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Kyle and Owen had nothing but great things to report about their day at school yesterday. They came home happy and beaming– just as they had been as they left the house in the morning. They got exactly the remarks they expected from some of their peers. And according to them, they responded just as they had planned. The unexpected was that several of the teachers, and also the Head of School, went out of their way to comment on Kyle’s hair and say how “gorgeous” it was! From all reports, a great day was had by all.

P.S. When I went to pick up the boys at the After School Program they were all in free play. I couldn’t help but notice that in the back corner of the room Kyle and a bunch of kids were playing “Barber Shop” together. I got a chuckle in seeing one little girl desperately trying to pull a boy’s hair (a boy with short, thin, blond hair) into a ponytail!   😉

I snapped this picture of Kyle right before he left for school this morning. For the past few days he has been planning this day: Wednesday—the day he was going to wear ponytails to his new school for the first time. On a few occasions K & O had gone to school with ponytails in their hair at their old school, but they were much younger then. The older they get, the more deeply engrained gender is amongst their peers; the more firm the gender divides; and the more established the unwritten rules, roles, and expectations become around gender. So, when Kyle first started talking about wanting to wear ponytails to his new school (now, at age 6.75), I was nervous for him. We talked about it quite a bit, and quite often, over the past few days.

Me: “So, you know some kids will make fun of you, right? What will they say?”

Kyle: “They’ll say, ‘Boys can’t wear ponytails! Only girls wear ponytails!”

Me: “And what will you do when they say that?”

Kyle: “I’ll say, ‘Boys CAN wear ponytails! Because SEE?!! I’m wearing ponytails!!!!!! And I’m a boy!!!!!!!!”

Both Owen and Kyle were fully on board with this. Owen ended up wearing purple nail polish to school today instead of ponytails…  with the same intended point to make to his peers. We talked and talked about it, mainly with me playing devils advocate, verbally hypothesizing all the possible scenarios, and them explaining in detail how they’d handle each one. And I also asked questions. Throughout they were self-confident about their plan, calmly excited to do it, and determined.

Me: “Why do you want to do this?”

K & O: “We don’t know! We just want to!”

I’ll admit— it makes me both proud of them, and anxious for them. There is a part of me that—at this point (as they are almost 7)—wants to frantically prohibit them from doing it, in a panicked desire to protect them from possible damage that might result. They are, after all, black boys in a fairly diverse, but still, majority white school. Their new school is a Quaker Friends School – we’d like to hope it would be the place where gender bending could safely happen – and yet we know the reality of the situation: gender bending is a social risk for boys in virtually any arena… even the most liberal of mainstream spaces. And so, I was tempted to try to convince Kyle to not wear the ponytails. I was tempted to try to convince Owen to not wear the purple nail polish. I was tempted out of my fiercely protective motherly instinct. But another part of me felt really proud of my self-confident, self-assured, playing-around-with-the-rules, and questioning-the-status-quo boys.

As their sociologist mother, I am sure it is no coincidence that their chosen day to make their big statement was a Wednesday. I am not sure if they are fully cognizant of it or not, but there are two reasons why Wednesdays are significant for this: 1) Every Wednesday is an all-school assembly, so they will be seen by everyone, and thus get the biggest possible reaction, and 2) Wednesdays they have basketball after school.

Kyle and Owen are, by far, the best basketball players amongst their peers. They are, unquestionably, superb athletes. They are too young to play for the school’s real team, so basketball for them is the once-weekly-basketball-intramural-program for the kids younger than 4th grade. It is sort of the “Junior Varsity” of the elementary school set, if you will. The coach quickly noticed what good players Kyle and Owen are, and established a rule that they needed to be separated onto different teams for any scrimmage or match (because otherwise they will ridiculously dominate). Yesterday when they played basketball outside during recess Kyle and Owen somehow managed to get themselves onto the same team, and they won 22 to 1 (according to them, they “let the other team get that one basket,” because, “they felt sorry for them”). According to Kyle and Owen, the other kids “told on them,” saying it wasn’t fair, that it was no fun to play if K & O are allowed to be on the same team, and in response the teachers apparently set a new school rule that even at recess Kyle and Owen must always be on separate teams. This is all just to say: they are really good at basketball. And this is important. Because, of course, for boys, athletics and masculinity go hand-in-hand.

