Category: family life

Posted in family life, musings

summer!

Posted on by kristinabean

Summer has finally hit us full force.

That’s right, we reached an official high of over 120 degrees this week. The worst few weeks of the year are here, until the monsoons come with some much-needed relief. Even nights are hot; the lows are technically in the 80s but most of the night is spent in the 90s, until just before dawn.

I am still biking to work and back, like an obstinate fool. I mean, I’m somewhat acclimated since I’ve been biking regularly as the temperatures have been climbing, but I can definitely feel the difference between 105 and 120. Even hell has different levels of heat, I suppose… around 100-105 I can still ride six miles without needing to carry water, but at 115-120 not only do I need water to drink, but also to pour over my head once or twice along the way.

For the kids, it’s similar. If they’re going to be outside, they need to be in the water. Water is the Southwestern equivalent of a snowsuit in winter in Michigan – essential for outdoor play! My husband has been taking the boys to the community pool most afternoons once I get home from work, we’ve been setting up the sprinkler in the back yard, and I lugged the kiddie pool out of the garage for the season as well. (The first time I put Aubade in it, her eyes opened wide for one second in complete surprise, and then her mouth opened even wider in a grin of pure delight. It was like she couldn’t imagine something so wonderful existed! Pools are good – but here was a pool she could move around in without needing to be held!) Splash pads are of course also nice, but honestly they’re only usable in the mornings at this point because of the sheer ferocity of the blazing afternoon sun.

(some rare pictures of my husband and me here, along with the kids!)

But still, we’re having a good time. It’s summer! My husband doesn’t have classes, we’re taking a family vacation in a week, Aubade is learning how to crawl and stand and climb and laughs more every day, and the boys keep on growing and learning and maturing in ways that never fail to amaze me. Despite the heat, I’m so thankful to be living here, with this job and this family and a new home to move into next month. We’ll survive the worst summer can throw at us and eventually the fall will come again.

Posted in family life

to my dad

Posted on by kristinabean

A father is important, a critical player in the development of a child, a power that influences lives for better or for worse. A good father is a precious thing. The gift of a great father can hardly be expressed.

Mine was one of the good ones. I’ll go so far as to say he was one of the great ones.

From my earliest memories, he was always willing to enter the world of our interests and activities, crowning them with the gift of his presence, of a companion in play or a fellow researcher in pursuit of some deeper understanding. He was – and still is – one of the best sounding boards I know for any idea, because he can think seriously and engage intelligently about almost any topic. He was – and still is – one of the best people to share something beautiful, profound, or exciting with because he will instantly seek to be and feel with you in the power of that emotion. 

As an example of the small everyday things he does that mean the world, just this week I was listening to Holst’s Planets suite and on the second time through found myself so swept away by Jupiter that I couldn’t focus on my work. So I sent my dad a quick text about how awesome it was, remembering that we’d seen it once together in concert – and he wrote back right away saying he was listening to it now too, and spent a few minutes analyzing the moods of the different planets with me. It’s not objectively a huge thing, but his eagerness to share in my interests, just because I’m his child, is one of the things I am most grateful for in life.

So Dad, I hope you have a wonderful Father’s Day! You are the best dad ever, in my admittedly biased opinion, and I’m so thankful for your encouragement and support through all the years of my life.

Posted in family life, musings

a bedtime routine

Posted on by kristinabean

Lights turn off for bedtime. The small flashlight flickers on but it’s not enough to play by, not enough to hide the scary shadows of a child’s imagination. I don’t stop to argue, don’t invite the protests, tonight. The baby is fed and warm in her daddy’s arms so I linger with the big boys, so tough and independent in the bright daytime light, all full of fears and doubts and unnamed dreads in the dark. I lie down on the bottom bunk and feel the lithe warm body of a little boy press against my back, strong and wiry and small and vulnerable in the drowsiness of just-before-sleep.

Softly, in the dark, I hear the gentle murmur of a snore, and I peek over my shoulder to see him lying there asleep, empty sippy cup tucked in against his elbow, Grandma’s handmade quilt pulled up over his belly, legs poking out the side with the knees up and the feet tucked under my hip. I sneak out of the room. I am eager to have some time with my own thoughts, to create, to be, without any demands or expectations on my time.

