= The time it takes to drive from Nashville to our house, with side trips for fueling and lunch. This also includes hitting Cincinnati at rush hour.

For a weekend trip it was a bit much, but it was for a family reunion so it was worthwhile. It helps that both boys are prone to falling asleep in the car. An unfortunate cheek-pinching incident precluded the use of the dvd player on the way home.

The trip also helped distract us from the looming layoffs that have thus far clouded the summer and stripped me of the will to blog.

Blue willow china reminds me of my grandparents, whose cupboards are loaded with enough ceramics in that pattern to feed a house full of guests.

I just discovered two modern recreations of that pattern: Chinese Whisper by William Warren and After Willow by Robert Dawson for Wedgewood

Sadly forty dollar dessert plates don’t go very well with my boys, but I harbor a continuing love for blue and white china and now I have a new secret desire.

In the interests of website, and perhaps sanity, maintenance I pruned, pinched, and privatized most of the blog archives recently. It was either that or dump everything.

To sum up the past five-plus years of my life: “Gosh, I’m tired. I wish the kid would sleep.” and “Gee whiz, I’m sick. The kid is sick. We’re all sick.”

As for right now - Thanks to the archive pruning, I did find out that it was exactly four years ago that PonyBoy and I both came down with the same illness that afflicts PuppyBaby right now. And, gosh, I’m so tired due to having a miserable non-sleeping kid!

I’m reading the utterly delicious The Girl With No Shadow, a sequel to Chocolat, by Joanne Harris.

To write that my husband and I are not “sporty” would be an understatement. Although I secretly believe that I have an untapped potential of athleticism locked away in my genes I have pretty much let it remain unexplored in my third of a century upon this earth. I merely let my genes take full credit for my children’s natural ability while resting the blame for not going out to “play ball” with them to unlock their potential firmly on their father. Therefore, while I have worked hard this spring on providing an environment to nurture PonyBoy’s ability to ride his bicycle without training wheels and not drown in a pool and glide - or not - around on ice, it’s still a leetle beet embarrassing to see him try to operate a ball. Ball sports are so not our forte.

Although he’s immensely excited about tennis lessons later this summer, I’m nurturing my guilt about the male bonding that the more usual team sports provide. Nevermind that I grew up with my mother blaming Little League for her father’s death - he coached, got hit on the leg, had a hollow spot there ever after, and eventually died of bone cancer that started with a tumor right there - ball sports are the sine qua non of American childhood. Furthermore, the teams are organized by home address so children play with relatively local children; local teams might help him get to know the bevy of other kindergarten boys in this area because we already buck tradition by not sending him to the neighborhood school.

That was my argument, anyway. The rest of the conversation went like this:

Husband: “He doesn’t need to do what all the other kids are doing. He just needs a few people. Like those loner boys at Columbine - they found each other.”

Me: “It’s too bad you don’t know html.”
While holding up:

Him: “I knew html before it was even called html!”

So, anyway, I’m thinking no soccer. Do you realize what a time suck it is? One practice each week and games at any point during each weekend. All for a sport I just can’t get behind. I know I’m a brat but I’d really like something a bit less common. Too bad water polo instruction doesn’t even begin for a few more years.

…Have you ever seen a water polo player who was not hot*? Plus, it takes me back to our California roots. My high school and college (in those long ago days) both sucked at football but, like, totally rocked water polo.

*I realize that statement could easily be misconstrued. My elder son can already do a lovely Vulcan salute so we really need to do something to combat all the nerdling genes we’ve passed on to him.

As the school year races to its end I brace myself for the future and look back wistfully on the past. Was it really over three years ago that I sat down with my stack of books about Montessori and decided to send PonyBoy to that first school? Back then, a few short months before his conception, I could barely conceive of the concept of having a second child. Now Montessori has passed. Now kindergarten has passed. In a few short months my sweet boy will march up to his school in the morning and leave nearly seven hours later, every school day for the next eight school years. Theoretically.

As for his own reaction to the end of the school year, we had an early indication on Tuesday evening after Montessori ended. In a word - emotional. I think he even surprised himself. However, he knows he’ll see his kindergarten classmates next year whereas he only realized this week that his Montessori buddies won’t be around in the same school next year. To make matters there even worse, it rained on the Montessori school picnic we would have gone to on Wednesday.

On the positive side, he won’t have too much time to reflect on the end of the public school year because we will leave for the airport about two hours after school gets out next week. Nine days off from “real life” ought to ease the transition somewhat. A day after we get back he starts camp, then his father has a week off of work for the 4th of July week. So, basically, there will not be much time for reflection for a while.

Actually I’m really quite excited for the next school year because the boy will be back into a mixed-age classroom so he’ll have the teacher two years in a row instead of this year where each class only lasted one year. Transitions are hard! I almost wish we had the spare change lying around to send him to a traditional three-years-mixed-together Montessori school. But we really love his public magnet school so, given the choice, I would probably choose that. Free buses don’t hurt either (especially with the pain of gas prices!).

As for the summer, I have two weeks of full-day camp lined up for the boy as well as the usual Chinese-speaking babysitter for the young’un - the elder one goes as well when he doesn’t have other morning activities (and I think his comprehension is already improving - CC is just a sucky, sucky teacher). One of the camps is “detective camp” so we have a couple dozen kiddy mystery books around the house right now. I have a weakness for Scholastic book orders! (Though many some of the books are from the library.) PB’s reading ability has been growing by leaps and bounds so he can actually read the books himself although I bought them for me to read out loud. (Although I was a precocious reader, chapter books intimidated me until I was much older than he is now. It wasn’t until third grade, when my mother bought me copy of Freaky Friday at the flea market, that I learned the joys of non-picture books.) Swimming, biking, seeking out nature, eating watermelon, drinking iced tea, etc. shall also occupy much of our time.

Positive spin! Positive spin!

Meanwhile, my wee baby shucks off more of his babyhood by the day. Last night? Last night?!?! At two a.m. he got out of bed next to me and went to sleep on his mattress (also next to me, but two feet lower). His newest frequent word is the de rigeur “Mine!” (The exclamation point is obligatory.) In other words, he is just so very TWO.

My husband attempts to console me about our clingy Mama-centric babies by telling me that they are evolutionarily fit: no tiger is going to get them!  Yet, despite co-sleeping and nursing and attending to their needs, I reserve the right to be jealous that Kate can deal with the multitudes of her same-aged children with drill-sergeant efficiency. She can herd six toddlers into their room for naptime and bid them adieu? Now, I’ve only watched two episodes of that show ever but it makes me think that surely some compromise exists on the parenting continuum.

Last night it all came to a head.  The toddler would not fall asleep.  I was sick, he was sick, my husband was sick. We were a miserable trio. My arm throbbed in pain at resting in the same position for so long.   Finally I grabbed the mattress out of the crib we banished to the other room and plopped it in the middle of my room.

“Lie down there,” I hissed. (Because I had lost my voice.)

“He’s not going to lie down there,” came the voice of reason (my husband), “Look at how far from the bed that is. Two lions could walk through that space!” So he pushed the mattress next to my side of the bed.  I wish I could say that we lived happily ever after and the toddler fell right asleep but he had some idea in his brain about his big brother and kept making a break for the other room (where we knew he simply would not fall asleep despite trying to climb into the bunk bed). But at eleven p.m. he finally fell asleep. The pillow on that bed undoubtedly helped his stuffy nose. Five hours later I let him crawl up next to me - I’m only asking for half a night on a separate mattress!