To Handy Man on His Birthday

Handy Man was born on this day in 1971. Poor boy was the only brother smack dab in the middle of 4 sisters. I love when he tells the bathroom stories from his childhood – 7 people, 5 girls, 1 bathroom. Suffice to say he peed outside a lot.

Baby Handy Man, circa 1972

Still, he grew up to be the Handy Man we know and love. He is quirky and funny, can't sing a note to save his life, threatens to try out for American Idol every season, throws in an “ankle slap” every couple of moves when he dances (as soon as I figure out how to post You-Tube on here, he is in SO much trouble!), he flirts miserably with my friends (God bless him poor soul), became a Chicago Bears fan just for me, and works harder than any other man I know.


Handy Man and me, circa 1999, ages 27 and 23

He is totally devoted to those boybarians, even when they break his stuff and make messes all over the house. He designed, then built our dream home – outsourcing only the most necessary jobs, doing most of it himself. He is a brilliant designer and architect, good with both the concepts and the actual construction. He is funny and patient, affectionate and loving, and the best husband on the planet.


Handy Man and baby Trouble, circa 2004

Einstein and Picasso with Daddy, circa 2005

And it wouldn't be his birthday if his beautiful wife didn't do something to embarrass him publicly on the internet. I love you, Handy Man! Happy Birthday!



Yes. It really is a big Woody Woodpecker.

Whole Lotta' Lot of Two-Year-Olds

That's how many two-year olds were at my house this weekend – a whole lotta' lot. After 5 or 6, it all starts to get loud, fuzzy and a LOT of fun.

It's Handy Man's birthday tomorrow. The old man will be 36. 36! Feels strange because when I met him he was a muscle-y builder with calloused hands, and a major farmer's tan. He was 27, single and a total bachelor. He ordered pizza 6 nights a week. Such a guy thing to do. Now he's all cute, middle-aged and domesticated. Don't tell him I said that.

So, for the celebration of the birth of my most-favorite man on this planet we planned to go see the National Hot Air Balloon Classic. What a trip it is! There are somewhere between 60-75 hot air balloons that all take off at once; it's bright and beautiful and the boybarians love it. This year, we invited a bunch of friends to come along.

Now, turns out that our friends are good at makin' babies. They are so good at it, in fact, that some of 'em had 3 or 4 at a time. That's some quality baby-makin'! But it also multiplies the madness pretty quickly around here. It was so much fun, but not for the faint-of-heart. My friends Quadmom and McTriplet have 7 two-year-olds between them. Throw in a few extras, and it was a whole lotta lot of 'em. In total, we had 12 kids 7 and under.

One of the cutest things was seeing Einstein with our friend Dainty's five-year-old that we are calling “Princess Leia” (Gee, guess who thought of that one?!). Einstein asked me if they got married if Princess Leia would change her very cool last name to ours. I said they would have to sit down and talk long and hard about that one. Isn't she a beauty? Einstein just loves her.



Despite our best-laid plans, we arrived at the festival just as the balloons were launching. We still had a ton of fun, but have vowed to leave an hour earlier next year to celebrate Handy Man's 37th.

Come back tomorrow for my tribute to Handy Man on his birthday.

"All by mine self"

NICU moms are different. We just are. I think something chemically changes in our brains as we sit helplessly over a warming bed looking skeptically at what appears to be a cockpit of machines and buttons that hold our children's lives in their proverbial hands.

My NICU experience with Trouble made me both very appreciative of the lives of my loved ones, and well, probably a little crazy. Okay, probably a lot crazy.

We hear scary things from those neonatalogists; stuff that grown children may expect to hear from their aging parents' doctors, or stuff that nightmares are made of. But NICU parents hear very real, very frightening diagnoses from unfamiliar men in lab coats that have to do with things like our children's brains, gross motor skills, and their future cognitive ability.

As a result, we tend to get a little giddy when said children prove those "worst case scenarios" wrong.

So with that preface, I can safely tell you that I was giggling like a school girl when Trouble announced he was going to get dressed "all by mine self" and came out wearing this.




I am both so proud of him in spite of his miscalculations and a little slap-happy that he just doesn't care or notice how he's dressed. He puts his shoes on the wrong feet. Clearly he hasn't figured out the whole waist vs two leg openings on his pants, but he did it "all by mine self".

If you could see me, I'm beaming.

Narration?

One of the strongly recommended practices from my favorite homeschooling book, The Well-Trained Mind, is narration. Narration, for those of you outside the classical homeschool lingo circle, is basically just the act of the child telling back the story or lesson in his own words. Sounds simple, right? Ridiculously so, I thought. I mean you tell a kid a story and he tells it back. Ummmmm... How hard is that?

Well, try it with a 5-year old. Really, I dare ya'.

Turns out it's more complicated than one might think (way more so than I ever imagined!) and it takes practice to develop the ability to negotiate the main points from the pointless fillers (or, artistic flair?). I sooooo under-estimated both the skill and worth of something so seemingly simple! I also learned that I love concise brevity and neither I nor my firstborn are particularly good at being either concise or brief. ;)

My oldest was an over-narrator. When he retold the story, it was nearly identical to the original, including length. While one may think that was brilliant of him to recall such exact detail, it shows immaturity. Meaning, he couldn't judge what mattered. His original narrations were pages long. Pages! At 5. He has since learned to summarize some - thank goodness for me who furiously tried to keep up with his notoriously long run-ons (Joyce has got nothin' on this kid).

Picasso, at 5 1/2, is a brand new narrator. He still needs story prompts and questions to prod him along, but thankfully for my writing arm... he is a skip-around narrator. He tells only the most climactic part of the story, leaving out nearly everything else. It takes only a couple 'then what's' to direct him back on track.