But there is still the food from dinner to be put away; the dishes are done but the food, too hot before, was waiting until after the bedtime rush, and as I scoop the leftovers into Tupperware, mindlessly, inefficiently, trying to read a book at the same time, I hear the baby crying, waking up for a last feed before settling into the deep sleep of nighttime.

I pick her up, lay her next to me on the bed, and she curls into me, little hands reaching for me, little feet tucking themselves into the curve of my belly, little mouth open and eager, little tear-stained eyes sleep-heavy and drooping closed. Her frantic energy lessens, breathing calmed, until at last I roll her back over to her crib. For a moment her whole body drapes across mine and I feel that soft cheek pressed up against me, the total trust and relentless love of an infant for their mother, and I’m the mother, and it hardly seems real, scarcely seems believable, like the whole crazy world is just too beautiful to be possible.

Most nights I stay here, worn out myself, caught up in the sweet beauty of the love a mother receives from sleepy children in need of snuggles and presence, unable to stop watching a baby or a toddler or a preschooler still and peaceful at long last, barely daring to breathe lest it all fall apart, amazed that such a life could be mine. But tonight I pull myself up. There are words to write, pictures to curate, cookies and milk to be eaten, and thoughts to be wrung out from ethereal unformed space to concrete actuality on the screen of my computer.

Posted in art, family life, links, quotes

lunarbaboon

Posted on by kristinabean

I have discovered a new favorite webcomic, Lunarbaboon. They seem to exist on the intersection of parenting, mental illness, and nerdiness, so I identify with and heartily enjoy almost all of them. One from January, titled “Enemy”, caught my attention as a particularly apt description of what it is like to be functional despite depression:

comiceveryday

The techniques taught in therapy are designed to help us ignore that inner enemy with more and more success – to make it harder for him to tear us apart each day. That’s why I’m so thankful for them, for the pills that give me the energy and positivity to keep fighting, and for the family and faith that give me a reason to fight and a hope for the future.

Posted in family life

blossoming creativity: Rondel at almost-four

Posted on by kristinabean

I have decided that Rondel’s current age (almost four) must be one of my favorites.

His energy levels are becoming more consistent even if he doesn’t nap; his clingy, angry, defiant moods are decreasing; his silliness is developing some sophistication; his conversation and presence are more often than not interesting and enjoyable; and, most of all, his imagination has exploded like a firework. This, I keep thinking, is how I imagined parenting a young child to be.

Pretty much anything can be a source of inspiration to him, but the books he reads have a large influence on his play. After reading The Magic School Bus In the Time of The Dinosaurs, he built a mother and baby Maiasaura (and deviated from the biological reality by having the baby nurse… what can I say, he’s used to mammalian norms 🙂 ). After reading The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body, he invented a game (the Body Game) where we move through the house between spaces that represent different parts of the human body – a blood vessel underneath a red blanket on the bunk bed, for instance, or the stomach under another blanket on the floor so we can have it mush us up like food. Then, of course, because he’s a three-year-old, we always have to end up getting pooped out into a potty with all the pillows and stuffies that are the “actual” poop.

Play that began as constructing a slide down the stairs with all the pillows from the beds turns into slides that bury people and then become mountains to climb back up. What started as the realization that Aubade’s crocheted blanket could be hooked onto the handle of the armoire door becomes a blanket bridge stretching from the armoire door (behind which is Grandma’s house) to the bedroom door, across which a monster truck carries our family from our house to Grandma’s house and back again, and into which is randomly stuck a bright orange toothbrush. Cups stacked up in the sink are rearranged to spray the water out in jets at various angles and the whole thing is proclaimed a volcano. Rondel bursting forth from beneath a blanket (after much preliminary rolling around) is also deemed the eruption of a volcano.

And every time we read Where the Wild Things Are, he has to have a monster at hand ready to read the story with us. Not wanting to shut down his imagination despite the onset of bedtime a few nights ago, I allowed him to build his monster to his complete satisfaction, helping him scour the house for the parts he needed.

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The folded front of the box is its mouth, and the links are legs connecting the feet (my shoes) to the head (the box). You can’t see, but inside the box more links are holding up a Slinky which is the digestive system of said monster 🙂 He was so proud of himself for designing and building it all by himself!

I absolutely love this creativity.

Posted in family life

a vignette

Posted on by kristinabean

On Saturday my parents-in-law watched the kids for a few hours so we could have some time to celebrate our anniversary, and they brought a few activities with them to occupy the time. One of the toys they had found was a wooden bowling set, with a small wooden ball about the size of an orange and six (I think) wooden pins with different color stripes around the neck.

