These two dudes had their first visit to the eye doctor today. They got the works, including eye dilation (they thought the post-dilation-shades were super funky and way cool). Turns out they both have 20/20 vision!
Big happenings here!
We’ve been letting the boys’ locs grow for the past two years, with only very minor trims here and there. Today we did a drastic loc-cut. This had been coming for a long time. Although the locs started as my thing (when I first started K & Os locs they were 20 months old), over time they have become K & O’s thing. They were very hesitant about cutting them. But they were also getting so hot, so heavy, and so in their faces (especially during sports). Slowly but surely over the past few weeks K & O both became convinced that cutting them was for the best. Today was the big day.
It turns out they are so happy with their loc-cuts! (And I am too!) Their hair looks so healthy and their short locs are so strong (which will be great for sand, sun, and chlorine this summer!). It was a good decision. But a dramatic change!
BEFORE:
AFTER:
This week was K & O’s annual “Heaven on Earth Week” (their own title for Lehigh Basketball Camp). This was their third year of doing this camp, and it is truly one of the best weeks of their year. It is right up there — NO JOKE — with Christmas week and their birthday week. I am not even kidding.
100 basketball-loving-boys, a slew of
idolscoaches, a TON of sweat, and nothing-but-pure-basketball 8:30-3:30 Monday-Friday. This is Kyle and Owen’s idea of heaven. On Tuesday Kyle announced: “Instead of school all year and basketball camp for one week, I wish that it was basketball camp all year, and school for one week.”I, however, don’t think I could handle that. I simply could not possibly handle the food production that would require.
As this past week progressed, I found myself shocked and awed by the sheer consumption of food they had going on. And believe me, at this point it takes a LOT to shock and awe me where my boys’ food consumption is concerned. I have blogged often about this subject over the years– the sheer volume of food these two put down. But during the week of
basketball campHeaven on Earth their food consumption jumps to a whole new level. (They are hustle hustle hustle non-stop on the court — in fact, Owen won the “Mr. Hustle” award this year for the second year in a row; can you just imagine how many calories they are burning each and every hour of this week?)It takes a lot to fuel these basketball-loving twinados. It occurred to me two days ago that I should be somehow recording this for posterity sake. In the past two days I’ve tried to document their food intake. Here, for the sake of preserving history, are my notes from the past two days of food production:
TWO DAYS IN THE LIFE OF: Fueling the Twinados for Basketball Camp Week
note: I signed them up for the camp’s Gatorade program– that includes all-you-can-drink-Gatorade all day long. This year I also signed them up for pizza lunch. You can buy as much or as little pizza as you want your kids to have (pizza by the slice). I signed them up for three slices each, each day. So, they drank Gatorade all day and ate 3 slices each for lunch.
Day #1:
Breakfast: two eggs over easy, 3 slices thick-cut bacon, a pile of blueberries, OJ. Owen also has a Boost Plus, in addition to his breakfast, every morning because he needs the extra protein, calories, and fat.
After-Camp Snack: in addition to what you see below, they each had a very large glass of milk and a banana.
Dinner: grilled teriyaki salmon, grilled zucchini, watermelon, and penne with spinach and white beans. For the record: Owen ate 4 pieces of salmon that night. FYI: that is over a pound of salmon (that is a lot of salmon; it kinda makes my stomach turn just thinking about eating that much salmon in one sitting).
Late Night Snacks: Kyle ate a bowl of black raspberry ice cream that night. Owen ate two (yes two!) mint chocolate chip Klondike bars, then had to get out of bed later claiming that he couldn’t fall asleep because he was “so hungry.” He proceeded to eat three (yes three!) bowls of his favorite cereal (Kashi Heart to Heart Warm Cinnamon Oat cereal).
Day #2:
Breakfast: homemade waffles (note: they each ate two of these), smoothies.
That particular morning their smoothies = high protein plain greek yogurt, a handful of fresh kale, a handful of fresh spinach, 1 whole apple, 1 whole banana, a few chunks of frozen pineapple, mango puree (as amazing as it is, even to me, these guys don’t care at all that the smoothie is bright green, with a very thick texture, with no added sweetener whatsoever. They just slurp it right on down without even batting an eye.
