at the water's edge

OK, so it took a squad of no less than five adults, but Luke was finally convinced to go in to the water at the beach today. He went in as far as knee-deep holding on to Papa's and Joe's hands. He got some extra coaching on the side from me and Mom and Liz. Even still, he contined to tell me variously that he only wanted to go to the beach with Dave, that he'd rather be at Sunnybrook, and that he just wanted to go back to the house. But who knows, maybe by this time next year he'll be boogie-boarding as well as Sam.

Zach, on the other hand, can't seem to stay away from the water. This afternoon we went to the stony Sunset Beach and I wasn't prepared to go in, but Zach forged ahead and I wound up stripping him down to get wet because I foolishly didn't have any more diapers with me. As it was, I wound up buying him a sweatshirt to keep him warm after his shirt got soaked.

At one point at the beach today, I went down to the water to fill a bucket for our sand-castle project and Zach started freaking out and tried to follow me down. "He would literally follow you into the ocean," my dad observed in amazement. "Kind of funny that two years from now he'll be a master at ignoring you." Too true. I'll take this for now.

Crowd-pleasers

Zach is becoming endlessly entertaining: on the beach, he stood there with the bucket on his head playing peek-a-boo; in the house, he sat next to a tray of nectarines and sampled a bite of each one. After a while he settled on one nectarine, put it carefully into one of Grandma's pink Crocs, and proudly carried it around the house. The fun ended when he put it on the floor and plopped down on top of it. Splat.
Here he is again pretending to talk on the phone.


Luke is happy to be part of the swirl of activity. At dinner we made sandwiches and he insisted on putting his together, then Sam's, then mine, and then proudly carrying them all out to the table. When Liz and Ken came, he of course made a point of interviewing tham about their car, checking out their keys, and then leading the charge out to the car to practice sitting in the driver's seat.

"When Liz was a little girl, I used to call her 'Charlie' for a nickname," Dad told him. "Where was I?" Luke wanted to know. "You weren't born yet - that was a long time ago, probably 50 years ago," Dad told him. Luke considered this for a few minutes. "Were there dinosaurs?" he finally asked.

Just a quick story from this evening - We took a trolley tour around town and Joe stopped at the fudge store before we got on the trolley. When Sam and Lily and Luke (sitting all together in the front seat) saw the fudge bag, they started chanting, "We want fudge!" Suddenly for some reason (it was a rowdy group on the trolley) everyone else on board joined in until the whole crowd was chanting, "We want fudge!" Joe had to stand up in front of the crowd and good-naturedly promise everyone a piece to get them quiet. Tomorrow: Horse and carriage rides.

House rich

Let's see how well I can do this with my thumbs (on my blackberry). Not having a computer for a week is quite a handicap. We're in an amazing, enormous, and yet cozy house, two (flat) blocks from the beach. It has been alternately fun and challenging for me with the two boys. There are plenty of hands around to help, but there are plenty of times (or always, in Zach's case) that I'm the only one who will do. Plus Papa has a wicked knee injury that has sidelined him and kept him out of most of the activities (though he's still hobbling up to his third-floor bedroom) and he hasn't been able to help as much as he would like.

Speaking of bedrooms, I think the reason I like this house so much is because of our super-cozy spot in the attic. Luke, Zach, and I are all together in a room that is big but feels small-ish because of the low dormer ceiling. I love how all three of us get to wake up together. Usually we spend a few minutes laughing and mugging in the morning before we head down to the chaos downstairs.

Luke loves being with his cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents but he sure misses his dad. I think it's most apparent when we're at the beach and he doesn't have Dave to dig a hole with him or slowly coax him into the water. Today we were at the beach for only 90 minutes when Zach petered out and Luke decided it wasn't worth it to stick around. It's hard to balance their needs because Zach (and the rest of the cousins) want to be in the water while Luke wants to be in the sand. He dug for a while by himself today, then called it a day.

It's always a relief at the end of the day when all six kids are in bed. Tonight Joe and Sara went out and bought ice cream - now the grownups are all sitting around and slurping up dulce de leche, carmelized pear, and chunky monkey. Aaaaahhhh. Don't tell the kids.

Cream of the crop

Ahhh...I hate to write over "Magic and Dirt," one of my favorite recent posts, but I have to soldier on for posterity. This morning we had the Most Fun Ever at a local farm picking blackberries, eggplant, tomatoes, green peppers, and basil. Luke, it turns out, is really quite good at picking blackberries and was delighting in showing me how many more blackberries he had picked than me. Zach liked the idea of picking blackberries, but he soon realized that picking up mud and throwing it was much more fun. I would love to have a picture of us at the farm but I didn't bring the camera and it was one of those times when it was far better to enjoy the moment than to be snapping pictures. Instead here's one of Luke and Zach playing with the car seat box, which is by far the favorite toy in the house at the moment.

