Never a Dull Moment

Meera today before heading off to school; Meera today grocery shopping after school

Meera is soon to turn 4 years old, and she suddenly seems so much like a little person. Her babyishness is just about all gone, and all toddler resemblance is quickly vanishing too. She wants to be a “big girl” and she lets us know it all the time. She dresses and undresses herself, she unbuckles her own carseat, can get herself a glass of water, and does a hundred other things “all by herself” too.

With this she is also quickly developing a newfound sense of her own identity. It is becoming very important to her — and important to her that others see it too — that she’s a Girl (capital ‘G’). She points out to me often that we (she and I) are “the two girls” in the family, and she contrasts this with “the three boys.” Heading off to school this morning she decided she wanted to wear a scarf, “just like Mommy,” and was quick to point out that “the two girls are wearing scarfs!” and “the three boys aren’t wearing scarfs!”

Also before school this morning I was talking to all three kids about the plan for the day. I had to go grocery shopping this afternoon after work, and I gave all three of them the option of choosing to either: 1) have me pick them up from school and then go to the grocery store with me, or 2) stay after school at After School Program and I’d pick them up when I was done grocery shopping. Kyle and Owen both immediately chose option #2. Meera, on the other hand, quickly jumped at the opportunity to go to the grocery store with me. She immediately announced, “the two girls are going grocery shopping!” and “the three boys aren’t going grocery shopping!”

Today, as soon as we got home from school/work, Owen went straight to the kitchen table, pulled out some colored pencils, and started drawing. I was starting dinner in the kitchen, Braydon wasn’t home from work yet, and Kyle and Meera were outside playing. The house was quiet, and Owen was focused on drawing for quite awhile. He has been drawing a lot more lately, but still this is new and unusual and noteworthy behavior (anyone who has read this blog much knows that K & O have never been sit-at-the-table-and-draw kind of boys! understatement!). I tried to just play it cool (as I have been with his recent dabbling in drawing/coloring), and went about my business in the kitchen. After a while Owen jumped up from the table and ran off to play outside with his brother. I was so curious to go see what he had drawn. When I got to the table, I found this.

As a mother, nothing gives me more pride than seeing my kids exude sincere self-confidence. But as a white mother of black boys, the overwhelming pride I feel in witnessing their self-confidence is impossible to articulate.

I picked up the drawing, examined every bit of it closely, and then thought to myself, “I think we’re doing o.k.”

For now, for now, at least for now, we are doing o.k.

Today they let me sleep in until 9am. It was rare and heavenly and so appreciated! Over coffee they gave me gifts — handmade cards and school Mother’s Day projects that only a mother of young children can receive — them beaming over it with pride and happiness almost as much as me. It is a precious time, this certain stage, of motherhood. Braydon gave me a Kindle (I’m finally converted!), and tonight I’m already 2 chapters into my first book. After coffee and gifts we went on a 12-mile bike ride. Our family record to-date, 12 miles is far with two just-barely-8-year-olds and a 3-year-old-being-towed-in-a-bike-trailor. It was sunny and gorgeous and the perfect temperature. We stopped only once, for water and peanut butter crackers, but the rest of the time we just biked and biked and biked. There were wild purple flowers blooming everywhere — my favorite color. The boys were convinced they were blooming just for me. After the ride I watched Meera play on the playground with a friend she instantaneously made right there on the spot. I was proud of her outgoing nature and ability to smile so freely and play so happily and make someone else so happy. Kyle and Owen wandered off to join in a pick-up volleyball game amongst a group of college-aged boys. The girlfriends of the players fell in love with K & O and offered them popsicles. They gladly accepted, but only if they could have one for their sister. I was proud of their outgoing nature and ability to smile so freely and play so happily and make someone else so happy. My kids are pretty awesome. I let myself see that today — deliberately I let myself — and tried to not let worrisome thoughts and concerns enter my head (am I doing right by them? am I good enough? can I do this? are they ok? — I tried to not let those incessant thoughts scoot in). It was nice to do that for a day– to just let myself see them for the pure awesomeness that they are, and just be proud of it. A gift to myself. We then went for a “Linner” (our favorite sort of meal: the late lunch/early dinner… the “Linner”). We sat outside at a chain Mexican restaurant that we know has great cheesy (literally and figuratively) queso dip. We dipped our chips and ate and drank and talked about the future and reminisced about the past. We were the best version of us today. It was great. It was the best Mother’s Day ever.

