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Anyone who knows Kyle and Owen in real life, and anyone who has read this blog for any substantial length of time, knows this about their clothing choices:

1. Kyle and Owen have never cared much about what they wear. With only one exception… that exception being…
2. Kyle and Owen have — from the time they could express an opinion — insisted on dressing as identically as possible.

That they have always dressed in matching outfits is no secret. Look back on this blog over the years of photos posted and you’ll see it over and over: matching outfits. I’ve been all over the map with this in my own mind. I’ve gone through phases (especially when they were toddlers) of thinking it was super cute; I’ve gone through phases of trying hard to get them to individuate with their clothing choices; I’ve tried to understand their deep desire to dress identical; I’ve tried to not think or care too much about it; I’ve worried about it; laughed at it; pondered it; and let it roll off me. Ultimately, I always let them do it, and helped them to do it, by buying the double-sets-of-clothing to make it possible.

I remember the year they were in kindergarten. They were six years old, getting really tall, sporting some pretty long dreadlocks, and wearing super-twinny-identically-matching outfits every day (down to the socks and underwear). I went through a phase then of feeling self-conscious, as their mother, about their clothing. I was worried that people would think I was some sort of crazy-psycho-twin-mom who insisted on dressing her (way too old for it) twins in matching outfits. I could only imagine the things that other mothers were saying behind my back when I went to pick them up at school. Who knows? Maybe none of them noticed, or cared, but for awhile that year I was feeling really self-conscious (read: paranoid) about it.

I decided to talk about it with their kindergarten teacher. She was/is one of the most insightful and gifted teachers I’ve ever known. She’s also a mother of twin boys herself. She’s also a Peurto Rican woman who is very in tune with minority kids at the school. I asked her, “So, what do you think the deal is with Kyle and Owen insisting on wearing matching outfits?” And she told me, point blank, “I think it is because they feel, so much, their minority status, and they feel stronger if they ‘match.'” Wow. It hit me hard. It hit me hard because it resonated with me so strongly. “I think you’re right,” I said. I told her that my inclination had always been to just let them dress this way until they no longer wanted to. I asked her what she thought. She agreed– “Just let them do it,” she said, “eventually they’ll figure it out and outgrow it.”

Ever since that conversation I’ve seen Kyle and Owen’s twinny dressing through that lens– at least partially. I’ve never drawn much attention to it with them, have bought the matching clothes to oblige them, and haven’t pushed them to dress otherwise. But I’ve always wondered when they’d let it go. And I’ll be honest: I’ve laughed inside my own mind imagining them going to prom in matching outfits– going off to college in matching outfits– starting their first jobs in matching outfits–

Until…

Drumroll please…

Get this! —-

Everything was chugging along as usual with their matching outfit thing. The night before we moved (August 17, 2012), before bed, they picked out — as usual — their clothes for the next day. And — as usual — they laid out identical outfits for themselves. They wore those on our moving day, Saturday, August 18, 2012.

The first priority on our moving day was to set up Meera’s room and K & O’s room. By the time Kyle and Owen went to bed that night (their first night in our new home), their room was completely set up, including all of their clothes in their dresser/closet. The next morning, our first day of living on campus, Kyle and Owen got themselves dressed. When they appeared in the kitchen I had all I could do to play it cool— they were dressed in completely different outfits. I did not let them see that my jaw just about hit the floor. I didn’t say a thing, and neither did they. We breezed through it like we had the years of matching outfits.

But I marveled at it, and wondered what would happen the next day.

The next day, they woke up and did it again— dressed themselves in completely different outfits.

They seemed totally 100% unselfconscious of it. In fact, they seemed unaware that they were even doing it.

They did it the next day, and the next, and the next. After a week or so I asked them, for the first time: “Guys, I’ve noticed that you’ve been wearing different outfits. You used to always wear matching outfits. Why the change?” They looked at each other, both sort of shrugged, and then said, completely nonchalantly: “We don’t need to do that anymore.” And that was the end of that.

