Meera continues to draw/paint/color every single day without fail. She produces a vast amount of artwork; piles and piles of it collect everywhere. Today she drew this for me. It struck me as so cute. I knew exactly what it was, and she confirmed what I thought when she told me about her drawing: “This is baby turtles. On the beach. With the sunshine. In South Carolina. They are on the sand, going toward the ocean water.” Weeks after our return, and our South Carolina summer is still at the forefront of her 5-year-old mind. I love this girl so much and just wish wish wish I could keep her at age 5 forever.

Ok. So. After 9 years, I finally broke down, caved, and gave in to the Nerf Gun. It felt sort of like when I broke down, caved, gave in, and bought a Barbie for the first time for Meera. It felt like everything I ever thought I’d uphold as a parent (feminism! nonviolence!) had suddenly come crumbling down. It felt monumental and anticlimactic at once. In some sense, it felt like a huge disappointment (‘Why can’t I be stronger in the face of the entire culture? What is wrong with me?’). At the same time, it felt like a huge relief (‘PHEW!!!! Why did I hold out for so long? I should have just done this years ago! Look! See? I can be a feminist and nonviolent parent AND buy nerf guns and Barbies’). [Can we? I don’t really know.] But, by the time we got to the car, in the parking lot of Target, what was done was done, the past was behind us, and I had let go of every internal moral conflict over the matter that I had ever had. Once I turn corners, I tend to not look back. ‘You know what?’, I rationalized in my own mind, ‘I did a good job of holding out as long as I did; they understand now why I’m against this stuff; and they’re now able to explore this on their own, knowing full well where their mother stands on it.’ All of this was running through my mind as I eyed Kyle, in the seat next to me in the car, holding the nerf gun package on his lap, with a look on his face that could only be described as “Absolutely Triumphant.”

Owen and Braydon were away this weekend for their Fabulous First Friday. So, I was alone with Kyle and Meera. We had a fabulous time ourselves (as those of us left at home for our “First Fridays” usually do), with a very fun playdate with school friends yesterday, followed by running errands (Owen hates shopping, but neither Kyle nor Meera mind it much). They had been so good, and I was in such a good mood. The nerf gun thing had been a long time coming, Kyle had mastered his argument slowly and steadily over time, and had recently convinced me to open a crack in the door of the matter. We were in Target, and I figured, ‘There is no better time than the present.’ And so, we did it. We bought the thing (well, to be precise: we bought 2, so that he and his brother could play with them together).

I am terrible at following directions, and at putting things together. So, in our family, tasks like putting-together toys out of the box always fall to Braydon. I had known Kyle would be disappointed to have to wait until Papi and Owen’s arrival home the next day, but I had also known we shouldn’t take any risks of me trying to put together the nerf guns, nor should I be the one to read the directions close enough to figure out how to use them (chances are higher that I’d break the things than actually successfully assemble them or get them to work).

We got back to Lehigh/home, and in a strange twist of fate (it seemed horrible at first, but then I realized the blessing in disguise), I realized upon arrival at our door that I had forgotten my apartment key. Braydon had taken my car on the trip with Owen, I had Braydon’s car, and I didn’t have my usual set of keys. We were locked out. For the first time since moving onto campus, I had to do the dreaded: call the Gryphon on duty, and with full humiliation admit our lockout situation, and request that we be let into our apartment. Luckily for us, the Gryphon on duty just happened to be our beloved Jon. But, to make a long story short, as it turns out we discovered that the Gryphon keys don’t work for our particular apartment. As a last resort the only option we had was to call Campus Police to come let us in.

While we waited for the police to arrive, Kyle proudly and exuberantly showed Jon his brand new, first ever, still in the box, nerf gun. Jon was beyond excited about this new development (expressing, immediately, his LOVE of all-things-nerf-gun and his THRILL at the idea of nerf gun wars in Sayre). Before I knew it, Jon was putting together the nerf guns, loading them, and giving a full private tutorial to Kyle on the fine art of shooting the things (note: much to my admiration, all without ever even looking at the directions). Next thing I knew, Kyle had one gun, Jon had another, and a full-on Saturday night shootout was occurring in the hallway of the dorm.

And then, of course, the LU Police Officer arrived, ready to open our apartment door for us.

But that was not that. Once the lockout dilemma had been resolved, the officer himself proudly expressed his own excitement at the arrival of a brand new set of nerf guns on campus. And within no time, Jon had turned over his gun to the officer, and my son and the policeman were fully engaged in gun battle. Laughing, and firing, dodging nerf bullets, and re-loading… all in the dorm hallway.

Not your typical Saturday night on campus, nor in our family.

