the ceaseless passage of time

by

Eight

Near our house is a pond. On the pond lives a blue heron; Carla has named him Jeff. We drive a specific way home from camp these days, just so we can drive past the pond. We look for Jeff. Any time we are in the car, Carla asks if we can drive past Jeff’s pond – even if we are approaching home from the opposite direction.

This feels so very Carla, and I don’t know why. 

She loves birds. She has always loved animals in all forms, but this year a second-grade study of birds really brought her ornithological passion to the fore. She has a pair of binoculars and a bird book and loves to cart them around with her. She exclaims over every feathered friend we encounter, no matter how common: “Look! A robin!” “Mom, look, look! I think that’s a pigeon!” “Is that a mourning dove?” “A chickadee!!!!!” Her enthusiasm for birds is boundless. Her grandmother recently took her to the craft store and she bought a bunch of tiny birds – the kind you see on Easter wreaths – and she wore one in her ponytail for several days.

Every time we see a bird of prey, she speculates it is either a red-tailed hawk or a vulture. I was not aware that our suburban area features vultures, and remain convinced that they are hawks, even when Carla insists otherwise. But then again, I am not the bird lady in our family.

She is equally enamored of dinosaurs, and somehow deeply knowledgeable. She will spot a dinosaur in a book or on TV and will immediately notify me that it’s a Spinosaurus or a Plesiosaurus or a Triceratops. Except that she knows dozens and dozens of dinosaur classifications, while those three dino-types I just listed are among the maybe five or ten I know. Her dinosaur birthday party went over quite well, I thought. Just the right amount of dino-décor for her party, and I surprised her with a dinosaur balloon on the day of her actual birthday. It was such a nice way to memorialize this current fascination. 

Carla, of course, remains especially enchanted by dogs. New over the past year, she has been granted permission to ride her bike or scooter around our cul-de-sac (ringing her bell as she passes, so I can listen for her; and if she goes over the ten-minute mark, which is how long it takes her to make the circle, I go out and look for her; she is always petting a dog), looking for dogs to pet. (Only the dogs of neighbors, not stranger dogs.) 

She continues to love crafting, and it is fascinating how her brain works: she can see a collection of raw materials and envision their endpoint and then actually make it happen.  (She brought home a stack of foam sheets and a zipper and told me she was going to make a backpack for her Barbie… I could NOT see how that would work, but she DID IT. A wearable, fillable, zippable, recognizable backpack!) She is a Maker, through and through. We watch Making Ittogether, and I hope it inspires her, shows her a few of the many ways she can transform everyday materials into something new, gives her ideas for potential careers doing something she loves.

She is obsessed by candy and TV, two things I try (and often fail) to moderate. She loves all things sweet, like her father, and is always asking for ice cream and s’mores and cupcakes. We have had all three, plus cheesecake, in the days since she turned eight. 

The cheesecake, by the way, was okay. Not great, but not bad. I had A Crust Incident when I was making it, but it was easy enough to scrap the crust and start over. (Less easy was wiping all the leaked butter out of the bottom of my oven. You live and you learn.) 

Carla’s tastes are growing and changing. Instead of dresses every day, she gravitates toward jeans and t-shirts. She is newly scornful of her unicorn-and-rainbows backpack, and wants one that is ALL BLACK for third grade. (We did put a selection of backpacks in front of her the other day, in the form of a Lands End catalog, and she liked ones with stars and galaxies moreso than the all-black option, so we’ll see what we end up with.) She loves experimenting with makeup and tattoo pens and stick-on jewels. She loves asking me to do new things with her hair – small ponytails, high ponytails, braids. (I didn’t say my hairstyling repertoire was vast.)

She can read very well now, and is able to read almost anything, but it’s still not an activity she likes or chooses to undertake very often. Over the past year, she’s grown very fond of audiobooks and will listen to the same ones over and over until I request that she try something new, or at least something we haven’t heard in a while. She went through the entire Judy Blume catalog (well, the lower grade books) and most of Beverly Cleary’s books and a lot of the Lemony Snicket “Series of Unfortunate Events” books and whatever else I can persuade her to listen to. She has heard Socks probably a hundred times, I am not even kidding. Ribsy is not far behind. I kind of miss the days of podcasts (Wow in the World and Story Pirates were her favorites) but I love that she is enjoying books in any form. 