It has been 8.5 weeks now and Kyle and Owen have not chosen matching outfits once. We’ve had a few conversations about it, but they have been short, and the boys have only reiterated that they “just don’t need that anymore.” When we went shopping for their First Day of School outfits, they picked different outfits. Last weekend we went sneaker shopping, and they picked different sneakers. Today I finally did some fall clothes shopping for them (it is finally getting too cold to wear shorts to school), and I was confident in picking all sorts of clothes that were not at all matching. Tonight, after dinner, I showed them everything I had bought for them. They were thrilled with it all.

They still share clothes, and like the same things. They just don’t want to dress identical anymore. And I think it is here to stay. We’ve turned a corner.

Sunday afternoon, walk in the woods behind Sayre, after brunch. Kyle and Meera ran up ahead. When we found them, we found them like this. Meera asked Braydon to take a picture. So he did.

We invited our neighbors over for Brunch yesterday. It was so much fun!!!

40 awesome students + 5 J-Ms + 1 beautiful Sunday = good stuff. We are loving getting to know these people, who are now our friends/neighbors/students, and we are loving watching our kids’ relationships with them develop. It is all very, very cool to witness and be a part of.

Meera insisted on getting dressed up for brunch. She was the only one in a party dress, but that was just fine with her. (In the photo above she is holding her new most beloved possession– an adorable hand-made crocheted ghost that one of our favorite friends/neighbors/students gave us yesterday). Kyle was not the only one who loved the baked french toast. It was my first time making it, but it will surely be top on the menu for all future brunches. I made a double batch but it was quickly completely devoured (the last few arrivals didn’t even get to have any)! Recipe at bottom of this post.

All three of our kids are social butterflies, but Owen most of all. There is nothing he loves more than having people over. And he is always (one of) the life(s) of the party.

And look! A picture of Braydon and me! Another one of our favorite friends/neighbors/students asked to take it, and we let him, and here it is! We might actually start getting more photos of us!

Not everyone made a craft while they brunched with us. But many, many did. Toward the end, however, the bambinos couldn’t be contained indoors any longer and the activities moved outdoors for football and scootering.

We are really excited about the Residential Fellows Program. As we start to settle in we are seeing how very real the possibilities are.

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re: Baked French Toast — it was so good! I used the Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I doubled it, and added two extra eggs (so, 18 eggs total), and an additional 2 cups of milk (6 cups of milk total). Seriously easy and seriously delish!!! We also had a ham, 2 spinach quiches, 2 pumpkin/cream cheese cake logs, a huge stack of fruit-ka-bobs, a big bowl of clementines, and chips/dip/carrots, not to mention the oj, cider, pellegrino, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, etc….. and just about nothing was left…. one thing I’m learning– let me tell ya: college kids can eat!!!!!

Meera learns hopscotch

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K & O (and Papi) play 3-on-3 football

Yesterday was our house closing on 275 Valley View Road. It is over and done with now. We sold our house. Mixed emotions (to the point of emotion-overload/sensory-numbness) abound for Braydon and I. The bambinos, on the other hand, seem to be nothing but a-ok. Thank the heavens for that simple true fact. It is, really, the one and only thing that has keep us plugging forward on this journey for the past year. Ultimately, we are very sure, that this has been the right thing for our family.

Still, it is just absolutely crazy what we’ve done, and not a day goes by that we’re not reminded of it (because people — everyday — tell us, “I wouldn’t do that if you paid me a million dollars!”). I’ve finally learned, at age 40, to follow my instincts and let the rattling and shaking of what others think roll off me. But it doesn’t come easy for me. It is a daily struggle.

So, we closed on the house. We closed that chapter. We are officially fully in, 100% in, our new chapter. It is exciting, and scary, and it is calming, and unnerving, all at once.

