My Truant Pen

Bedeck’d with bays and rosemary

It was midnight when my fellow-Santa and I laid the final touches around the tree. The cookies artistically partially eaten. The massive stuffed animal with the bow. The careful interspersing of presents – the ones from Santa outermost to indicate the jolly old elf had laid them there himself. We were weary from a lovely long day of cleaning, cooking, preparing, and caroling at our church. Our children had fallen asleep in record time. We’d had a lovely chat with some old friends in the neighborhood, and now we were ready for repose. We lingered, looking at the tree lights, looking forward to the morning’s joyous faces.

The next morning at seven, I thought I heard some noise downstairs. “Aha!” I thought. “My children bestir themselves. Perhaps they’ve started to open their stockings! I don’t want to a miss a minute.!” I shook my beloved awake and headed down the stairs, muzzy-minded.

To my shock – my horror – a scene of wrapping mayhem lay below me. My sons were in the midst of a piranhic frenzy of quiet unwrapping. Well over half their gifts lay strewn around in the shards of wrapping paper littering the floor.

STOP! STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP! I sat on the stairs, weak-kneed, as they looked up at me with confused faces. “This,” I said to my similarly week-kneed husband, “May be funny later. Maybe.”

Perhaps this was the culprit of the Great Christmas Mayhem!

After a good number of deep breaths, a pot of coffee and a very long explanation to the children that we open presents TOGETHER like we have every Christmas for their entire LIVES, I satisfied myself that there was an excellent chance that Grey really believed he was being kind in letting us sleep in. We talked through the presents they had already opened, and slowly enjoyed the rest together. We did enjoy ourselves, once our hearts got back to a normal tempo.

I only wish I’d had the presence of mind to take a picture of the carnage, with the sweet, innocent confused faces wreaking it.

Twelve hours later, my brother, mother and father had all arrived in my house, bringing loot and Christmas cheer with them. As I worked on the roast lamb, I became increasingly uneasy with my menu. The lamb, with carrots, celery and parsnips, had seemed a quintessentially British dish, well served with Yorkshire Pudding and Christmas Pudding. But there was tomato sauce. The veggies were cubed small. And spice numbers 5 and 6 were turmeric and saffron. These are not British spices. On further review, the dish was downright Indian. So I scrapped the Yorkshire pudding and substituted rice, and I’m delighted to report it was absolutely the right call. (And a delicious recipe to boot!)

A beautifully set table with lovely people

I likely warned my family 10 times that night that I would not be offended if the Christmas pudding turned out to be inedible. It seemed unlikely to be good. 4 cups of raisins and only one each of flour and sugar? Dates and citrons? Suet? This incredible double boiling maneuver – done twice? I’d be lucky if anyone ate two spoonsful. The hard sauce – equal parts butter and powdered sugar – might be eaten straight. But I doubted even it could rescue this unlikely looking concoction. I poured the brandy on with liberal hand and set the pudding to blue flame, lasting far longer than I thought it would and bathing the wide eyes of my son in eerie light.

IT WAS DELICIOUS.

And so has this time with my sons and my husband, my mother and father and brother been. I hope you, too, have had a joyful and restful holiday!

I have pictures of our Christmas celebrations here.

Also, since all the Christmas Cards that will be sent have been sent, you can see pictures of the great photo shoot we had this autumn here!

Mrs. Flynn’s Christmas Pudding

There were plums and prunes and cherries,
There were citrons and raisins and cinnamon, too
There was nutmeg, cloves and berries
And a crust that was nailed on with glue
There were caraway seeds in abundance
Such that work up a fine stomach ache
That could kill a man twice after eating a slice
Of Miss Fogarty’s Christmas cake.

At the last two Family Meetings, when the subject of Christmas planning came up, Grey has adamantly insisted that any Christmas plans must, MUST, include a Christmas pudding. I confess that this rather unexpected demand warmed the cockles of my heart. “Just what I need this Christmas!” I figured. “A ridiculously elaborate and archaic baked good that needs-must be served flaming!”

So I googled around a bit. I was somewhat dismayed by some of the ingredients. Suet? Citron? What are the odds my local Stop & Shop has those? Plus, all the recipes I read were in metric units. Although we have a scale for just this exigency, I prefer my teaspoons and ounces. Happily, I thought to check my never-used “Joy of Cooking”, and there it was:

Apparently by “plums” they mean “raisins”.