She has fallen in love with poetry, though. She found a battered copy of A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein and read it over and over and over, memorizing several of the poems. She often chose that book for us to read when we put her to bed, each of us picking a random page and reading, then handing the book to the next person. Some nights, she would help me memorize one favorite poem. Other nights, after we kissed her goodnight, she would continue reading long past bedtime. We got her Where the Sidewalk Ends and the Random House Book of Poetry for Children for her birthday. If Carla is in a phase of loving poetry, well, I want to stoke that fire. 

This year, she continued to excel at skiing. She needs lessons to help build skill, but she is an eager skier and has no trouble keeping up with her friends. She tried out ice skating, for the second time in her life, and I was very proud of her for keeping at it even though it did not come easily to her. She had a few days of feeling very insecure, but she really worked hard and I think she has a good foundation of balance. 

Second grade was Carla’s best academic year yet. Her class was small (only ten children) and her teacher was phenomenal, but I am so very proud of how hard Carla worked. Not only at math and reading, but at paying attention and staying focused on her work which do not come easily to her. I am also so incredibly proud of how well she did during Covid in general, and during remote schooling specifically. It was so hard. And she really powered through it all.  

She has a bunch of friends from school and loves them all. It was so fun to see her at her party, with all these other little girls who are all so different and who all, somehow, get along so well. One of her friends moved away and they bridge the distance by playing Animal Crossing together, over Facetime. At another friend’s birthday party, Carla led the entire group in a toast to the birthday girl. Her voice and her enthusiasm carry. She wore a rainbow dress with rainbow sandals to that same friend’s birthday party and one of the other mothers commented that it was so appropriate an outfit because that’s exactly what Carla is: a dazzling rainbow of a kid, who attracts people to her and makes them smile. What a compliment, right?! 

Carla is increasingly sassy and I have to remind her on occasion to be respectful and to rephrase things. She hates having her hair brushed. She dislikes cleaning her room (her coping method is to “plean” which is her word for playing and cleaning; I am not a fan because “pleaning” is at least 95% playing and often whatever small amount of cleaning that occurs is soon erased by the playing). But in the main, she is cheerful and friendly and kind. She is enthusiastic about nearly everything (except sleep) (except when we are about to be late for camp) and my husband and I comment frequently about what a happy kid she is. She still, sometimes, wakes up singing. We both hope she never loses that innate zest for life that lights up everything she sees, that draws people to her, that makes her glow from the inside out. Seven has been a surprisingly spectacular year and I can’t wait to see what Carla-as-an-eight-year-old is like. 

This year, I didn’t fall as deep into my annual “my baby is growing up too fast” pit of nostalgia and despair. Probably because the shiny rainbow lining of this awful pandemic year was that I got to spend more time with Carla than ever before. What a blessing. I feel less like my time with her is slipping through my fingers, more like we can find pleasurable time in one another’s company, more grateful than ever before for the things outside of me that help her thrive (school, camp, sports, playdates). I am so happy she is growing and I love being able to witness as she has changed from a squishy, spit-puppy baby to a toddler dynamo to a thoughtful, eager-to-learn, happy-about-life child. What a privilege it is, to be her mom.

Eight. Eight is going to be great, I just know it.

by

Things I Love Lately

First of all, I love you, you are all so very much My People, and I am delighted to know that you are all just as Done With Meal Planning/Prep as I am. I find this meal-malaise to be distressing because I generally LIKE food and making food and thinking about food. But I assume this is A Phase and that someday soon I will get all hot and bothered about some sort of soup or new way to assemble ingredients into a taco.

Speaking of which, my husband and I recently had an argument over whether something counted as a taco. He spread a pita with hummus, added some sort of shredded meat, and topped it with vegetables. Then he pinched the sides of the pita together, so that the whole contraption made a semi-circular (or should I say taco-shellular) shape, and then ate it. LOOKED LIKE A TACO TO ME. 

The sun is shining and the temperature is supposedly dropping from a sweltering 90 to a much more endurable 67, and I had a lovely morning with Carla, and school is nearly done for the year, and Carla gets to attend CAMP this summer, so I am feeling cheery. Seems like a good day to share a few of my favorite things, no?

