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Today was a huge day for us! Today was Kyle and Owen’s first day of kindergarten at River Valley Waldorf School! They are in a 2-year, mixed-age kindergarten program for 4-5-6-year-olds. They are the second-youngest kids in the program but their teacher from last year thought they were ready, and we agreed they were. And even though they are two of the youngest kids, they are still the tallest! There are two classrooms (evenly split between age groups and gender) with two different sets of teachers in each class. And the biggest part of all: Kyle is in the Star Room, and Owen is in the Moon Room! Different classrooms! This. Is. Huge. It was a huge (huge huge huge huge huge huge huge) decision for Braydon and I. One that we spent many-a-night this summer discussing late into the wee hours (sometimes blurry-brained between marathon nursing sessions with baby Meera). Even though many people would probably not separate twins this early, we feel very confident that we’re making the right decision for our boys with this. Over the past couple of weeks we’ve worked very hard to prepare K & O for this big thing— and the first day of school was looming large. At first they were not at all thrilled about separate classrooms. But over the past few days they’ve become more and more excited about the idea. By this morning they were ready to go, totally ready. Still, Braydon and I were feeling anxious about how it would all play out. It went splendidly. Totally splendidly. They kissed each other good-bye and went off to their different rooms without looking back. As both of their teachers told me later… “it was fantastic and could not have gone any better!” I’ll post more about this tomorrow, but now I’ve gotta go have a glass of wine with Braydon—- the gear-up for this day (the planning and prepping and shopping and packing and working-a-lot-with-the-boys-to-get-them-mentally/emotionally-ready) has been exhausting and now I’m really ready for the wine-down. 😉

8:21 a.m. — Meera is holding her head up really well these past couple of days. This morning she proudly showed off her skills for Braydon.
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4:13 p.m. — After we all came home from a very fun birthday party for one of their friends, the boys had a blast playing outside in the pouring rain for over an hour.

Each year, at the end of August we have taken a photo of K & O sitting in this one particular spot of our yard. Check out the photos on our blog’s sidebar to see the photos from Summers 2005, 2006, and 2007. Last weekend we did the photo shoot for Summer 2008. Meera was included this year! Doing it was a vivid reminder of why we generally work hard to avoid posed photos. Braydon, who was protected behind the lens of the camera and thus a bit more detached than the rest of us, was the only member of the family who didn’t have a major meltdown in the process to get these photos. Somehow, despite the pain and suffering of the posed photo shoot, the four of us over the age of 12-weeks-old did manage to laugh most of the way through it (between tantrums). We took a total of 78 photos during two different times of day, but we’ve narrowed it down to 5. Which is your favorite?!?! PLEASE VOTE!!! Vote by clicking on the poll at the upper left hand corner of our blog! Poll ends Monday… at which point we’ll reward you by posting 5 of the best reject photos from the Johnson-McCormick Summer 2008 Tree Photo Event. As always, click on any photo to enlarge.