After-Camp Snack: a huge pile of very sharp cheddar cheese, sliced salami, and grapes. In addition to what you see below, they each had a large glass of milk and a Nutrigrain cereal bar.
Dinner: grilled steak, sautéed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, steamed green beans (we also had grilled asparagus that night, and although Meera loves it, K & O have always had the gag reflex from asparagus so I don’t make them eat it). Note: after eating everything you see below, Owen came in after dinner claiming he wanted “more steak.” He proceeded to eat another half a steak before getting ready for bed.
Late Night Snacks: Kyle ate a bowl of black raspberry ice cream; Owen ate a chocolate dipped, nut-covered Drumstick ice cream cone.
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This morning, after we dropped off the boys at basketball camp, Meera and I made a grocery store run to re-stock. She saw this box of glazed donut holes near the check-out line, and wanted to get it for her brothers as a treat for the end of basketball camp week. This afternoon she presented it to them. They were beyond thrilled. I gave them each a huge glass of milk to go along with it. 15 minutes later I returned to find the box completely empty. Whattha?!?!
Here they are, watching a movie, this afternoon in their delirious post-donut-hole, exhausted post-basketball-camp-week state:
I am delirious and exhausted too. This food production gig is heavy-duty. Braydon is taking me out to dinner tonight so I can sip a cold glass of white wine and eat something delicious that someone else made.
Oh, and today is the 21st — Happy First Day of Summer!!! (And Happy 44th Anniversary to MorMor and MorFar!!!)
Photo from yesterday, texted to me by Cristina, from The Cup (Meera’s favorite place on campus: the campus ice cream shop!)
While her brothers were in basketball camp all week, Meera was at home having her own awesome first week of summer. I lined up a series of her favorite babysitters for a few hours each day (lucky for us some of her faves are taking summer classes!). Meera did lots of crafts, took lots of walks, and ate lots of ice cream. She also had her first major allergic reaction of her lifetime (note blotchy face = hives = diagnosed today by our pediatrician as serious allergic reaction to something — who knows what — started Zyrtec today and starts Prednisone tomorrow morning). Ahhhh! Summer glorious summer! (allergic reactions and all!)
Our summer is off to a good start.
Here’s a quick re-cap of the past couple of weeks:
The Last Day of School ~
The last day of two 2nd-graders and a pre-schooler. Onward and upward! The last day was a half day. I picked ’em up and took ’em out to their favorite lunch: Hibachi ~
We’ve managed to pack in quite a few lasts in the last bunch of days:
Last Little League game of the season ~
Last playdate of the school year ~
Last swimming lessons (the bambinos took swimming lessons every week for this past semester) [note: this here is one wacky pic, but it is the only one I have of the entire stretch of swimming sessions] ~
Last parental work trip of the academic year (phew!!!)… Papi had a string of work trips over the late spring and we were all happy when he got home from his last one — Meera most especially misses him terribly when he is gone ~
We weathered the storm of “lasts” quite nicely all things considered. We woke up on our first official day of “summer” (i.e., first day of no school) to the most torrential downpour and flash floods we’ve had since moving here. I could not get over how hard it was raining. The bambinos were in their pjs and I sent ’em out there to celebrate the first day of summer break. They went cray-z. (That makes their mama proud; I love a kid who can go wild in the rain; I was always that camp counselor who was first out of the cabins for puddle jumping, with all my little campers like little ducks stomping right behind me. Big warm rain + happy free kids = the best.)
That was a nice start to summer. But, for the boys, the start of summer is most symbolized by the newfound freedom to stay up late watching Red Sox games. This is their happy place:
Summer for Meera means more time to toodle and doodle. This is her happy place:
Summer means more time to read ~
(Kyle brought home this award from school the last day — I am very proud of this for/with him. When he discovered that I had taped it up to the shelf along with all of their sports awards, the message was received loud and clear that this award is a BIG HUGE DEAL to Mama.)