And it has been a ton of work. Sheer physical labor, hours and hours of taking apart the entire material life that we knew, dissolving a home that I (especially me) had worked so hard to create. It has involved a lot of emotional, spiritual, psychological work. We’ve processed and processed until we can’t process any more. And here we are.

The day before the closing, I picked up the kids from school and took them for a final farewell to the “old house.” Braydon was in Chicago on a work trip, so I did it with them on my own. I tried hard to get them to talk about their feelings. But, basically, they were like, “Mom, we have talked and talked and talked about these feelings for a whole year! We have nothing left to talk about!!!” For them, it just is what it is now. And I am trying to learn from them to just let it be. Sometimes it is important to talk it through. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to force it, there is just nothing else to talk about. And that’s o.k. So, they just played instead.

The boys jumped on their beloved trampoline. They miss it, but they say “it is worth it” to give it up for our new life. Meera wanted to swing (she misses that swing), but after awhile she was done with it and happy to just move on, leaving that swing set behind. She didn’t even look back. Amazing stuff. These kids are just so incredibly incredible that it just blows my mind sometimes.

Inside, with the house completely empty, they had their last dance party in the playroom. This was my favorite room of that house. I have always thought it was just beautiful; I love the light; I love the space; I have always loved that room. I watched them play and dance in there for quite a while. They loved the echo of the empty space as they stomped on the floor and sang at the top of their lungs.

We stopped the car at the end of the driveway for the bambinos to say goodbye to the two birch trees that sit at the entrance to the drive. They had climbed those trees and played in and around them for hundreds and hundreds of hours over the years. They had named the trees, long ago– “Lil” and “Frank.” Owen climbed up high in “Lil” one last time. He wasn’t sad or mad to have to leave her. Just happy to climb her one more time. With the windows rolled down in the car, they yelled as we drove away, “Bye Lil! Bye Frank!!” And that was it.

And then they just wanted to go home. They couldn’t wait to get home. Home is no longer 275 Valley View Road.

275 Valley View is now just a house that we used to live in.

Last night Owen and I were talking on the couch. He said, out of the blue, “Mommy, you thought we’d all be homesick when we moved. Remember? But I wasn’t homesick at all. Now, when I go back to the old house, I’m homesick for home. But I was never homesick here to go back there.”

It is amazing how time moves, chapters turn, things transform, closings happen, openings are found.

Owen took a whole slew of photos with my iPad yesterday. When I saw this one on the screen this morning, it took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on in it. At first I thought it was just Owen in the picture, then I realized it was both Kyle and Owen. (If you look closely you see that Owen is holding up the iPad, taking a picture of Kyle, in our messy bathroom, with the mirror in the background.) I feel like it is reflective of life for us right now. Everything is a bit confusing and scattered and it takes a few seconds to get a grip on much of what’s happening.

It is a phase of chaos and confusion for us right now as we walk through the final days of what has been a year-long journey for us. It was almost exactly a year ago that Braydon and I began exploring — in a very serious way — the idea of fundamentally altering our life. We had been talking about it for a few years, but it was October 2011 that we became very clear about actually doing something about it. And thus began the shift to: a) move onto campus via Lehigh’s Residential Fellows Program as LU’s first Faculty Family in Residence, and b) radically and dramatically downsize and rid ourselves of approximately 2/3 of our earthly possessions.

Here we are, a year later. We are 8 days from the closing date on our house (yes, that’s right). I am someone who does not believe it until it is signed, sealed, and delivered, so I won’t celebrate the house sale until 9 days from now. However, as we prepare to no longer own that house, and as we do the work to get every single item out of there, and deal with all that needs to be dealt with in a house sale, we are feeling the life shift very strongly.

It is unnerving. It feels like the earth under our feet is shifting as we try to get our footing. There is a sort of over-saturation at this point– and I feel a little numb. It takes a few extra seconds to figure out what is happening. And I know that I haven’t even begun to process everything.

I am confident that all is good, and that we are on track. But it is not completely easy.

