For an explanation of why we still allow Owen to use a pacifier, click here
Owen continues to be completely 100% unselfconscious of being 3+ years old and still using a pacifier. At this point he has only 2 left (all others have gotten lost, broken, or just disappeared over time). The 2 he has left are very old and don’t even work very well anymore, but as much as we’re willing to let this paci thing continue we aren’t going to actively support the habit by actually buying him any new ones. He only uses the paci when he sleeps at night. But just recently we’ve noticed that Owen might be finally showing signs of starting to give up the paci even for that. For the past couple of weeks we’ve seen that he’ll suck like crazy on his paci as he’s drifting into sleep, but by the time we check in on him before we go to bed his paci is long dropped out of his mouth, he’s sucking his thumb (so now we have two thumb suckers!), and he seems to sleep the rest of the night without the pacifier. Since he seems to be showing signs of letting go of the paci, yesterday we decided that we should start helping him officially move in that direction. So, last night, unbenounced to him, after Owen fell asleep, we found his paci in his bed and put it on his bedside table, out of his reach. All was good and the night was peaceful. …Then… very early this morning we’re all sleeping soundly and the house is silent and pitch dark. Completely out of the blue I jolt upright in bed to Owen’s voice — saying very calmly and very clearly and very loudly (not yelling or shouting, but definitely loud enough to hear throughout the house): “Excuse me?! Excuse me mommy and papi?! Excuse me?!” Braydon bolted into his room trying to get there before Owen woke up his brother. As soon as Braydon opened the door to Owen’s room I hear: “Excuse me papi?! Can you please help me find my paci?!”
for prior posts in this vein click here
Over the past week or so Braydon and I have had a series of encounters with overt racism. Of course we encounter various forms of racism regularly. Nevertheless, that doesn’t make it easy. It is horrifying. Racism has always been something that has horrified me. But it takes on a new level of horror when you’re raising black children. I remember talking about this once with a black friend of mine. He told me that racism had always been the dark side of life for him, but when he became a father racism was suddenly in “all caps” (racism became RACISM). Not being black myself, I surely don’t even know the half of it. But I’ll go out on a limb and say that as a mother, racism is no longer racism… it is RACISM. It screams out at me. It shakes me at the core. It sends me into that crazed-hyper-protective-mother-bear-mode that makes it hard to sleep at night. I hate it. “How can I protect them?” I keep asking myself. And the answer just pounds back every time, slamming me into its wall: “I can’t protect them.” It feels like an inescapable disease that I can’t keep at bay from my babies’ tiny lungs — no matter what I do, they will breathe that air, that sickness will flow in, I cannot keep them from catching it. I think of that After School Special I saw in 4th grade– ‘The Boy in the Bubble.’ Surely there is some sort of hygienic protective place where I could hide them so they don’t have to be exposed to this? But no, there is not. No such place exists. So, here we are. Trying to live our lives amidst this. We do our best to cope, to let it roll off us whenever possible, to get up and keep going. The looks and stares and inappropriate questions/comments/statements are manageable. But when you take a few heavy hits right in a row, it is hard to not feel weighted down by it.
- they go to bed with relative ease, and sleep through the night almost always
- we can go to a relatively nice restaurant and be pretty confident they’ll behave very well
- they play together every day like inseparable best of brothers
- they love their school and they already have formed a very strong group of friends from school
- they can’t even consider going to sleep without their loveys
- regularly they tell me that I’m “beautiful”; tell Braydon that he’s “so funny”; and tell us that we’re “the best mommy and the best papi in the whole world”
- they love babies and talk about babies every day; they can’t stand to hear any baby cry
- they eat us out of house and home
- their twinship is just as strong as it has been since we’ve met them
- their imagination is running wild, 24 x 7
- they regularly invite people (friends from school, neighbors, random strangers) to their birthday party, even though May 8 is many months away
- their favorite thing in the world is to jump on an airplane and go somewhere — anywhere
- they are soooo happy sooooo much of the time
- they still have no real clue whatsoever what tenure is all about
(for back story to this post click here and read the comments)
Your Top Ten Favorite Posts from Our First Year in the Blogosphere:
- Arranged Marriages
- Nativity Angels Steal Baby Jesus
- Braydon’s Videos
- Top 10 Lists: Is There A ‘Right’ Answer? & Warped Mindset
- Open Book Challenge (Answers on posts from August 27-September 3)
- Apple Cart
- ‘Informational’ Stuff: Kyle & Owen’s Dreadlocks & Things We Did
- Dressing Twins
- Kyle Shares a Memory & Trauma and Healing in Adoption
- …and everyone loves the Conversations (and the quotes, such as “Hey June… Feel My Muscle”)
Sunday we did our favorite day trip ~~ New Hope, PA. We love New Hope any time of year, but fall is probably our favorite time to spend a day there. Lunch on the patio at the Logan Inn (bloody mary’s & crabcakes for H & B; chocolate milk, french fries, & turkey orzo soup for K & O). Feeding the ducks at the river. Strolling the town. Ice cream cones. Watching the train. Checking out the motorcycles. Cafe au lait & almont croissants at The French Bakery. Time for tickles. A gorgeous, fun-filled day in New Hope for the four of us.
