d forget

Watching my second child growing up sometimes feels like reading through an old journal that I haven’t seen for a long time. There are the moments I remember vividly (where did that cursed $10 bill go?), and there are the events I had completely forgotten until I read them again (I can’t believe I ever thought those purple jeans were fashionable). And then I wonder how I could have forgotten them in the first place (because, really, bright purple jeans? Really?).

So when I sat on the carpet, watching Addra struggling to roll herself from her back to her stomach, I smiled to remember Coriel going through the same thing. I knew what to expect as she squirmed and twisted. And I felt the same sense of excitement when I walked back into the room one day to discover that Addra was no longer on her back, but was instead high centered on her tummy (and growing frustrated, I might add, to be stuck there).

But every new smile has taken me by surprise. I had no idea that I would ever forget what it felt like to lose that newborn, toothless smile and discover two tiny bottom teeth. I loved the new smile, but Addra would never look at me and smile that bright, gummy smile again. And I missed it. I couldn’t believe that such a poignant moment in my first child’s development would disappear entirely from my memory until I experienced it again with my second. I wished I had taken more pictures. I wished to capture it forever.

And then, again, as her top teeth appeared, her smile changed again, and it took my breath away just knowing that another stage of babyhood was gone, to be replaced with something still wonderful but distinctly different.

Then there are the differences, things that I don’t think Coriel ever did—or if she did, those moments have receded so far from my memory that to me they no longer exist. Like the way Addra has only just mastered crawling but seems already bored with it. I see her trying passionately to push or pull herself up to standing, as if to say, “Enough with this crawling business. I see where the real action is.”

I know it will still take time, but I suspect she will be walking far sooner than Coriel did. Coriel seemed more content to observe; Addra wants to act.

I have never felt any particular need for the presence of babies in my life. I love my children, and I will happily play with other people’s kids,* but I have never experienced that phenomenon called “baby hungry.” So it comes as a surprise to me, this nostalgia for my children’s babyhood. The way it aches when I watch time pass and I know that Addra or Coriel will never pass through this phase again.

The latest smile, including a total of six teethies.

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure there are some things I won’t miss. Changing diapers? No. Answering the same question fifteen times in a row? Probably not. Having to watch Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School every day for weeks on end? Emphatically not. Growing up definitely has its benefits.

I just hope I remember the important things.

*Yes, I realize this is shocking considering the years and years in which I would not even hold a baby, much less play with one. I guess I’ve grown up a bit too.

One Room at a Time, part 1

Soooo…. Approximately ten months, three days, and sixteen hours ago, I told a friend that I would post some pictures of our house so her daughter could see them. Yes, I am a total slacker (sorry, Rachel!). I kept thinking, “Oh, I’ll get everything all perfect looking, take lots of pictures, and post them all. And everyone will be so impressed that I’m such a fancy homemaker.” That last bit probably explains why it never happened. Some things are hard to fake.

So now, instead of trying to pretend that my entire house looks perfect and lovely all at the same time, I’ve decided to pretend that single rooms in my house look perfect and lovely. At least for long enough to snap a couple pictures.

I’m starting with Coriel’s room because it’s the cutest and because I cleaned it yesterday. I even vacuumed! (This is becoming increasingly important since Addra is officially a crawler now and really likes to eat things—you know, bugs, clumps of dirt, scraps of paper…) Eventually you may get a chance to see what other rooms in our home look like. But don’t count on it happening any time before I turn eighty.
 

The First Strawberries (and Other Growing Stuff)

Until now, everything that I ever tried to grow died miserably. Various potted plants I’ve tried out over the years, after the memories of previous attempts were dulled enough for me to willingly do it again.* A huge, gorgeous bromeliad—supposedly quite hardy—from my mother’s funeral. (Imagine, please, the guilt of killing off that one.) A basil plant tended in absolute desperation and hope; I probably spent more time on it than most children spend on their pets. I spoke to it daily as I watered it, I petted it gently, I think I even named it.** Either it got eaten by a bird or it died just to get away from my ministrations.

These were our plants a month ago. The squash have
pretty much taken over the yard now.

I think I also killed a cactus once (who knew you could give a cactus too much water?).

But now here we are, with a garden full of delightful stuff that is, for the most part, still alive. Yes, I accidentally killed a cucumber plant, and bunnies took care of a couple of the squash, and the peppers my husband planted are mysteriously doing better than mine. But on the whole, the garden does not look like a terrible case of plant bubonic plague has recently broken out.

I watched in daily anticipation as our strawberries began to ripen. When I saw our first strawberry ready to eat, I plucked it gleefully and rinsed it off just once—giddy that I didn’t have to scrub away the pesticides like on store-bought strawberries. I cut it into three pieces, barely nibbles, and the three of us with reasonably full sets of teeth each took part in the first harvest of the season.

The next strawberry I ate absolutely redefined for me what a strawberry should taste like—the utter sweetness of Strawberry, like a perfect summer day. It felt like Plato stepping out of the cave. Brice called it an “ambrosia berry.”

I am impatient to harvest it all. Today we finally could no longer resist the urge to check on the carrots. (No, they’re not quite ready yet.)

We have eaten our broccoli in several dishes now, and it felt just a little surreal to recognize that this broccoli tasted like, well, broccoli, that stuff you buy at the store. I realize that this should not be astonishing, but somehow it is. It’s like being told that Twinkies are actually based on things like wheat and sugar cane and such. It’s somehow hard to swallow (although I will admit, I have never had a particularly hard time swallowing Twinkies).

I am also witnessing firsthand that joke about zucchinis and neighbors. I find myself wanting to make more friends just so we have people to give our squash to (although I’m also making more curry too).

I have never done this before, so each new discovery is amazing. Did you know that cucumber plants produce beautiful yellow starlike flowers? And those little helicopters will actually grow into little trees if left unweeded? And lots of flowers need to go through the mysterious process known as deadheading if you want them to keep blooming? (Thanks for that one, Dawn.) In truth, the simple fact that flowers will continue to bloom if you take care of them rather than just dying off is news to me.

We have columbine! Columbine, the flower I have yearned to grow since the dawn of time. There is something about it—the delicate, bizarre shape; the combinations of color; its wildness. And now here it is, in my very own yard.

And have you ever seen a miniature snapdragon? Snapdragons the size of my pinky fingernail. And so many other flowers growing and waiting to bloom. I eagerly anticipate each new bud, awaiting the surprise of discovery when it unfolds. I am so thrilled when something blooms that I must grab Brice by the sleeve: “Come here quick, see what I found!”

I am learning all sorts of things, and I hope next year’s garden will be even better. But for now, going out into a garden, picking a cherry tomato, and watching Coriel eat it—that’s a pretty amazing start.***

 

*Strangely like childbirth

**I wish I were kidding, but I am not. To the depths of my soul I wanted that basil to grow. I tried to convince it to thrive, offering pep talks and encouragement. Which just goes to show you that I was never meant to be a cheerleader or a motivational speaker.

***In case you were wondering, our planting ambitions were perhaps a bit overzealous this year, but overall they’re going fairly well. Yellow and green squash, cucumbers, cantaloupe and watermelon (neither of which are looking like they’re doing well), red and green bell peppers, orange mini bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Oh, and sort of potatoes. A list that is quite a mouthful. And I hope it will provide many more mouthfuls in the future months. (Har har har.)