I dragged my eldest on a grocery store scavenger hunt with me. He found the dates. I found the citron. A helpful butcher’s assistant helped us find the suet. (Pro tip: it’s in with the steaks and beef – you’ll check the tiny “British” section fruitlessly.) I did use sultanas (golden raisins) instead of boring ol’ American Raisins. And we emerged victorious, with the fruits of our labors.

By the way, in case you’re as curious as I was, a citron is a completely new fruit to me. I’v never seen one before, but apparently it’s a nearly inedible fruit. I presume the Brits heard about that and took it as a personal challenge. I was truly shocked that they were available for purchase in my little Stop and Shop. I tasted one and they were, um, interesting.

Last night, I figured I’d make the pudding. I got the raisins and currants going, and discovered that step took two hours. Then this afternoon after church, I figured it was high time to make the pudding. I chopped the suet, mixed with my hands, and had several bowls of ingredients.

Some citrons and raisin and cinnamon too.

It was at that point that I discovered the steaming of the pudding takes at least three hours (and I have somewhere to be this afternoon) so I think that will be this evening’s activity.

My Christmas gift from my Mother-in-law was some of her wedding silverware. I’ve secretly always wanted real silver silverware, but it’s the sort of thing I could never justify actually purchasing, so I’m thrilled. I have plans for a fancy-shmancy Christmas dinner, totally from the Joy of Cooking, with my best dishes and linens. My intention is:

Roast lamb shoulder with roast vegetables
Yorkshire pudding
Gravy
Roast asparagus (a family favorite)

To which my son would like to add “Grey-joulais” which is rice with nuked veggies on top. Of course, I think this will be lovely.

And I’ll finish the whole thing off with a flaming (likely inedible – let’s be honest) Christmas pudding!

Saturday morning vignette

My boys brought me breakfast, and my laptop, in bed this morning. About the time I’d caught up on all the latest hijinks of my Facebook friends, my beloved eldest son came in to snuggle me. “Whatcha reading?” he asked. (He is the world’s most obnoxious over-the-shoulder reader.) Well, I wasn’t reading much. So I pulled up “Glorious Dawn”:

That led us to reading about Black Holes (Grey made it through quite a heavy article on the topic). And that led us to an hour long Nova special on the nature of space:

Grey watched the whole thing, rapt. I did step away a few times, and when I came back he’d say, “Mom, you missed a lot.”

Following that, Grey wrote this letter to NASA:

Dear NASA I was wondering if we could go faster than the universe to see the universe EXPANDING, and if you could send a rectangular prism filled with water covered on all sides and launch it @ detect it and send the progress in our mail (redacted, but correct) if you could do that it would be very helpful. Is it nice being a scientist? If so i’m looking for a future job that could buy me a lot of books in a month. Make a lot of discoveries! Your friend, Grey , age Eight. 🙂

It’s just been a calm, quiet, lovely day – with time for Nova videos, Lego battles and Christmas music. As the first flakes of a major storm begin to fall, along with the cloak of darkness, we are together as a joyful family. This would all be even more peaceful if we weren’t headed to the Mythbusters: Behind the Myths show tonight in Lowell. I admit to some trepidation, between the 8 pm showtime and the major winter storm. But mostly, I’m excited, happy and content.

A gift to be simple

A pretty accurate reflection of our Christmas tree

I remember very distinctly getting Christmas presents for my father. There was the year I got him the post-it-note paint brush. I went through a phase of chocolate-covered Cherries – the kind you get in the super market. My sister and I thought soap-on-a-rope to be the utmost in paternal gift-giving.

My husband has gone for about a week for a work conference that has kept him very busy. On my last night home alone with the boys, I figured it was a great time to pick up some Christmas presents for daddy from his boys, and to pick up a book for Grey’s class book swap, so I swung by The Book Oasis and told the boys to pick out a book for their father. (Sorry for ruining the surprise love! They’re both books. The only reason you will not know within minutes of seeing Thane exactly which books is because he can’t remember the name.)

We then stopped by the grocery store, where the boys begged for *their own* wrapping paper. In a moment of parental weakness, straight off the “yes you will eat fish for dinner” battle in the meat section, I bowed to popular sentiment.

When we got home, Grey set right to wrapping. Eschewing lame things like “advice” he set about wrapping his gift to his father. His eyes lit up with the thought of placing this little package under the tree, of what his dad would look like when he opened the package. All of a sudden, one measly package to his dad wasn’t nearly enough. He locked himself in his room and yelled at the top of his voice, “NO ONE COME IN HERE! I’M DOING SOMETHING SECRET!” Several packages were added to the tree before bedtime hit with full force. I had to put my down on “just one more present!” and tell him to get his rear into bed.