1. Plant protectors. This weekend, I finally planted the seedlings that Carla and I started from, well, seed. We had some fledgling cherry tomatoes, some broccoli sprouts, some little baby jalapenos, and, most exciting, some sugar snap pea shoots. The very next day, one of the sugar snap peas had been snapped in half because a very absent-minded or very optimistic chipmunk or squirrel had been digging in the newly planted pot. Arrrgh! Enough! I cannot fathom another summer of carefully painting my plants with cayenne pepper solution only to have half of them be eaten anyway. So I ordered these mesh plant protectors for my containers and so far I am Very Happy with them. I got the largest size and they are truly enormous. More than adequate for my containers. I could fit both snap pea pots inside one bag. They adjust with a drawstring, so they can really fit a wide variety of containers. My only quibble with them is that they don’t have adjustors/buckles to keep the drawstring tight; I had to secure the drawstrings with a knot, which is fine of course but there are better ways. I see that this brand of similar mesh bags does come with adjustors; if the current bags don’t last past this season, I may get the adjustor-included version next year.

2. New dress and pants. I finally found a dress that I like. It’s not QUITE as casual as I was hoping for; I don’t think I’d love sitting on the sidewalk and drawing with chalk whilst wearing this dress. But it’s summery and I like the fabric and I don’t hate how it looks on me. 

image from anntaylor.com

(I also tried this other dress, because I loved the pattern and I thought it also looked summery and casual. But the waistline is even more empire-ish than it looks in the photo, and to avoid the “maybe she’s pregnant” vibe, I need to be cinched in at my natural waistline. So I had to return it.) 

image from anntaylor.com

I also finally found a pair of summer-weight pants I don’t hate. I never in a million years thought I would buy or wear linen pants, but here we are. In fact, as I was looking up the link for these pants I made a snap decision to buy a second pair, so I will have grey and green. These pants are VERY casual. Like, maybe a step up from sweatpants. My husband and I had a discussion about suitable venues for wearing these pants, and he thinks they are fine for wearing to the grocery store or playdates but NOT for wearing to a barbecue in someone’s backyard. Just FYI, for those of you interested in fashion advice from my husband. I could kind of envision a person – probably a younger and/or hipper person – pairing them with heels and a dressy top, but I am guessing I will pair them with flip flops and a tank top. Anyway, these pants are very comfy and I don’t hate them. These are the barriers an item of clothing must clear to make it into my wardrobe, and, lo, so few can make the leap.

image from nordstrom.com

3. Mango smoothies. I have been making myself a mango smoothie on the regular. They are perfect when it is so very hot. They feel like a treat and they are SO easy. Half a cup of plain Greek yogurt. Half a cup of frozen mango. Quarter cup of orange juice. Quarter cup of milk. Squeeze of honey. Splash of vanilla, if I’m feeling fancy. Blend. Pour. Enjoy. 

4. Tula Cooling Eye Balm: I can’t remember where I got this cooling and brightening stick, but I LOVE it. It goes on very smoothly and leaves you with a refreshingly cool sensation and I do think it lifts and brightens my eyes. Now that we’re venturing out into the world more and more frequently, I find myself wearing makeup (mascara, eyebrow mascara, occasional sweep of blush) more often, and this balm is a regular part of the routine. 

image from amazon.com

5. Morning walks with Carla. This spring, much to the chagrin of parents, Carla’s school instituted a late start on Wednesdays. It took me/us a few weeks to adjust to the new schedule; I, for one, felt very off-kilter, always wondering what day it was and often feeling that jolt of forgot-to-study-for-a-test-dream-fear that comes with thinking “Oh no! We’re late for school!” or “Oh no! We overslept!” when really we were fine and on time and everything was okay. Once we got past that initial turbulence, the late starts have been lovely. Carla still wakes up at roughly the same time, which means we can have a leisurely breakfast and none of the frantic pace of normal school days. Best, though, is that we sometimes have time to go for a walk before school. Sometimes we go to a local nature preserve, but most often we walk around our neighborhood, searching for dogs to pet. Carla is a JOY during these morning walks. She’s happy and eager to find dogs. She’s well-rested and cheerful. She skips along next to me, sometimes holding my hand, and chats at me – it’s so different from after school, when she’s tired from a long day of playing and learning, and replies “I forget” or “stuff” to literally every question I ask her. (Although she has started saying “the usual” when I ask her what she had for lunch. Since previously her answer was “I forget” or “stuff,” I have “the usual” NO IDEA of what she actually ate.) But she is fresh and full of ideas in the mornings.