Summer means laid-back dinners outside (we broke down and bought a grill a few weeks ago; we just couldn’t take it not having one. Grilling = Mama’s happy place.) Dinner with shirts off, happy, hungry from playing deep into the evening in the sun. Nothing says “summer” more than that. [note: this here is another wacky pic of the bambinos — but somehow it paints the perfect picture of the imperfection.] ~
And summer means walks (including walks to the fairy forest!) after supper ~
I believe strongly that in the best case scenario summer should include getting sufficiently bored for creativity to set in. If the start of our summer is any indication, this summer will include a lot of creativity. Sufficient boredom (“dead time”; “unstructured activity”; time to “do nothing”) is a prerequisite for the kind of rich play I’m talking about here.
Late afternoon pedicure in the bathroom sink is a good sign of sufficient boredom ~
Mid-morning picnic in pjs on the deserted dorm’s hallway floor is a good sign of sufficient boredom ~
I also believe strongly that in the best case scenario summer should include water. Lots and lots of water. Of all kinds of varieties.
{Note: despite the fact that I miss our pool a lot, the bambinos have not mentioned it once on their own, and seem to not miss it much at all. In fact, when I ask them straight out, “Do you miss our old pool?” they respond simply with, “Sorta.”}
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P.S. Summer is also a time of eating. Lotsa eating. I can barely keep up (the demand often outweighs the supply on summer days). Speaking of eating… our girl turned a big corner upon turning 5 — the other day, for the first time ever, she ate her entire sandwich at Subway for lunch (the Subway “kids size” – her usual: turkey and cheese on wheat with cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, and mayo). She was rewarded with a chocolate chip cookie for dessert. She made her brothers proud — Owen especially could not have been a prouder big brother of his sister’s momentous feat. (Of course, her brothers were eating an entire 6-inch each by the time they were 5, but we didn’t feel the need to mention that to her).
Onward and upward! Growing, playing, summer fun in the sun and rain. As my dad is famous for saying, “This is going to be the best summer ever!!!”
Meera and Jewel have birthdays just a week apart. Despite the fact that these two BFFs have gone to different schools for the past year, they remain about as tight as two 4-now-5-year-olds could possibly be. It doesn’t matter that they are so young, their connection is the real deal. Here they are at Sweet & Sassy for Jewel’s 5th birthday!
(I think my longest series of posts ever)
7 of 8Â (Close-Ups of the Fairy Houses!)
And, Follow Up Posts:
The Fairy Forest in the Winter
When we moved onto campus we knew that a major perk would be having 1,800 acres of woodland right outside our front door. We imagined that Kyle and Owen would love mountain biking with Braydon (which they have), and that we’d spend lots of time exploring the walking/hiking paths (which we have). What we had not anticipated was that Meera would instantly develop a love affair with the woods.
In our first weeks on campus, Meera (at age 4) found that her favorite thing to do was to go on walks in the woods. These woods are 100% natural, preserved woodland, filled with all sorts of deer, birds’ nests, wildflowers, and trees of many varieties. It is vast, and devoid of people, and loaded with nooks and crannies to discover and explore. Meera was convinced, right from the start, that these woods were an enchanted place where fairies lived. She’d see a hole in a tree, and exclaim it was a “fairy’s house!” She’d discover a small crevice in a rock filled with rain water, and announce it was a “fairy pool!” She’d collect acorn caps and explain that they were “fairies’ bowls!” Right away she began calling the woods behind Sayre the “Fairy Forest.” And the name stuck. Walks in the Fairy Forest became a regular thing for us, and it was always her choice of activity whenever it was her turn to choose. Soon enough, we all sort of started to believe that the woods behind our new home were enchanted with fairies and woodland creatures and all sorts of magical happenings.
So, as we approached Meera turning 5, it was an easy choice to plan her birthday party around the theme of the Fairy Forest. She was so excited at the idea of having her friends see her special place! And I was so excited at the idea of making the Fairy Forest come alive in a most magical way that even Meera could not have imagined!
We sent out the invitations to Meera’s classmates and a few close family friends. Meera doesn’t want huge blow-out parties like her brothers do, and the smaller size of her parties allow me to go into a great depth of detail that I couldn’t if they were larger. Meera also notices, and appreciates, everything. She is very detail-oriented. So going into great depth of detail is a joy to do for her.
