A conversation with my five year old:
Norah: Mom, have you ever heard of a king who did whatever his people wanted him to do?
Me: No, I don’t think so.
Norah: I’m pretty sure they exist.
Me (homeschool mom trying to insert a lesson in government): What if you had some yummy lemonade and I wanted your lemonade. What would the king do then? How would he decide who would get the lemonade?
Norah (without hesitation): He would make more lemonade!
I have a super duper brother-in-law, Zach.
Zach is married to my beloved and only sibling, Noelle.
Today (or tonight if you live in Cambodia) is Zach’s birthday!
Zach is my polar opposite. He has mad self-discipline skills. And, as is typical of such folks, he is a runner. He can also deny himself the yummiest foods on the planet. Words that describe Zach: integrity, devotion, passion, and father-of-my-nephew.
He had a pretty sweet engineering career here in the US. He left it all to travel to a place where it isn’t easy is impossible to find fat-free cheese and where this intelligent man is reduced to toddler-speak communication. A place where he depends 100% on the financial support of people with first-world problems like “the dominos pizza tracker app isn’t working so I don’t know when to get off the couch and put my pants on” or “my hand is too chubby to fit in the pringles can so I have to tilt it “(stole that from I don’t remember where).
[insert: if you want to support this amazing couple with a meager 25.00/month, email me!!]
Ok, so in honor of Zach’s birthday, a story of how we met.
My sister returned to the states from Cambodia where she worked with children rescued from brothels. Total hero work. Zach found her blog because he was passionate about ending sex trafficking [read: he wanted to be a hero, too!]. Noelle had no contact info on her blog but mentioned she was enrolling in a master’s program in the states. He googled until he found her email address at Wheaton. Contacted her out of the blue. They seemed eerily compatible. Too compatible. He must be a psychopath serial killer luring her into his clutches.
Or so, I thought.
So I did what older sisters are supposed to do. I secretly asked my friend, Mr. Private Investigator, who happened to live in Zach’s alleged town, to follow him. Mr. Private Investigator sent me a report. Zach checked out. Mr. Private Investigator had even followed him to his church. Good thing. I cancelled the call to Mrs. Hired Killer. I’m just kidding. I don’t know any hired killers. And I’m a pacifist (except where my sister is concerned…).
I think this is the moment at their wedding rehearsal when I revealed my detective work and presented Zach with the background check! Glad he was a good sport.
He assured himself a solid spot in the family when he got Noelle to my first birth. When my water broke, I called Noelle who was in Chicago. She got on a plane but it was grounded for snow in D.C. Her new boyfriend, Zach, lived in D.C. He left work, picked up Noelle, and drove her to SC where she arrived in time to read a verse of scripture to me right before Norah was born. I met Zach and Norah on the same day. It was a good day.
As Zach protects his family against rabid dogs, language miscommunications, critters hiding in their home, pit vipers, and foods high in cholesterol please stop a moment and say a prayer for him. If you are inclined, say many prayers for him. I don’t think many of us can imagine the challenges he faces.
Happy Birthday Zach! I’ll see you soon!
After the last post, I better placate the people who read my blog for reasons other than birthy things.
And so, enjoy 39 seconds of Cedar tormenting entertaining Arlo, the puppy. He is in his crate. I’ll share his cuteness another time.
My sister and I have a weird thing we do sometimes. We’ll email each other our latest google searches. It is a fun way to keep up when she lives on the other side of the world.
I thought I would turn my last email to her into a blog post. Hold on, folks, you are about to get a glimpse into the randomness that is my life.
CNN heroes robin lim
Teaching kids respect
Calf castration methods
Lewis and Clark stole a canoe
Rotovirus vaccine causes intussusception
Enwrapture skirt instructions
Nano particles in produce containers
Sample back-to-work pumping schedules
Jack schaap on women teaching men
Allergic reaction to tilapia
Allergic reaction to cantaloupe
Anne of green gables streaming
Benadryl dosage for toddler
Why does ipad2 camera look grainy
Teaching puppy not to bite
Yellow pages opt out
Electromagnetic pulse
Doing little girl hair knots
Pig orgasm why
Att versus Verizon
Woodstock handmade houses
Earthquake mother snopes
After looking over this list, I’m somewhat concerned.
6:45: Wake to sounds of husband in the shower
Cedar crawls in bed with me. I feel mauled by a grizzly bear by the time she’s finished wallowing on me.
Make coffee. Kiss husband. Wave good-bye from the window with naked 2-year old by my side. Norah wanders in. Grumpy. Much like me in the mornings, this one.
Cancel my 10am playdate. Bummed about it but I have some sniffles starting and I don’t want to spread them. We were supposed to make homemade hair conditioner.
