Slow down.

Aaron is growing up. I dropped by this afternoon just as he was waking up (slowly, oh so slowly) from a nap and he was “g’barrassed” to be seen sleepy, “g’barrassed” to be seen half-dressed. His mother gently reminded him that I’ve seen him naked many times, changed many diapers, but he hid until he was awake and dressed, and only then did he want to play. This is the little boy who just a few months ago ran into the living room naked as the day he was born and presented his exposed little self to Bernd, proclaiming that nakedness was “the secret of Santa!” He’s five. I forget he’s five. I don’t always want him to be five, bright and loving five-year-old though he is. Sometimes, I still want him to be three.

Dispatches from the Big Person Who Carries Everything.

We fell in a pond. For real. We’ve ‘fallen’ into ponds up to our kneecaps before, but this time we topple-crash-plunged into one. I was balancing on the bank and Aaron had his arms coiled around my leg so that he could lean out over the water… and he leaned too far. Before I knew what had happened, I was lying on my back in water up to my chin, my arms somehow already hoisting Aaron (who had been totally submerged) out without any conscious instruction from my brain. No harm done, but we were unbelievably muddy. He was really mad at me at first, forgetting that it was his lunge that landed us in the water. I apologized and his anger wore off in minutes. By the time we walked back home, he was laughing and saying, “I didn’t g’spect that to happen!” Our quest for dry clothes was thwarted by the discovery that the garage door opener, which had been in my pocket, no longer worked—we were locked out. We called my brother from the neighbor’s house and he brought me dry clothes and somehow managed to fix the garage door opener (I had tried airing out the battery and replacing it, but that garage door opener required a man’s attention, apparently, since he did the same thing I had done and it worked). We hosed off most of the mud and then Aaron took a long bubble bath and we played sharks and pirates. After awhile, the blue plastic shark (voice by Sarah, a monotone modeled after Martin the Martian) decided he wanted to gobble up Aaron’s feet instead of Duplo pirates. This was very funny. “Pirates! Yuck. Pirates taste like Tupperware. Urgh. But you! You taste like all the yummy things you ate today… like Mac n’ Cheese. And Cocoa Puffs. And strawberry popsicles.”

Did you know a blue whale is longer than a tennis court?




At some point, I stopped being The Little Person Who Does Everything and became The Big Person Who Carries Everything instead. Aaron and I ran around in the sun all day and my big purse dragged with Juicy Juice boxes, garage door openers, fresh size 3T Iron Man underpants, Ritz crackers and Cheerios in small baggies, Aveeno Baby sunscreen, library books, AND irregular leaves, seed pods, Queen Anne’s Lace heads, stand-out rocks, rusty nails picked up on the playground by Aaron The Living/Breathing Metal Detector. I came home to find a willow twig stuffed in the back pocket of my jean shorts, and I sure didn’t plant that there. I don’t mind, exactly, but it makes me feel old every time Aaron presses something into my hands and says “You carry it!” before he runs off to do something more fun that requires two hands and a light, free body.

Aaron and I tore around all day in the heat. We went to the park, stalked bullfrogs, experimented with ants’ food preferences (honey, berries, Juicy Juice, fruit snacks), ate pudding popsicles (ohmygod, how have I never eaten one of these before today?), pressed oak leaves, ‘planted’ a row of dry-roasted sunflower seeds (I observed that Aaron shouldn’t be too hopeful for bold yellow sunflowers on his return from California next weekend…), and then we struck out for tae-kwon-do, Aaron in his immaculate white robes sitting in his little red wagon. Tae-kwon-do was priceless as far as entertainment goes. Aaron is the littlest of the lot, and the least coordinated. Every other kick and chop sent him tumbling to the (generously padded) floor, and he would grin and leap to his feet. When the other kids stood stoically with impeccable posture, Aaron bounced around on the balls of his feet and gazed inquiringly up at the ceiling tiles. He told me the little colored stripes on his white belt stand for “tegrity, severence, and self control!” Tegrity and severence really do go a long way in this life.