And this time around — boy of boy — did I ever go into a great depth of detail!
Readers know that I go all out for my kids’ birthday parties. Meera’s past two birthday parties have been incredibly glorious (her 4th birthday party click here; her 3rd birthday party click here). I wanted this one to be too.
And on that note, here, before I go any further, I want to write a disclaimer.
PREFACE: Before proceeding please read the following fine print—
DISCLAIMER: There is lots of chatter these days on the internet and everywhere else about the downfalls and pitfalls of mothering in the modern era of Mommy-Blogs and Pinterest and Facebook and Google. I am totally sympathetic to a lot of this in the sense that I do think it is outrageously awful for us moms to compare ourselves to what we see online. We will always come up short in our own assessments (or, at least, most of us will– myself included– especially if we’re even the slightest bit perfectionist-oriented, competitive, or self-critical). Thus I feel compelled to explain, just a bit, about the motivation and inspiration behind my CRAZY party-making. See below.
NOTE: I do these parties as much (if not more so) for me as for my kids. I love doing it. It is important, I think, to acknowledge that. This is not an wholly altruistic, selfless, “all for the children!” thing going on here. And this is definitely not a one-up, or ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’, or trying to out-do all the other kids’ birthday parties thing. All year long I work ridiculously hard at my job as a Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University. My job is intellectually challenging and requires intellectual creativity. But I don’t get any chance to pursue very many of the other aspects of my creative self. And it just so happens that the end of the academic year (when I’m most burnt out from my job, and when I finally have a chance to take a breather for the first time in 9 months), and the month of K, O, and M’s birthdays (which I want to mark and celebrate in a big way), all collide right smack in the one little month of May. It is like a whole academic year of pent up creative energy suddenly explodes in May. I also will admit: I love being a mother and I love kids and I love throwing parties and I love bringing people together for any kind of large or small celebration (thank goodness for my career or else I’d surely be one of those crazy ladies on Pinterest who makes the rest of us look bad with her endless outflow of creative-over-the-top-mothering-crafting-entertaining-to-the-9th-degree; my career is enough of a distraction to guarantee that I’ll never be one of them). So, for one month each year I let myself go wild. I take off the reigns and let it all go. I try not to think too much about what everyone else thinks of me (because I know they think I’m ridiculous with this stuff!). I just let myself go nuts. And so, May is insane. I become this totally insane birthday-party-creating mother. But it is insane in a whole other different way than the rest of our year. And by the end of May I’m totally completely 100% done. It is all out of my system and life resumes to normalcy. This is all just to say that the process of making the parties is a therapeutic, cathartic, good experience for my own mental health.
SPOILER ALERT: If you are prone to compare-and-contrast, where being a mother-or-woman-or-person-at-all is concerned, then you should know in advance that this set of posts about Meera’s birthday is not in any way meant to make you insecure or questioning. Only the opposite: this is just me being crazy-old-me and shouldn’t ever be compared to or contrasted with you being you. I want to be sure to say the following, especially because I know many young women [in particular, female PhD candidates who hope to be Professors-and-Moms someday] are reading this: 1) This crazy-birthday-party-throwing aspect of me is highly unusual [possibly unique?] for academic women. That should go without saying. 2) Please see this as an example of ALL THAT CAN BE. Not an expectation, or a bar set, or a standard to strive for. My hope is that this will be interpreted simply as I mean it to be: As proof that we can fill our lives with the things we choose. We can be mothers and professors and we can be intellectuals and party-planners. We don’t have to do it all. And we can’t do it all all the time. But we can do bits of it all some of the time. We can find ways to choose to be ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to apologize for it.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I could not do this without my mother. I have the vision. But she helps me to actualize it, and we work great as a team on things like party throwing. I also could not do this without my husband who accepts this ridiculous part of me and puts up with me to being just this insane. I also want to say thank you to everyone who sees these parties (in real life and online) and doesn’t judge me. Thank you for having my back! xoxxo
And now, without further ado, Meera’s 5th Birthday~~~~~~
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