As it was, he presented me with an “early Christmas present” – a Lego tree with Data and Tiberius under it. Thane, meanwhile, was desperately casting around the house for anything that might be put into his father’s stocking: pieces of gum, random bits of candy, half-used notepads.

The moment when you realize that giving good gifts is possibly even better than getting good gifts is an awesome moment. Generosity, especially when you get to bask in the recipient’s enjoyment and approval, feels *really good*. For the little ones the fun of Christmas morning is getting to open presents. But for me, the great pleasure is watching them open their gifts. It is a fantastic thing to see my sons learn the joy of generosity.

Grande, two-pump, non-fat, extra-hot, no-whip mocha

I even managed to find good coffee in my journeys through Africa

When I was seventeen, my dad and I packed a few of my most important belongings into our minivan and left my home in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, heading to an elite college in Connecticut (called, innovatively, Connecticut College). Mt. Rainier, my abiding love, disappeared over my left shoulder as I took Hwy 7 over the Cascades, to connect with I90. I left behind my family, my home and my access to good coffee.

The year was 1996, and Starbucks was in the first few years of its astonishing ascendancy. It was a matter of identity for a northwest kid to proudly announce their drink order. Were you a mocha girl? A latte guy? Or did you fancy a cappuccino? I remember horrifying my fellow youth symphonians by telling them just how unbelievably far away the nearest Starbucks was from my home (almost an hour). I had a set of four “favorite” Starbucks for the routes I took most. I bought in, hook line and sinker.

I used to bring three cups of coffee to school – one to drink in the car, one to drink in my first class and the third in a thermal tumbler I left in my locker for my second class. I was all in on coffee. That April, I’d been completely taken in by an NPR prank about Starbucks building East/West coffee pipeline. I was a little preoccupied about the coffee question on that long drive across Montana and North Dakota.

My four years at college were spent in a veritable caffeine desert. The closest Starbucks was in Cranston, Rhode Island, but I didn’t have a car. Eventually my long-suffering boyfriend got a car, but lacked a sense of direction which added a good 20 minutes to the Starbucks run. It happened only a handful of times a year. I accepted my caffeine-isolation as the price of education (although there are a few stories about what my friends were forced to do in order to get me to a Starbucks).

But when my now-husband brought me to our first shared home in Roslindale, I had high hopes that I might – for the first time in my life – live within easy access of a Starbucks. That hope was dashed – the nearest one was quite a way away. There was one near church I stopped at religiously, but certainly none within walking distance. Nor was there one near my then-office. Two years later, we moved to Malden. The Starbucks perimeter held firm. I changed jobs, and still was not near a Starbucks. We moved to Stoneham. If you draw a circle around my house, you would find I’m in just about the furthest possible location from any Starbucks. I was appalled to learn that Stoneham, when wooed by a Starbucks, didn’t enthusiastically support the project, but blocked it. Really, selectmen, the town is now sufficiently supplied with nail salons, convenience stores and liquor stores. But we’re terribly underserved by purveyors of fine caffeine solutions.

Black whole of Starbucks at home — Black hole of Starbucks at home

Since then, I’ve changed jobs twice. It wasn’t a huge surprise that the Billerica location was not close to a Starbucks. But when I got a gig in one of the most cutting edge districts of Boston, I was ready for my luck to change. At last, finally, I would have easy access to a Starbucks – for the first time in my entire life! I could go grab a cuppa in the dark stretch of afternoon. I could swing by in the morning if I was running short of my brewed coffee. It would be great.

Then I discovered that, while there are about six Starbucks at the half a mile mark, there is not a single one inside that radius. D’oh!

How is it possible to be this far from a Starbucks in Boston?

So anyway, if you have some local coffee shops you’d like to protect in your neighborhood, can I recommend that you hire me/sell a house to me? I can all but ensure there will be no Starbucks in your town then!

On internet connectedness

Morton Husky football my sr. year, shamelessly stolen from Facebook

It’s pretty easy to find people who hate Facebook. There’s the “Internet Privacy” people, the “I only have an account to see pictures of my grandkids” contingent, the “It’s stupid and I don’t know why anyone does it” group and several others. I understand all these perspectives. There are studies showing Facebook makes people sad and unresolved etiquette questions about when you unfriend an ex of a friend. And of course, Facebook can definitely be a time suck. These are all real things, and downsides of social media.