I have about 45 different blog posts, all semi-composed in my mind, all substantial in content, all ready to be posted, but just waiting in the wings of my mind while life whirls ahead zooming and spinning and chugging and speeding at full capacity — making it impossible for me to squeeze in time to actually write them down. I wait for little cracks in the pace, little windows of opportunity to blog. But they don’t come. Time comes— these days Braydon and I have true chances to sit and take a breather (which we do), and we understand the importance of savoring each and every second of that time (which we do), and we know that choices we have made recently have freed us a little bit (which we are grateful for). But, still, the time to blog — I mean, blog for real — just slips by. Which results in me feeling — at times like this — that I’m not even scratching the surface of the “real” that is our life. It would be ok if I felt like I was barely scratching the surface— that I can deal with. But it is when I feel like I’m not even scratching the surface at all that it feels like a lost cause. Now is one of those times.

Why do I blog at all if I can’t even get to the “real” of it? I’m not entirely sure.

All I know is that somehow I feel compelled to try to capture a slice of it— a tiny slice of life— if even only a thin, tiny, skimming the top of the surface, slice— so that I can somehow get it down and have a place to hold it in my grip. Someday, maybe, I (or we?) will have time to sit and read all this and maybe it will help me (or us?) to remember. Remember the sheer intensity of it, the depth of it, the substance of it — even though so often the posts are just gliding over the actual topography.

This is just a quick, catch-up post. I am an eternal optimist, so I’m always hopeful that one of these days I will be able to write in more depth and get down those 45 different blog posts that have much more meaning than this one. In the meantime, I have to do what I can to try to capture the tiny slice above the surface.

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Meera never complains about having to go to all these sporting events. She is such a good little sister to do what she does so graciously.

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Saturday morning Kyle decided to practice his trumpet while sitting outside our dorm/home for all the world to see/hear. Owen sat next to him, and was either: a) lost in deep thought, or b) totally envious that his own instrument — piano — is so much less portable [i.e., draws so much less attention from potential walkers-by].

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We took a long hike in the “Fairy Forest” that is behind our dorm/home. We have 1,800 acres of woods that abut Sayre Park Village. There are hiking and biking trails throughout, and it is unbelievably beautiful and full of nooks and crannies to explore. It is a major gem of a win for us to have this literally right outside our door. Meera is convinced that fairies live there. We go often and look for signs of fairies in the forest. We see many (signs of fairies), and we leave offerings to them (like flowers in the doors of their houses — see photo below), and we see lots of deer too, and we find many treasures (like huge leaves) along the way. Saturday we took a long walk there and it was ridiculously lovely.

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The campus has become our big huge sprawling backyard. There is so much to do. We must be in the honeymoon phase, or something, because even a lazy Saturday afternoon on campus is rich and full and completely enough to entertain all five of us just the right amount. Saturday we saw a bridal party (the bride was in an exquisite, heavy with fabric and gemstones, pale pink gown; the flowers were to die for) entering the chapel for a decadent wedding. We had smoothies for lunch (at the kind of smoothie place you’d find only in a college town; i.e., not a chain smoothie joint). We (more specifically, three of us) played in a fountain. It was all good.

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Sunday Braydon and Owen had their “First Friday” (which we should really re-name, since we’re really not sticking — at all — to it being on Fridays). While Kyle, Meera, and I ran errands, Owen and Braydon had Owen’s favorite meal for lunch: Hibachi (salmon teriyaki) at Kome…

…then they went back to campus for a piano concert by Emi Kagawa, which Braydon is still raving about. Apparently, on their way out of the arts complex, they ran into the Step Team rehearsing. Picture bottom right is of Owen, crouched in the doorway, watching them practice. (Side-note that I don’t want to forget: then, tonight, on campus, on our way back home after dinner in the dining hall, we ran into a few of our favorite members of the Step Team. They came inside with us for a quick visit, and proceed to gift us with an impromptu [thanks to Owen’s urging] private Step Show for us in our very own apartment! This little Step performance was about 3 minutes long, but it made my day [maybe my week?], and it was yet another moment when I was struck by the unique and amazing opportunity that we’ve been given to live the life we are currently living.)

