Hi Mom,

It sucks that we didn't get to chat today. I really just wanted to cozy up with you on the phone and shoot the shit. What also sucks is that Simon didn't end up with pink eye after all. Instead it turned out much worse. He had a metal splinter lodged in his eyeball which I suppose he may have gotten from diving into piles of leaves with his neighborhood buddy yesterday. I really love our pediatrician and I appreciated that she tried to maintain a calm façade while she rushed us into an appointment with a specialist (Right Away!). So we were off to the children's eye clinic at the hospital where they were not able to remove the entire splinter despite repeated attempts with miniscule kitchen tools. Tess meanwhile arched her back and screamed 'Me! Me! Me!' because she was so pissed off that she wasn't getting her eyes flushed with stinging liquids and concentrated flashlights. We finally did have lunch (lollypops and gum in the elevator) which made us all feel better. And then we filled prescriptions for doll house sized bottles of eye drops to help the remaining particles of metal and rust (!!!!!!) slide out of Simon's eye 'naturally'. He may be left with some minor eye scaring but it won't affect his vision.

So we were not here when you tried to call back. Now Simon is watching Dragon Tales with one huge pupil and one small one which will make his scary Halloween costume complete. Too bad for him he missed his school's harvest party today and my house never got cleaned up. But oh well. Sammy has mapped out our trick-or-treating strategy for this evening. He's going to be a skeleton. Simon is going to wear the same stretchy purple full-body leotard he wears everyday except that he wants me to make his hair into a Mohawk. We are still up in the air with Tess' costume. Maybe the baby Spiderman outfit will make yet another round in the neighborhood (4 years and still slowly unraveling). Tess does have some flubberish neon boogers which will add a certain horror house flavor to her costume, whatever it may be.

You can try and catch me tomorrow but we have more doctor appointments (Tess' 18 month well child and Simon back to the eye doctor for possible prodding). I miss you so much and I love you. Hugs and Kisses to you and John.

XXXOOOXXOOXO,

Helen

ps - Have you guys read Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon? I want to send you a copy if you have not. Tanya recommended it to me and I have been happily escaping my funk and my family. Tess attempts to distract me by laying down with her head in the middle of my open book and saying "Hi!"

I’m in a funk. Not only an anti-blog funk, but also a general all-around-no-good-whiny funk. I’m tired and my body is ready for bed by lunch. My sense of humor just stays in bed all day. I’m cold no matter what I am wearing. My kids are developing coughs. Tess can climb up the stools and get onto the kitchen counter.

Is it natural hibernation mode with the change of season? Am I anemic? Dehydrated by drinking my body weight in coffee everyday? Or just worn out by the antics of my crazy household?

I see loveliness everywhere and I feel happy and content with life just incredibly unmotivated to do anything. There is so much to write about and the longer I don’t blog the more the snapshots and the observations pile up behind me. As this swell of ignored updates shoves me closer to the computer, my heels dig in and I resist. Even now I am cringing.

We did have a wonderful trip to Orcas Island this past weekend and yesterday I took a long walk at Tryon State Park with Simon and Tess. We made gingerbread cookies with the dough I found in the freezer. Then Tess stood in the shower trying to catch the rivulets of water running over her belly for about an hour. After soccer practice we stopped at the store for pumpkins and I got some iron supplements.

Oh Sammy, my sweet.

Were you really once a tiny baby in my arms? My first little one. A snuggly boy with a smile every morning, who learned to laugh first and has not stopped since.
 

You are so old to me now. The long days when it was me and you alone together, those days are gone. Our relationship has changed now that your brother and sister are here. We don’t get enough time alone together anymore, me and you. But we still have our talks during bath time while you lay on your back in the steamy water and I sit on the side of the tub with my feet in the warmth.

You are so independent and yet still so young. You take care of all your school needs. You know your soccer schedule. You remember everything, even things I forget. Sometimes we joke that you are my second brain. We think very much the same.

But at night you still sometimes need me to hold you while you cry. You worry a lot about what life has to hold. You love life, family, and friends so intensely that you are scared of what might happen. Change worries you.

You have changed my life, Sammy. Thank you for being my sunshine, my band aid fetcher, my nuzzler, my book reader, my questioner, my singer, my joker. You make me happy every day. I am so lucky I get to be your mom.

Will you ever tell me what it is you wished for on your birthday? It was an extensive wish. You waited a good long time before blowing your candles out.

Last night was so lovely in the candle and firelight. We had a blessing way for Tanya’s baby (coming on Thursday!!). I loved seeing Tanya’s pregnant belly circled by the women in her life. I loved especially hearing how full Tanya’s mind is with her daughters' processes around the birth, and her own anticipation, and how Jerry is coping, and some of the sadness that naturally comes with all of those bundles of thoughts. There was so much life and love and experience and support in that room for Tanya. I hope she leans on all of us if she needs to.

I have been thinking a lot about Tanya’s baby. I am really excited to meet this new little fellow. I made him a quilt. I made up the piecing pattern myself. It is supposed to mimic the gradation of spiky greens that you find in fields and forests.

When Emily graduated from high school my mom and I made her a quilt. It was great fun to make a quilt together for her. We wrote wishes for Emily on little scraps of cloth and sewed them in-between the layers, so Emily would be surrounded by our wishes for her and somehow absorb them into her life as she grew into a woman. Some of them were poetically silly and I remember giggling gleefully with my mom. I have embedded wishes in every quilt I have made since then. So I thought a lot about Tanya’s baby and what I wished for him. And they are only the best sort of strong wishes.

A busy weekend here. Two birthday parties and two soccer games. Fun, fun.

The game on Saturday was so beautiful in the warm fall sun while Tess snuck crackers out of another family’s lunch bag and Simon threw extra balls into the field when he thought nobody was looking.

The game on Sunday was in the cold and pouring rain. There was mass confusion about which field we were going to play on. We were all circling around in a choreographed minivan dance, with our windows rolled down, calling to each other and pointing around in bewilderment. But in the end we all found the muddy field on a hill and huddled under umbrellas while eating pretzels.

I love it when Sammy plays soccer. He is like poetry in motion. I am so incredibly untalented when it comes to sports with... well, I was going to say sports with balls but truth be told I just suck at all sports. But not Sammy. His has such graceful focus and natural command over the ball. I could watch him for hours.

Also this weekend, we made some Halloween decorations for our front door. White handed, googly eyed ghosts. Maybe later we’ll make some cardboard tube bats.

Halloween is so much fun. I want to dress Tess up like a marionette, with strings attached to her and I can be the puppeteer holding the cross section of strings. But I think she’d hate being tied up seeing as how she even refuses to wear overalls because of the way the buckles feel too tight. Maybe I’ll give the puppet idea a try and see if it is a go.

I tried to get our family and the neighbor’s family to all dress up as yellow pencils together (we’d be 9 pencils) but we can’t talk the kids into being something clever. They just want to be scary. And they don’t think bags of spinach are technically scary like I do. Nope. Clever is out. Plastic crap is in. Woe is me.