She and her classmates have been learning about birds, a subject she has approached with great enthusiasm, so she tells me all the names of the birds we pass and whistles at them, trying to get them to chirp back. This morning, she started singing the Twelve Days of Christmas, but she called it the Twelve Days of Summer, and for each day “mommy” gave to her an item we spotted on our walk: grackles, chipmunks, dogs, geese, five butterflies, and ending with a squirrel in an oak tree. I cannot fully express just how full I feel of love and affection and absolute delight.

Because I am not in a hurry, I can slow down and devote my entire attention to Carla. I can really see her, and enjoy her, and glimpse through all the shimmering morning sunshine just how precious our time together is. Of course I wish I could be a better and more patient person always. I wish all mornings could be like this. But I suspect it’s partially their infrequency that makes them so special. I know I will remember these mornings and their glimmering, unrushed intimacy as long as I live. I hope they mean as much to Carla, and that she remembers this time together as tenderly as I do, even after I’m gone. 

What are you loving lately?

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Pandemic Randomosity: More of Narrative Than a Bulleted List But Still Pretty Random

I had to double check that it truly is SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH SOMEHOW. This has long been a refrain of my life, the “where has time gone?!?!?!” theme, and yet it never ceases to astound me because WHERE has the time GONE?

Time has taken on even new depths of slippery-ness now that Carla is back in school. (She is SO HAPPY, internet. I know it could go remote at any moment, but for now she is SO HAPPY.) I keep jolting out of whatever I’m doing and thinking, “Where’s Carla?!” as though she’s still in the house somewhere and I’ve forgotten about her. Or I will look at the clock and think, “Oh my god! I need to go get Carla!” even though I may, in fact, have four hours yet before I need to pick her up. 

We have all these new things to do each day – make sure she doesn’t have a fever, answer some “do you have Covid or Covid symptoms?”-style questions via an app before 7:30, make sure she has a selection of masks to take to school with her – and it’s making me jumpy. I will be prepping her breakfast and think, “Oh no! I didn’t take her temperature yet!” Or we’ll be in the car line and I’ll yelp, “Shoot! I didn’t fill out the online form!” Or we’ll be just ready to step out the door and I’ll feel that sick sensation of having forgotten to wash her masks. When, in fact, I have plenty of time to take her temperature and I already filled out the form and she has plenty of clean masks.

And then there’s the new pickup time. The kids all have staggered arrival and departure times, and I need to pick Carla up at 2:45. Which is exactly the time I used to leave the house to pick her up. You are seeing the issue, right? Even though I have set my alarm for 2:30, so that I can leave the house right then to go get her, my brain is always going, “Pshaw, you have plenty of time!” because it still thinks I don’t need to LEAVE until 2:45. And then I’ll be puttering around doing lord knows what until I see that the clock says 2:37 and then I FLIP OUT. I have even included a little note that shows up when the alarm goes off, that says “PICKUP AT 2:45.” Still, my brain is convinced I have more time than I do. We live very close to Carla’s school, so I haven’t been late yet. But it’s been very very close. (I don’t know what would happen if I were late. Nothing, probably. But I like to FOLLOW the RULES.)

This is all part of adjusting to a new routine. I have set myself all sorts of alarms and reminders on my phone so I won’t forget any of the steps. Plus, we have purchased new whiteboards and listed out all the things Carla needs to remember each day (she can’t bring a backpack, but she does need masks and a water bottle) (she also has to take a shower immediately upon arriving home; I don’t know if this will help at all with germ containment, but it definitely helps move bedtime along more smoothly). We don’t have any after-school activities; our only commitment is one day a week, every other week, which helps significantly.  I think we have some good systems in place to help keep us on track. But it’s still early days, so I am feeling off-balance and afraid of making a mistake. 

When I was writing this post, I could not for the life of me remember the word for “commitment.” I was WRACKING my brain and coming up with nothing. Well, not NOTHING. The brain is very helpful, and was serving up all manner of wrong and not-even-remotely correct words. I am going to hope this isn’t a sign of aging but rather a keto-related brain fog, yes I have just started keto again and I don’t want to talk about it. Because I was in the car and unable to Google, I texted my husband. I am sure he lives for these urgent interruptions in helping seriously ill people. Obviously he knew the exact word I needed. He is a brilliant, wonderful man. This is the kind of thing that keeps a marriage fresh.

