c'mon!

there was a long string of weddings for a while there. sorry of i missed anyone's wedding gift, it really did become hard to keep track! then things slowed down for a while.

today two of my favorite people i have met since moving out here got married. they are a solid enough couple that they rebuilt their entire house together, while living in it, with many pets. amazing. and now they are legally wed. maya and miles and i went across town for a little reception to congratulate them (one of us was mainly focused on the cake).

some $&^$%)( folks want to ban marriages between two people of the same sex. oh no, the institution of marriage is threatened! hasn't the institution of marriage had multiple flaws since the beginning of time? why shouldn't people who love people of their own sex have the same civil rights as others? even the same rights as other not so nice and smart and cool people who think they know better than anyone else how we should all live our lives.

i'm sure i am missing something and hope my stepdad never reads this as he will roll his eyes at my simplistic thinking. but there is just no argument here, people!!!!!! let anyone who is old enough to make their own choices marry whoever they want!!!!!

yay kim and kimm.

we love you,
all of us over here even the ones who didn't make it out to your sweet little reception tonight. i hope you drank a lot of tequila for me and rich.

music in the hood

this morning we went up potrero hill to the annual fair. we started with a pancake breakfast at the neighborhood house. i kept thinking how much my dad would love this as we ate homeade pancakes and eggs while an incredible jazz band of what looked like 75 or more year old musicians (stand up bass, trombone, drums, keyboard, trumpet, sax, woman singer in big floppy hat) played jazz. all was free, with jumpy castles, sugar skulls to decorate, pumpkins to paint, an obstacle course to run wild on, cookies to top with icing and sprinkles.

later we walked, pushed/sat in the stroller or rode a batman bike through the mission to see some friends play in a new version of an old band at the homestead. they are called the mummyshots, and awesome. maya drank a shirley temple and miles cavorted on the sidewalk outside with edison and emily while his dad watched him and drank PBR. i heard someone say that having kids in the bar made it seem more wholesome. we even got blessed by a visit from the tamale lady herself.

right now there is a crazy LOUD noisecore (i'm guessing at this description) band playing in a house party nearby, unless someone is blasting a concert album i've never heard. feedback and bass and angry unintelligible screamed/shouted lyrics and drunken cries of joy and all are floating into my window. i can imagine the crowd and keg and sweaty smells and moshing in a little space because i've been there before.

rock on, my neighborhood!

love, me

big buddy

miles told me excitedly today that he had a new friend. his class is teamed up with a 3rd grade class and they met for the first time today and drew pictures of each other. i think this made miles happier than any school activity so far. he recreated the picture of his buddy, and then drew about 250 happy hearts to show how he felt. procratinating bedtime, sure (new and baaaaad trend around here), but so sweet.

"is this your favorite picture i ever drew?"

"i like it because my favorite art is art that shows how you feel."

sorry if this post is nonsensical and/or agrammatical, i am on vicodin for my painful mouth.

at least some folks still have their sense of humor

part of halloween decoration on glen park home.

there was a george bush bat also, but i didn't get the photo.

trick or treat!

i don't wanna work

I am a terrible procrastinator. i have tons of work to do--work there is no time to do anymore while i am at work, and even though the kids have gone to bed beautifully early (7:40, haven't had one of those in a while), i just don't want to do work work at home.

instead i will mention the inspiring conference i attended part of this weekend, coordinated by the green schoolyard alliance. on friday night i took the bus to gough and geary and met many people whose mission in life is kids and nature, and heard a talk by richard louv, who wrote last child in the woods. i won't say he is an amazing speaker, but by the end of the talk my mind was zinging with ideas and inspiration. he talked about how there are different rings when it comes to giving kids more time in nature (where they really need to be). the first ring is programs, the second the volunteers and low-paid workers who run the programs. the third ring was more interesting, more about a big cultural change, and that is what would really make a difference. things really seem primed for this cultural change--mass awareness of environmental problems, consumer economy bombing out, and kids who need to feel that the future is not a big hopeless mess. so i left and dragged rebecca walking with me all the way down to the mission and we had an eco-warrior talk and i was definitely feeling fired up!

we met an old friend nat visiting with his new phD homeade autumnberry chocolate, and a big plastic boot on his leg, and sylvia who i last saw playing walkie-talkie games at burning man and who now has her MFT. my friend at zeitgeist gave me a double jameson and coke for free and then we went to delirium where my other old old friend was djing. i felt so popular, how delightful.

yesterday miles and i walked the alien and brand-new but actually beautiful new neighborhood of mission bay, high-density condos along the channel full of funky old houseboats. we went to a benefit for friends of the urban forest and listened to the sippy cups rock out some covers including a kid version of i wanna be sedated, handled some giant bugs, snakes, lizards, played some old-fashioned games like tug-of-war and, inevitably, miles got his face painted.

enough of this.

did i mention i went to the dentist for the first time in 13 years? i have to get two root canals.

buh bye

anxiety, greening

yesterday my son's teacher mentioned that he seemed anxious, which is what i have been noting for a while, and which makes me very sad. so, we will try harder to make him feel secure and confident. time to amp up the calm and happiness around here, and keep adult concerns hidden away from little people.

walking down the very steep hill from miles' school today we heard a crazy loud noise. it was two middle schoolers zooming down the middle of 23rd street sitting down on skateboards. and then one more came by, i dunno, maybe at 40 mph? is that possible? really fast, with huge serious smiles on theire faces and i had to laugh out loud in amazement. they were flying. sledding. rocketing.

this morning i and 2 others from the starr king greening committee put up a display of photos from other schools around the city showing various ways to green the schoolyard. composting, butterfly gardens, synthetic grass, vegetables, dry creek beds, goldfish ponds, outdoor classrooms. we pasted up a background of green and blue construction paper while maya roamed the school cafeteria finding books and spilling milk, and eventually drawing what looked exactly like a fish skeleton on the asphalt with chalk. we put a sign up saying "schoolyard greening, what do YOU want to see?" along with a flyer for a community meeting next week. i found myself feeling inordinately proud of this little effort. i will be a small part of moving things forward towards health, fun, nature, sustainability for this group of kids and it is a good feeling.

i keep reminding myself that miles was shy when he started preschool. they said he was a quiet observer there, as is right now at school and at his after school program. i see so many kids playing happy and relaxed and i want him to feel that way too. he was the wacky loud and happy king of preschool by june of last year. but it might not be so easy. his daddy was a very shy kid. my dad says he was too. and i remember that excruciating feeling of switching schools and wondering what everyone was thinking about me, the new girl. yuchhhh.

maybe the green schoolyard will help a little. and time, of course.

bye

potrero del sol again

sorry dear readers, i mean mom, shannon, and cassie, for my absence

there is plenty to write about but i have been thinking instead. lying at night, awake, awake, thinking of huge amounts of stressful b.s. at work (tied to school budget problems, mostly) and fantasizing heavily about quitting. still awake, visions of economic and ecological collapse, simultaneous solutions (growing plants to eat in our yard) and doom (someone stealing the plants from the yard, kids starving). still awake, wandering to thoughts of rearranging our furniture to make our nest better so that home will be a happier place (think what you will of this one).

so anyway, i will write what i tend to write about on this blog, another day at the park.

