Adventures in Rest

They discovered that the old apple tree growing on the other side of the creek had a host of fruit. Small, but with that Granny-Smith kind of bite.

"These are good! Let's get a basket so we can have them for snacks!" says the elder, bubbling over with excitement.

"Yah!" says the younger, "Les get baskit!"

We pick a couple of dozen. Correction: I pick a couple of dozen, while the other two argue over the basket, eat the proceeds, and get distracted, all in thirty-second cycles.

She lets out a gasp. "Daddy! Look! There's another one up there!"

It's true. Our property used to host a whole orchard of apple trees. It still does, technically. But they've gone untended so long, no orchard would want them.

"Where?" says the younger.

"See, up there? With the red apples on it. Daddy, let's go up there!"

"You do realize that means we have to cut a path through the weeds." Moment of diabolical parental anticipation: I had been procrastinating on hacking my way to that very tree earlier this week.

"Let's go get the tools!" says the elder.

"Me too!" says the younger.

An hour later, we're half way there:

Burdock, it turns out, is a fascinating opponent in a first-grader's summer imagination. We have to hack through a great deal of it. One would think we were slaying dragons.

Another hour later, and we've been to the Red Apple Tree. (And we have found the other two Green Apple Trees right next to it.) These are sweeter, more of a Fuji or Gala. Perfect for "ruining one's dinner," as we often say:

When one has a belly full of wild apples, there is no better activity than digging in Daddy's Bridge Renovation Site. After a lesson in not sitting where someone else's shovel is flinging (bloody nose), seats are found side-by-side. And there is silence in the yard for a whole fifteen minutes:

"No work today," my calendar said. Sabbath.

The sweat in my clothes begs to differ. It can beg away, though--because labor this fun can't count as work.

~ emrys

Dirty Work, Dirty Play

We're rearranging our garden for next year, which means dismantling seven of the raised beds and planting grass seed. Yesterday morning, Gwendolyn asked if we could work in the garden after breakfast. Micah piped up with his approval of the idea. So out we went. They love wheelbarrow work, because it means both moving dirt and riding to and fro in the empty barrow.

We've razed two beds and seeded them for next year:

We found a toad, petted it, held it, and followed it around in the grass for a while:

The dirt from the garden beds is going to fill in the earthen ramp on the north side of the back porch:

Micah spent a good half hour playing by himself inside the barrow:

His big sister spent that time discovering textures in the moist earth:

Both really like shovel work: cutting, lifting, and dumping:

Here is Minute 14 of the first 30-minute period this week when they occupied with same space without making each other angry:

What a blessing to work and play in the dirt with my children!

~ emrys

Remember When . . .

. . . you could fit inside a vacuum cleaner? Remember when you wanted to?

Digging out my mobile phone pictures, I found these two of Micah, at 1.5 years, loving the steam cleaner. It's in repose, getting its resevoir refilled. While an adult makes the trip from living room to kitchen faucet, Micah seizes the moment to climb into his race car and take off.

And for the times when the race car is not going fast enough, the geniuses at Hoover even added a crop with which to whip your vehicle to greater speeds:

Yee-ha!

~ emrys

Traditional

How many times does a family have to repeat an activity before it can be called a "ritual"? How many years must contain the same activity, in the same season, before it can be called a "tradition"?

For our household, blueberry picking has become a tradition.When Stone Hill Blueberry Farm opens up in July, we schedule a day to pluck several buckets of the little blue lovelies. Picking our own fruit continues to be one of the few activities which, for all four of us, can be productive, healthy, energetic, and fun all at the same time.

For scale, here's the haul, drying on the kitchen counter, with my two-year-old son looking on with excitement:

Jam and jelly, here we come!

~ emrys

Finally . . . That Last Little Thing

Since the day we bought the house, Sara has been complaining about the carpet in the upstairs bathroom. "Why do people put carpets in bathrooms? Don't they know it's just going to get wet?" Having two small children who love to splash during bath time brought the question continually to the forefront of our minds. And we have wondered, since the first time water splashed out of our shower, whether water was soaking into the carpet and corrupting the sheeting beneath our feet.