Zach has made quite a few strides in the past few days. For instance, he didn't use to drink with a straw and now he only wants to drink with a straw (like Luke). Also, I never gave him corn on the cob before and suddenly it's one of his favorite foods. I think he likes gnawing on the cob just as much as eating the actual corn. Oh, and it helps that it is the Best Corn Ever from the farm stand down the street. Mom has promised to keep going back there every day to make sure our nightly corn is as fresh as possible.

I'm not going to stay on the computer long; there's a big thunderstorm swirling around tonight. We had some scary lightning on the way home from the library. "Batten down the hatches!" yelled Luke, as we ran into the house. It's all part of good summer fun.

Magic and dirt

One thing we sorta forget about when we come here in winter is just how green it really is throughout most of the year, especially summer. Even though the heat is stifling this time of year, the trees and hedges and vines make a total canopy over all of the yards in the neighborhood, rendering them marginally comfortable - as opposed to completely oppressive - for outdoor activities.

Lucky for us, the next door neighbors on both sides have kids, which means they have cool play structures and equipment to play on. Today Luke discovered the joys of the tire swing hanging from one of the big trees next door. The movement on a tire swing is different from the herky-jerk back-and-forth of a swingset swing. Once you get on, you just kind of glide to and fro, changing direction with the slightest shift in weight, but never once coming up against a sharp angle. Luke was skeptical at first but once he started getting with the flow, he didn't want to get off. "This feels really nice," he announced dreamily, to no one in particular. In a way, it was sort of hypnotic to watch him drifting back and forth through the thick air, with the sound of cicadas buzzing above us and ...

...wait a minute! Isn't there another kid somewhere? Where's Zach? Ugh! Any time you turn your head for a second, Zach will find his way to the nearest pile of dirt. Like tonight when Rosemary and Fred came over for dinner and for a moment all attention was on Luke so Zach worked his way over to the potted plants and started methodically emptying the soil onto the dining room floor.

"You know, you did magic tricks for my mom at her birthday party once," Luke told Fred after dinner. It's true, as we pulled up the pictures to confirm: There we were, 36 years ago this summer, at my fourth birthday party, and there was Fred, '70s-style hair and clothes, hamming it up for a crowd of little ones who are now in their thirties and forties. Tonight Fred brought a few tricks for Luke, who screamed and applauded and couldn't stop laughing. It seemed like magic way back then, and somehow it does now too.

Breakthrough

There we were, at the end of the longest airport security line I have seen in recent memory, and even though the situation looked brutal from my point of view, Luke was undaunted. "I am the excited-est person in the whole world!" he declared.

Luke loves being on vacation, and he especially loves going back East to my parents' house. And if you think about it, what's not to love? Doting attention from grandparents ... A basement full of tools ... Crazy wildlife sightings (cicadas, rabbits, chipmunks, ant lions) ... The complete Calvin and Hobbes treasury ... Blueberry iced tea and strawberry jam ... Chocolate donuts from Wawa ... Proximity to Uncle Joe's house ... the list goes on and on.

But since that first excited morning, we've had a roller-coaster of a time here. Luke and Dave have both been sick from the get-go, so that is dragging everyone down. Plus it's been in the high 90's in the daytime, cooling off only as low as the mid-80s at night. And even though we are loving every minute we get to spend with Dave, we are all dreading his eventual departure (tomorrow) and the two weeks we will spend without him, which is almost unimaginable.

On the flip side, we've had one big development here that is so amazing that I can't let it go unmentioned. I haven't written much about this because it's kind of personal for Luke and because it has caused me such extreme anguish ... but ... drum roll ... Luke seems to have finally given up his iron grip on the Pull-Ups and is now doing his big business the same way the rest of us do. "You know Mom, you were right - it really does feel better this way," he told me tonight. God bless four-year-olds and their lovable, innocent candor.

Zach hasn't paid much attention to this major milestone for Luke because he has been too busy building synapses and making massive developmental leaps of his own. He's added some words to his vocabulary (balloon, bear, baby, banana) and one of these days he's bound to learn that there are words that start with letters other than "b." He's also entertaining us by carrying large objects across the room, pulling toy trucks while making truck noises, and playing peek-a-boo with any willing participant (mostly me).

It's worth noting that I started writing this blog three years ago, for the sole purpose of recording our trip back East and to Cape May. Who knew that anyone else would ever read it, or that I would continue writing for so long? Now, three years later, we're headed back to Cape May again and it's been fun to compare notes from the last time. My life has gotten incredibly more complex and wonderful and challenging and whatever other fill-in-the-blank adjective you can think of ... and just like then, I don't have any great words of wisdom to wrap it all neatly together. I'm just sitting here trying to get as much written down as I can before my eyelids crash from sheer exhastion. But suffice to say that all told, things are good. I'm happy to be here, I'm happy to have gotten here from where I was, and I'm looking forward to where we are all going.

The natural

If anyone doubts that there's such a thing as having inherent "ball sense," all they have to do is come and watch Zach, just two weeks into walking, dribble a soccer ball (see Zach blog pic for details). In fact, the best time to do this is during Luke's soccer class, when you can see all of the four-year-olds stumbling over the ball, missing it, and generally being goofy, while Zach quietly makes his way up and down the sidelines kicking the ball with complete competence and accuracy. Imagine him in ten years.