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Every Wednesday at 11:00 a.m., for this entire summer, Calvin has come to give the boys swimming lessons. I first met Calvin in my Intro to Sociology class a couple of years ago. He was a sophomore and in a big lecture class of 250 he stood out. He’s smart. Turns out he’s a fine swimmer too. Big time. I had Calvin in another class this past spring– the spring of his senior year. Captain of the Lehigh Swim Team. President of the Black Student Union. Star Student. Late spring, as graduation was approaching, Calvin was winning every student leadership award that’s given out. He’s staying at Lehigh for the next year, getting his MA in Political Science, and applying to PhD programs. This is the kind of student you love to love. There aren’t many like him, but when they come along… well… it sounds cliche but it is true: they are the ones that make the whole thing worthwhile. And now that I have kids of my own — now that I have black boys of my own — when a black male student like Calvin comes along I can’t help but think of him as more than simply an exceptional student– Calvin is the kind of role model I want in the lives of my sons. He’s that good. So we got to talking. And in addition to having a genuine academic/intellectual/sociological interest in the development of young black boys, Calvin also has some experience teaching swimming. I had been looking for some sort of way to get K & O into swim lessons of some sort. But I had been having no luck because of the weird situation we had on our hands— at age just barely 4, K & O had never had a swim lesson in their lives but were unusually good strong confident swimmers. Swim centers I’d looked into wouldn’t take them into group lessons because their swim skills were way too advanced for their appropriate age groups, but their social skills were way too –how shall we say it… um, unadvanced…– for their appropriate swim skill groups. Calvin agreed to come to the house once a week this summer to do private lessons at our pool. And more importantly (from my perspective at least), he agreed to build a relationship with my boys. I was pretty up front with Calvin about it– yes, I wanted them to learn something about swimming, but my not-so-hidden agenda was just to get them around Calvin on a regular basis. By the third week Calvin was their hero. And they were doing the freestyle. And now, as the summer is ending, they consider Calvin their “Swim Teacher” as well as their great friend. Kyle has already announced that Calvin will be getting an invitation to his 5th birthday party (that kind of says it all). Oh, and in addition to the freestyle they’re also doing the back stroke, and treading water, and flip turns underwater off the pool wall, and they are both diving beautiful perfect 10 dives into the deep end. Calvin has suggested we continue the swim lessons through the school year. He’s looking into using the Lehigh pool once it gets too cold to swim in ours. It will be nice for the boys to keep swimming through the winter this year. It will be even nicer to watch them continue to build their relationship with Calvin. Anyone who knows anything about the studies that have been done on black boys knows that all the research evidence points to the same thing: the importance of the relationships between black boys and older black male role models in their lives. Finding those role models, however, is sometimes the tricky party– especially in situations like ours; we want there to be an organic glue holding the relationship together… not some kind of fabricated pseudo-relationship based on emphasizing black role modeling. So, right now, for us, the best part about the boys’ relationships with Calvin is that it is organically bound together by a shared genuine interest: swimming. And just for the record… just in case one (or both) of them ever are superstar swimmers… Calvin was K & O’s first Swim Teacher. You read it here first. Summer 2008.

You only have your 4-Year-Old-Summer once. It seems to me like it is the perfect age for summertime. This has been an imperfect — but somehow therefore perfect — summer for Kyle and Owen. They have run barefoot for the past three months. Their feet show it. Every one of their twenty little brown toes are stubbed. There are scabs, blisters, callouses, scrapes, and bruises all over their feet. At least half of their toenails are broken. The bottoms of their feet are permanently stained with grime. It is quite a contrast to their baby sister’s pale soft little feetsies and tiny tiny toesies. What a difference four years make. And yet, what little difference. In so many ways K & O are not much different than Meera. They are, like her, in so many ways, still so wonderfully beautifully innocently unaware. For the past three months K & O have been immersed in days without much care in the world. How blissful to not be burdened with thinking about what is around the corner; without trying to peer beyond the bend. How sweet it has been for me to be able to give them days of endless summer. Falling asleep with their hair still wet from the pool. Crickets and caterpillars. The smell of fresh cut grass. Lazy mornings. Blueberry pancakes. Bikes. Bubblegum. Strawberries. Fireflies. Corn on the cob dripping with butter. But, at the same time, this summer has been so profound and intense for my big little 4-year-olds. The summer started with the birth of their long-awaited much-anticipated heavily-adored sister. And it ended with the death of their mother’s cousin. Life and death; bookends to an endless summer. It began with their questions and statements about new life. And it ends with their questions and statements about the end of it. That is the most incredible thing about life with 4-year-olds: just watching as they try to make sense of it all. Just knowing them as they grapple with wrapping their heads around it all. It isn’t just that they are curious and inquisitive– they take it further: they create their own meanings out of all of it. “Bad news,” said Owen, as we drove to the airport to drop Meera and I off last week. And then he announced, matter-of-factly, “My June died.” “Wow,” Braydon and I both said. Not knowing quite what to make of that. A few minutes later, after some silence, he proclaimed, “Good news guys! I have many other Junes!” The boys are regulars at our local bagel shop. Teenage twin girls are working there often when we go in. But this weekend the twins weren’t there. That night as I was tucking him into his bed, Kyle said, out of the blue, “Mommy, the twin girls at the bagel store died.” It doesn’t matter that Braydon had told him that the girls had gone off to college, Kyle was adamant: “They died, they really, really did died.” Yesterday afternoon, cuddled up in towels, warming up in the sun, they both wanted me to know: “We don’t want to be in Heaven. We want to be with you.” “You are with me,” I said. And they jump in the pool. Huge jumps. Big splashes. Unafraid. Two little fish. They hold hands in the shallow end and circle round and round singing “Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down” and they dive under the water, hands still clasped tight, and with their eyes wide open they find each other’s lips for a big underwater smooch. They pop up, faces straight up to the sun. Glistening. Gleaming. Screeching. Laughing and yelping, “MEERA! Watch us Meera! Watch us baby sister! WATCH THIS!” And from her little chair, poolside, she recognizes their voices and smiles and baby-gurgles and drools in delight with it all. This is our endless summer.