Breakfasts consumed by two small children over the next three hours (4 boiled eggs, two blueberry pancakes, 1 orange, 2 peaches, 4 spoons of peanut butter, 1 piece of toast, 1 chunk of cheese, 1 yogurt). Yes, really.
3 cups of coffee and a secret cupcake consumed by me.
Sounds of Elizabeth Mitchell on Pandora.
Save Cedar from a puppy attack. Clean up puppy mess. Find a library book shredded by puppy. Put puppy in crate.
Shower. It is a good day. And I have new soap.
While in shower, Cedar brings me her diaper. She has removed it. It contains poop. I try to lure her to the shower so I can clean her butt.
Learning with Norah: She reads to me. I read to her. We read about amazing heroines of the American War. Turns out that while Paul Revere rode 16 miles, a sixteen year old girl rode 40 miles at night. In the rain. Where is her poem? Ahem. (Oh wait! I found one!)
Back to learning. I drink coffee while she does addition with coffee beans. She reviews her timeline cards and we giggle over pronunciation of “Hammurabi,” “Amenhotep” and “Tutankhamun.”
We break so Norah can play with My Little Ponies.
I clean up potty messes made by both Cedar and puppy. Answer work emails. A friend wants to know about natural birth of twins. A woman tries to decide between VBAC at the hospital or at home. A lactation question. A contract confirmed. A private class arranged.
Norah and I worked on memorizing “The Bones Song.” It is so much fun to sing. Our motivation is to sing it for Aunt Noelle in December. The skeleton Dr. Stafford loaned us has been a fantastic visual aid.
Lunch. A triumph and a fail. Triumph: I finally convinced one of my children to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Thank you Cedar for branching out. Fail: Norah wanted a lettuce and plain wheat bread sandwich. Which she didn’t eat. She ended up with celery and peanut butter.
Cedar napped. Norah worked/played on her computer. I ate lunch and read a book. (I will be happy to finish this book 5 from Game of Thrones. Madness. Should have never started the hefty series. But I must finish. How many thousands of pages have I read?)
Phone call from a client with maternity leave ending. Daycare looming Monday. Anxieties. I push the girls on the backyard swings so I can talk without fighting in the background.
The 5 year old yells “stupid phone call. I hate your phone.” Um, it was the only phone call all day. Time for physical play! With much dread, I dress them in old underwear and we walk to the neighbors’ backyard renovation project. I unleash them with cookie cutters and buckets in a giant mudbath. My neighbor and I (and baby Elisha) talk about slings and wool diapers while my children make mud angels.
Hose children. Bathe children. Fill and empty tub three times to get rid of mud. The girls use all my new soap.
Pack children and drive to my parent’s house. Time it perfectly for uninvited dinner. While eating, Cedar has an allergic reaction to either red pepper or tilapia. Swollen lips, red bumpy cheek (“it hurts, mama!”), sneezing, coughing. For a couple of hours. Norah entertains with a magic show involving a hat and the requirement that we all close our eyes each time she needs to make something disappear.
We look at constellations using an iPad app.
On the way back home, we listen to the unabridged Anne of Green Gables on CD. Norah asks ”what is the depths of despair?” Oh child. My mind races to events that will take her there someday. I hold back tears as we continue to listen to Marilla Cuthbert and Anne Shirley with an “e” talk of what tomorrow might hold.
I feed bedtime snacks of yogurt. I risk giving Cedar some Benadryl. She’s still reacting to the pesky food. Benadryl usually causes her to go hyper-wild. Do I risk it? She seems pretty tired. I risk it. Put Cedar to bed. Norah to bed. Craving salt, I sit down with bean sprouts and tamari sauce. Bam! Cedar fell out of bed. Put child back in bed.
Talk briefly with my husband before he puts a kayak into the ocean at night. Turn on his Pandora station, “GruzFrahBah”.
Search for the perfect poem for a friend’s blessingway tomorrow. Settle on this one.
Play on Pinterest.
I fret over my poor neglected blog and decide to blog something. But what?
It is 1am as I finish this post. And I gasp as I remember that Norah still has red mud in her scalp and we have to leave at 8:30 in the morning for her science lab. Shoot.
Run my mind over all the events and expectations of tomorrow. It is going to be a doozy.
This morning at the grocery store, the teen bagging our groceries dared to touch our cart.
Oh dear.
You see, two year olds are on high alert for any possession infractions. He crossed a line.
Cedar: MY CART! MY CART!
And she pushed the teen in the kneecaps.
For a moment, he flexed his muscles like he was going to engage. I intervened and we quickly left. However, as I pushed the cart out, Cedar snarls, “Get Your Hand Off!” Because, of course, two year olds not only own everything, they also can do anything.
I had good intentions of blogging Cedar’s birthday last week. I suppose I was busy running interference.