Kyle and Owen’s athletic superiority is unquestionable. And thus, Kyle and Owen have that extra-special-privileged shield of boyhood: the shield of unquestioned masculinity. And thus, they can get away with wearing ponytails and purple polish to school. Even on an All-School-Assembly day where everyone will notice.

Kyle and Owen also have a deep, core, forward-presented self-confidence. While as their mother I intimately know the vulnerable places of their fragile souls, the world sees them as unabashedly self-assured. I don’t think they are perceived as cocky (at least not yet, thank God, and we’ll need to continue to work on making sure that doesn’t develop as the years go on), but their self-confidence and social extrovertedness is unmistaken. This, for sure, only adds another layer to the unquestioned masculinity which gives them the gumption to do the “crazy” things that they do where gender is concerned.

In a strange coincidence (or maybe it isn’t a coincidence?), we are reading Barrie Thorne’s Gender Play in my undergraduate Sociology of Children and Childhood class right now. Yesterday I had the students come to class prepared to read aloud their favorite quotes from the book and then explain why they had chosen the quotes that they had. It led to the best discussion we’ve had this semester. As I listened to my college students talk about gender and childhood I couldn’t help but think of Kyle and Owen. As the discussion turned to gender-bending I told the class about my boys’ ponytails-and-purple-polish-plans for today. One of my favorite students of all time (I’ve had him in several courses), happens to be in that class. He’s a smart-as-a-whip, incredibly-nice-and-polite, gorgeous, very popular, huge, dark-skinned, black super-star football player from Nevada. He spoke articulately about the social power of boys who excel at athletics, about their unquestioned masculinity, and about how he himself used to wear pink sneakers and carry a pink backpack during high school. And then he said, “Don’t worry Heather, they’ll be just fine!” And in that instant I truly was assured. While I knew it to be true intellectually (from Gender Play and a hundred other studies I’ve read on the matter), it took that moment in class to allow me to know it to be true emotionally.

And so, this morning as they left for school, at my intellectual, moral, philosophical, and emotional-motherly core I was more than o.k. with the ponytails and purple polish. While I could write a whole other post on the fundamentally problematic complications that all of this raises in regards to the privilege my boys carry that other boys don’t (etc., etc., etc.), for now I am alright with savoring this moment of watching my boys use this part of their privilege to question the power structures of gendered masculinity and femininity. It is a first step in one of the most basic things we’re trying to convey to them in our parenting: that with great privilege comes great responsibility, and we must use our privilege to question the power structures. As they walked out the door, I was, in my mind’s eye, jumping up and down in the bleachers, ecstatically cheering for them on the court of this gender game. Just like I scream, “THAT’S MY BOY!” when they shoot the ball into the hoop, I was screaming “THAT’S MY BOY!” watching them head off to school.

Dear February 2011,  So long! Farewell! Happy to see you go! We can’t kick you out the door fast enough! Goodbye!…   wait, wait, wait, haven’t I written this exact post before?? Oh, yes, it turns out I have—at this same exact time last year. So, basically, ditto to just about every single thing in that entire post. Whoa. Can a life that feels as never-a-dull-moment-ish as this one truly be that mundanely cyclically pathetically predictable????? Can Seasonal Affective Disorder effect a whole family unit? All I know is that we are so done with February.

It started like this (how did I get such stereotypically boys’ boys???):

(don’t worry, they did not get hurt… they almost never do… knock on wood.)

And it ended like this (how did I get such a stereotypically girl’s girl???):

(don’t worry, we are currently reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter… hopefully that will give us some guidance on raising her?)

