Category: Uncategorized

Hide and seek.


Art really likes to go south 2 blocks from our home to a big block-wide drainage ditch that is actually quite beautiful. We call it the ‘Egret’s nest’, since we’ve often pretended to be egrets there. Yesterday, we played hide and seek in the tall grass.

And here’s a bench overlooking the pond–it’s the third time we’ve ridden the bike down and eaten an apple at this spot in the past few days.

Bedtime.

I’ve got Lewis’s bedtime ritual down now.  About 80% of the time it is flawless.  Not a peep after I leave the room.  About 15-18% of the time we have some fussing and the other times the mark has been sorely missed and we just have to start over.  Anyway, we read a few books, I sing him “By and By”, a lullaby I learned in music class, then I hum the song for a while, rocking in the chair.  Take his sleepy but still awake body to his bed and plop him in.  A little more humming and patting and I’m OUT OF THERE!  80% success rate is not bad at all.  I would even go so far as to call it at 88%.  
It reminds me a little bit of a magic lullaby I had going with Art about a year ago.  It was one I learned from a kid’s songbook someone gave me.  It got to a point where all I had to do was start singing this song and Art would lay down.  He could be sitting up and trying to talk about something and I could start singing, “Bye bye, baby… Hushaby….” and he would flop over snuggle into his pillow.  Ben will attest to it.  It was magic.  We even talked about how I needed to use that power responsibly – not to abuse the gift – and that it would eventually lose it’s potency.  Ahhh… Those were magic times! 
Tonight Lew’s bedtime routine fell into that 10% of slight fussing, but nothing major.  

The latest!

Right now (10:48pm) Ben is going into Art's room to wake him just enough to use the bathroom.  He's bringing a very floppy Art – oh! He just walked over to our bedroom door to show me the floppy Art! – to the bathroom so he can pee.  Ben said, "I love doin' this!"  Ben thinks that Art wraps himself around Ben more "ergonomically" when he's half-asleep.  

Anyway, things are going well here at the Parker-Garvin house.  Art is still enjoying school for the most part.  He often doesn't want to go into the room, though, when we first get there.  Then, when I pick him up he doesn't want to go to the car.  The boy has trouble with transitions.  No, seriously.  It can be really frustrating.  
Lewis has taken more steps and is guilty of standing without holding on to anything more and more often.  But he has not yet made the leap into true walking.  He has just stepped away from one perch to another a few more times.  
I am so happy that it is warming up.  This has been an especially brutal and long winter.  Maybe it felt worse because I had two young boys who were needing to get outside a lot.  The last few days we have been taking pre-dinner walks with the tricycle and stroller.  A couple days ago we took Art's old scooter out for Lewis to try.  Art went around the block so many times on that thing when he was Lew's age our neighbor called it the Artmobile.  Lewis scooted and pushed it and Art rode in his pedal-car and then his tricycle.