potrero del sol has become our second backyard, 2,3,4,5 times a week i find myself there. today we met cousin natalie and she and maya rolled down the hills, picked and blew dandelion wishes, ran shrieking from miles on his batman bike, and attempted to climb the climbing tree. another perfect sunny day. the two tiny puppies from down the street show up and the kids play with them. someone lets miles borrow his skateboard for a long time and he rides it down a steep hill sitting down, over and over. we hear the wheels of the skateboards constantly now, going by the house, down the sidewalks, bump bump, bump bump, over the cracks. when it is time to leave we pause near the exit. maya, exhausted says my want to listen to the drums, just a tiny bit. they are playing congas, three men sitting down, and one playing another percussion instrument, i don't think i've ever known its name, like a gourd you scratch with a stick. my smell fire says maya. and it is a bbq near the drummers, full of charcoal black chicken. the man with the bbq asks us if we want some, and although my first thought is no thanks i think of how much my little boy loves dark meat, and bbq, and say yes. the man gives us a drumstick on a paper plate, sizzling, but then makes several more trips, another leg for maya, a napkin, two more pieces for me and rich, 2 corn tortillas.

maybe someday when we have a bbq we can offer him some chicken says miles.

and this is good and important, right? this is not an endless meaningless cataloguing of what my kids do and say at the park, right? because they are the future, and we are here in a city, and cities are the future, and won't it be good if we could all share backyards in that future? and listen to drums on the wind? and eat food from a stranger and hope to see him again to pay back the favor? so for all the scary stuff happening in the world right now, all these fine little moments in our lives are working to negate some of that scary bad future. not ignoring it. not really. not hiding or running.

i don't know if any of that makes sense. the benadryl is really kicking in.

gotta go lie down and think some more.
miss you dear readers. wish you could come to our lovely park and we could feed you some chicken and brazilian drumming. we could come up with a plan to make things even better. make our own music in the park.

nautilus

here is miles' version of the chambered nautilus we saw today at the new california academy of arts and sciences. today felt kind of cosmic. maybe that word is in my head as miles has a new buddy named cosmo. but we walk up a huge hill in the sunny morning, listen to bootsy collins on a playground looking over huge dilapidated projects full of poor people, beyond them the bay, the shoreline jagged with docks and warehouses and pointy rusting metal boats. maya and i stop at the cafe on the hill so she can play with the owner's daughter and i can talk neighborhood politics with the owners. we keep walking back down and meet up with our old neighbor molly. at the park i exchange numbers with a mom i meet. skaters whiz around us, young, old, fat, thin, speedy looking, healthy looking, staying on or falling off. maya conquers the hanging net and makes a little boy friend.

and after school i take the kids to this fabulous new museum in golden gate park , full of light and glass and water and plants with fish, alligators, seahorses, penguins, turtles. huge photos and paintings show the earth and inhabitants for the last 4 billion years. whale bones float overhead. sharks and skates bicker for shrimp and squid a museum worker tosses them. i know that many of these exhibits touch on the crisis going on in the earth's environment but we don't read them today.

on the way home miles is asking about how long creatures live, and i lie again and tell him that i won't die before him, although at this point i think he suspects i am lying. the kids spend a whole peaceful 30 minutes drawing together in the late afternoon light on the back deck. we spot a family of mourning doves. before bed i start sorting through a box of old journals and memories my parents have been storing and find a book i wrote and a teacher typed in first grade. not so different from this blog. there is a story titled the country in which i declare i like country things better than city things.

buenos noches

dreams and rock spirals

i have been having a lot of dreams about partying. wild parties with all kinds of people, even a dream starring many old friends and new ones--including a young teen mom with a baby with craniofacial anomalies and an actor from hill street blues--having a big party in my parent's house and OOPS--drinking all their fine sonoma county wine. (sorry mom). what do these dreams mean? i miss my wild side? i need to write about my past? my subconscious is in need of a good professional overhaul?

i sure don't know.

mondays and fridays i walk miles up the big hill to school, pushing maya up a, what, 90 degree slant in the stroller. lately we have been joined by one or more of miles' schoolmates on the way, which is cool. we walk over the river of cars on the freeway. past the ambulances whoop whooping to the hospital and cars with kids going to starr king honk at us sometimes. at the top of the hill across from the school is a big open space with a panoramic view of the city and little criscrossing paths to run on. one day we saw a black and white cat stalking a group of innocent pigeons. another day miles and a friend found broken pieces of a thick white plate he gave to me to take home for a mosaic. if i see broken glass (and i do) i pick it up and throw it away.

yesterday we found this, the spiral rock maze, otherwise known as a labyrinth. it was unexpected and beautiful and here are my kids running around it finding the center.

i tried it too.

jimi rocks the school yard

school update, mostly for grandparents:

well, the kids are in new schools and so am i. i still feel queasy inside that we have out our son in a school program where 90% of the instruction is in mandarin, but (repeat to self many times) i think it is going to be okay. he is going. no tears yet, just a few evening meltdowns. looking isolated in the after school program, but he looked like that at the start of pre-school, too. miles can count in mandarin now!! and he did his first homework packet quickly at the kitchen table, while maya painted her hokey fisher price coloring book.

they play different music each morning at starr king while the kids show up on the playground. salsa one day, funk the next.

yesterday they were playing JIMI HENDRIX. how cool is that???

and maya came home with tortillas she made with her teacher at baby school. and kisses her teacher goodbye, and talks about her little boyfriends there. and gives me about 10 fierce hugs and kisses but doesn't cry when i drop her off.

so, it is all okay for now.

i walked up 24th street to guerrerro tonight and met 2 newish friends for drinks at an irish bar. they are sweet and smart. we talked politics while our husbands tended the children. sarah palin makes us all sick.

it was a cool clear night with a bright white moon and i got a ride home.

night night

maya's pink dream

upon awakening, looking very confused, maya tells me, "the octopus is fighting with the pink princess. in the pink sea. with the pink shirt. the pink pink birthday. the octopus happy now."

and another shot from fabulous fairyland.

no car day with sky parade

i didn't get in a car or bus today, which was nice. two park visits, time to check out the windows and art on 24th street, the flowers and trees and painted houses in our neighborhood. there didn't seem to be any fear in the air today, just a lot of energy with the end of the heat wave.

in the skate park we sat on the hill with our very pregnant friend and her visiting sister. maya wore her belle princess dress and miles pretended to be a bull or battering ram to get my attention. the park was brimming with life: skateboarders whizzing around curved walls, kids running and kicking balls, swinging, rolling down grassy hills, climbing trees, and pinatas and balloons and the delicious smell of grilled meat and charcoal lighter fluid.

as we were leaving we saw a group too intriguing to ignore. a dad, handsome as david bowie, and two 8 or 9 year olds, lugging and pushing dollies and bags with 2 motors, air tanks, a big bag of stuffed animals, and a huge u-shaped black pvc pipe, about 8 feet tall. we followed them onto the field and discovered it had been part of a burning man installation, the Penguin Blaster, and was now being utilized to salvage a play date gone sour. my kids helped stuff animals into the tube, and after a lot of false starts the motors were going, an air tube was hooked up, a valve was pulled and BOOM an anteater, teddy bears, madeline doll, little dogs and cats and a green fish sailed 100 feet into the air and fell gently back to earth. the kids screamed with happiness and went to retrieve them and after about 10 more explosions and the addition of some big kid skateboard physicist helper the first boy announced that it was a sky parade.