So, yeah, those two photos were two of our relatively nicer moments. And at least all the snow has melted. But just about everything else in between was blah and February funkish. Here is my Top Ten Things I Hated Most About The February Funk of 2011:

1. snow days gallore
2. wiping 3 – otherwise cute, but in February totally snot-covered – faces over and over and over and over again
3. constantly running out of Kleenex. constantly.
4. K & O’s growth spurts that always seem to collide with the dead of winter… thus cabin fever isn’t just cabin fever, it is Cabin-Fever-With-Constant-Incessant-Never-Ending-“Mommy-I’m-Hungry”’s from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed. I swear, when they see me, day or night, they immediately say “Mommy I’m hungry.” It is like a conditioned response. Pavlov’s dogs. I swear.
5. my obsession with the subject of “How Can I Fit In Exercise When I Can Barely Fit In Brushing My Teeth?” which seems to get profoundly worse in the deep dark icy days of winter when daylight hours are fleeting and work is at a fever pitch and hardy heavy meals and glasses of red wine are at their finest. I find myself dreaming of living in a place where we can ride our bikes and go for walks and swim outdoors year-round.
6. the gross sticky-sweet smell of the made-for-children liquid-form heavy-duty antibiotics, and the strange breathing sounds that come from the at-home pediatric nebulizer. need I say more?
7. the palest of pale skin on three of us; the driest of dry skin on two of us. nothing seems to help when it is deep into February. and to be honest, I’ve pretty much given up and am now just waiting for spring to fix it all.
8. laundry. of the heaviest, bulkiest kind. I cannot wait for the coming days of shorts and t-shirts and little size 3T sundresses. Yes, it gets dirty, and yes, they still go through at least a couple of changes of clothes on most days. But, you can fit a lot of that stuff into our washer and dryer. corduroys and sweaters and turtlenecks and snow-pants… not so much. the laundry is just overwhelmingly endless around here. I know I only have three, and I shouldn’t complain, but seriously, the laundry is just overwhelmingly endless around here.
9. twin boys age 6 = double the obnoxious inappropriate so-not-funny “potty talk” and the burping-farting-obnoxiousness that dominates this particular (6 year old boys) segment of the population. It is bad anytime… but I swear that the caged-in-cabin-fever-snow-days-shortened-daylight-days-of-February make it clinically, empirically, absolutely worse during this time of year. I don’t care how “normal” it is, I so do not find it funny.
10. snow days gallore. I know I already said that. which leads to number 10b: the constant mind-numbing sensation that my mind is going numb, which is totally mind-numbing. Call it what you will– ‘mommy brain’—or whatever (by the way, they say that “mommy brain” is not a factual reality, and that indeed women’s brains actually grow stronger – not weaker – upon becoming mothers), but speaking only for myself, personally, I swear my brain is mush. Mush I tell you!!! And by the end of the February Funk… it is even mushier mush. Yes, mushier mush. That’s how mushy it is. Just plain mush.

Good riddance February. Don’t come back any time too soon— you hear? We will gladly savor the eleven months between now and the next time you roll through. You may think you have toppled us…

…but oh how you have not!!!!!!!!!!!! You do not have us beat! We do not lay low for long! We are here and ready, eagerly chomping at the bit to take on that roaring lion of March! We’ll take the March Madness over the February Funk any day! Bring it on baby! Tomorrow is a new day!

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how fast our life was moving, and about how soon we were going to have to hit pause. Well, the time has come, and I’ve pulled the reigns way, way in baby. Unfortunately, of course, there is no way to actually hit the pause button on life (Lord knows I wish there was!), but I’m trying my darndest to do the next best thing.