(p.s. don’t worry– big 8th Birthday post, and lots of catch-up, brewing)

Happy Birthday K & O!

Today these two boys turn 8. Our gratefulness for them in our lives overflows daily. 8 years on this planet, and already they’ve made such a huge impact on so many people. We get excited thinking of what the future holds for these two. They are two deep, bright orange, abundantly alive souls — they live life to the fullest — and they are a privilege to know and love.

Happy Birthday Beautiful Boys!

(Saturday they had the best birthday party ever! Mega post coming soon!)

(Owen & Kyle, 4/29/12, at an event on campus at Lehigh, photo credit: Lehigh Photographer, T. Harnett)

These two big boys are about to turn 8 years old. They challenge me daily with their antics, make my blood pressure sky-rocket with their dare-devilish pranks, and keep me up at night worrying about their futures. They also make my heart melt, give me enormous hope for this world, and fill me with a level of pride I could not possibly have previously known. I could not be more in love with them. They are my dream come true. They are on the verge of turning 8. We are getting ready for a huge birthday bash. And we are thinking a lot about what might have been happening eight years ago at this time in Cite Soleil, Port au Prince, Haiti.

At the kitchen counter, before school today, taken by Owen, with Papi’s iPad.

We’ve had a rough go of it these past few weeks– mainly because of a combination of two entwined factors: 1) we’ve been extraordinarily busy, and 2) at least one kid, if not two or three, have been sick pretty much non-stop for this whole past winter and spring. Kyle and Meera, especially, have been sick more than usual (mostly just colds and flus, but still… just yuck!). And my work schedule, combined with Braydon’s work schedule, has just been a lethal combination, ramping up especially in these past few weeks. It has taken a toll on all of us, but on Kyle in particular. He is a very sensitive little soul, and he picks up on everything, and feels things intensely.

Kyle is, by far, our most unflappable child. It is amazing what he can handle (especially given how sensitive and in-tune he is), and he regularly astounds Braydon and I with his tolerance, patience, and ability to carry heavy burdens. But every once in a while it all gets to him and he starts to sort of unravel. That’s what has been happening a bit with Kyle lately. And on Tuesday night, when he struck out twice during his first baseball game of the season, well… he just sort of fell apart. Poor little guy.

The next morning he was dragging and having a hard time coming out of the funk he had fallen into the night before. We were in the kitchen and I was packing up their backpacks with Kyle’s help. One of the items going into his backpack was a form I had filled out for a dessert fund-raiser. Someone was raising money for something by selling chocolate chip cookies and we were, once again, giving money for it. With a completely defeated look on his face, with his big brown eyes peering up at me, Kyle said, “Mommy, why are all these things always chocolate? How come nobody ever makes stuff for kids like me?” (Note: Kyle does not like chocolate, and never has.) It was sort of the last straw, and it had been a long-time coming, and his eyes started to well up. My heart could had broken in two right then and there. And my mind quickly raced to think of what to say.

“You know what Kyle? I don’t know– but you are absolutely right!– it isn’t fair that so much of this stuff is always chocolate!” He fell into my arms. The tears never actually poured, but it was very close. I pulled his cute little face real close to mine, looked him in the eyes, and said: “You know what?! Today, after school, WE ARE GOING TO MAKE A LEMON CAKE!!!!!” “Really?!” he said. “Yes, really,” I said, “you and me baby, we are going to make a dang LEMON CAKE!”