we left and watched some men playing congas by the park exit. i remembered for the moment why we live here, it is because i just love it here too much to leave.

plates

last night i heard gunshots. then sirens. i was going to the park today with maya and (probably unwisely) was drawn to the little gathering of people with candles and a bunch of black and red balloons. it was a couple of big latino teenage boys, swigging vodka from a paper bag and reeking of weed. what happened? i ask. i heard the shots last night. 2 people shot and killed, the biggest guy told me. were they your friends? i ask. yes. i'm sorry, i say about times, and it is a wierd feeling, my eyes lock on with the big gang kid and both of our eyes well up with tears.

sad but scary scary scary. gang warfare going on in my neighborhood. and reading my friend's blog in oaktown some scary crime there too.

all day in the neighborhood i felt a twinge of fear, and a suspicion of bad judgment. should all of us stroller pushers out in the sun be in our homes with the doors triple bolted?

we meet a friend at miles' school and soon the boys are running around the water park in their underwear and chocolate stained faces, maya joyous and speedy in a wet saggy diaper, while we hear neighborbood gossip and venting about the violence happening. later other friends come over and we get buzzed on white wine and pizza while the kids watch a movie and draw and hold guinea pigs.

and at bedtime there is a short strong earthquake. i am more buzzed then i thought and am lying eyes closed on the trundle bed while miles asks me about the plates in an earthquake. i realize he thinks we are resting on many many dinner-type plates which are moving back and forth.

is this about how safe we are? drinking our wine and raising our kids on top of a foundation of millions of loosely stacked white china dinner plates, ready to be shaken at any time?

mostly pictures

images:
mandarin kindergarten influenced art with some characters i can't read.
greetings from fairyland.
our new buddies ajax and prince mermaid.

i'm outside on the deck in the dark. a little girl i met at work today told me that sun plus rain equals rainbow. in the house 20 yeards behind ours some friends are listening to loud salsa music and trying to learn a dance together. their laughter falls right down on me and i imagine what they look like whirling around the room, making the funny faces people do as they try new dance steps. i barely know what these neighbors look like and wish this wasn't so. underneath our deck my neighbor is reading her book and smoking her cigarette. global warming was in full effect today, whatever the horrible republican vice-presidential candidate thinks, and the cool night feels good. the kids have just passed out and rich and i are shuffling around like the exhausted zombies we are. maybe someday i will have the energy to learn a new dance. for now, buenos noches amigos.

when will we live next to a river?

what grade will i be after kindergarten? how old will i be when i am done at my school? when will i be able to write hard chinese letters? could we cool down the sun if we put a million pools around it? what happens when you stay under water too long? do some people who don't have enough food to eat eat GRASS? if they don't have enough food to eat do they die?

i'm used to my daughter wiggling and squirming way past bedtime. now miles is doing it too, but squirming and wondering and processing verbally, so many big questions.

and my son wants to live next to a river. this is a consistent wish. which is how i grew up, in my early homes. one river basically a storm drain, but good for dams and frog eggs and finding treasures and mica and clay nonetheless. and the other in a huge woods, with The Big Rock to dive off, a hook sunk into it that once tied up big boats, minnows and catfish, a beach across the way, creepy swimming snakes, even an occasional family of nudists. the sun hitting the sandy other side that you could swim to if you fought hard against the current.

how are all these things related? i'm not sure. but in these hectic days of new teachers and schools and students and families and schedules and after school programs, for all of us, i am wondering myself, when will i ever live next to a river again?

life is feeling short now that i am 40.

news flash: city cleans sidewalk!!!

something crazy happened. a week or two ago i sent a late night email to the city of sf politely venting about the litter situation (you know--human and dog poo, dumped out fried rice, vomit, as well as the usual cups, papers, bottles, etc) on the sidewalk in front of our house.

i got a call the next day from someone named mario who told me all about who cleans up our block and when, gave me his cell phone number, and another number, 28 CLEAN and said to call him anytime there was garbage out front. amazing! but b.s.?

i introduced myself to the 2 guys cleaning up and told them about my call to mario and thanked them for their work. and since them i have seen scarcely a trace of poo or old food. not too much else either. this gives me some hope in my heart.


on another note we made it through week one of kindergarten and my week back to work with only 3 meltdowns (2 miles, 1 me). miles got an eraser and a new pencil for something, he's not sure what because he still doesn't understand anything his teacher is saying. but i'm assuming he's behaving passably well if he is getting gifts.

and today we passed a big family of african-american kids waiting in the bus stop, the kind of family we usually don't talk to, because we don't know them, and a little girl kicked her foot out at miles. he said his funny "HEY" and made a face, and i found out she is in his class at school. very cute in her little uniform and a million neat braids with colored beads. i think miles likes her.

the good old days 30 days ago

here is miles in training with poppop millman, and maya knowingly wrapping her poppop john around her little finger. in lewes this summer we ate crabs and were treated to pizza and my dad took us for boat rides in the ocean to fish and see dolphins. miles was taken to funland on the boardwalk three times, returning each time with an armload of stuffies. i wore my bathing suit almost all day every day. i didn't drive anywhere. ice cream for dessert, every night (look at me for proof of this). two months of no work, no school.

bam we are back in the thick of things and i was not prepared. maya to daycare by 7:45. too many kids to schedule at work. sweet new students with so many challenges--autism, cancer, hearing impairments, elective mutism. all their parents waiting to meet me and see what i can do to help. maya and miles waiting to be picked up by mommy. miles tells me that his new school is okay, but he doesn't know how to speak chinese yet. and they mostly just sit on the rug. and then abusing me on his third day of school, hitting me for the third time in a month, in front of his new afterschool program teacher and fellow parents. why? i disappointed him by not bringing a snack he thought i promised. and he apologizes but says he just can't remember not to hit me. old habit i guess. it shouldn't matter but i am very embarrassed. i am a working mom punching bag. and in the car maya says i no hit my mama, i no make my mama sad. and then has her own crying fit about wanting a pink mermaid, wanting pink, pink,pink,NOW.

and later i let myself have a little cry in the bathtub with maya. what hurt mommy? i tell her my head hurts and she looks very concerned. she carefully dabs my hair with water and asks "your tummy too? i fix it with this." she gently prods my tummy with a rubber killer whale and then kisses my arm. miles pokes his head in, rich looking concerned behind him, and tells me that when he is mad he stops thinking about it so he won't keep feeling that way anymore.

wish it was so simple. i wish i was not working now. too many new things, feeling too needed by too many people. before bedtime miles and i take apart the rotting half wine-barrel planter in the yard. we dig out carrot-like roots from parsley plants. pull the staves off and pile them. think of uses for the metal hoops. together we take the cake of dirt and shovel and move it into low parts of the yard. maya is crying for mommy up with rich on the deck, she won't take daddy for an answer, and for just a peaceful minute, before she steps on a bougainvilla thorn, we all silently spread the brown dirt, miles with his shovel, maya with a broom, and me with my hands, while it starts to get dark and rich leaves to go mix rock music in the studio.

this is a rambling post with no real direction, but how i am feeling now. it's quiet and time to lie down and sleep before tomorrow comes.

we haven't fled yet

we travelled across the country and back on amtrak and had a lovely time in small towns and suburbs. what can i say? green grass yards perfect for hide-and-seek, driveways in front of houses, lush summer trees, friends with big houses and guest rooms. quiet at night and clean sidewalks. swimming pools and more swimming pools.