To change topics rather abruptly, Carla is very into LEGO right now. She’s always liked LEGO; she and her dad love to build scenes from Frozen and the like from sets. A few years ago, her grandmother even made her a big table-top sheet of LEGO that she can build on; it lives in our living room as a permanent part of our décor. But this summer, she’s gotten really into it. She used her allowance to buy a big tub of LEGO, rather than one of the build-something-specific kits, and she’s been busy building things and breaking things down and incorporating her creations into her imaginative play. I love that she finds it so absorbing. The other day, my husband and I watched football and Carla just… played with LEGO. The entire time. 

Aside from the important fact that CARLA enjoys LEGO, I like it because I feel like I can get points for playing with her while not actually playing. Listen, I love my child with the fire of all the stars in the universe, but I do not like playing with her. I do play with her. We play Barbies and we play restaurant and we play pet store and we play all sorts of things. But I do not enjoy it. I enjoy crafting and reading and going for walks with her. I enjoy doing things by myself. Playing, not so much. 

But with LEGO, I have carved out a very clear role for myself: that of Piece Finder. The way it works is that Carla will decide she wants to build something – a park or a hotel or a triceratops or whatever – and then she will tell me, “Find me all the green pieces.” Or, “I need all the 2×2 bricks.” Or, “I need this eye that looks like it’s closed so I can make my alligator wink.” And then I will sift through her giant tub of LEGO pieces and find what she needs. It is soothing and I am spending Quality Time with her and – most important of all! – she counts it as playing.

(“You never play with me!” has been a frequent tearful complaint these past six months, because creating lesson plans and taking her to the dog park and walking along as she rides her bike and watching her swing on the swingset and playing board games with her and taking her on hikes and teaching her how to bake banana bread and designing elaborate chalk obstacle courses with her and searching for bugs and watching Full House with her do not count as “playing.” Omfg.) 

We watched LEGO Masters starring Will Arnett (who normally annoys me, but whom I found rather endearing on this show??? even as he simultaneously sort of annoyed me????) together as a family. When it was airing live, earlier this year, I rolled my eyes at it. Carla kept wanting to watch the previews and I kept discouraging her from wanting to watch it. So lame, I thought. Grown ups playing with LEGOs? Ugh. But it turned out to be a really sweet, charming show featuring extraordinarily talented (and sometimes DEEPLY annoying) contestants and truly mind-blowing creations. The things these people can do with LEGO!!!! It makes me eager for Carla to pursue a LEGO-oriented career, like as a LEGO designer or builder or whatever you call them. How COOL would that be?????? (My husband and I agreed that the prize for winning LEGO Masters should be that you get to design something for LEGO. Or maybe get, like, an internship at LEGO or something. Because the contestants were SO creative and skilled with LEGO, it seems like the $100,000 prize was just not enough.) 

One thing that I found charming about LEGO Masters was that there is all this LEGO specific terminology. Like, I had no idea that LEGO is a plural noun. It’s not LEGOs, which I still have to correct myself from saying; it’s just LEGO. (I feel like kind of a dumbass saying LEGO as a plural. The same way I feel like a dumbass if I try to pronounce a foreign word correctly. Which, in both cases, is a stupid way to feel.) And the little LEGO pieces are called bricks. And they have ALL this lingo for different types of brick usage. It was super fun to learn.

One thing we did NOT learn, which would be intensely helpful: how to easily unpair bricks from one another. I spend a LOT of time breaking my thumbnails trying to get bricks apart for Carla’s various building needs. (We have a little orange thing that’s supposed purpose is for getting LEGO apart, but I do not know how to make it work. Most often, it slips and stabs me.) 

This post is not leading anywhere, so instead of leaving you in as completely abrupt a way as I switched subject matter earlier, I will say that we are now contemplating buying Carla a LEGO dragon. She requested one specifically, and I think it would be an excellent Christmas gift. She also wants 1,000 2×3 black bricks, but perhaps she will need to save up her allowance for that particular purchase.

We did get her a LEGO Advent calendar. There are several options in this category – like a Harry Potter version and a Star Wars one. We got her this one because it seemed a) the most Christmassy and b) it had the most options for actually building things; some of the others seemed to feature a lot of figures and not as many things you can put together. 

I can’t believe we’re thinking about Christmas already, but there you are. Well, I guess this post is ending where it began, with time slipping and sliding away. Before you know it, we’ll all be filling trash bags with scraps of wrapping paper and wondering how 2021 is right around the corner.