So the sum-up:
The child still sings Bob Marley and asks for the Ai-yai song (Buffalo Soldier) 52 thousand times a day. She’s a groovy lil bit, though, and will boogie to most tunes.
She has a high-pitched scream and a belly laugh. Her voice is husky. She has strong opinions about what is “pretty.”
Cedar prefers to be naked. And will strip anywhere, anytime, given half a chance.
She despises the potty. She hides her stand-alone potty and has chucked her potty seat at my head while screaming “no potty.” That said, if she is naked and needs to potty, she will bring me a “piper” to put on her.
Cedar sleeps through the night and slips into our bed each morning between 5am and 6am.
She still nurses. And I will not wean her until we complete the crazy trip to Asia in Dec/Jan. The other passengers on the 15 hour flight will appreciate my dedication to breastfeeding. And the dramamine cookies I plan to bake.
She reminds me of a sheepdog. She likes things in their place. When she wakes from a nap, she must walk the perimeter. Last week, she woke and immediately noticed that Scott moved his truck while she slept. It was a nightmare! Screaming, pointing, and finally collapsing onto the floor. And she herds other children. If they leave the group, she must nip at their heels until they return to the fold.
The fights between Norah and Cedar are already the stuff of legends.
Eating is a challenge. I struggle to get veggies in her. Especially green ones. Her favorite foods are butter, cream, cheese, mayo, ranch dressing, candy, crackers, cookies. And coffee. I’m trying. Really I am.
While Norah always loved the dentist and the doctor, Cedar plots to assassinate them.
She plunges into lakes without hesitating. Climbs heights. Already plays tricks. Can work an iPad. And recently said, “No Fair!”
Happy Birthday to my spirited, quick, courageous, strong two-year old.
I don’t trust my sister to blog this story so I’m keeping it alive here.
Noelle and her husband, Zach, were strolling down a street in Phnom Penh this week. Noelle was wearing Asher on her back in the Ergo.
They notice a large lizard (I’m thinking a tree monitor?) hanging out in a tree above them. It had a snake hanging out of its mouth. They stopped to watch and said, “Go lizard! You got that snake.”
At which point, the snake put it in reverse and came out of the lizard’s mouth and booked it down the tree.
Straight towards the hapless Slagel family.
Zach did what we’ve all been instructed to do–he froze. Noelle saw the snake eyeing her and ran. With baby on back, she ran.
And the Green Pit Viper took up chase! Seriously chased her down the street.
Again, the Ergo saves the day!
I found one Southeast Asian variety of Green Pit Viper listed on several sites as being among the World’s Most Disturbing Animals.
Noelle was later informed that the lizard was not eating the snake. The snake was eating the lizard’s eggs inside her body! Ouch.
Me: Girls, what would you like for breakfast?
Norah: Plain green peas, steamed broccoli, and do we have any cauliflower? Oh, mama, can I please, please, please, have an orange??
Me: Of course! Cedar, what would you like?
Cedar: Nandy.
Me: We don’t eat candy for breakfast. I’ll make you a cheesy egg.
Cedar (screaming, snorting, stomping, and maybe spitting): Nandy! Nandy! Nandy!
Why are children so different?
Do you remember imaginative play? I do. I remember it with such envy. I remember getting lost for hours playing with my button collection. I still remember how I played and the names of certain families buttons. And I sometimes bring my buttons down from the attic and hold them in my hands.
I suppose that is why I can’t take enough pictures of imaginative play. I might have more pictures of abandoned toy set-ups than pics of my children!
“The adult has various means at his disposal of coming to terms with the whole range of his environment…but the path of children is and remains that of play. Simply by a staircase of games, children have reached the world of adults from time immemorial. Each step is made up of the games of a particular age-group.” –Children at Play (Heidi Britz-Crecelius)
I struggle some days with Norah’s “schooling.” She’s a December baby so she would not begin kindergarten until this fall. We homeschool. Which, at this point, mostly means she has unrestricted free play. That is the bulk of her school. I remember the year I went to kindergarten. It was half-day then. And I remember playing. It seemed like that is all we did. Sometimes we made peanut butter on saltine crackers. I don’t think kindergarten is like that anymore.
Re-centering involves reassuring yourself that you have made a good choice, that you have recognized that the true center of childhood is play, not work. After all, play is the primary way children were designed to learn…research shows that a child’s intellectual awakening takes place during the normal adult-child interactions that occur in everyday, purposeful activities…playful environments and spontaneous learning opportunities hold the keys for a happy, emotionally healthy, and intelligent child–and for a fulfilled parent. –Einstein Never Used Flashcards (Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff)
I hope I can stay relaxed and trust she is climbing the staircase. I need to find ways to play more, too.