thought-provoking, yes, but we are back in our crazy loud city, enjoying the new skate park, digging holes by the pacific ocean, playing with our new guinea pigs ajax and prince mermaid, checking out the renaissance fair, hanging out with new and old friends and neighbors, meeting our tiny nephew, returning to work.

and here is miles on his first day of kindergarten. looking at his little face in this photo makes me want to cry. my big boy. my baby. he drives me crazy sometimes but i will state that obvious, i LOVE this kid, so, so , much.

kids and camp fire

i heart p.a.

we fled the city for the fourth of july in point arena. up up and away. we camped at the caperton's with four families, the kids joining and separating organically in the big field, checking out each other's tents, hiking with john, kiccking balls, investigating bugs, and at night toasting s'mores on super long sticks. the kids conked out in seconds in our tent, the sound of wind in the trees and grass lulling us, their daddy a few miles away in town rocking out all night at the oddfellows hall. we saw our delaware friends and kids, miles and edison running around nudies in the heat wave at lisa's. we moved our tent down the road to brian's for night number two. a lot of very late-night partiers showed up and mommy jamie stayed up with them until at least 3, sipping on cocktails and having fun making dumb jokes and appreciating the loud loud music with friends around the fire, as, incredibly, miles and maya and rich slumbered on in the tent which, to me sounded as loud inside as a busy bar. the next day we checked out the parade, and i got tears in my eyes watching some older maybe ex-hippies, march down the street joyfully promoting peace. the extra-action marching band did their funky thing, we saw our friend dressed up as a zebra seahorse, and there was much candy to be snatched up from the street.

it's so so clean up there. i lounged in a hammock at brian's listening to the clinking sound of horseshoes, maya lounging next to me as miles and edison made a pile of firewood under brian's deck that they called a lemur's nest. even the dirt seems clean. the sky so blue and clear, no noise pollution from honks and air brakes and ambulances and yelling crazy people. this happens every time i go up there. should my kids be growing up in a heaven like this??

miles begged to stay until the fire that night but we had to go. the begging turned to threats. he even threatened to hit me if i made him go, and i tried to ignore that one. i tried to be understanding, and i guess i was. i will stay here forever, like a statue, i won't move, if i can't stay for the fire tonight. that's the only thing that will make me happy. that's the only thing so i don't have a fit. so he did end up having a fit. our grown-up friends who were camping another night said it was the saddest thing ever, hearing miles (and his sister who joined in) just wailing and wailing as we strapped them in their carseats and drove up the long driveway. of course the crying stopped when we got some ice cream in town. that makes it all better.

i want to go back soon.

another day

i just finished reading what is the what
by dave eggers. i don't need to write anything about it because the reviews pretty much say it all, but go get it and read it, even if a heartbreaking work of staggering genius didn't do much for you.

in a lame parenting move i let miles whine his way out of going to his day camp today and then ended up reinforcing his lies about not feeling well by taking the kids swimming at the bakar fitness center.
we walked by the huge wooden statues of people and past the men and women working their bodies while watching daytime tv. we got in the pool and joined a few other familes for the parent toddler swim. maya and miles made 10 times more noise than the other kids. look mommy, look brother, i swimming, i swimming! shrieks maya excitedly. the huge windows in this expansive room let us see the panorama of downtown, and cranes building more huge modern buildings in mission bay. miles dives for rings. maya orders us around, and then for a few minutes holds onto her brother in the water as i try to float on my back, just for a moment in this clean room of water.

afterwards we eat our bunny crackers and pineapple on the big green field. the kids walk a hundred yards to the top of a hill and roll down, in uneven lines and circles. when they get back i am told of the 2 cool things they saw, a bird with a bug in its mouth and a dragonfly.

amazing dinner and meltdowns

last night i took miles to an amazing birthday dinner while maya stayed home with her daddy. it was for our friend jessie who lives in a big warehouse on 3rd street. the theme was hearts, unicorns, and italian food, and miles was the only kid who made it to the party of 30+ people. we used to come here and hear bands, or check out small art shows, or sing karaoke, but no matter what the food is really really good. the warehouse has a huge room with a kitchen and loft, and then a burrow of separate bedrooms to the side. there are beautiful much larger than life woodland creatures all over, left over from a previous resident who painted them for a party at the sundancce film festival. two huge tables with booth/couch seating. miles' eyes bug out at a huge bowl of lollipops, a tray of cupcakes, and a tiramisu walking by in sheila's arms. there are many more familiar faces here than i had imagined and i get to catch up with some people while lynn and birgit make monster faces and chase miles around the room.

for dinner: two kinds of clams, crab risotto, 3 different lasagnas, grilled asparagus, zucchini and sausages, lots of salads, homeade red sauce, bottles of wine galore. jessie makes a toast which ends with "to my family who are friends and my friends who are family." there is an epic silly string battle, starring my son, who is looking quite confident and is hysterical with screaming giggles. eric winds things down a bit by projecting a care bears film, about 50' by 50', onto the wall. on the way home, topping off his tiramisu with a lollipop, miles mentions that he would like to go out to more night-time parties.

but today was just awful. miles slept in and then didn't want to got to his camp. we went to the randall museum, which was ok, but after that the whining, arguing, fighting, and not listening from both kids went through the roof. i finally dragged them to the park at 4, but then dragged them right home after miles started jumping up and down yelling that we wanted ice cream which set his sister off wanting ice cream. the evening culminated in miles having a huge crying meltdown because rich wouldn't let him play with the window screen. he explained in great outraged detail that it was the only thing that would keep him " a little bit warm" because to had holes in it. like a nice blanket with holes, just perfectly ventilated and nothing else would do. waaahhhhhhhhhhhh.

of course i am projecting into the fall. did i mention that my ^*(*&*& %^& boss (cassie, you know who i mean) pretty much doubled my caseload??? i am imagining early morning freakouts of miles not wanting to go to kindergarten, me having to go to work, maya not wanting to go to her new day care, both of them wanting me not daddy after work, having to struggle through homework. sounds awful. guess i need to just live in the present and try to take the kids to as many parties as possible while summer is still going.

commander finger does fine

miles went to his first day of superhero day camp today. we entered live oak school and the a teenager showed us the room. kids were milling around playing with superhero dolls and blocks. i hadn't realized when we signed miles up for this camp that most of the kids knew each other. the teacher wasn't overly friendly. miles' friend from preschool was not there as we thought he would be. miles held on to me and asked me to stay. we sat for the circle but then maya started disrupting things (getting up and shaking her booty in the middle of the circle, actually, just as the teacher was going over the rules of the room). miles whispered urgently that i should stay until the end of circle. i took maya to the back of the room but she started yelling about sittin gon her brother's lap. i sensed disaster. so i went back to the circle of kids and whispered in miles ear that we were going. i kissed his big soft cheek. he grabbed me and kissed me back, then let me go...and that was all!

when i returned he was sitting and drawing with a bunch of kids. they each had a superhero they had created through some sort of card game. miles was commander finger. "he points his finger at you and electricity comes out of it." he tells me darby never showed up and they buried a big boy all the way up to his head in sand at the park. he showss maya the bird and we go. i was SO PROUD!!!!!