But in a weird roundabout way (as it is with life, it seems, always — always — the unexpected), I must admit: it warmed my heart to see my son playing nerf guns with a 21 year old college student and a campus police officer — all three smiling ear-to-ear. And, I must say: there was something progressive and profound (and again, entirely unexpected) about watching as students, walking through the hall on a Saturday night, got caught in the crossfire between their Head Gryphon, a campus police officer, and their little 9-year-old friend who lives in their dorm. Lots of smiles, lots of laughs, lots of real connectivity (ah the irony! peace! love! happiness!), all around. And I was so glad I had bought those nerf guns.

I. As we approach the outskirts of Gettysburg, Kyle and I notice a subtle change in the landscape. Along Baltimore Pike things feel more rural, a bit like we’re going back in time. Not exactly to the period of the Civil War – since there are restaurants and our brief home away from home – a Comfort Suites – along the road, but no longer fully Today either.

After his joyful surprise of getting to ride in the front seat for the first time (for the 2.5 hour drive) and playing Infinity Blade for much of the way, when we walk in to the hotel lobby he says – a bit to himself – “I don’t think my honey bunnies know where we are.” Later he pulled them out to lay them on the bed to make sure they are comfortable.

To Kyle’s delight, there are goldfish in a waterfall in the lobby of the hotel and to my delight we have a couch area in our room – but the biggest delight is that it’s just Kyle and Papi for our first Fabulous First Friday. We’ve done other Friday’s before, but Heather thought of this and supported making it happen – that we would embark on a series of very special, overnight First Friday’s for our children. This is a great start.

I don’t think the hotel clerk’s recommendation for the Irish Pub is the right place for my 9-year old although its reputation as a great steak place and Kyle’s love of a NY Strip almost change my mind. Instead, after a quick online search, I find a place much better for us.

Dobbin house back in the day.

When you know someone obsessed with Civil Rights, macro level conflict, the history of slavery in the US and Haiti and the Civil War, you would be remiss if you skipped having dinner in a restaurant that also has a mini-museum with an actual station on the Underground Railroad. We go to the Dobbin House in town.

Dobbin house with a happy boy standing in front.

There is something special about being in the same physical space that has been used for hundreds of years by people for public gathering and dining. There is a certain ethereal sense of things looking out from the front door and knowing that in 1863 there were hundreds of field tents across the street housing the wounded from the day’s fighting. And that there were runaway slaves hid between the floor and ceiling of the second floor. And how my son sees that.

Kyle sees where the escaping slaves hid between the floors.

But there is something truly magical about having dinner and that same Civil War, Civil Rights obsessing guy wanting to sit on your side of the table on the bench with you and talk and talk and talk. Magical and wonderful.

The steak was ok, but the company was incredible.

That and while we’re waiting for 30 min for a seat, we do whatever he wants. We walk around the outside of the house a few times. We use my phone to take a compass bearing on where the archeology dig was done in the 1990’s, we visit the gift shop and decide there is nothing there of any value, we visit the underground railroad station – again.

Although dinner is not excellent, the experience is and we walk out very happy. Amazingly, as we’re pulling away from the tavern, Kyle spies the store where we had bought his toy Civil War Soldiers this summer – of course we have to stop. Kyle is in heaven. The only thing better would have been if they also had space men – but this is a shop just for toy soldiers. We augment his collection a little – but mainly just that I was willing to turn around and go in there at 8:45 after a dinner just for him at a restaurant just for him, in a town just for him in a First Friday just for him – that is most important.

How can you not get this boy some defensive walls for his toy soldiers?

We take a quick dip in the very cold hotel pool, but mostly we play Infinity Blade together until it’s 10 – incredibly late. But – there’s a fireworks show outside we see through the trees – turns out it’s a tribute to the Medal of Honor recipients in the park.

Back in the room. No, he doesn’t have to shower now to get the chlorine off (mommy will be so mad, but oh well), but yes he will have to in the morning. Prayers, lights out, I read for a couple minutes; everything is all done.

We have fully arrived at Gettysburg and left the rest of the world behind.

The early bird gets the worm: Arrival no later than 8 AM.

II. The Gettysburg visitor center opens at 8 – an hour earlier than our Licensed Battlefield guided tour starts, but since breakfast of little hotel waffles was at 7, we get tickets to the first Cyclorama show of the day. We stand inline among the cannons, bugles and rifles. The show is outstanding – the movie, the 360 degree painting and narrative. Kyle stands mesmerized as we hear called out the names of major portions of the battle – the Copse of Trees, the Angle, and others. And in an incredibly unusual moment for Kyle, he asks no questions. He just takes it all in.