I don’t really know how or why that came to me. And there were many moments in the following hours of re-arranging my schedule in which I cursed myself for committing to it, but it somehow seemed like the only right thing to do. I proceeded to find the best Lemon Cake recipe I could get my hands on, clear my schedule for the afternoon, pick the bambinos up from school right at 3:00 (instead of having them go to the after school program like they often do), and bring them home. This, mind you, was a major feat (picking them up at 3:00, relatively spur-of-the-moment, right smack in the middle of Last Week of Classes at Lehigh). I paid for it later (being up working until midnight), but it was well worth it.

When we got home I quickly put a video on in the family room to keep Owen and Meera out of the way, took Kyle’s hand, and brought my sweet lemon-loving boy into the kitchen with me.

Kyle loves lemon cake. One of his favorite treats in the world is the lemon cake at Starbucks. My goal was to find a lemon cake that would, at a minimum, look like the Starbucks lemon cake. I showed him the recipe and asked, “So, do you think it will be as good as Starbucks’?” In typical Kyle fashion, he responded, with a huge grin, “I think it will be even better!”

And when it was done?— Oh my oh my oh my! It was better. It was, truly, the best lemon cake any of us had ever had!

But you know what? Kyle felt better before that cake even came out of the oven. I swear, cooking in the kitchen with Mommy is the best cure for any of my kids’ aching hearts and minds. Time and time again, it does the trick (and I sure hope it always will). Kyle’s spring has been back in his step ever since we made that lemon cake. Not that there aren’t still some ragged edges for him… there are. But it is back to being nothing he can’t handle… at least for now.

There is some hard-core lemon zesting involved (zesting lemons = great stress reliever!).

It is well worth it for the scrumptious end result:

As some of you probably recall, Ina Garten’s cookbooks are my all-time-favorites (I have them all, and use them all regularly). The lemon cake recipe we used is from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa at Home. If you don’t have the cookbook, you can find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/lemon-yogurt-cake-recipe/index.html. Try it. You’ll love it!

(Note: we used Chobani, non-fat, plain yogurt and I think that is partly what pushed this lemon cake over the top into the “Heavenly” category.)

Around here there is sometimes sibling rivalry. And there is sometimes teamwork.

Tonight was Kyle and Owen’s first Little League baseball game. They’ve been practicing with their team (our town’s I8 team) for the past few weeks. But tonight was the first game.

K & O played T-ball the spring they were 4-turning-5-years-old. That started out ok, but they quickly became enormously bored with it. They hated batting off the T– it just seemed like a joke to them since they had been batting thrown pitches since they were 2-years-old. We made them stick that season out, but by the end they were bored out of their minds and they pretty much hated T-ball. We figured we’d just not play organized baseball for awhile– at least unit they were old enough to play real games with thrown pitches.

Well, they are old enough now… and they are LOVING IT.

Tonight’s game was a really, really, really big deal for them. They had been waiting for this night for awhile, and in the past few days their excitement had reached a fever pitch. They lost the game. Kyle struck out twice (he’s actually the best hitter on the team but his nerves/excitement got the best of him). Owen got a couple of good hits. Kyle played 2nd base the whole game. Owen played short stop for half and pitcher for the “kids-pitch” half. They are really good little baseball players. And in the end, the game wasn’t exactly the awesome-dramatic-home-run-hitting-victory they had hoped for, but they had a good time and it was a good game.

I was so proud of them tonight. They are good team players, and good athletes. It was very fun to watch them play 2nd base and short-stop together, working as a twinny-twinny-force-to-be-reckoned-with-on-the-baseball-field. I have a feeling we’re going to be watching a lot of baseball games in our future (and not just this spring either).

We don’t make it every single Saturday, but ballet is still going strong for Meera 7 months in. We’re not sure if she actually loves ballet, but she sure does love having her own thing. So much of the time our family life and schedule is revolving around her brothers– their school stuff, their social activities, their interests, their (many) sports practices and games. Ballet on Saturday morning is all Meera. And she likes it like that.