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Also this weekend, the bambinos caught Gangnam Style fever. In a big, big way! They’d watch the video over and over again a trillion times, if we’d let them.

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Tonight was Lehigh’s annual Take Back the Night march. It ended at Sayre Lodge, right outside our front door. The bambinos, of course, were curious as to what the several hundred students were doing out there. We got them ready for bed, got Meera to sleep, and then Braydon and I took turns taking K & O out (in their pjs/bathrobes) to see what was happening. It was a good introduction to some very basic concepts of gender violence, violence against women, and violence-related-trauma.

We intentionally barely scraped the surface, but we did scrape the surface just enough to make us feel good about some early steps on our journey to trying to raise two healthy, whole, mindful, sensitive, caring, conscious, concerned men. There are certain aspects of raising two very big, strong, muscular, self-confident, charismatic, black males that aren’t always easy. Tonight we were grateful for a gathering, right outside our door, that helped us, together, to be more aware and thoughtful of one very tough part of life in this world.

So, there it is. Not even scratching the surface, but it is the best I can do for now.

The Residential Fellows Program is new for Lehigh. Some other colleges and universities have these programs well established, but Lehigh is just starting out. Once Braydon and I had made the decision that we would become Lehigh’s first “Faculty Family in Residence,” the big question became where would we live? We worked in close collaboration with Residence Life staff at Lehigh to determine that the area of campus known as ‘Sayre Park Village’ would be the ideal place for our family. We chose Sayre because of its open green spaces that would allow for our kids to play outside in a relatively safe, quiet, set-to-the-side-of-campus environment.

Sayre includes a community center (called “The Lodge”), and three ‘dorms’ /buildings, each of which houses four floors worth of student apartments. We decided on a 3-bedroom apartment on the second (but ground-floor) floor of the middle building. There were many factors that went into our focusing on this particular apartment (it was slightly larger than many others; it was right next door to the building’s main lounge; it has a beautiful view from the back windows; etc.), but the biggest reason we chose it was because just downstairs from this apartment is a large storage facility that could become ours. Having the storage space in the basement was key! So we went with Sayre House B, Apartment 230.

We spent several months working with an incredible team of Lehigh architects, project planners, Residence Life staff, Residential Services staff, Auxiliary Services, etc. planning to maximize upon the 800-square-foot apartment to become “home” for a faculty family of five. These folks were AMAZING!

As soon as the students moved out in May, the construction crew got right to work. For Braydon and I, it was an incredible experience to be involved in, and then witness, the transformation from an apartment in a student dorm to a beautiful campus home for our family. We were truly blown away by Lehigh’s commitment to this project and the attention-to-detail with which they carried out the renovation.

And here is a bit of the progression from demolition to renovation:

And now it is our Residential Fellow home sweet home for the J-M Family. Here are some ‘After’ Photos:

I have to say: it has been such an amazing experience to be a part of! Now that we have been living here a month, I so appreciate every detail and carefully-thought-through plan. It truly feels spacious to us! We are so thankful for this opportunity. And we are loving living here!

New chapter, new home, new place, new people, new rhythms and routines. Same crazy schedule, same time crunch, same overflowing inbox, same too-much-happening-too-fast. Some things change. Some things stay the same. We are settling in to a new school year. It is bittersweet.

It has been a long time since the boys have played golf. Now that we live on campus, the Lehigh Golf Center is a 3-minute drive from home for us, and that point is not lost on Kyle and Owen… who love hitting golf balls with their Papi… and have loved that for a long, long time. Since moving K & O have been asking almost daily about when they can go to the Lehigh driving range– Kyle, especially, has been fixated on it. It took us a while to get there (the boys have grown so tremendously in the past few months that they had outgrown their golf clubs and we had to buy a new set), but today we finally made it to the Lehigh driving range.