He also dug everything out of my purse (I reminded him never to go through a woman's purse until he had at LEAST run a few blocks away) and disassembled a tampon before I knew what he was up to. He was very curious about it, but I said it was a "girl thing, you know, like lipstick." "Boys like lipstick. Kissy, kissy." "Okay, just a girl thing like nylons, you know, 'funny legs.'" But of course, he likes 'funny legs,' too. Whenever I wear colorful tights, he can't keep from plucking at the fabric!

He totally didn’t want me to go home. He kept grabbing my hands and saying, “Sarah, you forgot something here the last time you were here, so we have to go look for it” (I hadn’t forgotten anything) and “Sarah, I have to show you this!” and “Sarah, I have to take a photograph of you, because I’m going to California and you’re not!” so I made a silly face and he snapped his photograph. I adore him. I wish he were mine. The rest of the world can be positively demented at times, but he is perfect, always, even when wetting his pants and spilling tall glasses of milk and begging non-stop for Bazooka bubble gum. At this easy age, he still plunks himself down in my lap and fashions himself blond mustaches out of locks of my long hair and shouts “Sarah! Sarah! Sarah! Banana-fana…rana…farah!” when I show up on his doorstep, and his arms are still too short for him to tickle back effectively.

Then I would bring an ax, no books.

1) Chickadees are eating our house. Yes, for real.

2) Babysat Aaron yesterday afternoon and evening. It rained non-stop, so we made up our own board games. CandyLandUnoPickUpSticksLife, anybody? We also built a terrific matchbox car race track that eventually consumed most of the basement. Aaron chattered away happily most of the day, but once went quiet for several minutes and then said very (very, very, very) seriously, “Sarah… do you ever hang out with other boys?” I was impressed it even occurred to him to ask, since preschoolers aren’t famous for their ability to look beyond themselves!

3) Oh, and I mentioned this to my mom the other day and she couldn’t stop laughing: When I was younger—11, 12—I used to wear an underwire bra 24/7, even and especially while sleeping. I was totally flat, but I was hopeful. I remember thinking, “If my boobs ‘come in’ overnight and I’m not wearing the right bra, my breasts will be weird-shaped for life!” because I would see old women with sagging breasts and not think, “They’ve probably nursed a lot of children and cleaned a lot of plates,” but “They must not have had the right bras way back when they were little girls!”

This is a happy place. Happy thoughts.

Visited Aaron last night. He proudly showed off his T-ball trophy. I congratulated him and then said, in a silly voice, “But what is T-ball? Is that the one with the net where you spike the big, white ball…?” “NOOOOO.” “Is it the one with the really heavy ball that you try to knock down pins with?” “NOOOOO.” “Oh! Is that the one where you hit the ball with a bat and run around?” “YES!” “After you hit the ball, where do you go?” I asked, expecting "around" or "home plate." Aaron exclaimed happily, “THE TROPHY STORE!”

Listen... if it weren't a friendly call... you probably wouldn't have gotten it.

Today was eleven hours of babysitting a busy four-year-old, most of it dashing around in the sun. I came home at 7:00 happy, and covered—no, really, covered—in scrapes (I cut up my knee nicely on the playground, diving to catch Aaron), sunburns, grass stains, chalk dust, sticky soap bubbles, and mud.


Here's what we did to earn those stripes...

- We assembled a jumbo jigsaw puzzle of the Solar System… Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. No Pluto. This blew my mind a little. (Great, the “my very educated mother just served us nice pizzas” mnemonic device is obsolete.)

- Aaron kept grabbing a bunch of partially deflated birthday balloons and shouting, “Up: Coming soon to a theater near you!” XD.

- Aaron piled into his little red wagon and we went to the Wagen Waschen place to sit on a little green hill, eat gummy worms, and watch car washes in progress.

- We went hunting for a new mysterious park (the stuff of Fountain of Youth and Northwest Passage lore) with no luck. Aaron grew pretty frustrated after awhile so I said cheerily, “Let’s play ‘I Spy’ while we’re looking. What should we try to spot?” Aaron looked at me like I had lead for brains and exclaimed, “The PARK!”

- Lead for brains or Lifesavers for brains. Aaron called me a Lifesaver…brain…head several times. I’ll try not to take that too personally.

- We spent about an hour up to our knees in the creek catching frogs. Muddy, muddy, muddy.

