There’s been some talk amongst the family lately, of course with Verity’s arrival, that resembles the fun guessing-the-features-game: “Oh, he/she looks JUST LIKE your great uncle Chester, but he/she totally has Grandma’s pinkie toes!!!”

Which got me thinking, so I pulled out some photos and threw together this fun little comparison for us to smile over

(FYI – Betsy is Chris’ mom, and Ian is my brother- or as I like to call him, Ethan-Number-One because, folks, that’s just scary.)

You were born just yesterday – but that was four years ago. If you ever do read this, you’ll be older still.

You are growing up. You hair isn’t silky soft anymore. Your knees aren’t smooth and plump, rather they are lanky and rough with scabs and scars already. Your breath isn’t fresh in the morning. Life and decay have already begun to impress upon you.

Sometimes you make me laugh. Sometimes you makes me cry. Sometimes I scream my head off.

Sometimes I remember the little boy you were just a skip step behind. When we went on a mommy/son only date to the library and you said, “Mama, I love you so much. I don’t know what I would do without you.” Like a flood, I remember how close we once were. How intuned we were. How holding you close, my first born little boy, was heaven to me.

I remember giving birth to you, carrying you around, watching you grow amazingly chubby from vats of breastmilk. I see you now, trying to balance the immaturity of a 2 year old with the maturity of a 7 year old. Practicing, however unsuccessfully at times, to grow and learn the magnitude of expectations the world has of you. You grapple with the loss of the infant-mother bond, the difficulties of your relationship with your father, your adoration towards your baby sister. Your brain understands complex relationships well beyond your years, and yet you struggle with saying “please” or keeping your voice down. How very frustrating it all must be; trying to control one’s body, regulate emotions, practice using your own voice.

You are an ocean of unknown to me. Sometimes I cuddle and play with you based only on guesswork. Never have a faced a mountain in life I was so unprepared and ill-equipped and completely inadequate to tackle. I hope you will forgive me for all my failures with you, for all the times I missed out on something great you had to tell me, for all the events that ended in tears.

You, Ethan, are so self-sufficient, a self-learner, brave and gentle and transparently loving. You are strong-willed and easily frustrated when you aren’t able to explain your intentions and wants. When you are severely disappointed, you express yourself so dramatically: “You are breaking my heart and hurting my feelings!” You are patient, having shared your mother with her work simultaneously for four years, and now also with your sister.

While I can’t deny my excitement in seeing you grow, in all the new things you learn to do and be, I admit I wish I could jump back in time and smell your soft baby hair. I secretly wish to go back, for just a moment, to those years when all I had to do was make a suggestion or warning and along you followed, never considering an alternative plot of your own free will. (Back then, you never had a 500 word monologue of rebuttal ready to present for my reconsideration!)

As you fall asleep in big boy Transformers PJ’s to, of all things, Anne of Green Gables, I am overwhelmed with the melancholy passage of time.

I love you. I love you so much it aches sometimes. I am so proud of you for facing this life so valiantly, already, at only four. The world is better for having you in it, and I’m humbled to be your mother.

Mama

Do not ask me to successfully think, move, sleep, or otherwise function properly until absurd temperatures of over 100 degrees cease to exist – at least not without first COexisting with this newfangled device called air conditioning. Newsflash: I am not a fan of stickiness. I love the sun, but not when it scorches me from the walk outside to feed the chickens. No, not so much. This is insanity at its best. This must end. What gods must we offer sacrifices to in order to bring rain to this dry forsaken land? Huh? HUH? What, you want my baby green tomatoes, the first fruits of my labor?! TAKE EM!

Move along, Summer. Bring it, Fall! On with the chilly nights, the apples, the corn, the harvest parties – not to mention the days with more than 6 hours of darkness…

If the sheer idiocy of this post does not sufficiently prove that this heat is crazy-makin’, I don’t know what else will.

Kindly,
Mama.

It was a lot of fun to spend time with friends in the sun for the afternoon while celebrating another year in my son’s life. He is such a joy, even in the “worst” of times. He’s been having a rough day or two with stomach problems, so he hasn’t enjoyed himself as much as I had hoped he would. He couldn’t even eat his cake So we opted to skip the special birthday dinner and let him get to sleep early on a bland meal. Chris deserves props for many things these past few days, not in the least for keeping the kids highly entertained with water balloon games, but most notably for cleaning up the bathroom and clothes when Ethan’s …er… stomach problems emptied themselves inside his pants when he couldn’t make it to the bathroom. Poor buddy!

Side note: I’m officially an Oregonian now! Mandatory photo ID check to board the lunch cruise forced me to finally get an Oregon driver’s license Friday morning. I did pass the test, but I got several wrong that were REALLY hard. Who knows what it means when your vehicle approaches a horseback rider on a rural street and they raise their arm straight up? Huh?!

Additional side note: Ethan awoke this morning to follow arrows to the steps around the corner of his room, where a few gifts awaited him: a take-apart car from Nana and Papa, a build-your-own rocketship from Paw Paw and Maw Maw, and from us: glow in the dark stars, a handsewn birthday crown, and a small batmobile. I didn’t finish the rocket ship he asked me to knit him (though I stayed up til almost 1am working on it)… alas, the best laid plains. And after all that, you know what he said after finding all of his gifts waiting for him? “Hey- where’s the squirt gun?!” Ay mi!