potrero del sol

this weekend was the grand and long-awaited opening of the potrero del sol park 2.5 blocks away. this is the park where in another lifetime, i would take chicken dog every night. we dog owners would sit and stand around, some sipping an after-work beer, and watch our babies chase each other around the field. in this other lifetime i also had a garden plot at the potrero del sol community garden, where i grew some artichokes, mustard greens, bulb fennel donated by the cool old italian gardener, and flowers.

now the park has a big green fence around it, locked at night. there is a huge concrete skateboard park and it is humming with all sorts of skateboarders, from serious looking 35 year-olds to serious looking 5-year-olds whizzing up and down the tall sides of the bowl. there is also a nice new playground and glorious brand new clean grass (not for long). maya and miles do one of their first sibling team-ups ever when confronted with a funny growling 3-year-old and then some hugging and rolling in the grass.

i had a crush on another dog-walker here. i had long hair and was kind of thin. i came sometimes and sat on the concrete bench and wrote in my journal until it got dark. time is passing and things are changing. if one of my kids doesn't turn into a skateboarder i'll be surprised.

and i can't help but fantasize about the on ramps and over passes and highways surrounding this park and our neighborhood being torn down, potrero becomes a quiet street with houses, bikes, trees, and of course skateboarders.

sidewalk envy

i found myself saying to my son today "i wish this was our sidewalk." it wasn't a really fabulous sidewalk, but he got my point. "but it only has three," he said. "no, ours has three, this one has five." we counted them, five, (he seemed to know how to refer to the number of sidewalk squares from door to curb), as opposed to our measly three. if we had five i would put out some big planters and maybe dig out some of the sidewalk for a garden. i would put a little bench, although i really couldn't do that because it would instantly become an additional room for the crowd that hangs out and drinks in the walgreen's bus stop.

timing is off. preschool is ending thursday and miles said today when i asked how school was that he tried to have as much fun as he could since school is ending soon. this ended up being the week we transitioned maya into sleeping in the same room as her brother. it started while rich was away over the weekend and all seemed peaceful. tonight it hit miles that rich was home and maya was still there, in his trundle bed. there were a lot of big real tears and anguished wails about her being there, invading his space and his mommy time. big awful cries which were finally stopped by a pathetic mommy move of digging up a star wars plastic lightsabre and giving it to him as a way of saying thank you for sharing your room with your sister (translation, stop crying and expressing your feelings kid, or you don't get this cheap toy). the ploy worked, kind of.

wish there was more--more squares in the narrow sidewalk outside our house, more years for play in preschool, more space and mommies to go around. it's hard not to feel greedy sometimes.

miles and nina, artsy photo miles took of friend on preschool camping trip

well, you get behind with the blog and then there is too much to write about. the soofis have come and gone, a whirlwind of kid-watching, friend-visiting, and reminiscing. it is good to still feel close to people who are far away but a little bittersweet when you want them in your everyday, or at least every week or two life.

we spent the heat wave mostly at the 24th and york st water park. maya hogged the baby fountain, the only one that doesn't spray 10 feet up in the air, and miles screamed and ran in his underwear for hours. we keep meeting more cool families whose kids miles will be going to school with, which helps to reassure me that going with a neighborhood school was the right thing to do.

my old friend nat sent a video of himself talking about foraging in n.y.c. and it reminded me how much i enjoy foraging. i have a great book about foraging in the bay area, the flavors of home, but it is really best to learn in nature, with a human guide. tonight while trying to keep maya safe from miles' increasingly powerful soccer ball kicks i took a little inventory of what could be foraged in our back yard--some blackberries, borage, nasturtiums, oaxalis, a dandelion or two--pretty good for plants that have just made their way into our little green space.

it is very quiet here. i think i will go take a long bath. goodnight.

rock on

went to 12 galaxies last night to see rich's band play a birthday party show. i drank several whiskey drinks very quickly and was hurting this morning when maya woke up at 5:20, but it felt good to dance with old friends and watch my husband playing guitar lying on his back on the floor. music was a big part of my connection with my spouse and others in the early days of being an adult and sometimes i forget the power being in and around live music has to bring people together. i mean, you have to pretty much have your mouth in someone'e ear to talk to them at a rock show, and that promotes closeness. there was an awesome emo-core band, touched by a janitor, that took me back to about 1993, and phil crumar was playing with a big happy band including a trombone. it is kind of wierd, many of our friends from the rock and roll days are the ones who are still in the city, and one by one they are buying houses and/or talking about or having babies. maybe the friends in this crowd are ok with smaller spaces or not being home-owners. the rock and rollers have turned out to be the least transient in our community of friends. i'm glad they are still around. rock on. love you guys.

mandarin immersion

there was an article about the starr king mandarin immersion program in sfgate today. kinda' cool...maybe miles will like his school because it is famous (a new interest).


this week i said goodbye to many of the little cuties and their families i've worked with for the past two years. i will miss them.

my best friend and family arrive in town today. i can't believe they have been gone 2 years. we will have to pack in the fun for the next 2 weeks.

bye

critters

last week we saw a baby rat in mckinley park. maya fed it some bunny crackers. camping we saw a wild turkey and some deer. in sonoma there was an immobile hurt fledgling by the duck pond that we spent about an hour trying to track down a ranger for. today we met one of miles' future classmates up at the potrero hill rec center. the visit started a little badly, as the boys scrabbled up a hillside and found lots of broken glass, which i climbed up to help them over as maya whined for me from below. then a couple of kids appeared with a toy gun that shot plastic balls and gave me the creeps. but the kids relaxed and ended up playing a little and hugging goodbye. on our way out we saw a garter snake wriggle through the fence. and from the deck at home i saw 3 yellow lorrakeets (i think?) swooping and flying around our backyards, at one point just a few feet from my head.


last night i spent about an hour reading websites and blogs about urban chickens.

i think i want to make this blog more interesting to more readers. any suggestions, my devoted and beloved audience of three...maybe four...??

my fault?

i took miles on his preschool camping trip friday night. over 70 people, about half preschoolers, at china camp state park. rich stayed home with maya and i didn't know what to do with myself. i wandered around chit-chatting while miles ran free lord of the flies style with a pack of kids. they climbed in and out of trees, tied ropes to things, ran up and down hills in the dark with flashlights, threw rocks, found giant beetles, battled with sticks, pushed and pulled each other perilously close to the edge of a rocky creekbed in a red wagon, and burned marshmallows on sticks to hold up like torches in the night. as i sipped lots of red wine from my cup and watched miles having such a blast, and started to slip into my sentimental sadness about how here was this great community that was going to end soon (miles' last day of preschool is the end of june) and how great it would be if the kids could all stay together, it dawned on me that it was MY FAULT. if we lived in a small town he WOULD be going to kindergarten with most of the kids. they wouldn't be ripped apart to go to 30 different schools and could continue to wrestle and refine their poop jokes for years to come.

so, my tiny devil's advocate says, would that be so great? you grew up in a smallish town and really didn't want to stick around there.

isn't there some happy medium? perhaps i am an idealist but i am going to try so hard to hang on to the people we have made connections with through miles' school. maybe not deep deep level connections, but enough that you know what i'm talking about, friend. with some layers of show and defense pulled back. maybe we really can nurture our little boys' blooming friendships. as we roasted hotdogs with one of miles' buddies and they got giddy giggly making private jokes about the stars and then the next morning as one of his friends gave him an unexpected and strangely hilarious hickey on his back i felt strongly that i was going to help miles keep these friends, even if i had to annoy their parents to do so. and as i sipped my wine throughout the evening and looked into some of the mamas' eyes i thought maybe i will make the time to nurture these seedling friendships too, before they are thinned out by the demands of feeding, driving, and surviving these young kid years in the big city.