I knew in my own mind that as soon as the Haiti Party was over our way-too-fast-pace was going to have to slow-way-waaaaaaaay-down. That (the Haiti Party) was the last “big thing” in a long stretch of “big things” on our calendar that spanned all the way from pre-Thanksgiving until now. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got a lot on the calendar for the coming weeks, but we’ve got a little stretch right here and right now of a slightly toned-down-version of our “normal.” And so, on Sunday morning, with all of us in a hazy-blur-of-happy-from-the-Haiti-Party, it began: Mama’s demand for nothingness. And when Mama demands, the other four J-Ms have no choice but to do as they are told. And what they were told, in not so many words, was this: “We are doing nothing. For as long as humanly possible. And then, even after we stop doing nothing, we are doing very, very little for as long as we can.” So, yesterday none of us got out of our pajamas the entire day. We slept last night in the same pajamas we had slept in the night before. We snuggled in bed for hours, we lazed around doing who-knows-what, we watched movies and made popcorn, we drank coffee (2 of us) and hot chocolate loaded with fluff (3 of us), we watched the birds at our birdfeeder, we ate whatever we could scavenge from the fridge, we did “nothing” (i.e., everything). Owen had a bad cold and was running a fever – which, in a strangely ironic way – only helped our plight: Owen sick is Owen slower (and the only way that he’s ever slower). His fever broke in the night and he woke up feeling like himself again (and while we were slightly taken aback to be dealing with him at full-throttle again so soon, we, of course, wouldn’t trade our super-charged boy for the world, and were happy to see him bounce back so quickly).

Today was another day at home. We left only to go out to lunch and to the grocery store. And it was another day with Mama at the reigns, pulling them way, way in, saying “whooooooa there. slow it down there. take it down a whole bunch of notches.” And so there were airports built in the playroom, and sword fights in the basement, and elaborate picnics made for dolls on the floor of the kitchen. There were shows performed, indoor-jump-roping-records-beat, and there was dancing to all sorts of genres of music. There was a “Fancy Nancy Fancy Tea Party” that lasted a good long while:

And there was Play-Doh for another good long while too:

And my goal for the next couple of weeks is to try to keep it right where its at here: slow and steady for as long as we can possibly sustain it. Because we’ve had a lot going on. For far too long. I’d like to try to use this “down time” to blog about some of the highlights of our past few months in the next few days. Things that have happened over the past slew of weeks that have kept us going at full-tilt for a far-too-long-stretch-of-time… such as…  our decision to move them, and the boys’ massive transition, from our old Waldorf school to our new Friends school; our decision to let go of our nanny for the past two years, Margie, and our re-acclimation to life without her; Meera’s start at her very own “school” (i.e. daycare) – so huge for her and for all five of us; and our purchase of a… get this… prepare yourself for the shock of it people (I, personally, am still in a state of utter shock over it): none other than, oh yes, believe it or not, a minivan. Oh, and believe me, there have been about a gazillion other things that have gone on, thrown in there, all betwixed and between the big-ticket-items of our past few months. And so, for the (hopefully) final phase of winter, my goal is to hunker down and try to reap the only real benefit I can see in the dead-of-winter-February-funk—  that is, the chance to be part of the stillness and dullness and lack-of-excitement-in-the-landscape, the opportunity to embrace the nothing-ness (but everything-ness) of it, and the challenge to try to hibernate in it a bit. And so I’ll be shooting for a fire in the fireplace (or two), a lamb stew (or two), more soft old quilts snuggled tight around five bodies in this house of ours, and a slower version of myself at the helm of this family.  This is our chance, and I don’t want to blow it. The chance to do nothing together. The chance to ‘hit pause’ as best we can – knowing that we can’t really hit pause, but knowing too that we can really savor where we’ve gotten ourselves to through this frenzy that has been our past few weeks.

