We Road-Tripped Back Home!

I discovered that Virginia may be the perfect state for Hobbiton:
We drove under mountains! I held my breath!
We took photos of mountains!
Mountains!
We passed a place called Bastian!

We Spent Time with Family & Friends!

Me in Southport, on the Cape Fear River...Grandma Cat
Uncle Tony
Aunt Natty and Great Aunt/Grandma/Godmother Marty
Bastian and Max, eating pudding (something that never ever ever makes it into my house)...
Natty and Sebastian being crazy, spanking butts (though it's never okay to hurt...unless they like it).
Bastian fell deeply in love with Aunt Lilly's friend Alisha. He spent his time doting on her, fawning over her, petting her, smiling, and whispering "I loooooooove Alisha..."
Bastian and Aunt Lilly
Left to Right...
1st Row: Grandma Cat, anna kiss
2nd Row: Marty, Uncle Tony, Jeri, Grandpa Jim
3rd Row: Jon, Dan, Max, Aleks, Alisha, Bastian, Aunt Lilly, Aunt Natty

We Played in the Sand!

Drip castles!

A shrine that Jon started, I added to, and Bastian destroyed!
Digging the Moat!
Minas Tirith complete!
Then the ocean took it all!

We Spied Sea Creatures!

Strange little creatures that looked like tubes with tiny tentacles, propelling themselves through the water...Hermit crabby things, clinging to seaweed (I wanted to put them in Jon's beard and take a photo, but he wouldn't let me - didn't want to go for the Davey Jones look, apparently)...
Crabs of all sorts (this one in seaweed, ghost crabs in the sand)...
Dolphins jumping in the morning....

We Played with a Rhinoceros Beetle!

One afternoon, Uncle Tony found a Rhinoceros Beetle walking in our driveway and trapped it in a water bottle knowing that Aleks would be fascinated. And indeed, he was right. They fed it a bit of apple, then eventually we let it go under the back deck where it buried itself into the mulch with surprising rapidity considering its otherwise slow pace.

We Did Things We Do Normally!

Aleks drew everyone in the house countless pictures of monsters, taking requests and building a menu of options...Watching sports!
Playing with toys!
Acting completely insane!

We Swam!

Jon, back from riding waves in the boat...
Grandma Cat & Bastian.
Bastian did not like the big waves at different points and hated getting water in his eyes, so we had him prepared for anything.

When it got too hot, a couple of times we just put Bastian on the deck in our inflatable boat filled with water to keep him occupied.
By the time I got the camera, Bastian had stopped dancing along to Grandma's singing (of course), but here ya have it anyway...

First Evening at the Beach...

For weeks, my mother invited everyone she spoke with to visit us at the beach. The first night there, we arrived along with my father and step-mother, and my Uncle Tony. My dad and step-mom just stayed the night, but Tony stayed the week.

We grilled brats for dinner and found a great octopus kite in the storage closet downstairs.



After dinner, we all took a walk down to the end of the island, since it was pretty close. Here's Bastian walking on the dunes, illegally (it's a five hundred dollar fine). Oops. We promptly got him off.
Aleks drew in the sand.

All four of the boys' maternal grandparents. Left to Right: Grandma Cat, Grandpa Jim, Papa Logan, and Grandma Cathy.
Bastian with Papa Logan.
Papa: beach bum.


At the end of the island was an inlet with a terrible looking swell to the waves, perfect for dragging one down in the Under Toad. The water came up and formed tide pools.

We went to the Beach!

My mother rented a house in North Carolina for all of us to stay at for a week. It was right on the beach and the nicest beach house we'd stayed in yet (we rented houses many times during my childhood, but only twice in my adult life). Within an hour of arrival, the boys were on the shore, swimming and building sand castles.





Bastian's head:

We Road-Tripped!

9 people in a 15-passenger van...Ohio farmland...
Book learnin'...
We stopped for a pee break at a National Treasure!

We observed where holes for poles once were...

We observed animalist artifacts...


We drove over the Ohio River...


We also counted horses that we passed and argued for days about it. Aleks tallied the scores and told everyone to shut up.

We Moved Heavy Stuff!

A couple of days before we arrived at the grandparent's house, Grandpa Jim was mowing the lawn when one of the swings on the swingset caught onto the tractor, pulling the whole thing over on him. It struck him a bit in the head, though he didn't have a concussion. The main damage was to his back, which he unknowingly exacerbated with physical labor and he spent the whole vacation in varying amounts of pain. The big crossbeam actually pealed the hat from his head and pinned it to the steering wheel.
One morning before we left for the beach, all the adults in the house had to help put the swingset back into place.
Bastian wanted to come out, but since I didn't want him underfoot and possibly getting hurt, we compromised by positioning him in the laundry room with the camera to capture our work.

