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July 2009 Archive

July 31, 2009

It's in the stars

T. is a girl who loves her bedtime. She's never been a night owl (unless you count those dreadful colic days, or the months post-op when she decided it was neat to be awake from 3-6 a.m.). Even if she has the chance to stay up to do something fun, she starts to wilt after 7:30 and asks for bed, and jammies, and sleep. As a result, she's had little interest in the world at night. I'm not sure she's ever really seen a starry night sky--at least not to gaze at in wide-eyed wonder. [more]

July 30, 2009

Operation Bento Box

Sometimes I think I should just quit my job and devote myself full-time to the effort of getting L. to eat. It really IS almost a full-time, high-stress job. We cycle through periods where we just deal, because there are other more pressing things going on; other times, like at the beginning of the school year, we go into panic mode, and scramble to implement reward systems and gimmicks--all of which usually end up not working, or fail too soon. [more]

July 29, 2009

It was the worst of times, it was the best of times

Not long ago, L. surprised us out of the blue by telling us that the happiest day of his life was when T. was born. He then went on to recount, in great detail, the facts of T.'s birth ending with his first sight of her, as she lay between my legs. He really meant it, too, because he witnessed her birth--right there, up close and personal, while Clifford the Big Red Dog played on the wall-mounted hospital room television. He's never talked much about her birth before. He was, after all, only 3 1/2 years old at the time. We hadn't planned on his being in the room when T.
July 28, 2009

Manna from neighbors

On Saturday we returned home from an afternoon out and about and found a huge bag of corn waiting by our front door. Although there was no name attached, we knew the corn had come from our neighbors diagonal to us. We've also, in the past, been the lucky recipients of vine-ripened tomatoes, knobbly homegrown cucumbers, and the odd green pepper or two. [more]

July 27, 2009

Here we go again

It's here. The first day of fourth grade for L. We took him school supply shopping on Friday and, some $180 dollars later he had a new backpack, new trapper keeper, new pencils, new ruler, new gym shorts and we had bags of supplies we had dutifully purchased to take in to the class. I completely understand the egalitarian motives behind issuing massive class supply lists for each family, but by the time I pushed the cart outside Target I felt that familiar sinking hollow feeling in my stomach that comes from spending large amounts of money in a short time. [more]

July 24, 2009

Have bubbles, will travel (even if by armchair)

It was only fitting that yesterday we came home from a morning of end-of-summer-like activities (meet-the-teacher event for L., and a work meeting for me) to find a package awaiting us. A dear family friend has a yearly tradition of sending us a "Christmas in July" package. This year we unwrapped the mysterious brown parcel to find this:

Amazing Places [more]

July 23, 2009

Sea change

My little girl has grown up a lot this summer. She hasn't so much grown bigger, as she's grown older, more like an elementary school child, and not the preschooler she used to be. When I catch sight of her out of the corner of my eye these days she seems longer-legged, more solid, her face is older, somehow--I can't quite explain it. [more]

July 22, 2009

Bread, life, love

Quite a few years ago, when I was in high school and my sister and I were in Greece for the summer, we took a train to visit an aunt-by-marriage and her son (our cousin) in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. When I think about the many stand-out moments in my life so far (and there are, fortunately, many) I always think about that particular trip and about the time we dug out hollows in the sand on the beach, wedged our sleeping bags into the cool spots and spent the night under the stars. [more]

July 21, 2009

Thanks, George

When we took L. out for his birthday dinner earlier this month the conversation turned, as it always does these days, to his latest obsession: Star Wars. He had just watched Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (when did Star Wars get so complicated? It has taken me forever to get my mind around the fact that there are no longer just three movies) rented as a birthday treat, and his head was still spinning from the film. [more]

July 20, 2009

The bad, the ugly, and the good

We've been back from vacation for two days now, and I realized on Saturday that the urge to share bad vacation stories is not unlike the need to share birth stories--particularly birth stories that involve squirm-in-your-seat gruesome details. Even though I had sworn nine years ago I wouldn't be one of those new mothers who went on and on in intimate detail about their labor and birth experience, only days after L.'s birth I found myself to be exactly that kind of woman. [more]

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