Yesterday we hosted our fourth annual mid-year “Haiti Party” at our house. We’ve always had this party right before Christmas, but as all of our kids are getting older, and more involved in more activities, and making our family lives crazier-than-ever, a Christmas party was proving very difficult for families to be able to attend given their schedules (schedules that are even crazier during the holidays than the rest of the year). And so we decided that February would be better than Christmastime. It turned out to be nice to have something so fun to look forward to right in the midst of the depths of winter. We had a great day yesterday! In Kyle and Owen’s opinions it was the best “Haiti Party” yet. I think I might agree. This party is so special, and this group of friends of ours is so wonderful, that it is just impossible to try to articulate. I’ve tried in the past (you can check out past year’s posts by clicking here), so I’m not going to even try to again now. I’ll just say this: this group of kids – all of them; the Haitian kids and all of their siblings – have got to be one of the coolest, nicest, well-mannered, gorgeous, athletic, smiley, wild-and-off-the-walls-high-energy, polite, self-confident, talented groups of kids on the planet. I truly believe that. And their parents? I’ll just put it this way: they are raising these awesome kids… so they must be doing something incredibly right. All I know is that I’m inspired by being around them all (the kids and the parents alike), and I’m so proud to call them friends. Which is why we wasted no time taking pictures (because we were savoring every second of conversation), and ended up taking exactly four photos during the entire party. ?!?! So, I’m posting all four here.

Owen loves playing checkers. He learned the game a few months ago, and has become really, really good at it. The boys had today off from school (this weekend is a mini February break for them with no school on Friday or Monday), and during Meera’s nap Owen and I played two full games of checkers. I played my absolute hardest and used every strategy I know, but we were neck-and-neck the entire two games. The whole double-game-match lasted about two hours, with both of us in full-concentration the entire time, and neither of us getting up from our chairs even once. I beat him both times, but just barely. I could see him anticipating my moves, and plotting out his own strategy two or three moves ahead. I told him the truth: that if this is how it is to play checkers with him at age six, I can’t even imagine how it is going to be to play chess with him when he’s twelve. The kid is seriously, seriously smart.

On Saturday, February 12, 2011, Meera Grace got her first haircut ever.

I asked MorMor to do the honors of giving Meera her first trim. Growing up my mother always cut my hair. And to this day, nobody except me has ever cut Kyle or Owen’s hair. We take these things very seriously in our family! Meera’s haircut was a big deal… much more so for everyone else than for her… but still… a big deal! Kyle and Owen tried to capture all of it with their iPod cameras while Meera just happily and contentedly enjoyed a lollipop calm-cool-and-collected (in true Meera style) for her first trim. I was worried that the cute curly wave to Meera’s hair would be gone forever if/when we cut her hair. But I’m happy to report that that cute curly wave is still there.

MorMor was visiting all of last week. Which was great fun. And then she left. Which was greatly depressing. Having her come and go is always a mixed bag– it is always so exciting and wonderful when she comes, and it always throws off our routine and puts us off-kilter in a big way; it is always a huge help to have her here (she is sooooooo helpful), and it always makes us feel even more “on our own” when she leaves us again; it is always awesome to have her visit, and it is always good to get back to being “just us” too. It is all of that and more all wrapped up together. At the end of it all, though, it always takes me/us a few days to recover and bounce back after she’s left. And so, now, four days after her departure, I’m finally sitting down to blog about our week with her. Here is a random selection of some of the highlights of MorMor’s visit:

MorMor taught me needle felting! She brought all of her supplies and we spent almost all day Friday needle felting together while the boys were at school and Meera played. It was my first time needle felting and I absolutely loved it! At one point my mom and I looked over to find Meera totally mimicking our needle-felting-behavior. She had no idea what she was doing, or why she was doing it, but she was doing what she saw us doing— she had found a wooden shish-ka-bob stick and was “needle felting” with it and a pile of wool felt. I’m sure this is one of those moments where, really, ‘you just had to be there’… but it was so striking to see Meera mimicking us this way. So, for a while there, we were three generations needle felting together. My mom and I made three little needle felted toys for Meera that day. We made Meera, Meera’s lovey Bunny Bun (both made my mom), and Meera’s best friend Jewel (made by me). This little trio is Meera’s new favorite things to play with. She’s been playing with them every day since we made them for her.

