We were due for a new family photo, and as luck would have it I was able to snap one of the four of us this evening when we were out walking — or rather, being buffeted along. It so windy that by the time we finished the loop around the scenic sometimes-a-reservoir walking trail this evening (when I took this shot), we were all pretty wind-whipped. We looked a little dazed and none of us are smiling, but I think it still works, don’t you?

Too late for the Christmas cards that never went out last year (thanks to the shroud of viral misery that enveloped our home for the duration of December), and that’s a shame; it’s four matching red sweaters shy of family photo perfection.

I like days
with a snow-white collar,
and nights when the moon
is a silver dollar,
and hills are filled
with eiderdown stuffing
and your breath makes smoke
like an engine puffing.

I like days
when feathers are snowing,
and all the eaves
have petticoats showing,
and the air is cold,
and the wires are humming,
but you feel all warm …
with Christmas coming.

“December,” Aileen Fisher

View of our back yard, December 24, 2004:

View from our front yard, December 4, 2009:

It was Em’s first ever experience with snow (she enthusiastically pronounced it beautiful) and Cal’s second; and it was the second time I have seen snow in Texas since moving here in 1999. For a brief time, the flakes fell thick and fast, and we savored every minute that we could.

Cheeks were pink, fingers were stiff with cold, jackets and hats and mittens were wet. Smiles were big.

Forget 2012.
Sign me up for December, 2014.

Sometimes I like living in Texas. When I can step outside with my family for brisk walk in the evening without feeling like poultry on the rotisserie, it seems downright inhabitable.

November is the month that finally gives some relief to the insane heat and humidity. The air conditioner isn’t laboring, rattling and groaning through the day, and sometimes I get to wear slippers instead of flip-flops around the house (squeal!). Now if only the mosquitoes would die off when it drops below 70, and we got just a little bit of snow (more than once ever 5 years) it would almost be perfect — at least from November through February.

Marker on natural canvas. The artist’s work is also being displayed on select refrigerators across the country.

This evening, Cal and I watched as Em smashed and beat her dinner roll nearly flat with the back of her spoon.

In the world of Two, food isn’t just for nourishment or even flavor — it’s for play and for art and for sport. Edible fun! It isn’t unusual for Em to do all manner of terrible things to her food, so we were fully prepared to see her take the roll-smashing to the roadkill level.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she began circling the deflated roll with two little fingers on the table. Fingers that first appraised the situation, then seemed to be discussing whether or not the roll would make a suitable bed for finger people.

“Mommy Daddy bed?” she squealed excitedly, giving one of the fingers a voice.

“No! Mommy Daddy bed!” the other finger replied, with identical pitch and tone.

Calvin and I suppressed giggles.

The fingers fell to arguing, then abruptly collapsed into the bed, fell into a deep sleep, and began snoring loudly.

With a jerk just as sudden, one of the fingers sat up in bed and picked up the conversation where it left off, quite possibly having no idea that it was awake, let alone talking. “What? Mommy Daddy bed?” it said groggily.

“Mommy? Daddy? NO Mommy Daddy bed!” piped an intruder — a third little finger — in a distinctly girlish voice.

This third finger came and went several times, always bringing with it the same aura of confusion and inciting further debate about the Mommy-Daddy bed. We could only surmise that the third finger was the reason the first two fingers never stayed asleep for long, and the scene always ended with the mommy and daddy going back to sleep.

Then Em took a huge bite out of the bed, and the play was over.

But I think it was based on a true story.

Vol-a-tile

adjective: reacting to routine occurrences in the day [being diapered and clothed after a bath if you are a certain 2-year-old girl, for example] or the denial unreasonable requests ["No, you cannot have M&M's until after dinner"] with excessive rage, sometimes accompanied by screaming, biting, kicking, screaming, full-body thrashing, screaming, spitting, hitting, or screaming.

IN CONTEXT:
We have one superhero-loving son, and one sometimes sweet, sometimes volatile daughter.

Em is usually happy and easygoing, but when she is volatile, I find myself wishing that straight jackets came in size 3T.

According to a recent study, the forces of nature people fear most are earthquakes, hurricanes, and volatile toddlers.

SYNONYMS: dictatorial, contrary, dramatic, irrational, defiant, exhausting, feral

ANTONYMS: cooperative, docile, predictable, tame, obedient, energizing, sleep

If the Word of the Week turns into the Word of the Year, I’m going to need to stock up on patience.