At least once or twice a week Braydon and I feed the bambinos an early dinner, and then desperately attempt to get them to bed at a decent hour. Their latest is that they want –whenever possible– to eat on the deck. We have all always loved eating outside, but lately I think their motive is more about trying to squeeze into one big deck chair together than it is about anything related to the deck itself. They’ve always had this thing about wanting to be super close (physically). I think it stems from twinship, but often it extends to include Meera too. Last night all three of them sat in one chair while they ate their supper. After a really long day at work, I sat there, across from them, watching them eat, all squished into that chair together. I thought my heart was going to explode because the sight was so beautiful to me. These three are a handful and a heartful. They drive me crazy and I’m crazy-in-love with them all at the same time. I’ve got the three of them all squished up tight inside my one little heart.

Because I’ve been asked, because my life is an open book, because I want to document this for myself and my kids for the future, because I wear my heart on my sleeve, because I can’t help myself…

Here is the full length version of our explanation for moving to campus. This is what we’ve told our closest friends and family, and in an effort to be clear about why we’re doing what we’re doing (for whoever might care or be interested, now or in the future), here it is– the full scoop:

Moving to Lehigh’s campus, as a “Family in Residence,” is the culmination of a bunch of things all coming together for us:

* We have been feeling very strongly, for a few years now, that we want to downsize in terms of our home/property. For the past 2 years or so we’ve been talking about doing something radical in terms of this– i.e., not only downsizing, but REALLY downsizing in a huge way. We feel like our current situation is too “big” for us; too “much” for us; we have too much “stuff.” We have really struggled with managing the house we have and do not feel committed to doing what needs to be done to maintain and keep up with a house like the one we have. We will be moving into a TINY, 800 square foot, 3 bedroom apartment. The only saving grace is that we are also getting a huge storage space in the basement of the building (this will be extremely helpful). Regardless, it is a massive downsize from our current living situation. It will be a true experiment for us in living much more simply, and radically downsizing our life. This is something we’ve been considering and discussing for a long, long, long time, but now it is a matter of ‘walking the walk’ and not just ‘talking the talk’… this is going to be a huge deal for us to make such a radical change in living space.

* We have also been feeling very strongly, again for at least a few years, that our current situation is not sustainable in terms of work/home balance. We are really struggling with balancing two huge and self-driven careers. I, especially, have been really suffering. It has been 3 years since Braydon went full-time with his business start-up. We have come to the conclusion that we are unable to sustain the current situation and something has to give. Neither of us are willing to give up our careers, and we are not willing to sacrifice our marriage or the tight-knit-ness of our family/parenting. So, we have been exploring lots of options for how to handle this. We’ve been wracking our brains to come up with some kind of solution. By moving to campus we’re trying to do something about this. We will have a MUCH smaller home to maintain/clean/keep up; we will be able to eat on campus a lot (we will have MUCH less cooking/food planning/food shopping/food cleaning-up to do); we will have tons of built-in-babysitters (!); and we will be massively stream-lining our life (Braydon and I will both be able to walk to work, and the kids’ school will be the same distance from us as they currently are now– they will stay at the same school). For a long, long time we’ve been complaining about our struggle with work-home balance. I’ve shed too many tears about this (constantly feeling torn in two directions, and feeling a TON of tension between work and home). We are finally going to DO SOMETHING about it. It is scary, but we’re excited to at least give it a try. Like I said, something has to give.

* Because of Braydon starting his own business, things have been very tight for us financially for the past 3 years. We have been really struggling with wanting to re-prioritize our budget (to spend much less on home stuff and much more on experiential stuff), but have felt ‘trapped’ by all of the financial commitments of our current house. By moving to campus we will have zero rent/mortgage, and all of our home utilities will be completely paid for (heat/AC; phone; cable; internet; etc.). Our only bills will be our car payments and our cell phones. This will allow us to do so much more with our kids while they are young… which is what we really want to be doing.