On this day in celebration of Heather’s 36 years on this earth, we are more grateful than ever for her birth. With all she does for so many people and her wonderful spark of life, we love Heather so dearly and we are so thankful for her presence in our lives.

And in typical Heather fashion, she eschewed a cake at night and preferred home made pecan sticky buns for breakfast. It was the perfect way to start the day.

Honestly, there is so much to say. I have never been one to lack blogging material. I have 3 million thoughts each day that could be subjects of blog posts. But right now I just feel a strong sense that I shouldn’t be blogging. I’ve been plodding along, but suddenly it just doesn’t feel right, and I feel like it is time to call it like it is and take a blog break for a little while. As I am having the best summer of my life with a new adorable baby girl, two cool 4-year olds, and my husband-soul-mate, miles away my cousin Karen is suffering the worst kind of suffering. It is too much to grasp. Right now we’re in a holding pattern — just waiting. Here in Pennsylvania we are waiting to hear that the end has come. Waiting each hour for updates from the hospital in New Hampshire. Waiting to hear that relief and sweet peace have come for Karen. Waiting to hear that a new long chapter of a terribly painful journey has just begun for her husband and two little girls, for my aunt, uncle, and cousin (Karen’s brother), our entire family, all of her friends and the people she has touched in this world. Sometimes being far from the rest of my family feels really far. Now is one of those times. And yet, somehow, times like this are a reminder to me of how nonexistent time and space and distance really are. If you believe, if you are faithful, if you pray, please send out a loving wish for peace and strength for Karen, her family, and all who suffer so in the world right now. And please pray for creativity and ambition to all those out there working to find a cure for cancer. If you’re interested in the blog my cousin’s husband has been keeping, you can link to it here: http://karenstasko.wordpress.com/

If you ask K & O what they want to be when they grow up they say, “Travelers!” If you ask them what their favorite thing to do is, they’ll say “go on trips!” Their love of travel comes through loud and clear in their daily play. I mentioned in this recent post their obsession with playing “Travellers.” According to their teacher from this past year, they got their entire pre-school class wrapped up in this at school every day — I wrote about that in this post from last March. This summer, with them at home, I’ve had a chance to watch the two of them play ‘Travel’ on a daily basis. It is always a variation on a theme. But it is always elaborate, dramatic, vividly imaginative play. They make an airplane with blankets, pillows, chairs, etc. They work hard to construct the airplane’s wings, jet engine, cockpit, etc. They discuss in great detail the trip they are on, where they are going, which airports they are flying through, etc. They pack up bags, bring their carry on’s through security (including taking their shoes off), etc. Snacks are often involved (for eating on the plane). Recently maps have become a regular addition to their Traveling play. And in the past few days they’ve been adding Meera to the whole thing too – they put her Bjorn chair in between their seats so that they are all sitting together in the same row on the plane. They will sometimes wait for hours (literally) for Meera to wake up from a nap so that she can join them on the plane before taking off. They seem to always be jetting off to some fabulous beach for a glorious vacation. Watching all this play everyday has me reminiscing about all the fabulous beaches we’ve been on with K & O for glorious vacations… and all the amazing trips we’ve had (even when they haven’t involved a beach). So far they’ve been on 14 trips involving air travel, and numerous other road trips. I was inspired to look through some of the photos from our early vacations with the boys. Here are a few of my favorites.

This is what we did today (click here). A fun, fun, fun day!