Maybe it comes in supplement form, like a vitamin, and I can simply take 1 capsule daily and chase it down with a frothy drink rich in anti-exasperation. Chocolate-flavored would be nice.

I’m waiting for Em to fall asleep, and decided to kill a few minutes by writing a new post. I thought it would be fun (for me, probably not for you) to just write whatever pops into my head during the next 5-10 minutes and hit the “publish” button (that WordPress even has a “publish” button amuses me — it sort of makes dumping the contents of my brain onto the Internet seem perfectly legitimate, even somewhat professional).

I’m waiting for Em to fall asleep before determining my afternoon plans. This is mainly because I usually have to pop in on her several times before she falls asleep, because even though she has been sleeping — and staying put — in her big girl bed for naps, she hasn’t exactly been doing so by putting her head upon her pillow until she drifts into serene and peaceful slumber. We have a video monitor (my bestest friend in the whole wide world), and the things I’ve been seeing her do before she falls asleep are shocking.

First, she likes to move her pillow, and tunnel under it. Then she flips around and kicks at the gate rail — the one that keeps her from falling out of bed. Then she sits up. Then she lies down — with her bottom on the pillow and her feet in the air. Then she kicks at the wall and growls. Then she rolls over a couple of times, until the gate rail — the one she has already pushed out a good way — is bearing her all of her weight because not much of her body is actually on the bed. She laughs, then shrieks, then rolls away from the gate and charges it again, until it can no longer be ignored and I have to come in to fix it and tell her to cut it out. Ect., ad nauseam.

Yesterday, as I was waiting through this daily spectacle and pining away for a nap of my own (I got one, sort of, but came to the same conclusion I always come to about naps: they are more trouble than they are worth), I watched her sit on her pillow, then raise herself to squatting position, then bring her bottom down right on top of her baby doll’s head, laughing as she did so. Such ladylike elegance.

Someday, I’m going to get out our digital camcorder and record a few minutes of this behavior as seen over the video monitor. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it as a teenager.

(Ten minutes later…)

Where was I?

Oh yes, I was telling you how Em stays in her bed but flops and wiggles around for a long time first. I was interrupted by a rustling sound just outside the bedroom door. Thinking that Calvin had left his room (Em’s naptime is his quiet/reading time) and was spying on me to be ornery, I got up and went to the door. The little imp must have heard my approaching foot steps, because I suddenly heard the soft patter of little feet, taking the body they belonged to in the other direction as quickly as they could.

Guess who it was? No, don’t guess. It’s beneath guessing, because you know as well as I do which of my two mischief-makers was trying to peep quietly around the corner at me when she should have been across the house in her own bed. I thought she was IN her bed, mistaking a bit of rumpled blanket on the monitor for a toddler foot. (I love the video monitor, but it seems to use some sort of night vision technology, so trying to figure out what you’re looking at is a bit like contemplating an abstract painting.)

Anyway, this is the first time she has actually gotten out of her bed during nap time since she started sleeping there a few weeks ago (hello, crow, nice to eat you) (I’m not talking about the birds from yesterday, in case you wondered). I wasn’t about to let her get away with it today, so I stationed myself outside her room and every time she slipped out of her bed I went in wearing my mean mom face (no smiles, lips in a tight line, evil eyes) to deposit her back into it without giving her anything to find amusing — no exasperated sighs, no good nights, no hugs, no tsk-ing.

She’s asleep now, partially buried beneath her pillow. And I think I need a nap too, after all.

If you made it this far, you must have the patience of a saint. Take a deep breath, and read this one last happy word:

finis

The original Star Wars trilogy is regarded by many as a Big Deal in the history of movies. But I’ve got to be honest here — Star Wars has never ranked on my list of favorites. For one thing, take seriously Yoda I cannot. For another, Jedi mind tricks don’t work in real life.

“You will eat your green beans without complaining. You will eat your green beans without complaining.”

No good. (Believe me, I’ve tried.)

That awesome but practical ability failing to come to fruition, I’ve never been able to muster more than a benign interest in Star Wars.

My son — brace yourself, this is going to come as a shock — doesn’t share my indifference regarding this epic space trilogy.

Calvin inhales Star Wars the way normal people breathe air; if Star Wars were edible, he’d spread a generous amount of it on his peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the nourishment of his body; I do not doubt that he dreams Star Wars dreams as he lays his head upon his Star Wars pillow, curls into his Star Wars sheets, and keeps warm beneath a Star Wars throw (which goes over his comforter, presumably to hide the naked embarrassment of it not being of a Star Wars theme, too).