So I am birthdayed OUT. I have done nothing but prep for this birthday for the last 48 hours and I’m ready to CRASH. Good thing I have a nice long day of work tomorrow with tons of stuff to catch up on (seriously- I welcome this- anything is better than more birthday work!)

Final side note: My roomates new baby is SO FREAKIN ADORABLE!

I used this recipe for the homemade chocolate zucchini cake (doubled for the castle bunt pan and the muffin pan). Instead of white sugar I soaked turbinado with the wet ingredients for 15 minutes before adding the dry ingredients. I used whole wheat pastry flour, oh and raw milk instead of buttermilk. I also omitted the pecans because I don’t think Ethan would like that, and it is his birthday cake, after all

The frosting is cream cheese – from the delicious Birth day Cake recipe here. I tripled the recipe listed for TONS of frosting, plus adding two ripe bananas.

Topped the cake and muffins with slices of fresh strawberries and a few blueberries. I then mixed honey with a can of pureed pineapple and drizzled it over everything.

Hungry yet?!?!

All aboard the Willamette Star…

Big birthday planned for tomorrow, so stay tuned for more pics…

Learning via everyday life. We do it from the moment we are born, and hopefully continue to do it all our lives. No doubt children learn more new things each day, from how to move their bodies to learning a language to social interactions to facts/knowledge about whatever they find of interest.

I’ve been trying to be very mindful of Ethan’s learning each day, what things he learns about or asks about, what observations he makes on his own, in a very basic day at home with a work-at-home-mom.

This morning, as I mentioned, we Couch-2-5k’d it to the bank. He got 3 miles of bike riding in, plus he learned a bit about the bank and why we need to deposit money (okay, okay… I told him that it’s because the bank is a hungry machine that needs to eat our money or else we can’t use them to buy things… which is not entirely untrue!). He also stopped to make observations about the fact that there are a lot of Queen Anne’s Lace growing (we’ve been studying native wildflowers and collecting them to press) and other random things he saw on the ride.

At home, it was mostly a me-work, him-movie day, but even still, I noticed a ton of things he was learning. For example, he asked lots of questions about the movie Little Bear – about camping, making food, pretending to go to the moon, so on.

He learned to organize/load and start the dishwasher today too.

At one point today, he counted to twenty a few different times today, and when I asked him what he was counting, he informed me that he was picturing twenty kids and if they could fit in his shark tent. Do they?, I asked. Nope.

Later, he asked if I could take a break from work to show him a map of Oregon. (He’s been seeing the bumper stickers that have a shape of Oregon with a big green heart on it). We looked at Oregon and pointed out where Portland is, where the Willamette River is – which we will tour on the lunch cruise tomorrow for his birthday, and where the mountains are that we visited with Nana Betsy. Then he wanted to see a map of America, to see where Oregon fits in with Florida and so on. He was very puzzled that Florida was NOT in the sky (because, after all, you go UP in a plane to get there. I reminded him how the plane comes back DOWN to land when it arrives in Florida.)

Before bedtime, he’ll collect the eggs (actually, he just did this, and informed me that there was 1 in the coop and 2 already collected, and that 1 plus 2 equals 3!), feed the chickens, pick up his room, water play in the shower, read books (today we are reading about the months of the year and many concepts that are taught in Blueberries for Sal and its sequel, One Morning in Maine), color some pictures, write a thank you card to Misty for his pinwheel, brush his teeth (and no doubt have a fight about it and I’ll have to explain again that he will be going to his first dental visit in two weeks, etc) and sing and pray with mama and dada at bedtime.

Recap the day in early education terms: home ec, farm concepts, pet responsibility, arts and crafts, penmanship and early reading practice, music appreciation, natural sciences, botany, PE, cycling, banking (economics?), math concepts/counting, geology, hygiene, social sciences (what does a dentist do, etc), water manipulation/free play, spirituality, astronomy, so on and so forth.

When I stop to notice it, I’m often quite surprised by how much learning he does when I’m not even trying to formally teach anything at all. I can’t even begin to imagine how much more so when the gift of knowing how to read is at his disposal!

… P.S. Amy, if you are reading this- remind me to ask you about some movie Ben told Ethan about… apparently there’s a boy who eats his own poop. That was a lovely topic starter/lesson to discuss today LOL

I had a rough morning. I rolled out of bed just in time to Couch to 5k it to the bank to deal with bank issues, very stressful. I barked at Ethan nearly the whole time. I couldn’t handle his questions, stopping, complaints. When he skinned his knee, I gave him a quick hug of empathy but that was about the best “mom” he saw all morning.

He’s been so great though today. Helped me load the dishwasher, put on Lost when I told him I was tired of Backyardigans. (It’s a workday for me. Which means, unfortunately, a little extra Tube viewing happens.)

And right now he is laying down on the rocker couch in my room with a blanket over him. He is hiding under it and says he is going to take a nap. I heard him whispering a prayer.

Not to mention, this was the part of the prayer I heard:

“Dear Jesus…. *whisper, whisper* … boat tomorrow …. *whisper, whisper*… oh and a lollipop – IF (he added the emphasis on the “if”, people!) I listen to mama. AMEN.”

He breaks my heart. I don’t deserve his love.

P.S. After the prayer, he sat quiet for a minute and proceeded to question me about the whereabouts of E.T. Does he live on the moon or the stars? Is he from OUR outer space? So then he lives HERE? etc. Could this get any cuter?

I tell ya!

Some pics and video of our peek-a-boo games between PR editing today: (Verity- almost THREE months old! It seems only yesterday…)