We Interacted with Nature!

On the farm, there were flowers,

and moths
and bees
and more moths

and an overgrown forest of poison ivy,
and massive sticker bushes turned deathly, Sauronian trees!
They could kill you if they tried hard enough (and were animate).

Cherry-pickin'

At the grandparent's house, we were told to pick cherries. I did so against my will. The kids did so briefly. There wasn't much left uneaten by the birds and bugs.

Saskatoon is in the Room!

From my Feedjit Live Traffic Feed:

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan arrived on "sugar boot and weasel"

Welcome! Forgive my inane Soul Coughing reference and arbitrary shout-out.

A Tour of the Garden, with Added Scarecrow

We share our garden with our next door neighbors as they have a bit of yard and we do not. In previous years, we've grown but a very few things in a tiny space beside our front porch as front yard is all we've got. This year, Papa talked Chris and Brad, our twenty-something bio-medical engineering PhD student neighbors, into digging up a bit of their unused back yard to grow good things in the dirt. They were all about it. Thus we have our massive cucumber plants and tangle of home-built trellis on which to grow them.

From the back corner of our house, we look at an angle through the neighbors' driveway towards the garden.Over the driveway, we approach the bit of yard...
Our cucumbers are massive, our tomatoes staked and growing, our pumpkin & squash mishmash threatens to overtake everything, and our beans are already yielding results.Last weekend, while we were visiting the grandparents to celebrate Aunt Natty's graduation, I asked Papa what I should do for Art Day this coming week. He said we should build him a scarecrow (though we have no crows eating our vegetables...yet). When Art Day rolled around, we didn't really do much of anything as the children were interested in merely playing with toys and chasing each other around like crazed monkeys. So I began work on the scarecrow all by myself. By the weekend, I completed it.
Jon's plastic owl also helps ward off unwanteds. Together, the owl, the scarecrow, and our sparkly-loving gnome form an intimidating alliance.
The scarecrow is comprised mostly of trash. His head was a grouping of plastic bags stuffed with a piece of foil overlaying it into an onion net bag.
The left eye is milk jug lid, beads, sparklies, and feathers.
The right eye of milk lid tie, juice lid, beer lid, PBR pin, button, button, rivet, and bead.
The arms are strung-together seedling packs (the threes cut into singular units, handy for stacked arms, strung on excess inherited acrylic yarn).
Bastian and I made the wavy, gay fingers together of plastic beads on wire.


The chest cavity is a salad container filled with artificial organs.
White plastic cutlery forms the ribcage.
The heart is stuffed felt, the lungs pink tulle leftover from our second wedding stuffed into more onion sleeves.
The liver is stuffed fabric (leftover from the teepee my mother made the boys for Christmas 3 years ago), the stomach the same fabric stuff into a garlic sleeve, and the intestines are braided yarn.
The stomach and the intestines are actually connected, via a lovely clump of hot glue. I'm quite fond of that touch, even if no one can see it.
We imagine that the tremendously bright colors will fade over the summer and it's my belief that I'll have to restuff the organs back into the chest cavity. That's what you get for walking around with your organs exposed, I suppose.

Cucumbers in Bloom

Our massive cucumber plants have started sprouting flowers. Aleks pointed them out to me.
He explains all about it:

Jarassic Park

Aleks' depiction of the Jurassic age:

City Fresh Tuesday - week 2

The children ran the usual amok, with a deadly serious conversation about remaining in eyeshot, a trip to get more library books, the eating of many strawberries, and my promotion from lowly volunteer to one part of the management team (which I had no intention of doing, yikes). Veggies were the usual sort of lovely.




This week's share included romaine, maple syrup, garlic scapes also known as ramps (and which I'd never heard of until we first joined City Fresh 3 years ago), radishes, onions, mixed greens, peas, garlic, hyssop, lemon balm, and strawberries. Yum...