* While Kyle and Owen were really little our house was perfect for them. They/we used every square inch of it –inside and out. But now they are in school all day, they play sports after school, and we are often out and about on the weekends. They no longer ‘need’ the space the way they once did. We’ve been feeling like it is time to move on… and we’re interested in doing a different type of lifestyle with them and with Meera. For our area, Bethlehem (where Lehigh is) is the most ‘urban’-type of living. Although it is not a big city, it is as ‘big’ as it gets for here. It is by far the most diverse area (the area around Lehigh’s campus is extremely racially mixed, and predominantly black and Puerto Rican). We’ll be living in a MUCH more racially mixed area. We’ll be able to walk to many shops/restaurants/activities/events. And we’ll have access to a ton more stuff to do– both on campus, and around the campus. Kyle, Owen, and Meera are all extremely extroverted, and are always up for anything, so we are really excited for this change of pace for them. We plan to attend a lot more on campus (stuff we’ve been wanting to do, but have not been able to since we’ve been living 25 minutes from campus): concerts, lectures, shows, performances, sports events, etc. We also will make much more use of Lehigh (the swimming pool, the gym, the climbing wall, bike paths, etc.). And the area around Lehigh will allow for us to get take-out from ethnic restaurants, sign the kids up for dance classes or theater classes or hip hop classes or skating lessons, etc… all within walking distance. This is something we’re really looking forward to.

* I began teaching at Lehigh University in the fall of 2001. I was fresh out of a PhD program, eager to be a great young scholar, and excited to teach sociology. During my pre-tenure years I did a lot of research, teaching, and service on campus. I also did a lot of learning. Ten years later, and three years post-tenure, I am now doing a lot of reflecting. What I have been reflecting most upon is this: It has become clearer and clearer to me in the past few years just what exactly my role at Lehigh (and beyond) really is. What I thought I had been doing for the past ten years was being a sociology professor. What I have come to understand, however, is that much more powerful than any of my teaching or scholarship is simply my presence on campus; specifically, my presence as a young, female, progressive, ambitious, working-mother, concerned-citizen, modeling for young adults what it means to live a life of purpose. Perhaps what I’ve noticed most in my ten years at Lehigh is the need our students have for mentors in their lives. This makes sense, of course, given the phase of life they are in—they are in the process of forming their own social identities, and figuring themselves out. Many of them want to forge lives for themselves that don’t look like the lives of the generations before them. But they don’t know where to start. And they don’t have the self-confidence to begin, even if they did know how. What has struck me is their need for examples— real-life, living, breathing examples – of what it means to carve out a satisfying life for oneself that is committed to the common good. More than anything, as I reflect on my past ten years at Lehigh, I see this as my role: simply being a presence in the lives of young people who simply need to see someone leading a life of purpose. With the Faculty in Residence Program at Lehigh, there are no expectations for me to be a “Dorm Mother,” or for our family to take any sort of responsibility for caring for students. We are, however, expected to be a presence at Lehigh, engaged with students, and integrated into in the life of the campus (which, for us, comes easily and is almost unavoidable when we are at Lehigh).

We all (truly, all five of us) are looking forward to this new phase. And I, especially, (although Braydon, too, for sure), am feeling a strong sense of purpose to do this. We are compelled to move on this path and feel that this is what we are supposed to be doing next. And so, despite some trepidation (and a lot of people questioning this untraditional move), we step forward into this journey.

We are selling our house and moving to Lehigh to live on campus as, what I’m fondly calling, a “Family in Residence.” Lots of other schools have Faculty in Residence programs (among many, there is this one, and this one), but Lehigh is just starting this in earnest. We will be the first Professor family to do this. We’ve made a two-year commitment; we’ll move in time for the fall semester to begin; and we’ll be truly living — full time, and for real — as a family of five, on campus. We are super excited for this opportunity for our family. There are many aspects to this for us– including all the great stuff we’ll get to do, and people we’ll get to interact with, as well as a radical downsizing and change of lifestyle. We are moving out of a large house into a tiny (800 square feet!!!) apartment. Yes, go ahead, call us crazy. But we’ve put more thought into this than you could possibly imagine and we are ready to embark on this next grand adventure for our family! The upshot (for now… believe me, there will be much more blogging on this topic over the coming months!) is that we’re selling our beautiful house. We just officially put it on the market Monday. Do you know anyone who wants to buy a great place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania?!

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