soft walls

this weekend we fled the city and went to costanoa with some friends. we met two boys making a crazy trap in a tree for mean girls, heard some native american storytelling, played in an inlet at pomponio beach, spent a lot of time making sure the kids weren't running on the road. miles and emily were given a chance to take a very short ride on horses who had just returned from guiding other horses and people on trails up in the hills. their eyes are so big and intelligent, and so different from ours. a groundhog shared our site. there was a lot of tree climbing.

we didn't get much sleep, though. miles had a little trouble once it was time to crawl into the sleeping bags and stated tearily that he wanted to go sleep somewhere with hard walls. maya couldn't get into a deep sleep THE WHOLE NIGHT which was a real killer. all she could state in her defense was that "the baby lights wake my up."

i was thinking about the ohlone indians and their sustainable lifestyles as we cruised back up the coast. about how we wrecked their civilization and how ours is on the brink of collapse. it makes me glad some people have been working to protect native american indian knowledge from disappearing completely.

my mom and stepfather are travelling cross country right now with their cat molly to begin the next chapter of their lives as retirees in sonoma. they narrowly missed some tornadoes. wish them safe travels.

guest blogger rebecca goes to the prom

here is a guest post from my friend rebecca. she is a very fun and energetic person with that midwesterner's sense of hospitality. she has kind of stumbled in to being a teacher in a high school special day class for "severely impaired" (the district's lovely term) students. last week she helped out with the special olympics AND volunteered to chaperone two of her students whose prom was the first date for both of them. sorry i am posting it a bit late.

thanks rebecca!!!!

p.s. she also sent a link to some cool photos

Happy Memorial Day to you all. Thanks Jamie for giving me a chance to post on her amazing blog. Here’s SF Weekend Wrap-Up – take #1.

Things were hoppin’ in San Francisco this weekend among the under 21 crowd.

Friday was the inaugural SFUSD Special Olympics Track and Field Day at Kezar Stadium. The stadium was filled with over 350 elementary, middle and high school special-ed students from 26 schools plus parents, teachers, paras and therapists of all sorts- speech, physical, occupational, and more. The students competed in a variety of running/rolling events, turbo-jav, ball toss, and long jump.

Emily’s school, FS Key, brought 5 general-ed classrooms of kids along to cheer on the inclusion kids from their rooms. They cheered their own cheers at top volume. Totally adorable.

And my own group of rambunctious high schoolers gave it their all. One threw a softball 92 feet – about the distance from 2^nd base to the catchers box. Way to get SF’s special-ed population on the map!

The weather was glum on Saturday, so Em and I tidied the house, or at least I did, while Emily danced her own version of the entire Nutcracker.

Then, it was off to the next big event of the weekend: Balboa High School’s PROM.

Two of my students had wanted to go with each other. So, I met N. (chaperoned by his mom) and K. (chaperoned by her 19 year old sis) at the In-N-Out Burger joint on Jefferson for some viddles and to shake off everyone’s nerves. They were dressed to the nines – N in a black tux with white tie and K with a lovely cantaloupe colored floor length knit frock and a pretty black jacket zipped and tied modestly to the tippy-top. When we finally made our way into the ballroom’s entrance the mom, sis, and I kept our distance of about 20 feet or so while the young coupled made their way to a table right in front of the dance floor. It was a memorable night for them I think – awkward at first but then eventually doing all the prom things dancing, nibbling appetizers, mingling with other students and teachers, dancing some more. But when the first whiff of smoke from the soon to be smoldering dance-floor hit the consciousness of the family chaperones our young pair was quickly escorted OUT OF THERE and back to their pumpkin, I mean car and sent back home around 9:40.

I had to stay a bit longer just to soak in the ambience. The students looked great. All of them! The young men now dress to match the colors of their dates’ dresses – with some combo of shirt, vest, tie, armband, and boutonniere the same color. So I was seeing guys with the de rigueur black pants with shocking pink or lime green or lemon yellow on top. Really looking sharp. As for the young ladies: strappy floor length dresses of every possible design were all the rage. Along with up-do’s of every possible creation. Sexy and elegant. A fun evening and my first prom in over 20 years. Next year I’ll have to bring a date!

Sunday in San Francisco’s hippest event had to be the annual Capsule Design Fair in Hayes Valley. The rare sunny weather beat down on shoppers, vendors, and French Bulldogs.

Tomorrow’s back to work but here’s hoping you all had an unbelievably lazy Monday.

whole mess of photos

here are some random photos from the last week or so. match the photo to caption:
A."stop attacking your baby sister my big crazy boy cousin, that is too dangerous. somebody might get hurt. what is wrong with you?"
B."mmm, poisonous treat on a stick from mexico, thanks for being weak mommy." C."hmm, is someone going to call the pants police soon?" D. "look, look, daddy, special ladies, pink, music, pink, pink,look!" E. beautiful colombian dancers
F. "my friend and i here don't know each other well and we are males, so we will take turns beating at each other with a hatchet to the drum beats at carnaval. it's fun. now we are closer buddies and want a playdate so we can beat each other some more." G. "see, sometimes we like to be near each other. sometimes." H. "brother, let's smack each other with swords. iyou are teaching me to be tough. don't listen to our smart little pacifist cousin urging us to lay down our arms."

very silly, i know. things have felt a little too serious lately. what the heck.

bye

cloudy

this
makes me feel very frustrated.

backyarding

either the world is changing fast or my view of my place in it is. about 7 years ago i started working on the yard, and went crazy digging things up and planting flowering trees and flowers, flowers, flowers. i still love flowering trees and flowers. but new people have just bought the bottom apartment and in preparation for a meeting with them i made a list of what i envision for the back yard.

(in no particular order)
--a place for kids to play, mess around, dig, make rivers, make stick structures, explore and discover
--a bird, bee, and butterfly haven
--a place to grow fruit, herbs, and vegetables, maybe with a little portable greenhouse
--a place for some environmental education, about plants, soil, compost, sustainability
--a place with sensory pleasures
--pet chickens that lay eggs for us??
--a pet turtle to roam around?
--and if it was possible a play structure of some sort for climbing, swinging, pretending

this is quite a list but wouldn't it be cool?

when i was little we lived in a suburb with a big park behind us and a tiny stream ( a storm sewer, actually) next to us. i remember hours of making dams in the stream, finding forts in the woods, picking tiny watery tasting strawberries and juicy mulberries, finding strings of frog eggs and then hundreds of tiny frogs. we moved from this house when i was about 8, so all these adventures took place before then, without my parents. were they just innocent about the wierdos and creeps in the world or were there less wierdos and creeps then? was it safer there because there are less people per square mile than in the city? i remember once finding porno photos stabbed onto tree branches in the woods. if i lived in newark delaware with miles and maya would i let them wander around alone now? right now, it is hard for me to imagine them being out of my sight. yet i want them to have some time to explore and build in nature, on their own.

