Changing Peer Group: Sunday Snapshot

Abigail's peer group at her birthday party 3 years ago and her current peer group at her party today.  The composition has changed so much.

(Sunglasses were added to help protect the anonymity of the kids who do not belong to me.)

Living in a No-Grown-Up World

My ineffable thoughts have been churning away in my head, coming together over a few weeks into something more solid. Something more expressible.  Something more.  And throughout this process I contemplated if I would blog this and decided that there was a very good reason to do so.  At the end of every calendar year, I take all of the entries for the past year and have them published in a book.  A real, tangible, on-the-shelf book as a future gift to my children.  They will have stories of their childhood, documentation of things we have done together, proof that I was trying my hardest because who knows what will become of these intangible bits and bytes on the web.  And, with entries like this, they may have something to draw on if/when they are parents themselves.

The hard thing, the really damn difficult thing, is the loss of grownups in my world.  I have been a parent for five and a half years and at first there was a slight drop off in the number and types of activities to which I was invited. Then, after bringing Joseph home, a precipitous drop happened.  At first, I thought that people were just giving us space, but the invites to attend adult functions, both casual and formal, dried up. We are more than willing to hire baby-sitters and get some adult time with others, but the invites aren't there. When we try to initiate, we end up disappointed.  

We know a few wonderful families with kids and sometimes have the pleasure of hanging out together, adults and kids and chaos, and that does provide a modicum of adult time and some fun for us and the kids.  But this doesn't happen often.  And I still really miss the people I used to hang out with: the ones who don't have kids/ don't want kids/ whose kids have grown and I feel so isolated from.  Some very important relationships to me have atrophied in the presence of my kids.  I have put in efforts to revive them, but they are not met with what used to be.  It seems that People With Kids and People Without Kids are two non-overlapping circles of a Venn diagram.


I found this on the Web.  It seems mostly true for me.
I don't want them to remember me tired, but if they do,
and this is why, then that will be okay.

Quick Charleston Vacation

We lived in Mount Pleasant, SC for over a decade before Abigail entered our lives.  Then we moved to Virginia to be closer to family.  It has been 4 years since we lived in Mt. P,  and 3 years since we last visited.  We just returned from a wonderful little trip, Joseph's first to Charleston (which, if you didn't see, was Travel + Leisure's #1 Best City in the World, so I guess that we've seen all that the world has to offer, right?)

We were lucky enough to stay with some old family friends during our visit.  Joseph mourned them deeply tonight, crying buckets because he missed his new friends so much!

These two besties, waiting to get into the Aquarium.

Joseph LOVED the shark

Joseph took this pic of Lar and me.  

Shell hunting with Baba as the storm comes in

Good thing we moved:  Joseph HATES the heat and humidity!!

Abigail pet the sharks for so long that the worker at the petting tank
called downstairs for a shark tooth for Abigail to take home!

Our dear friend with two happy kids who love her!!

Abigail always wears a wet suit so her tan lines are amazing!

He wanted so badly to see a lighthouse.
It was his first time in the ocean.

At my favorite park in Mt. P

She kicked me hard right after this shot as she crash
landed, but it was worth it!

Seriously, the boy was a puddle for 4 days.

Splashing in the famous pineapple fountain

He put down quite a bit of sushi.  Then he named his new stuffed seal from the aquarium "Sushi."

Happy Match Day to Abigail, a girl without a horse

Our baby girl is outgrowing her love of horses, I think.  She used to be obsessed.  Every morning she would ask if it was a day that she would get to ride a horse, much like her little brother asks if he will get to drive a tractor every day.

But last summer, she made a wish on a star or candle or wish bone or clover or something.  A few days later, I asked her what she had wished for and she said "a horse of my own."  

About 8 months later, she said "I wish I never said out loud that I wished for a horse [last summer].  Now that wish will never come true."