In September of last year we bit the bullet and decided to change the upstairs bath: new paint on the walls and linoleum on the floor. Here's a glimpse of its original state, complete with Little Splasher #2 and the foreshadowing cordless drill on the left:

 Note the dirty cream walls:

At 14 months, Micah is ready to take on the 14V DeWalt:

As you can see, no expense was spared in the original construction--not quite wall-to-wall carpeting:

 We are big fans of having main colors and accent colors in our rooms. Instead of uniform dirty cream, we went for a light blue main and bright blue accent color. (By the way, I can't recommend strongly enough the yellow pour spout that attaches to the rim of the paint can: saves paint, mess, and is reusable!):

Of course, all home improvement projects are family projects. Here is my lovely partner in decorating:

 Much of this project was done while Monkey See was off at school, which left Monkey Do to help. He's very serious about his role in the painting process:

This renovation happened as Hurricane Dos was entering his Serious Climbing Phase. So he got up on the toilet and reached for some tool on the changing table. I thought this was a good photo op, and grabbed the camera for a couple of shots:

And I was in mid-shutter-click when the changing pad slid and Micah lost his balance. This was my view right before reaching out to catch him:

He was fine.
When the painting was finished, the carpet awaited removal and replacement. Here's the scene with all the trim removed:

To our surprise, twenty-four years of shower spillage had not rotted out the sheeting.

It turns out that the easiest way to cut linoleum flooring for your bathroom is to use the recently removed carpet as a pattern, laid out in the living room. No measuring necessary! It is a testament to the size of our bathrooms that marking and cutting the linoleum flooring had to be done in two phases; the whole cutout of the bathroom floor would not fit in our living room:

When it came time to install the trim, Handyman Deux was ready to swing 22 ounces of nail-driving power. All right: his spirit was ready, but the flesh was a little too young.

So he set himself instead to understanding the tool at rest:

And with new color, new floor, and trim almost completely replaced, we have a new bathroom:

I said that the trim was almost completely replaced. The job was almost done in November of last year. This is June of this year. Even though we plowed through the big parts of this project in good stead, I didn't make time to cut, sand, and seal the one piece of trim that I had to totally replace. (And I needed to replace the leaky sweat valve on the toilet.) I had the wood; I had the tools; I had the polycrylic. I just didn't make the three hours in my schedule to get it done. That's how it often is with my projects: They are not completely finished because of some Last Little Thing that gets put off, as if its small size makes it unworthy of attention before all the Big Things of this world.

Well, two weeks ago I finally got That Last Little Thing done: replacing the sweat valve and trim behind the toilet:

Now the bathroom is done!

~ emrys

Baching It with My Toddler

Mommy dropped off Gwendolyn at school on Wednesday, then drove on away to her work in Norwich for the day. Micah and I were left in our bachelors' paradise to whoop it up and explore the house from the point of view of a sixteen-month-old. First was about forty-five minutes spent opening, climbing into, playing in, and closing the shower:

 Micah could get the door closed and opened from the inside by himself. Once it was closed and he was outside, though, he needed me to reach the handle to open it again. So the sixth step in every iteration (the first five being enter, close, open, exit, close) was to go get me from the kitchen and ask for help please--in clear sign language. Once I opened the door for him, he didn't care what I did for the other five steps of his routine.

 The other arena of strength training, flexibility, and stamina yesterday was the booster seat. Micah wants no more to be buckled in. If he's going to sit at the table, he wants to get into the seat himself and sit unbound by seat belts that no adult uses.

 And he wants to feed himself once he's up.

And he wants to prove that he's also unbound by rules of etiquette and toddler safety.

That move was just for the record. After I got the photo, he sat down again and resumed eating.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to explore the world of adult furniture with a toddler. And I have remembered what it's like to cross an important line into an age of slightly lower maintenance: While Micah played in the shower and on the chairs, I got a load of laundry done and dishes in and out of the dishwasher.

~ emrys

Pajama Party!

Two weeks ago, on my day off, the kids and I were bumming around the house. When the mail came, Gwendolyn received a gift of yellow M&M pajamas from my mom. She donned them immediately and declared that today was a Pajama Party day.