- Come naptime, I couldn’t for the life of me persuade Aaron to lie down for even one minute. He was obviously tired and verging on a major meltdown, so I strapped him in his stroller and took him for the longest walk ever. He fell asleep within minutes and I kept walking until he woke up 45 minutes later because I was afraid he’d wake up if I stopped moving.

- We busted out sidewalk chalk and bubbles at three and those kept us happily occupied until his parents came home at 6:30. We drew sidewalk rainbows, fish, sharks, Nemos, Wall-Es, Eves, Lightning McQueens, Titanics, Bad Icebergs, Big Dippers, Broken Wrists (not my idea!), centipedes, and aardvarks (because ‘aardvark’ starts like ‘Aaron’).



Really, a beautiful day all around. I felt very lucky to spend most of it outside and active, in the company of a little person who proclaimed almost everything we encountered ‘G’MAZING!’ XD.

Wait, Sarah!

Forgot to mention this gem last night. So it took hours for me to convince Aaron to stay in his little bed last night, and just when I thought he'd fallen asleep, he poked his head around the corner. I said, "Aaron, I'll snuggle with you but you HAVE to be in bed first, okay?" and he said, "Wait, Sarah! I have to tell you about Baby Jesus!"

This kid just kills me. How can I send him to bed when it's four days till Christmas and he wants to talk about Baby Jesus?

Keeping up with the three-year-old busy body.

Yesterday, I worked six-and-a-half hours and babysat six-and-a-half hours and had a very small taste of what it might be like to be a working mom… for twelve hours. I hope one inherits a wealth of energy, etc., somewhere along the path to motherhood, because I came home one tired 21-year-old.

We...
- Looked for “Lightning McQueen lookalikes” (that is, snazzy red sports cars).
- Constructed a terrific fort out of pillows, blankets, and cushions.
- Drew sidewalk rainbows out of chalk.
- Read lots of books about trucks and airplanes.
- Walked twice around the subdivision – well, I walked and Aaron sat in his little red wagon and took great pleasure in dropping things out of it so that I had to stop and gather them up.
- Pretended to be asleep so that Aaron could leap out from under the bed and scare me. He did manage to surprise me the last time—by dumping an entire cup of ice-water on me!
- Reenacted, in great detail, that one scene from Monster’s Inc. where the monster comes back to the factory with a child’s sock on his shoulder…
- Turned me off hot dogs forever, as if The Jungle had not already done the job properly. A.B.C. hot dogs are far grosser than hot dogs fresh out of the package. Yuck.
- Found it impossible to be mad at Aaron for his few less than adorable habits. He sits on my lap, and showers me with kisses, and tells me he loves me, and gives great hugs. That cancels out all offenses. Even ones involving food that's already been chewed.
- Watched the first half of The Little Mermaid. Every time Scuttle the seagull made an appearance, Aaron tipped over giggling.
- Allowed Aaron to mend my “injured” knee with a plastic scalpel and scotch tape.
- Ate strawberry popsicles outside on the grass, because that house is near immaculate with a lot of near-white carpeting, and I am taking no chances.

I only managed to convince Aaron to hole up in his room for the night by presenting him with a fragile (invisible) egg. I instructed him to lay on top of it to keep it warm, but added that he had to lie very, very still and be very, very quiet. I don’t expect this to work again, but last night it did!

Look, I can draw big penis!

There is a gigantic pink penis right outside the church's front doors, and I didn't draw it, but it's my fault. I gave Aaron chalk, and while I was drawing friendly sharks and schools of purple fish, Aaron was drawing what I thought were eels, until he said, "Look! I can draw big penis!" It had better rain before church tomorrow morning...!

Ladies' man.

At the tender age of two, Aaron is already going all-out to impress girls. I was looking after him in the park this morning and he kept walking over to this little girl and cocking his head to one side and chirping, "HI!" The little girl didn't pay him much attention and her mother smiled sympathetically at Aaron and said, "Oh, Lexi says, 'I'm too shy'" to which Aaron enthusiastically belted out an "I'M TOO SHY, TOO!" Aaron, Aaron, Aaron. You are many, many things, but 'shy' is not one of them.