A Walk to the Park for No Reason at All

Aleks wanted to go to the park and I needed to get the kids away from the house, so we went. On the way, we ran into our neighbor, Jo, out for a walk with her puppy, Mason. So they walked with us. We got a cookie and I got iced tea at the coffee shop on the way. Then the kids played for a long time. Mason sat in the clover quite contentedly. I picked up all sorts of glass from the sidewalk and hillside.
Jo and Mason went home, but we stayed and got too dizzy on the tire swing. We stopped in the library and got Aleks signed up for the summer reading program. He's excited about the prospect of prizes. I'm very not into summer reading because I don't like incentive programs, but whatever, it's fun and casual. We also picked out some books while we were there.

On the way back home, a woman had a mama cat and a kitten for free on the sidewalk. We couldn't take them home, but we stopped and said hello.

At home again, Papa had made delicious stir fry out of the veggies from last week's City Fresh.

Natty's Graduation Party

We had yet another weekend away to visit the grandparents in honor of Aunt Natty's graduation from college (which isn't actually until Sunday the 14th, but alas the schedule of a midwife demands early celebration). Early Saturday, the boys and the grandparents went strawberry picking. Grandma got so excited that after the graduation lunch, she invited everyone back to the house for the freshest of strawberry daiquiris.

Natty introduced her friend Myco to the family chickens. Bastian adopted Myco for the day, insisting on sitting in her lap and petting her fondly. He loves the ladies.

Aunt Lilly even made the trip all the way from Chicago despite a case of pneumonia. We made fun of her all weekend and insisted she not breathe on us.
Jon cleaning out the coop.
Daiquiris!
Boys in the yard.
*Photos courtesy Myco Nguyen as I left my camera in Cleveland.

If Wishes Were Dandelions...

Aleks, commenting on the empty dandelion stems sprinkled throughout a passing lawn as we walked: "Almost all of these have been wished!"

Art Day: Freezer Paper Tees

Cuz Soulemama is so much awesomer than you, we decided to do one of her famousest of activities: freezer paper tees. Julie at Living Our Own Lives reminded me that we really wanted to do this craft (and offered the link to the fabulous free stencils). It really is simple, fun, and functional, despite my urge to never make our activities sound that trite. We did monsters, cuz that's the sort of folks we are.
That drying rack really is getting a lot of use. So glad I thought of it.
I need to go to the thrift store to find more blank(ish) tees because Aleks is finally out-growing all of his and I can't stand paying too much for tee shirts. It's just unreasonable. This is a much better way to do it. $22.50 for a Star Wars tee is uncalled for. I can just make a Death Star stencil and paint it onto a $.50 recycled tee.

CSA Season Begins!!!

City Fresh kicked off its season even though it doesn't quite feel like summer yet to me. This year, we're volunteering right off the bat as opposed to last year where we just started helping out when we'd be hanging around for hours on end socializing. And by we, you can assume that I mean that I volunteer whilst the children run about with the other children of locavores.Our fearless leader, Lotte, writes receipts for folks paying for next week.
Tracie and Mike werkin' hard at organizing veggies.
Henry the librarian has all sorts of plans for activities with kids and food demos. This week he hosted story time. My children even listened! Sorta.
It will be another summer of countless veggie pictures.
These are handy since I'm now creating a brochure for our Fresh Stop.
Thyme.
Basil - Aleks' favorite. He's just like my sister Lillian was when she was little: his favorite food is basil pesto on pasta.
Onion stems.
Aleks took our library videos in to return them and decided to sign up for the summer reading program. He didn't get a chance as the librarian was busy with another patron, but he wrote "Aleks" on a random sheet of paper and placed it in the summer reading box. I promised we'd do an official sign-up next week. Which is all very exciting because Aleks is now reading! Not a lot, but enough. It's very, very much a relief for all my nagging doubts.
The full Family Share for the week: bok choy, mixed greens, onions, romaine, spinach, basil, maple syrup, thyme, and cilantro. Small at first, but it grows and grows...

Opera - In Brief

I saw this short on Bravo when I was 15 or 16. My husband saw it around then too (this was before we knew each other) and we always knew we loved it, but didn't think we'd ever find it again. 15 years later, with the magic of YouTube, it has been uncovered. I watched it with Aleks just now and he thought it was hysterical. Our favorite bit is the walking, talking statue from Hell in Don Giovanni.

The Cleverness of Us

Some things we've done lately.

Grown a rubber cobra (gifted to Bastian from Piddy Peddy for his birthday) in an otherwise useless 2-liter Pilsner glass of water to 600 times its size on the dining room table (it made quite the attractive centerpiece).
Acquired four pairs of hologram/3D glasses from seeing Up. The kids find them useful for dress-up, I guess.
Planted pumpkin seeds with Papa.