Meera was in on the action too (at least at first)…

But her interest quickly waned and it wasn’t long before she was more interested in watching her brothers than she was in actually hitting balls herself…

…she was pretty quickly done with that too, and on to the sorts of things that interest her much more than hitting golf balls.

(Note: Meera’s disinterest in golf has been long known by us, but her Papi will still forever try valiantly to turn that around).

But the boys in our family? Goodness gracious. They are all about it. They could do this forever.

After awhile I lost track of how many buckets of balls these three hit.

A beautiful September Saturday tailgating and game-watching (sort of!) with Kelly, John, Shalinee, Kavya, and Alex.

Summer 2012: K & O Heading Off to Basketball Camp

We made a conscious point to hold off as long as possible on organized sports for Kyle and Owen — mainly because we knew that once we started, we’d be fully immersed for our entire foreseeable future. We waited until K & O were seven to begin. It felt like a huge deal to hold off for that long. They are both super athletically gifted (we’ve known that for a long time). And they both love sports (that becomes even clearer and clearer as each day goes by). By the time they were seven they were chomping at the bit to begin.

Tomorrow is their first soccer game of their 2nd year of playing soccer for their school team. It feels like the past year has, in many ways, been filled with (maybe even dominated by?) sports for K & O. As we expected, it has become a major part of our family life. Owen and Kyle are definitely driving this ship… but the rest of us are very much on board on this journey.

And now another year of it is officially beginning. I’m not complaining. It is incredibly fun to watch these two play. It brings us lots of joy to see them do so well and have so much fun. I could go on and on and on about how exceptionally gifted and talented Kyle and Owen are at every sport they’ve ever tried, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin to describe it. Suffice it to say: they are really amazing and have great potential. We will see what the future holds.

This post is a photo retrospective of Kyle and Owen’s First Official Year of Organized Sports.

SOCCER: Fall 2011 K & O played for their school team (as the first 1st graders to ever be allowed on the team)

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BASKETBALL: Winter 2011-2012 K & O played for their school team (again, as the first 1st graders to ever be allowed on the team)

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BASEBALL: Spring 2012 K & O played for our local Little League team– the Durham I-8s (Owen won the MVP award for the season as Pitcher, and Kyle led the team in hits)

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SUMMER SOCCER: Summer 2012 Kyle and Owen played in our local youth league (leading their team in an undefeated season)

Meera has a routine of hanging out during her brothers’ games. K & O have a routine of eating cereal after their games (each and every time, regardless of the sport or season, and regardless of how large or small their dinner was prior to the game).

And that’s a wrap! Now… onto Year Two.

There is a sculpture-like trio of fountains that stand outside of the Admissions building at Lehigh. It sits on the edge of campus, along a road that we often drive on as we’re going on-and-off campus. Before we moved to Lehigh, I never really noticed it. But since moving, every time we drive by it Meera points it out. She gets excited to see it each and every time. And she always talks about how seeing it makes her wish she could “play in it,” “run in it,” and “put her hair under it.” I have been waiting for the right opportune moment, when we have the time, on a nice sunny day, to stop along our way and let her live out her wishes.

And for that reason, I’ve been keeping a towel in the back of my car.

This afternoon Meera was delighted when she realized I was turning left into the Admissions driveway. “Oh my gosh! Are we going to the fountains?!” “Yes!” I said. “Oh my gosh Mommy! Thank you!!!” She could not quite believe it as I pulled her out of her carseat and said, “GO FOR IT!!!”

And go for it she did.

It was the perfect way to spend a few minutes on September 11th 2012; a day that was eerily similar — in the crisp blue-ness of the sky, in the feeling of the air, in the temperature and weather — to September 11th 2001. To watch Meera in the fountains was a reminder to — for the millionth time today — count my many blessings. And count my many blessings I did.