Boy

Aug 14, 2013 By Sarah in Jolyon 6 Comments

No longer a baby. Not really. Once you can get up on your two sturdy legs and go places under your own steam, it’s a new phase. (Sniffle.) There’s empowerment happening in other arenas, too. Your sister hogs the train set and grudgingly gives you a single measly boxcar to play with? Bop her over the head with the railroad bridge! She pushes you off the cushion (or “squooshion,” in her charming parlance) she wants to lie on? Pull her hair! Because you are done being a passive infant. You are a boy with ideas of his own now. You are a playmate, not a plaything. Notice has been served.

This is new, too, this fierce face with manly shouting. I was struck by a sudden vision of Jolyon as a soccer captain commanding his defenders into position for a corner kick. I don’t mean to thrust either of my children into the realm of sport, believe me—I’ll be pleased as punch if my boy would rather be a musician or a thespian or a scientist and never feels a whiff of desire to pound a rival into the mud of the pitch—it’s just that I’ve played competitively myself and the likeness was unmistakable. But oh, he is still sweet and small, too. (And funny. Hello, tongue!)

The other night he reached for Ada’s hair, paused, fixed me with his roundest and most serious eyes, and deliberately shook his head no. He reached out again and gently stroked her curls. We praised his decision most enthusiastically, and Ada announced, “Jolly IS a good boy! That’s why we chose him.”

Thanks for choosing us, Pippin. I’ll walk anywhere with you. Although I’m going to miss this view enormously:

Island

Aug 4, 2013 By Sarah in Ada, Island, Jolyon, Outside 2 Comments

This one has island blood. He shrieked to be free of his carrier as soon as we scrambled down to the beach. I lowered him to the sand and he was off to explore.

This one needed some food before she was ready to brave the slippery seaweed and the chilly water. (In fact, there was a whole week that felt like an endless succession of meals punctuated by the declaration, “I’m STILL hungwy!”)

Jolly couldn’t be bothered with a bathing costume. In he went.

Oh, that island of mine. I’m never ready to leave. Ada, though, was missing her own home. Despite the beach, despite swimming in the lake, stalking deer with a gaggle of other little people, cooking out with friends, exclaiming over the cows every time we passed their fields, eating ice cream and watching the ferry churn away from the dock, staying up late for live music, and riding the patient horses at Plum Pond, my girl was asking to go home to Portland. It’s a little sad to know our deepest roots won’t be sunk in the same soil and that she may never love the island in her marrow the way I do. But there’s time for her to claim a second home as she grows. And I’m glad she loves the life we’ve made for her in the city.

I have a souvenir of this vacation: a finished sweater! I stuffed the ends I hadn’t woven in up the sleeves and made my husband pull the car over on the way to the ferry to take pictures before we left. Stay tuned…

Sand

Jul 22, 2013 By Sarah in Ada, Jolyon, Outside 1 Comment

On Friday we went to the coast. It was a harebrained idea, loading my back seat with people whose combined years number fewer than the hours they’d have to spend there. (You may wish to incorporate this newly formulated Law of Logic into your own vacation planning.) But the bit where we were actually in/on Cannon Beach was brilliant. The sea was cold but good for splashing. Ada taught everyone how to make sand angels. (You execute them tummy-down, then scuff your feet backwards to make the tails — sand angels have tails — when you stand up again.) Jolly shrieked and flapped at the kites other beachgoers were flying. Tufted puffins abounded. Seagulls ate part of our lunch, but left us the string cheese and the vegetable-fruit paste pouches we call num-nums. And we supplemented with muffins from the Sleepy Monk Café.

Ada’s nap went awry on the way home and we got mired in traffic, but we were saved from the ensuing ugliness by eight cement mixers and The Highwaymen. No one can stay surly in the face of heavy construction equipment and ’60s folk music. By the time we finally reached I-84, Ada was cheerful enough to sing along and replace lyrics with “slice of cheese!” at random, to everyone’s amusement.

All in all, a good day. And I’ll be even more thankful to have a co-pilot along when we all head north to Friday Harbor for family vacation.