so far i see that city kids spend more time with their parents. i like this. maybe we will just have to find ways to do the exploring and building in nature together. i just hope the kids don't rebel against the lack of freedom, from their parents, in their lives...maybe this is all part of the nature of our rapidly shrinking world. we need to be able to have freedom and experience nature, but also to live close to and in harmony with others.

rambling on, again. like an old hippie this time. but i'm not an old hippie, really.

goodnight,
love,
me

no title, really

we crossed the golden gate bridge two times this weekend, to sonoma through the golden hills and back. sonoma always the same, sun, trees, a pool, the horses at the farm down the road. on our early morning park trip i overhear several people discussing money and real estate. there are new ducklings in the pond.

can't help feeling a little overwhelmed by bad news. there was an article in the paper about miles' teacher. her body was found in the water and there are questions about her death, a suicide or foul play. i don't want miles to ever find out about this, so i suppose when he gets old enough to read my blog i will erase this post. while looking for the article i found a link to a photo book this teacher's friend posted. it was so surreal and awful to see pictures of her being a happy silly young person, and reading about the mystery of her death, when not long ago she had just been the friendly new teacher at miles' school making sure he and his friends were good to each other while they played basketball.

the news is just too much. the earthquake in china has me eyeing our own old walls. we drove by a house burning down. there was a six year old with a gun in his backpack in sf. oh yeah, and the world is running out of food.

driving home over the bridge i shut down a little, even after our nice weekend of swimming and playing in the sun. maya was whining and crying and the fog was all around and i gave up for a bit on cheering her up and stared out into the fog thinking about loneliness. feeling sorry for myself in a crossing the bridge mood, and it popped out, in a not good mom way, that i felt lonely. and miles said right away, "but we're here. you have us."

the people i have to keep me from being lonely are all sleeping now. it is too late to call my best friend whose call i missed again, whose son and daughter's little voices are on my answering machine. the heat wave is over. i am going to stop listening to the news for a while.

water park

it is freaking hot today. like, walk around the house in your underwear hot, compulsively buy bottles of gatorade hot, little old ladies carrying around umbrellas hot, let the kids have all the ice cream and popsicles they beg for hot. i picked the kids up and was driving home thinking i wished i lived in the suburbs right now, feeling desperate for a pool to jump in, or a river to wade into. we parked on hellish sunny potrero and went straight to the water park, where we ended up staying for over three hours. there were all kinds of folks there, naked little brown boys sticking their hands into the fountain, girls running and shrieking through the water in their bathing suits. the ice cream pusher sold out of spongebob squarepants ice cream. four preschool friends showed up and miles was in heaven making insane noises and moves in the fountains with them, pushing the giant swing, riding the giant swing, and staring at a boy with an awful plastic gun toy for a full 15 minutes. maya was a little less content,and tired from waking up at 5:30 and launching into 12 hours of whining for the last few days, but she finally relaxed and chilled out on my lap, feeding me bits of dry cereal and watching and listening as the spanish, english, and spray from the fountains washed over us. i pushed them back together almost naked in the stroller and was happy to hear a bling bling covered woman at the bus stop tell me that i had two beautiful babies.

it's so so so so hot.

just stuff

i'm writing this in the trundle bed while miles cuddles for "one more minute" by my side. he has been all over the map recently, cuddly, mature, polite, rude, aggressive, gentle. he has been asking so many questions about what happened to his teacher, and i feel so lost trying to answer them. trying to explain death and its possible causes to a young five-year-old can make an atheist wish she was a born-again christian. listening to him speak his thoughts aloud, rambling on "maybe she cut her finger and her blood all came out. maybe when you die it's like your body stops working and your bones stop working so you can't move and then you can't eat anything for a long time and then you are dead. maybe she ate a poisonous mushroom. let's stop talking about this." i feel helpless. if i say the right thing will i help my child live his life with a less crippling fear of death. what exactly is the right thing to say? we will never know what happened to his teacher, only that she died...so the questions will keep coming and i will have to try and answer them.

today a haze of travel and spending cash up and down the 24th street corridor.
first--miles and i walk to st francis where he eats an evil face pancake and we listen to sun ra and cat power
second--all of us drive up potrero hill to check out the new park at the potrero rec center. this used to be a scary sketchy place, rusty playground equipment and cat poo in the sand, overgrown trees and weeds everywhere. today we play on a beautiful new playground with views of potrero hill backyards with terraced gardens and the bay through eucalyptus trees. a little boy is holding his first birthday party there. the smell of smoky bbq. well-dressed families speaking spanish and english. we see a little friend from miles' school and he follows her around being obnoxious but she loves it.
third-the kids scream out to stop when he drive by miles' school-to-be on the way home. there is a health fair with booths promoting healthy things,a bookmobile, volunteer clown who painted a perfect ninja turtle on miles' face, a dj blasting kmel jams, boys riding bikes around an obstacle course, lots of people from the huge potrero hill projects. miles scores a man's xl t-shirt he is presently sleeping in.
fourth--we cruise up to noe valley to check out a garden on the garden tour that our friend john created. he and andy made the garden for a man they befriended who is blind. john called it a sensory garden. he is a rock sculptor and landscaper. our party crowd friends are there mixed in with the noe valley garden tour people. there is a groundcover that smells like mint when you walk on it. an amazing little stream with rocks in it to move and change currents falling onto a pond. a bridge that rocks slightly when you cross it. one of our rocker friends is due to have a baby in october...
fifth--we eat lunch at barney's and are disappointed with the hyped-up burgers and curly fries
sixth--this marathon goes on. we walk up the block to the little noe valley 24th street park. maya talks about the terrible easter bunny we saw there. miles climbs a tree and impresses a little german boy. maya shoves miles in the back and he shoves her back. time to go
seventh--rich is craving mitchell's ice cream. we get there and there are about 40 people waiting but the kids are ready to freak out so we wait. there are rainbow sprinkles all over the car.
eighth--we go home and watch our first mandarin video, with bao bei the panda. i feel like my ears are clogged. yikes.

and now the kids and rich are asleep. i'm writing all this down, why? i'm not sure. maybe this day to day minutiae will somehow counteract this heaviness that won't leave us alone lately--teachers being mysteriously dead, scary headlines about environment, politics, economics.

maybe if i write this down and someone reads it it will make me feel closer to them. knowing all these dumb little details. i don't know. too tired to make sense.

buenos noches

more experts

(read post while pinching nose shut to get true effect)

i have been dealing with over a month now of very bad sinus congestion. it's really hard to sleep, say my "m", "n" and "ng" sounds, and i am exhausted. it's hard not breathing through your nose. i've been taking claritin and sudafed which have worked in the past, but things are not getting better.

i finally went to the doctor today. she talked to me for about one minute and then said i needed to try a different allergy medicine, like zyrtec. i should stop taking sudafed, as i have been taking it for too long. then see if things improve in a few weeks. she starts to bolt out the door but i get teary eyed and say i don't think it is just allergies, and i really am having trouble functioning, so she quickly prescribes antibiotics and suggests claritin-d instead of the zyrtec. rich just went out and got the medicine--it's claritin and sudafed combined. so what the heck is this dr thinking????? help!!

on another note i am home with 2 sleeping kiddos and my stuffy sinuses. rich is at band practice and i am missing the meeting at miles' preschool with a child psychologist who is there to talk about the effects of the teacher's death. miles is asking about her a lot. as soon as we left school today he said "no one knows what happened to teacher b yet." i asked if he talked ot someone about it but he said no, no one did. he is back to wanting to fall asleep with me next to him, and i am saying sure and hoping it is okay.