My mom’s visit just happened to fall over the week before Valentines Day. Cue Hallelujah Chorus. THANK GOD she was here to help me get through that week-‘o-crafting with my twin-six-year-old-super-non-crafty-boys. Oh. My. Word. We had to get K & O to each make four different days worth of hand-made “Secret Pal” V-Day gifts for school, PLUS the Valentines for their classmates. Stuff like this is tough with a non-crafty kid…  double tough with two of them. Anyhoooo….. my mama was here to help and I love her for that. She even pulled out my sewing machine (which, by the way, only she knows how to operate, and which only comes out when she’s visiting) to help the boys whip up beautiful over-the-shoulder fabric bags for their Secret Pals. Amazing, I tell you! What would I have done without her???

For one thing, without her the V-Day bracelets for the kindergarten classmates would not have been possible. That’s FOR SURE. (we barely got through them even with her here). But in the end? We sure did pull off some nice V-Day gifts that the boys were very proud and happy to give away.

And a lot of more “normal” stuff happened while MorMor was here too. Like a Saturday playdate she got to witness with three of K & O’s friends. For a mid-playdate-break, they made Playdate Popcorn and drank Juicy Juice through crazy straws. I caught them doing “cheers” “just like a bunch of grown-ups” (their words, not mine), and luckily grabbed the camera just in time to snap this:

MorMor was also here for a weekend basketball game at Lehigh. It was a women’s game, and my goal was to try to get Meera to notice that girls can be basketball players too (not just cheerleaders). K & O just love basketball. Period. So it doesn’t matter to them whether the players are male or female. But the choice of a women’s game was very purposeful as far as I was concerned. I worked hard to do everything in my power to have it register with my daughter: GIRLS CAN PLAY BASKETBALL TOO. Look at the girls playing on the court, not just cheering on the side of it. But she barely took her eyes off the cheerleaders the entire time, seemed to not notice that females were on the actual court, and shook the pink (breast cancer awareness) pom-poms they were handing out that night with gusto, pretending –obviously— to be a cheerleader (they handed out pink basketballs too—and Meera got one—but she quickly asked me to “put it in my bag” so that she could focus her attention solely on those pom-poms). Toward the end of the game, when Meera said to me, “Mama, you paint my fingernails purple tomorrow, just like those girls” (pointing to the cheerleaders), I realized that none of my hard work was paying off and that she was entirely oblivious to the female basketball players despite my best efforts. Whatever. Luckily I had my mom there with me, who helps me laugh these things off. It is just a passing phase, right? My mom thinks NOT (and cannot get over that her daughter’s daughter is such a princess). But I’m still hopeful that Meera will eventually embrace more than just the cheerleading alone in the years to come.

MorFar was there for the ‘bookend’ days – the first day of MorMor’s visit, and the last day (he had a work trip in Pennsylvania that he was off at during her stay with us). But of course, while he was here, we made the most of it. And for his sake it is probably best to just take the bambinos in small doses anyway, because they make him do stuff like this when he’s around:

There were lots of other things too. Like a great dinner at Carrabbas (thanks MorMor!), some good mother-daughter bonding time, and lots of MorMor’s baked goods to keep her grandsons the happiest grandsons on earth. Oh! And the biggest highlight: MorMor gave Meera her first haircut!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was great to have her here. We all make the most of the situation, but we also just can’t help but wish we weren’t such a distance from MorMor and MorFar.