One evening a week or two ago, Calvin was standing in the doorway of the bathroom as I was getting Em ready for her bath. She was, in her usual brash and enthusiastic way, trying to jump into the tub before she was even undressed. Giggling, Calvin took the opportunity to address her exuberance, saying, “You must be patient, youngling.”

I chuckled and asked where he picked up the term ‘youngling’, which turned out to be exactly the kind of question that exasperates a Star Wars fanatic. My lack of knowledge regarding this elementary bit of Star Wars trivia earned me an eye roll along with the explanation. (A youngling is a child in training to be a Jedi. Duh.)

So can you guess what theme he and Mr. Husband decided on for his Pinewood Derby entry for Boy Scouts this year? Can you? Huh? CAN YOU? I’ll give you a hint:

Yes, Star Wars. More specifically, his entry was loosely based on a Star Wars speeder (whatever that is):

He took 3rd place out of the Wolf Cubs.

Not bad — for a youngling.

More commonly known as Valentine’s Day, of course.

We’re going to make our traditional heart-shaped cake, and I think I’ll let the kids go crazy with decorative sprinkles and M&M’s this year, which means the chances of it being a photogenic cake are slim. (Slim — unlike our waists. Ha!) If I can get it together in time, we’ll also watch a DVD slide show of family photos. Maybe some home videos too.

When I was growing up, the highlight of Valentine’s Day came in the evening. My parents set up an old slide projector, and the four of us — my dad, my mom, my sister and I — ate slices of heart-shaped cake while watching a procession of family photos, aglow and larger than life, march one after the other on the living room wall.

It was always a surreal experience, at least from my childish perspective: the darkened room; the guttural noise of the projector, like the idling motor of a car; the light cutting a conical swath through the darkness, illuminating bits of dust particles and filling the room with so many tiny fireflies; the crank of the lever that moved one slide to the next — a clunky noise that made you think that it cost the old machine great physical effort to produce such magic.

Alas, I think the slide projector is another victim of advances in modern technology. In our big-screen, hi-def, clear-picture era, I find it curious that better technology doesn’t necessarily mean a more memorable experience. Then again, maybe my kids will remember as magical what I currently view as ho-hum.

How about you, friends? What are your Valentine’s Day traditions? Any special memories? Or do you gag at the thought of the whole commercialized, consumer-driven day?

(By the way, the cookies pictured above have fulfilled their destiny. We are diligent about cookie eating in this house, and letting a delicious iced butter cookie go to waste is practically a crime. So we didn’t waste a crumb. The recipe, if you’re interested.)

Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the beauteous land.

And the little moments,
Humble though they be,
Make the mighty ages
Of eternity.

- From “Little Things,” Julia A. Carney

Play-Doh is one of Em’s favorite activities right now, and this photo is one of my current favorites.

It’s rarely the technically-perfect photos of my kids, faces scrubbed clean, smiling, and making eye contact, that end up becoming the images I love best. It’s the photos of my kids doing little, every day things that I covet — running, playing, making silly faces, peeping out from behind a fort constructed of cushions and blankets and kitchen chairs — because these preserve the memories I want to revisit.

This phase of life, life with young kids, means days filled with assigning school work to reluctant pupils, finding lost teddy bears, taming piles of laundry into submission, arbitrating disputes, meeting the high demand for PB&J sandwiches, and dispensing band-aids (sometimes for boo-boos that are nonexistent), all while waging battle after battle against a to-do list in a war that the to-do list is usually winning. It’s busy, it’s demanding, and it’s fleeting.

Even though I’m overwhelmed by it all some days and find myself wistfully imagining the days ahead when my kids will be older, more mature, and independent enough to fix their own sandwiches, I know that when they finally are all of those things I will suddenly wonder how it happened so fast. And if I’m honest with myself, I’ll wish — sometimes — that I could go back.

Maybe that’s why I love photographs like the one above: it’s a moment in time stopped forever; a moment I put aside a basket of laundry, answered my 2-year-old’s plea to “Wooky, Mommy! Sit doww!” and got busy rolling out Play-Doh.

Then I can go back to re-live my favorite humble moments — and laugh at the miracle that most of them only cost me a few wrinkled t-shirts.