Oh, and speaking of balls, here's a pic of Zach and Daniel together at their gym class. If Zach's face looks a little different, it's because this picture was taken about three hours after his lip-ripping incident so he's a little puffy. In fact, he was unhappy that whole day except for the single hour that he was at the gym, so it's nice that Bruce managed to capture that picture.



I'm blogging this morning because Dave took both boys with him to run a race (in the double stroller we borrowed from Scott and Teresa). I don't have that much to say today but I do have the time to say it, so I'll just stick in a few random pics (all of the high-quality pics are courtesy of Bill-o) and thoughts.

Zach is surprisingly self-confident around the house. I'm sure he doesn't want to be in the high chair any more (even though we put him there) because most mealtimes he heads straight for the snack table and sits down. Also - and I can only mention this because Luke can't read all of these words yet - the other day Zach wandered off into the bathroom and I found him up on the stool in front of the sink, very calmly brushing his teeth with Luke's toothbrush. Yeah. So let's not mention this to Luke.

Luke isn't reading yet, but it's not too hard to imagine. He's really into spelling right now. "Do you want me to shut the d-o-o-r?" "Why can't I have a p-e-t?" When I took him to see WALL-E he really didn't seem to like the movie, but since then he has wanted to buy a book about the WALL-E robots (grrr...movie merchandising) and now he is really into telling people to "HALT! H-A-L-T!" like the security-bots...

OK - Took a little break there. Turns out that when Dave gave me a free morning, I really did need the rest. I felt a little tired, went back to bed, and woke up TWO HOURS later, feeling like, what just happened? Zach has slept through the night for the past two nights (if you consider sleeping through until 5 or 5:30 sleeping through the night, and I do) so that is a relief, but I have a LOT of sleep to catch up on. My sleep deficit is as wide as it is deep.

Funny thing is, if Zach actually sleeps through the night on a regular basis, I might really start to enjoy long summer days with these beautiful boys. This afternoon Luke took a nap (a rarity) and while Dave was working downstairs, I took Zach over to the school and we sat in the swing together looking at the clouds and letting the breeze blow on our faces. I found myself thinking, how much longer can life stay this idyllic?

Update, 7/15: Apparently only until 12:45 am. That's when Zach woke up last night, and again at 2:45, and finally at 5 am. Who knows what is up with him. But let's hold back on the idyllic visions for a while...

Brothers and Men

Our Fourth of July weekend started on Friday with a kids' parade and a whole bunch of bab-ms (that's "balloons" to Zach). Then we hauled a carload of toys, swimsuits, changes of clothes, and other equipment over to Suzi and Boom-Boom's for an afternoon at the pool with Tony, Joanna, and the cousins (for the first time all four boys were together). Finally, after a barbecue feast at Grandma Bobbie and Granddad's that evening, we realized that in one day we had already packed in more than a weekend's worth of activities.

(Side note: Zach encountered a situation at the grocery store that required him to use almost his whole vocabulary at one time: A balloon escaped and floated up to the ceiling. Zach was going nuts pointing to it and saying, "Uh-oh! Bab-m! Uh-oh! Bab-m!")

On Saturday, Tony and Joanna and their crew came to our house and somehow the boys all gravitated to the water (imagine that!). And of course when I say boys, I don't just mean the young tots. From what I understand, Dave and Tony have never met a pool they didn't want to go in. And of course the trend continues in the next generation.

Another side note: Luke absolutely adores baby Eli. He just can't get enough of him. Of course Eli is adorable and smiley, but I think it also has something to do with the fact that Eli is not currently able to take any of Luke's toys. Contrast that with Zach, who only is interested in a toy if Luke is currently using it. I put Luke and Zach in the bathtub together with some foam letters and numbers, and Zach had no interest in the letters I gave him; he only wanted the ones that Luke had carefully put up on the wall to spell a word (H-O-N-D-A or some such). I know Eli will be the same way soon enough, but for right now, he can do no wrong in Luke's book.

Today, Grandma Bobbie and Granddad and Suzi and Boom-Boom hosted an amazing, beautiful party in honor of our beloved boys, brothers, and men. Zach wandered around, knocking over sodas along the way, on a mission to put every single pretzel in his mouth and spit it out. Luke made the rounds at the party finding out what kind of car everyone drove and checking out their car keys. The cousins hugged and mugged and basked in all of the attention. Now we're all tuckered out and ready - maybe - for a somewhat more normal level of activity. But I still love these busy days anyway, just as I love all of these beautiful, busy boys.

Arrrr!

Just a few more party pics rolling in ... Setting up the pirate outpost (Zach is in the foreground sitting in the monster wagon); kids running down to the water (yes, some of those are girls wearing boy shorts - it was a little crazy that way); Luke glomming down pizza.

Leftover totals include: four pizzas, three dozen cupcakes, several dozen beers and sodas, and one very large bag of pirate booty. Oh, and thirteen bandannas. Anyone want one? It's a great look for the summer. Really. As Luke would say, "I'm serious."