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Well, after over four years of having separate bedrooms, the boys are back together again – sharing the same bedroom that they shared as babies. Over four years ago we gave them separate rooms primarily as a last ditch desperate effort to try to get them to go to sleep at night (from the time they were about 18 months old until we separated them at 2.5 years old bedtime was like a crazy-sleepover-party-with-your-BFF… a.k.a. NIGHTMARE for us parents— blog post from when we made the big move to separate bedrooms found here [click!]). Separate bedrooms worked great for ending our bedtime battles. And there were many great aspects of having K & O each have their own space. However, for the past 2+ years they have been insisting on sleeping together every single night. Which, obviously, sort of defeats the whole point of separate bedrooms. At this point they are pretty great about going right to sleep, and even though it is still a nightly slumber party with their best friend, our bedtimes have been relatively painless for the past couple of years. And so, when they started talking about sharing a room again, it seemed to only make sense to go ahead and let them. And so, last week, we made the big move. A lot of movin’ and shakin’ (and one utterly exhausted mama who stayed up way too late way too many nights getting the move accomplished), but the result is very cute matching twin beds, two happy twin boys, and their original bedroom is once again their shared room. K & O continue to be closer than I believe any non-twin could ever imagine existing with another human being. While they are – for sure— each unique individuals with unique quirks, traits, strengths, weaknesses, and separate identities, they are also so enmeshed and entwined with each other that it is virtually impossible to wrap my mind around it. I know that all twins are interesting, but I truly believe that because of K & O’s early history they are especially twinny. If there were a rating scale of twins’ twinny-ness, I’m sure K & O would be way off the chart on the “super twinny” end of the spectrum. They still finish each other’s sentences, read each other’s minds, crack each other up for no reason comprehensible to anyone but the two of them, and insist on dressing in identical matching outfits whenever they can possibly manage to get away with it. They also drive each other nuts sometimes, tackle/wrestle each other like there is no tomorrow, defend each other like you wouldn’t believe, and have each other’s backs 24 x 7. When they aren’t making me a crazy person, they are incredibly fascinating to stand back and witness – they are Twins (with a captial “T”), in all their glory. And, like I’ve said many times before, twins are very, very interesting to raise.

MorMor is visiting! Yippeeeeeeeee! She’s here with us for a few days and we love it! Tonight MorMor joined us for K & O’s bedtime routine. The last piece of the nightly ritual involves us saying prayers together. We’re all there, gathered around the boys’ beds, the lights are off, all is peaceful and serene. We say our family prayer in unison, and then we’re all taking turns saying our individual prayers out loud. Hands are folded, heads are bowed, eyes are closed. Reverence all around. Then it is Owen’s turn to say his prayer. He is serious as can be and completely solemn — “Dear God, I really love my family. Thank you that my grandma is here with us visiting us in Pennsylvania. Her name is MorMor. She’s really old, but I like her like that. I saw a picture of her from when she was younger, when she was getting married, and she looked like she wasn’t even familiar. So, yeah, she’s really old but I like her old like that. Thank you God. Amen.” Kyle was nodding in deep agreement with his brother throughout his heartfelt prayer. Braydon, my mom, and I had all we could do to not burst out laughing. My mother, in fact, started cracking up at the first “I like her like that” and then could barely contain herself for the rest of the prayer. We said our goodnights, gave our kisses, and got out of there as fast as possible to fall apart laughing as soon as we were safely in the hall outside the boys’ bedroom. The funniest thing about this is that my mom looks like she is about half her age. What a hoot! And good thing we can all laugh about it!!!!!!!

As a result of the Lehigh Basketball games we’ve been going to, and the Michael Jordan IMAX film that we saw in Baltimore a couple weekends ago, our three bambinos are seriously inspired. For better or for worse, they see what they see and attempt to enact, re-enact, create, and re-create it. The details are important to them. K & O’s shorts must resemble the basketball uniforms as closely as possible (only certain sports’ shorts in their closet will do). Meera determines that her tutu bathing suit is the thing that she owns that most closely resembles an actual cheerleader’s uniform. The boys tuck their Lehigh shirts into their shorts now (just like the basketball players do). M insists that I put her hair in a high ponytail with big bow (“like a cheerleader!”). K & O want to do jump shots and lay ups and slam dunks (and I keep duck taping the plastic basketball hoop back together every time that they break it. they are thrilled with it every time it is re-fixed.). Meera desperately wants pom-poms (and I do the best I can – again with the duck tape – to make her some using old party streamers. she is thrilled with them). It is all so endearing and scary and cute and unnerving all at the same time.