So as we planned her Match Day fun, we offered to get her an hour-trail ride like we did the past 2 summers.  She demurred, saying she would rather spend the day with her bestie "A."  They went to a local jump-castle warehouse, went swimming, pelted each other with water balloons, shared lunch and dinner, and had a wonderful day.  Larry tried to explain to "A" what a match day was and Abigail was embarrassed, telling us later that she doesn't want her friends to know she used to live in an orphanage.  It opened the door for new dialogue about her past.

She is growing up so fast.  I love her more every day.  She is clever, funny, intelligent, loving, and more empathetic than her years would suggest her be capable of doing.


Photo Captions, top to bottom:
1.) Abigail with her match photo
2.) Joseph quickly jumped into the photo session, not wanting to be left out of anything that involves his best friend, role model, and center of his universe
3.)  Abigail and "A", drinking juice, making gators, and singing out loud to Katy, Miley, and a dozen others I never heard of, yet they both knew by heart!

Spring Break, Part 2

Our dear friend Seung Lan is visiting this week.  We are very excited to have her here.  She played a big role in our wedding over 10 years ago and was a reliable and close friend through our years living in Charleston. But 3 years ago we moved to Virginia and Seung Lan and her husband moved to Japan where they had a spunky, whip-smart, adorable little girl.  The past two days we have been doing DC tourist things: cherry blossoms, tidal basin walk, monuments, the mall, and 3 Smithsonian museums (American History, Natural History, and Air and Space). The weather has been overcast and drizzly, and we have been walking our butts off, but the girls are such good sports and seem to be having a blast!

Read the captions with the pics below for the full story of the past few days.
(And yes, we took Joseph to daycare.  Larry figured it would be easier to explain to him in years to come why he is not in any of the pictures than it would be do deal with him on the long, wet DC outings.)

Hanging out at TJ's memorial
(my absolute favorite)

Travelling many miles each day
by foot is much easier when you
can hitch rides on Mama's back.

Ditto that when you can ride together
on Baba

Getting psyched to climb all those
steps to see Ol' Abraham.

The crowds, which were the worst we have ever seen in DC, kept me
a safe distance from Lincoln.  Abigail took my camera and
disappeared into the crowd and came back with this awesome shot!

Ready to check out the WWII memorial

Over 2 hours of walking, my "starving" child manages a smile
at the Korean War Memorial.

They found reserves of energy buried deep within themselves
and just kept going and going and going

(Except when the 3 year old passed out
for a quick nap on beautiful
Seung Lan's back)

3 Museums in 1 Day
Favorites: Early Transportation (and Abigail
realized the wagon that Laura Ingalls
wrote about- not the red Radio Flyer that
Abigail uses and  had pictured making
its way across the prairie),
First Lady Dresses, Mammals,
Hope Diamond, and Aircraft Carrier

Much to our amusement, the girls also spent
a lot of battery life taking pictures of
each other taking pictures!!

Cheese!

Junior Kindergarten "Graduation"

Abigail "graduated" from Junior Kindergarten today.  What I loved about the program was that they didn't pretend that it was something that it wasn't.  They didn't dress the kids up in gowns and cardboard hats and parade them around to Pomp and Circumstance.  The teacher said some wonderful things about "returning" the kids to us, a few pounds heavier, a few  inches taller, with a few letters and sounds in their minds and a few more social skills in their repertoire.  It made more than half of the room of parents and relatives tear up at least a little. It was very sweet, nostalgia-inducing stuff.

Then the kids sang some songs about things they learned ("I can sing and I can paint; I know to say not instead of ain't" and "I'm ready to learn to read and write; I learned to share and not to fight!").  Adorable!!

Abigail and her best friend, singing together
We hope they stay friends for 13 more years: the other girl
is SUCH a good kid and we love her so much!!!

One song that they sang was apparently a big secret (they were instructed not to practice it at home) called "The World Is A Rainbow" with some wonderful lyrics for children about acceptance and love.  ("Now you be you, and I'll be me; that's the way we're meant to be... The world is beautiful when we live in harmony.")  Super sweet, innocent, child-stuff and I got to live blissfully in that virtuous, wholesome world again for 30 or 40 minutes this evening.