Papa built a jacked-up birdsnest of a trellis to support our five-million cucumber plants.
The growing season is far too short in Cleveland, but our garden is off to a decent start. Hopefully by July or August we'll be overwhelmed with cucumbers, melons, beans, and tomatoes. Papa bought a dill plant with which to make lots and lots of pickles when the time comes.

On Clefts and the Immense Privilege of Being White and American

My friend Becks sent me a link to an article about the film Smile Pinki and it's recent success at the Oscars and in raising money for Smile Train, a non-profit organization which repairs the cleft lips and palates of children in developing nations for free. I remembered vaguely hearing of the film during Oscar season, but have not seen it myself.


In watching the trailer, I was reminded of how privileged we were to be white, middle class Americans with access to the resources we had access to when our son Aleks was born with a cleft lip and palate nearly 7 years ago. When Aleks was born, I was told that clefts were the single most common facial deformity and the fourth most common birth defect. Approximately 1 in 700 children are born with a cleft. With certain populations, for instance, among Native American/First Nation peoples, that goes up to 1 in 500. In India, 35,000 children are born with clefts each year.

Having a child with a birth defect was deeply saddening for me. I had spent my pregnancy doing everything "right" and was confounded about how this could happen to me and my child. I felt as though the mistakes I had made had set in motion an issue my son would have to deal with for the rest of his life. I cannot imagine raising him without knowing what I know about clefts, without the information I gleaned to explain this from the dozens of doctors we spoke with, without the pamphlets and books we read, without the support of our families, and without the state having paid for my breast pump and Aleks' surgeries. In developing nations, it seems that families of cleft-affected children don't even know that other children have this deformity. They are isolated and alone. More so, I am sure, than I have ever felt.

Were we not from America, where the initial lip repairs are performed at 12 weeks of age, were we not white and middle class which results in our extensive privilege: our extended families with their relative wealth, our ability to not be questioned or looked down on, our ability to walk around the world assumed to be intelligent and responsible enough to provide the best for our child, our college-educated, well-fed brains which help us ask the right questions and be advocates for our children - all of the things that help us to receive the best possible care - what might the world be like for Aleks?

Later in the evening, my husband came to me and told me he'd read an article about Lebron James having surgery to remove a growth from his jaw. What surprised him was that the doctor mentioned in the article is Aleks' plastic surgeon. Upon further research, Jon discovered that Dr. Papay also helped head the team who performed the recent face transplant at the Cleveland Clinic. Jon said, "we have the best facial plastic surgeon in the world."

It's a total coincidence. The only reason we have Dr. Papay as our surgeon is because his name was given to us by the plastic surgeon who did Aleks' original surgeries in Montana. What's more, our plastic surgeon in Montana was one of the best plastic surgeons for cleft repair in the world. The only recent book on cleft-affectedness mentions him.

We arrived in Montana when Aleks was 10 days old so that Jon could begin work on his Master's degree. We had a phone number for the local cleft & craniofacial clinic and nothing more. We called and were introduced to Dr. Hardy who became our primary care provider for the cleft issues. He had excellent bedside manner and was actually quite handsome to boot. He performed Aleks' first three surgeries at 12 weeks, 6 months, and 9 months.

While Aleks recovered in the PICU, someone told us a story they'd heard about a family similar to ours. They were living in Missoula, far away from their well-to-do family in New York City when they had a child born with a cleft. The patriarch of the family decided to do an extensive search to ensure that his grandchild had the absolute best care available. He soon called the parents up again and told them to just stay there: his research had uncovered Dr. Hardy as the ideal doctor for the job. And so it was we proved tremendously lucky as well.

Of all the places to find oneself with such obstacles, we have unbelievably found ourselves perfectly located. It seems that all of our trials are like this: whenever something terrible, earth-shaking, and heartbreaking happens to us, we do uncommonly well in the end. I don't know why. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in the universe. I positively loathe the secret laws of attraction. I see that the bad things are still bad things. They still break my heart. They still make life unbelievably challenging. Yet we have it so, so unfathomably good. I can hardly make sense of it.

If there is meaning to be found in this life, I suppose it is our commitment to one another, to the world, to our love of this awesome universe and the wild and enchanting things in it that can be extracted from our struggle. We cannot untie the need for justice from anything at all. Our struggle simply illuminates the struggle of others and the need for all of us to be able at all moments to ask for a hand to help. The challenges we encounter highlight the need for inter-dependence, community, and collective action. It is the only sense I can make of it.