She also decided that winter hats were necessary as part of our pj ensembles. So Micah and I obliged and suited up.

The hats took a little explaining when Mommy got home.

~ emrys

Making Memory

 

One month ago we started offering Cheerios to Micah. With eight incisors and a propensity to gnaw, he can crack the toasted Os or he can gum them over his budding molars. I say that we "offer" him Cheerios, rather than "feed" them to him, because part of his learning process is trying to pick them up from the high-chair tray.

Micah doesn't quite have down the coordination of his thumb and forefinger. When he goes for a toasty cereal bit, he usually pinches his quarry between the tip of his forefinger, the base of this thumb, and the tray surface. The porous cereal chunks stick to his skin, even if he doesn't have the best grip. With that sideways hold he can get it up to his face. At this point, however, a quandary arises: Since the Cheerio is not at the most accessible point on his hand (out between tip of thumb and tip of forefinger), how will he get it into his mouth?

The day is saved by the fact that Micah does not yet have any compunction about stuffing his whole hand into his mouth, even if it's an inefficient way to get that crumbly ring of oats.

The most fascinating part of this learning curve, to me, takes place away from the table. When I'm holding Micah--talking to him, babbling with him, walking him around the house--I see that his thumb and forefinger are quietly rehearsing their routine. Micah's eyes and attention may be on something on the other side of the room; but his forefinger and thumb are softly pinching and releasing, pinching and releasing. It's as if he's watched us show him how to pick up a toasty O, and now while they're not doing anything else, his digits are using the down time to master their moves. I imagine that they're forming the neuromuscular pathways that are second nature to us adults, who can pick nuts out of a bowl without looking a second time. Micah's on his way.

Always learning, always growing. I love it.

~ emrys

Gifts from Friends

A colleague of mine is an avid textile artist, and along with a couple of other colleagues from my presbytery, enjoys producing works of art for members of the next generation as they appear. Here are the jacket and cap made for Micah--fitting just right his six-month-old frame. (Big Sister could not help but get in the way of the camera's eye.)

Thanks, Barbara, for your gorgeous work!

~ emrys

What I Want

If my children are blessed with children, I want those children to have grandparents who jump into the household at birth-time. I want my grandchildren to have Grandpas and Grandmas who will drop everything else for two weeks on either side of the due date, ready to drive at a moment's notice. I want those grandparents to weave seamlessly into the chores and mealtime routines of my children's homes: helping with meals, doing laundry, and of course taking care of the newly arrived grandchild so the parents can get some rest.

I want my grandchildren to have grandparents who are thrilled to pay attention to the older grandchildren, even though they're no longer Center Stage in the family drama. I want those grandparents to be present, remembering with seasoned grace the Great Fog of bringing a new child into the world, but without insisting that the way it was for them must be the way it is now.

I want those grandparents to consider their greatest calling to be good parents, and the greatest part of that calling to be good grandparents. I want them to view their children and grandchildren as strange and wonderful gifts from a strange and wonderful God who is mysteriously present in every life.

I want my grandchildren to have these kind of grandparents, because my children have them, and I see the blessing therein. May the Lord make it so for us.

~ emrys

Itty-Bitty Number Two

On Sunday, June 24th, Sara decided she had had enough of being pregnant. She wanted to have a baby. So we trundled down to Our Lady of Lourdes in Binghamton and got assigned our room in the Birthing Center. We were in by 11:00am. Then we waited.

After much labor but no delivery, our physician decided that it was safer to have the delivery by C-section. So Sara went under the knife, and out came Itty-Bitty Number Two, who is by the time of this posting officially Micah Ambrose Tyler:

(9:28pm, June 24th; 8lb, 3oz, 21.5in, Apgar 8.5-9)

He's got the Tyler face (if you ask the Tylers), and the Wheat face (if you ask the Wheats), but no matter whom you ask, he's got Emrys' long toes and cold feet:

And he's a snuggler.

We thank God for the safe arrival of Micah Ambrose; for the phenomenal staff in the Lourdes Birthing Center; for friends and family who shower us with support; and for the Life of Christ which makes all life possible. L'chaim!

~ emrys