After understanding how the game worked, and attempting to knock over the pins with the wooden ball a few times (without much success), Rondel set the wooden ball down on the table, walked over to the toy shelf, and came back with a basketball… not surprisingly, it worked much better!

Meanwhile, Limerick spent his time lining up the pins in perfectly straight rows, organized by the color of the stripe on each one.

Neither of my boys are “typical” kids, but they deviate from the norm in very different ways! As my in-laws put it, and as this one situation demonstrated, Rondel is an out-of-the-box thinker, while Limerick is an organizer and categorizer to his core. And I can’t imagine my life now without either one of their quirky personalities.

Posted in family life

being loved

Posted on by kristinabean

Tonight at dinner, to forestall the usual request to read a Magic School Bus book (good books, but we’ve been on serious repeat mode here and they’re still a bit over Limerick’s head so he gets left out), I brought down one of our children’s Bibles and read a few stories from there.

As we read the story of King Solomon, I asked the boys what they would ask for if God said He would give them anything they wanted. What would you want most?

Without hesitation, Rondel answered, “Mommy!”

And then, “And baby.”

To say I was touched would be an understatement. I am so blessed to be loved so much by my sweet boy – and especially when the depression is telling me that everyone would be better off if someone else was filling my place, it’s extremely validating to have such deep and unconditional love given to me.

Posted in family life, musings, quotes

parenting perspective

Posted on by kristinabean

There were two things about Mama. One is she always expected the best out of me. And the other is that then no matter what I did, whatever I came home with, she acted like it was the moon I had just hung up in the sky and plugged in all the stars. Like I was that good.

– The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver

This is the kind of parent I want to be.

It is so easy to fixate on the difficulties, the flaws, and the immaturity of one’s children – to be constantly thinking of how they need to grow and improve, or to be irritated by their boundary-testing, neediness, or even their boundless energy and silliness. At least, it is easy for me, sometimes, when I’m in my grumpy grownup or anxious mom modes! But there is so much more joy in parenting (and probably much more joy in my kids’ childhood) when I can see them in this way: as if they had hung up the moon and plugged in the stars.

There is so much good, so much beauty, in each of them, if only I choose to see it.

Posted in family life

fighting the terrible Jiboo

Posted on by kristinabean

“And what would you do
If you met a Jiboo?”

I’m reading Dr. Seuss’s Oh the Thinks You Can Think for our bedtime story, at Rondel’s request, and because the baby’s already sleeping instead of tiredly fussing in my lap, I’m letting the boys’ comments and questions slow the story down. I pause here to let them answer the question posed by the book, a dark shadowy creature standing on a moonlit street on the pages before us.

“I would knock it over!” Rondel proclaims.

“What if it is friendly?” I ask. “Do you think Jiboos are friendly or scary?”

Rondel looks at me uncertainly, pondering.

“Maybe if they are friendly they like playing games, so you can knock them over in a fun way,” I suggest.

“No, they don’t like games. They don’t like anything.” Rondel declares.

“What do they do?” I ask. “Do they chase people and gobble them up?”

He nods, solemnly (this isn’t our first time through the book… he’s decided Jiboos are man-eaters long before now).

“That’s scary!” I say. “I would run away and hide, then, if I saw a Jiboo.”

“I would take its head off so it couldn’t eat anyone!”

“Wow, you are so brave! You would be the hero, then – you would rescue everyone from being eaten by the Jiboo!”

“I am brave!” His shoulders lift a little – I can see the idea of being the brave hero, the defender of the weak, taking root in his mind; he is thinking about the goodness of force when used for justice and protection, though of course not in so many words.

I used to be uneasy discussing violence and physical force with the boys. Well, to be honest, I still am uncomfortable with it. I don’t want them to rely on violence to solve their problems or settle their disputes, and I definitely don’t want them glorifying brute force. But I do want them to grow up into men who intervene when a woman is harassed or objectified, who protect the weak, who stand up for the oppressed, who would be willing to lay down their lives for the innocent. So when they express courage in the service of others, even if it’s in very physical ways or just in their hypothetical imaginary worlds, I want to encourage that. We can dive into the nuances of non-violence as they get older and see that power comes in many forms. For now, they can fight the Jiboos to protect those who can’t fight for themselves.