Clay, our white haired field guide who grew up in Gettysburg tells Kyle he thinks that the Civil War is a great hobby for him to have – that it kept him out of trouble as a teen ager and will do the same for Kyle. This goes over Kyle’s head, but the sense of how much Clay loves studying the battle of Gettysburg does not. Clay drives our car and pitch-perfect nails the tone for Kyle for the day. Where do we want to go? Pickett’s Charge, Little Round-Top and Culp’s Hill.

Little Round Top looking over Pickett’s Charge.

If you’re not familiar with these skirmishes, it’s ok – I wasn’t either. Not until I had to be to keep up with Kyle’s growing Civil War knowledge. Maybe it’s the “Civil War Day by Day Book” he reads regularly, but he has a staggering amount of Civil War information for a 9 year old; in my not-so-knowledgeable opinion anyway.

Kyle on Little Round Top looking toward Pickett’s charge.

Our guide has forgotten more about the Gettysburg battle than I will ever know. For him, it’s not just the town that’s a living little world, the day by day blow is almost as present as the Kentucky Fried Chicken we drive by during the description of the first day of the battle. We see a shell stuck in a building. We see bullet holes in a store where a Confederate sniper was holing up. We find out that 90% of the houses in Gettysburg were used as Field Hospitals and that current residents are strongly discouraged from sanding the floors or painting the walls since there are still blood and carvings throughout. We find out there the town had a population of 2,400, but were almost 200,000 soldiers around during the battle.

I worry that is all too much for Kyle, for any 9-year-old, but he takes it in, engaged, the gears working in his mind. We go through the seminary and see a line of US Army soldiers doing a battlefield study – albeit a very different one that we are.

Pickett’s Charge.

We arrive at Pickett’s charge. We stop and get out. We look across the field where Lee sent 12,500 men into raging gunfire. Being in that field makes it much more real. Seeing how far these young men ran – mostly to their deaths – is not lost on us. The seriousness, scale and intensity is not lost on us.

Kyle at Pickett’s Charge.

Then something really amazing happens. We’re driving along, awash in the generals, and commanders and the 1,300 monuments and plaques and the charges and retreats and hills and high-ground and Kyle has an observation. “So, basically, the Confederates lost because the Union had a stronger defense.”

Kyle discovers the key to the Union’s victory.

We have not discussed this idea at all. The guide has not hinted or offered up this theory in any way. Kyle has listened, asked questions and distilled the entire battle outcome to that one simple statement. I am not sure who is more dumbfounded, me or the guide, but we both kind of laugh out of surprise and just say yes.

Kyle offering his opinion of the Confederacy.

After we wrap up our tour and visit the amazing museum that goes through things in even more depth, it’s clear our time at Gettysburg is ending. We sit outside on a stone wall, Kyle playing with the gift spyglass he picked out and I say “so, I think we’ve done everything we can today, it’s probably time to go home.

Kyle wanted me to take this picture so mommy got to see something other than guns.

It’s one of those moments you’ll never forget. When you realize how wonderful of a time you’ve had with one of your kids and you have to return to reality. We hug and get in the car.

Kyle hangs with Lincoln.

A very Fabulous First Friday.

In order to preserve our privacy, and in order to protect our intimate family intricacies, I can’t allow myself to say too much on this. But I do not want to look back at this blog some day and feel like I 100% sugar-coated our life or completely glossed-over the bumps in the road. I want to remember how hard some of the times were, how tough some parts of parenting were, how the glitches felt so terrible, all the moments of yuck. Tonight I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night with Owen. I am hitting the wall of stress that slams just right about now in the yearly rhythm of an academic life; and I am tired from the push of the past month to get our family through the major transition out of summer and into a new school for the kids, a new school year for me, another year of living on campus, and… yes… a new puppy. And tonight, after a whole series of my darling and most charming son, Owen, pushing my limits and testing me to the max for the past few days straight, I completely 100% lost it on him. I broke down like only a wildly crazed over-the-edge mother can do. It happens. It was a moment of yuck.

Yes, we have a mostly splendid life. That doesn’t make the terrible moments any easier to get through. We’re just like everyone else — we crash and burn sometimes. And those times can be pretty gruesome. Someday I will look back on these days and remember these years for all the magic that they were. And I’ll also surely remember how tired and pushed-to-maximum-capacity I was. I refuse to complain (most of the time), because our life is just so dang good. But it is not always easy, and we aren’t yuck-less.

Today I picked the kids up from school in order to get them home sooner (sooner than taking the bus), to get homework done early, in order for us to attend a dinner event at Lehigh. It was a beautiful day and they were all in such great moods as they hopped into my car in the school pick-up line. I was in desperate need of coffee, so we stopped at Dunkin Donuts on the way home. I let them each pick out a special treat/drink — Owen & Kyle picked Sprite, and Meera picked chocolate milk. I still haven’t quite gotten used to the uniforms– they still look so striking to me– and I had to snap this photo as we walked out to the car.