the maker faire

well, we passed up a birthday party (gasp!) and went to the maker faire in san mateo. rich was wise and drove down 280 so we missed the traffic jam and breezed through the gates with our free tickets. wow! a huge giraffe robot, make your own marshmallow gun, isolate strawberry dna, see the tesla coils make lightning inside, make your own pet robot, watch battling big robots, see the devilettes and burst into tears thinking about tedd, ride a carousel or bus powered by bicyclists. listen to a musical saw. see a beautiful fountain display created by mentos and diet coke. get inspired by engineers without borders or grey water exhibits. watch your kids get confused by the steam punks. there was much to do, make, see, and hear. unfortunately we could only stay a few hours but we will be going next year. a little taste of burning man without the dust and the distance.

on another note, through park, word of mouth, and the sfkfiles blog, about 10 families of kindergarteners going to starr king mandarin have already connected and are starting to talk about playdates before schools starts and even pta meetings. i can see there is going to be some real community there if we want it. i'm also feeling intimidated by what i perceive as a group of very intelligent parents. i hope miles can keep up there and is not intimidated like his mama.

this photo of a dinosaur stomping on pretty flowers is for those of you who love cute and evil. you know who you are.

adios amigos

lady bugs and worms

it was a garden and party day. this am miles and i cruised down to flowercraft and deliberated for a while but came home with a lemon tree, a blueberry bush, some basil, strawberries, some alyssum miles picked out,a container of worms and a container of ladybugs. then off to cousin natalie's fabulous 3rd birthday, complete with a deluxe spread of food, a multi-colored ice cream cake, a real live princess who put on a show (believe it or not the boys couldn't take their eyes off her, yikes, it is starting), balloon animals and weapons, face painting with sparkles, a craft activity that engrossed the adults for hours, and a chaotic degeneration into mike hurling chocolate into the yard and kids growling and throwing balls and other objects at the adult males at the party. when we came home it was nearing dusk and time to do some planting, as well as release our critters. miles banged on our neighbor's back door and she finally came out to help us place the hundreds of ladybugs around the yard, one by one. i hope they like it here and stick around for a while

gone and gon

so sad and tragic. a young teacher at miles' school has died. how she died is a mystery, the kids were just told that she had died and that the teachers didn't know how yet, they would have to find out from the family. i don't want to speculate on what happened but miles certainly is. maybe octopus crime killed her. maybe she got burned in a fire. was she with her family when she died? where is her family? do you know how she died yet? and then, "let's stop talking about this, it's making ME feel dead."

when i talk to someone on the phone he is whispering in my ear to tell the person at the other end that his teacher died. this type of mystery is not good for anyone, especially my son. all day he just seemed wild, laughing too hard, running too fast.

we also discovered gon at the library. a wordless japanese graphic chapter book for kids. about a tiny dinosaur who lives in the present, in nature, and is in different chapters a member of an eagle family protecting the baby eagles from a bobcat, a member of a tundra wolf family happily nursing and playing with his fellow cubs until a terrible tiger comes along, at which time he must avenge the death of his mama wolf. then he is chomping down trees trying to build a mansion of wood in a stream next to an irritated beaver. amazing art, lots of biting and tail-swacking and anger and oh so therapeutic for a little boy overwhelmed by the world of humans.

what this all has to do with shall we flee the city i don't know.

goodbye

iron will

well, maya finally started walking today, about 10 minutes after she got to the babysitter's. we spent about 3 hours at the doctor's office yesterday as three doctors tried various strategies to get maya to walk or open/use her hands. she fell for NOTHING. it looked very behavioral to them, as to me, but they all said that this was level of persistence was highly unusual in a cchild her age. they thought it might be something medical since she absolutely wouldn't stand up or open her hands. after brainstorming at some type of secret pediatrician round table yesterday it was decided that she is stressed about something and that's why she is doing this type of regression. it was also decided she must be pretty smart, which makes me feel a little better. because overall, i'm pretty sad that maya is stressed/worried enough to act like this. when i got her this afternoon i felt like i was mommying on eggshells, trying to be kind but not baby her, love her and encourage he but not reinforce her whining. luckily, except for a moment when we got up the steps and she said "maya no walk at home" she has been walking, dancing, running, making a mess, and being her pretty much usual happy self. as the dr said, it's hard to tell what kind of spin their little brains put on the information they get at this age. i know maya may have heard us stressing about schools, day care, will she be potty trained in time for preschool, and god knows what else. things have been fast and hectic and stressful. so for now, even if we don't feel it, rich and i need to put on our calmest, happiest, most supportive faces for our little ones. maya told me today that she came from mommy's tummy, maya sleeping in there, it dark in mommy tummy, and it made me think maybe she shouldn't know these strange things yet, maybe it is too much, because she made it pretty clear she would like to be in there sleeping in the dark again, and had a strange little smile on her face when i told her she wouldn't fit anymore...

what's going on, maya papaya??

well, maya has not walked since friday. and she has not used her fingers since last night. if she has to get somewhere she crawls on her knees and elbows. she has a few little cuts and scratches that seem to have been catalysts in this thing. we are 99% certain in is psychological but she is going to the doctor at 3 to get checked out anyway. maya says she is various babies she knows. she wants to nurse a lot. she takes her pull-up apart so it is a diaper. when she crawls around on her elbows being a monster with miles she is a baby monster. so, seems like the reason she isn't walking is that she wants to be a baby again, but if you ask her she'll tell you "my legs hurt", and point to a week-old 1/2 inch long scratch on her knee.

what can we do? just find a balance between helping to satisfy her emotional needs and not reinforce this too much. we were at a bday party yesterday and i put her down about 20 feet from the pinata. when it broke and the kids swarmed she slowly scooched over on her bottom and arrived just in time to find the last goodie--an eraser which she sadly tasted and spit out. she is absolutely not breaking out of character on this one. she holds her cup between two clenched fists bc there is a little cut or scratch on each hand.

it's hard to grow up. i'm also seeing that our little one has quite the iron will.

i'll let you know when she takes her (second) first steps. i hope it is soon.

who woulda thunk it?

well, we finally got our round 2 letter from the school district and miles is going to...starr king mandarin immersion! you can check it out online if you are interested. he definitely wouldn't be going to mandarin immersion kindergarten anywhere else we've considered living. a nice friend of mine said to me "you are an amazing mother, talk about rolling with the punches", referring to this turn of events. i hope she is right, and my funny irish friend is not, who asked, when told where miles was going, "and what did he do wrong to deserve that?"

extinct wrestlers

miles was playing with his mammoth and stegasaurus. "they are doing a wrestling show," (i wince a little) "and using sign language." we met some cute preschoolers from the cesar chavez deaf and hard of hearing program at the park today. and miles and maya gazed longingly through the doorway of the mexican wrestling mask store on 24th street. the mix of cultures we flow through daily is being absorbed by his little brain.

been listening to npr more in the car and being reminded about the dismal state of the earth. we need to start growing more food in the backyard. collecting water. raising chickens. solar panels. preparing the kids for a quite different world. i really think things will change faster than most of us imagine.

too much to say on this topic. i try not to think too much about the future but i want to think about it.

nighty night