A Message to Me

This past Saturday evening, at the end of a wonderful day, I was at a One Love concert at the Lancaster Metaphysical Chapel. For the last song/chant, everyone was asked to get up and form a circle around the room. I could tell they would be asking us to hold hands. The kids and I didn't know anyone else there. We had seen one familiar face earlier, but she was gone now. As we formed a circle, my thoughts were centered around isolating the kids, keeping them safe from strangers, and calming any anxiety they may be feeling. They have each had typical kid reactions to strangers in the past, and I expected hesitation in being asked to hold a stranger's hand. I was leading them to the edge of the room, with my daughter A (10 years old) behind me and my son J (13 years old) next to her. I obviously couldn't isolate both of them and wasn't sure where I would be best positioned. As we walked I realized I had the band's "lyrics sheet" in my hand. Instead of just setting it down or folding it into my pocket, I jokingly handed it to A to deal with. She similarly passed it along to J. But he got defensive and started bickering with his sister. That would be a huge distraction and potentially ruin the moment, so I stepped between them, took the sheet of paper back and put it in my pocket, and isolated them from each other.

At this point, it was time to close the circle and join hands. My trepidation concerning their reactions returned, and I realized now that I wasn't blocking either of them from a stranger - they each would have to hold hands with a stranger. As I looked to my left at J, he was looking to his left and holding out his hand to the older lady standing next to him. Awesome, no need for concern at all! When I looked to my right, A was already holding hands with the lady next to her. Wow! So I took my position confidently and proudly between my kids and held their hands.

The song was a version of the Gayatri Mantra. There were some spoken/chanted phrases in Hindi/Sanskrit that we weren't to worry about responding to or chanting with (this was a Kirtan concert). But a large section of this song was a chorus of the word "Hallelujah" repeated, which everyone sang along with.

As we sang Hallelujah, I closed my eyes and relished the moment. I was standing between my kids holding their hands as everyone sang. It was exactly where I should have been. I shouldn't have been on the edge to protect one of them after all - but right between them so we could share this moment. Never in a hundred years would I have opted for this arrangement, however. Without the distracting scuffle over the lyrics sheet, I would surely have been to one side. But it was time for me to experience this feeling, and so the Universe made sure I was able to.

"The next message is where you are when you hear the next message. Whenever you're ready you'll hear the next message.... Always there. Question is: Can you see it?" -- Ram Dass (in Be Here Now)

No more training wheels?

Now that the littlest child has her first real bike, her cries of "I wanna ride my bike" echo through the house every evening and weekend. As such, we've been heading out around the block much more often again (after seemingly taking all of last summer off). But of course now Jake is big enough that he shouldn't need training wheels at all, but watching him ride, he still relies on them. I raised them up, but he would just drop the bike onto one wheel or the other and go down the street -- no concerns for balance (or the noise!) and just merrily relying on the extra wheel.

So we decided that was enough of that and he should be going without training wheels. He's taken to swimming like a little fish (piano lessons too) because he wants to do it. And these past 7 years with him have shown me that whenever he's ready to do something, he just does it. If he's not ready, it's a lot of yelling and pouting and crying and a general uphill battle until we give up, and he decides a month later that he's ready for whatever it was. This is how taking off the training wheels is going. He's afraid to fall, but won't try in the grass because it's too hard to pedal. When you're walking next to him, he just leans against you. I was convinced there was a problem with his bike until I got on it and pedaled around a bit (it's fine). The boy just leans side to side.

After an hour of explaining how the pedals go around in circles and you can't just push downwards, but need to make them go around, and also that nobody can balance on a bike while it's standing still; that it's easier the faster you go, we finally got out on the street. He was so worried about staying near the edge (as is the regular rule when going around the block) that he kept running up into the grass or else panic braking as he'd drift into the street. It wasn't a busy evening, so I convinced him to ignore those rules for now, that I'll watch for cars. Finally he did get going with me jogging along side. I still had to rebalance him several times while going, but at the top level he's finally getting it. He still needs help starting, and stopping, and turning, and balancing. But at least he was out there on two wheels with no support!

I expect he'll progress quickly from here - but it's all up to him.

A good day for the kids

As my wife picked up our daughter from school yesterday, the Headmaster (Headmistress??) pulled them aside for a moment to show off what happened today. She showed our daughter a couple flash cards of short words with short vowel sounds (beginner reading words like CAT, MAT, BAT) and Audrey actually read them! Then they set out a string of words to make a sentence: SAM IS A MAN. And she read it. We worked some more after dinner last night writing more of those short beginner words and she was doing really, really well. Sounding things out properly, though not quite squishing the sounds together efficiently yet. Of course, her brother was constantly hinting as well, so sometimes it was hard to tell where her attention lies. Still, I'm impressed - at just over 4 years old she's picking this up very well!

Every morning at the breakfast table while I referee the kids, I'll read the morning paper over my cereal. On the weekends, I do the puzzles - Sudoku on Saturday, and Kakuro, Sudoku, and a crossword on Sunday. Of course the weekday papers have Sudoku as well, but they range from Very Easy on Mondy through Medium on Friday - the weekends are the only days with Hard puzzles. So every morning recently when I get to the end section, the kids are watching alertly for the number grid and then point out the difficulty and gauge how fast I could solve it. Yesterday, Jacob asked if he could start doing the easy ones. This morning's paper had a Medium puzzle, but Monday's paper was still in the recycling bin. I pulled it out and folded the paper up so he could work the puzzle. I told him the rules and started him off with a couple obvious entries. Then I jumped in the shower to return to a completed puzzle, but a mildly disappointed boy. Seems that towards the end he transposed a 6 and 7, throwing off two other numbers. He was frustrated because "there needs to be a 9 in this box, but this 9 is blocking it." But considering he worked through 90% of it alone and only goofed a bit at the end, I'm pretty impressed. He won't settle for the slow pace, but I'm planning on letting him do the Monday puzzles for a couple weeks before moving him up to Easy. I'm sure he thinks he's ready for Medium tomorrow, but I'm very proud of how well he did today!

One tooth down!

My boy lost his first baby tooth today! Exciting times! Of course, today is school picture day, and I thought for sure it would have come out yesterday so his first grade picture would have a gap right in front.
He was just watching some after school TV before dinner and suddenly yells, "it's out!" He's a bit upset by the experience with wonderful quotes like "I don't feel like me anymore" and "I want it back in". He didn't like the blood at all, but he's got a nice big gap for the big-boy tooth to come in.

If you give a pig a pancake...

This is just too funny, and I had so share.

My son had to write lists of 2, 3 and 4 letter words for kindergarten. They send everything home, so we were going over the words, and some of which weren't words. Some were spelled phonetically like "EAGL" for Eagle, so pretty much everything was close to a word. But at the bottom of the two-letter column he had "LL". We asked what that was, and he responded, "When you give a pig a pancake...." But then I started laughing out loud, and everyone else was all smiles too. We never found out the end of that. When we asked later, he just grinned and said he didn't know. Just one of those great childhood moments!

[after 2 seconds of googling, I see there is a real book called If You Give A Pig a Pancake, so we'll have to see if "LL" shows up anywhere]

First day of kindergarten

We've done a couple orientation sessions, but this is the first real full day of school for Jake. I walked him down to the bus stop this morning (a first for me too!) and finally his #3 bus showed up and took him away.

Now I can't wait for this afternoon to go down and pick him up and hear all about his day!