So, today, for eventual comparison... here are their narrations. Einstein is narrating the medieval story of Beowulf. Picasso narrates the Anglo-Saxon invasion and the Dark Ages, post fall of the Western Roman Empire. The punctuation is mine, the words, theirs. We've come a long way, baby!

Picasso, 5 1/2 years:
"The Celts had battles with other Celts from Wales, Ireland and Scotland. They invited the Angles and the Saxons to come help them do battles. A lot of Angles and Saxons came to Britain. Then the Celts moved because so much people were coming - hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people! The Celts moved to Wales, Ireland and Scotland.
"The Anglo-Saxons did not have much books. They did not write out stories. They told their stories by telling them to people. They learned the stories.
"We call it Dark Ages. That means they don't have much books."

Einstein, 7 years:
"Once, the king built a room. One night a monster named Grendel came and ate sixteen soldiers. Then, a great fighter named Beowulf came to fight Grendel. He did not use any sharp swords to fight Grendel. Beowulf used his own hands to fight Grendel. When it was night, Grendel came. He broke down a door that was locked. Grendel tried to eat a soldier but Beowulf did not let him. Beowulf twisted Grendel's hand three times and it fell off. Then, Grendel ran away. The soldiers followed him and found out he was drowned. All of the soldiers were happy and they had a feast. The King gave gold armor to Beowulf."

We'll see where we are at the end of the year.

Oh, and note to self... discuss "much" vs. "many" with Picasso.

Almost 32 Years

That's how long I managed to avoid the whole Star Wars saga.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure Star Wars is fine theatrical entertainment. I just happened to be born into a mostly-girl family who did mostly girl things. Growing up there were no "boy toys" in my house. Yes, I have brothers - 3 actually - but I have one of those families that needs a flow chart, not a tree, to make any sense out of it. My brothers didn't grow up in my house. Their toys and their movie tastes stayed mostly at a distance. Oh, how God must've chuckled as he sent me boy after boy after boy in the delivery room.

So, I have managed to make it nearly through my thirty-second year without having to watch Star Wars. Just recently, I learned how to determine Star Wars from Star Trek. But in my mind, both were equally weird and boyish. Yesterday, after days weeks of talk of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Obiwan Kenobi, and the never-ending debate about "light saber" vs. "life saver"... I waved my little white flag. With 2 boybarians in my lap, another close at hand (giving play-by-play - a blog for another day!) and Handy Man on the couch next to me, I watched not one, but TWO Star Wars Movies.

I can now identify Han Solo (it's "Han" and not "Hans" - who knew?), Luke, Darth, and Yoda. I can say with certainty that her name is "Lay-a" not "Lee-a". Oh! And this (and I feel so betrayed...)... Did you know Darth Vader never actually says, "Luke I am your father!"??? I'm not kidding! The real quote is simply an emphasis on the word "I". "I am your father!" There's no "Luke" in the quote at all. For years, I've feigned Star Wars knowledge by saying. "Luke I am your father." That must be the barometer by which to judge the fakers (me, formerly) from the real watchers (me, now). So there. I watched it.

And ya know what? I still think it's weird and boyish.

Summer Lovin'... errr... Lovin' Summer.

So the blogging thing hasn't been the most dedicated thing I've ever done. I'm going to try and be better, in case anyone was actually looking forward to reading about the boybarians. (Hi, mom.)

Anyway. Einstein turned 7 back in May. And I look at him and I think, How in the world did that tiny thing I just gave birth to morph into a wizard-watching, light-saber-swinging, knows-more-geography-than-most-12th-graders, math-whiz of a 7-year old? Just how did I let that happen?. When I was 7, summer days lasted forever. Time... went... so... slowly. Now, my baby boy... my beloved first born son is a big kid. Just ask him.

Trouble also had a May birthday. Criminy, I've caught myself lying about his age. "He's 2 1/2," I lie. Sometimes, "Oh, he's 3." But I have to force myself to say, "He's 4!". Ugh. My baby is four.



We spent the month of June enjoying a respite from our studies and went art camp crazy. Picasso took an art class and at the end announced, "That was fun, Mom. I'm never doing it again." So much for braving the outside world. Shy, sweet Picasso.



To Einstein, on the other hand, art class is like a drug. More, must take more! And for a short time, my tired old van knew no other destination except the Art Center. He took a week-long intensive drawing and painting class, a 6-week clay class and another week-long intensive mixed-media class. He was in little boy heaven. All the mess-makin' a boy could want. Worth every penny; I had no mess to clean and all the cool projects to display.

We got to experience our first bonfire in June, too. What a fun family thing. We had so many pallets, boxes from moving and left-overs from the masons that we had acquired quite a big pile of wood, boxes and scraps. Handy Man made two huge piles and burned stuff for nearly 14 hours that day. I had to deliver food and drinks; his safety-minded self wouldn't leave the fire. At sundown, I brought out the lawn chairs and stuff for s'mores and we all sat around watching the last of our boxes and building scraps become the perfect thing for roasting marshmallows. Trouble, who just celebrated one year tube-free, was blissful. Picasso and Einstein just kept eating marshmallows. It was nice.

The house now looks more like a house. In June we had the stone put on. At the beginning of July we put down sod. And by "we", I mean not me. Though I made nice sandwiches, and served cold drinks with a smile.

Here are a few pics of our adventures. And dagnubbit... I'm determined to blog more. It's on my 'to do' list. Next time, I'll tell the "one about the rainbow". Remind me. It's a good one.