My parents visited for the weekend. When they visit it is tempting to try to keep them all to ourselves and to hoard their time for just us. But it is also nice for them to really know our friends and ‘do’ life with right along with us. So, this visit I planned a big day for us Saturday — a Lehigh football game (vs. UNH no less!), with a big tailgate party afterwards. I invited a bunch of our family friends (Uhrigs, Kishore-Famolaris, Carolina & Ashley, Beverlee & Corey), as well as a few of my favorite football players to make guest appearances! We had so much fun with them all, and it was so nice to have my parents so central to it. It was a short visit but they got a big dose of our life, and we got to have them with us for a fun-packed weekend. Oh!– and they got to meet Dash too!  My parents’ visits are always so special, and it means so much that they make these long trips to spend time with us. Photo above: MorMor & MorFar at the tailgate party.

We also had the pleasure of a visit from our dear friend Greg (a former student of mine who has become a family friend), who brought his boyfriend for us to meet. This was so special for me, as I’ve waited years for him to find someone special enough that he’d want to bring him to meet me! I loved his choice of a great guy, and was just so happy to see and support these two so happy together. We had bagels and mimosas with them Saturday morning, and then went to the game together. I can’t express how honored I am, and how much it means to me, to have students come back wanting me to meet their significant others. Especially students who were, and are, so special to me. These moments are just profoundly sweet; they are one of the greatest joys of my job and life. Photo below: Garrett, me, Greg.

How to volley a volleyball.

How to tie shoes.

Waiting for the bus, under an apple tree.

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Playing with Meera.

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Running as fast as he can, to go greet Owen.

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Sunday we hosted a brunch for our neighbors in Sayre. We started the tradition of once-a-semester brunches last year. The students catch on quick that there is good food at our brunches! The food used to be the big draw…

…but now… now our universe has slightly shifted… and now Dash is the big draw…

Everyone wants to hold the puppy. He was literally held, non-stop, for the entire 2.5 hours of the open-house-brunch. And trust me, I’m not the only one taking pictures of students holding Dash. The iPhones are a’clicking just about non-stop.

The bambinos love these brunches because they get to have everyone over to play…

…and hang out…

…and just enjoy a Sunday with our favorite students as everyone heads into a new week. (This week at Lehigh is “4 o’clocks” — i.e., the first round of exams — so it was especially good timing for our brunch. The stress level around these parts is running pretty high right about now.)

At least once a week we feed the kids something simple for supper (and Braydon and I find something to eat later, after they’ve gone to bed), because we sometimes just cannot manage to get a real family dinner on the table in time. Between double work, and triple school, and a lot of homework, and everything else, as probably most families know all too well, pulling off a sit-down-family-meal is oftentimes practically impossible. Tonight was one of those nights. Homework was done, K & O were playing basketball in the hallway with Jon — as usual (they literally play every single day), and Meera was hanging out playing, while Braydon and I were scurrying to pull together a quick and easy meal for the kids.

Very spur of the moment, we invited Jon in to eat with them (as in, I shouted out our doorway into the hall: “Jon, do you want to eat mac-n-cheese with the kids?”). It was just mac-n-cheese… however… 1) mac-n-cheese is still K,O,M’s all-time favorite meal, and 2) Jon was just thrilled it wasn’t his usual can-of-spaghettiO’s-for-dinner. These four were just so happy to be sitting there eating that mac-n-cheese together. I could not get over the goodness of it all. Note: Jon is our Head Gryphon this year. We all absolutely adore this guy. The bambinos, especially, are just head-over-heels for him.

This photo is just a snapshot, but it captures the moment perfectly. We are living a very unique family lifestyle, and there are challenges and joys to it. The moment in this photo represents one of the greatest joys.

It is Meera’s turn to learn to read.

She’s just beginning.

I took these yesterday– exciting moments for a lazy Sunday morning.

Not sure who is prouder of the emerging reader: Meera herself, or her doting brothers.

I snapped these with my iPhone just as I got the kids home from school today… so they aren’t the greatest pics… but they definitely convey the idea: ‘Home From School!’ is a very exciting time around here these days — for Dash and the bambinos both. Reunited at last, after a long day apart! There is nothing quite like a kid (or kids) with their dog. And there is nothing quite like a dog with his best playmates.

I thought kids were a big hit on campus. And they most definitely are. But puppies…. my oh my! A puppy takes it to a whole new level.

So far, Dash has not left Sayre. But it has been nice weather, so we’ve been outside at Sayre a lot in the past three days. Dash has met a lot of students already, and a lot of students have fallen head-over-heels for Dash already. I’m pretty sure that Dash is well on his way to being the most popular guy on campus.