Saturday was our Second Annual Fall Farm Day with The Uhrigs! Alstede Farms, Chester NJ. Hay ride. Hay Mountain. Hay Tunnel. Pony rides. Pumkin Picking. Apple Tree Climbing. Apple Cider & Apple Cider Donuts. A beautiful day on the farm shared with some great friends!
- “I have a plan!” Today, for example, the four of us were on a long walk. K & O were pushing their babies in their strollers. Every time a car would go by we’d all stand on the side of the road and wait for it to pass. Owen, of course, had to wave —enthusiastically— at every single car as if the people in it were his long-lost friends. Also, Owen, of course, would announce to us from time to time that June was watching the car too, June was walking with us, June was in the stroller, June was helping him push the stroller, etc. (at one point June was even in his pocket– ???). Anyway, we were all standing by the side of the road, waiting for a car to pass. Owen was inching too close to the edge of the road and it was making Braydon nervous. Braydon sternly told him to back up and move away from the road. Owen held up his hand shoving his palm in the air in Braydon’s direction (as in, ‘stop talking’ or ‘you’re now talking to the hand’) and said very confidently: “I have a plan!”
- “I’m thinking about it!” Today, for example, the four of us were in New Hope. We were by the river and K & O were feeding the ducks. Owen was questioning whether the duck food was exclusively for ducks or whether he could eat it too. It was duck food (like, grain), and we were repeatedly telling him that it was only for ducks and that he should not eat it. He held up one morsel of duck food and examined it very closely. Then he held it close to his mouth, said, “I’m not going to eat it,” and then announced matter-of-factly, “I’m thinking about it!”
Note: To watch slide show with music, click on speaker icon on bottom left corner of black slide show box.
October 11, 2007 marks the One Year Anniversary of the Johnson-McCormick Blog. Rather than try to do a retrospective of our past year in the blogosphere we decided to take the plunge and do our first blog ‘slide show’ ~~ not of the past year, but rather of the year-and-a-half of our lives before we started blogging. Our blog has turned out to be so much more than we ever had imagined when we began it. And our only blog-related regret is that we did not start our blog sooner. Alas, we were waaaay tooooo tired to blog then — the boys were not easy in the beginning. Not that they are ‘easy’ now, but they are so very much easier with each passing month. I do wish I had a better record of the early days of our family… not just for our own sakes, but also for the sake of our readers– so many of whom have had questions about the earlier stages (and our memories of that time are so often hazy that we can’t answer those questions with much detail). So, the slide show above is a compilation of photos from our Referral Photo through the Last Photo Before We Started This Blog. We are happy to share these photos with you, and we are happy to share what we do of our life with you through this blog. Most of all, though, we are humbled that you care to look, read, check in, think, and care about us via our blog. Happy Blogiversary to all of our Johnson-McCormick Family Blog readers!!
P.S. What we originally wanted to do to celebrate our blogiversary was to make a Top Ten List of our favorite posts from the past year… but here’s an even better idea!!!… how about you tell us what your favorite Johnson-McCormick Family Blog post was, and then we’ll compile a Top Ten List of Our Readers’ Favorite Posts From the Past Year?!!!?? …So, please… tell us: What was your favorite post? Share by posting a comment here! 
Kyle (in blue) with his baby Donald,
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