But I find in my life that there’s way more upside to social media than down.

I left for college in New England in 1996, when the internet was new and social media undreampt. (I remember one college I visited telling me I would have to use a “motor” to connect to the internet.) I had been married four years before Facebook was invented down the street. When I returned to my hometown four years later to get married, I only invited two high school friends. My class president is MIA, so there was no 5th or 10th year reunions. By the time the 5th would have happened, I was out of touch with everyone from my home town to whom I was not related.

Then Facebook happened. And in those heady early days we just friended everyone we’d ever met. The algorithms matched us to our high school classmates, and for the first time in a decade I heard the news from Morton again. Very gradually, over time, the shared experience of a tiny town began to fight back against time and distance. We began to learn about each other’s grown lives.

In my case, I was often surprised and pleased to see how happy and interesting my high school classmates had become. The kids who sat with me during Pep Band in the “rooting section”, whose portraits are next to mine on the single long hallway of the high school, have become really neat people. A Knowledge Bowl team member is a PhD biologist. My fellow D&D player is an English professor (who still loves Tolkien as much as I do!). A guy whom I remember in a school play – wearing my father’s sweater vest – is on the sidelines of a make-or-break playoff football game right now. There’s a decorated war veteran and gay right’s activist. I’ve spoken before of fellow-basketball-player Brandy Clark. There are many others besides them.

Tonight a whole bunch of us are huddled around our computers, listening to the Morton/White Pass Timberwolves playing in the Tacoma Dome. (It’s in progress, and a real nail biter!) I’m hearing places I remember from childhood, and names I once knew well rolling off the tongue of the announcer. I am feeling connected to East Lewis County right now – from my 110 year old colonial in a three hundred year old New England town.

So does Facebook paint pretty pictures of the life of others? (Absolutely – for the record, my life is not nearly as photogenic as you might think from reading this blog/following me on Facebook.) Can it be a time waster? Sure. Are there people who are either unrelentingly negative or saccharinely obnoxious? Of course. But I’m grateful for this moment of shared community: brought to me by social media.

Edited to add: Morton White Pass won!

Middle Age and the Tyranny of Choice

I spent most of my youth striving to be capable. I practiced my trumpet and learned the capital cities of every country in the world. Like most children, I spent all day, every day, in a circumstance intended to turn me into Productive Member of Society – aka school. Every day, for more than 16 years I did this. And I learned the difference between a Madrigal and a Motet, the four main castes of India, how to conjugate the past tense in two languages, and why CFCs were denuding the ozone layer through the power of catalysts. I also learned things like how to organize my time for a large project, that you should not wash your whites and colors together if you want your whites to not be grays, that if you leave your grounds in your coffee maker over Christmas break it will be moldy when you get back, and how to live within your means.

And when I graduated, over a dozen years ago now, I was actually capable of being a productive member of society. But the learning didn’t stop.

I learned how to program web pages and design relational databases to drive them.

I learned how to cook a turkey dinner for 20+ people.

I learned how to write and teach a Sunday school curriculum to teenagers.

I learned how to run an efficient meeting.

I learned how to get a nutritious dinner on the table almost every night, with enough leftovers for lunch.

I learned how to write blog posts regularly.

I learned how to nurse a baby and change a diaper, even at 2 in the morning.

I learned a thousand other things, building up a capacity to learn quickly what I needed to know, to triage needs, to manage stress and to decide what didn’t need to be done.

And now, in my mid-30s, I feel like I am at the height of my powers. There are few things that I might want to do that I cannot – with time and attention – do.

And therein, my friends, lies the rub. Time. Attention. Focus. I am catastrophically short of these two things. My work is a constant source of new learning and skill, and requires 100% of my abilities nearly every day (except for those days when it really pushes me). It is a really great feeling to have a job that is so interesting and engaging, but I come home tired and worn out at the end of the day.

The running of a family with a rich social life takes so much of the rest of my time. There’s dinner with friends, and Lego League. My sons need my time, love and attention. My husband and I married each other because we want to spend our days together, every day. My God calls me to service in church. There are dinner parties, concerts, laundry piles, fellowship events, fund-raisers, work trips, produce to preserve, play-dates, Library-pizza nights, holidays and birthdays. I feel like I was flat-out for two months, from mid-September to mid-November.

And this is where that capability becomes a hard choice. I *can* do so many things. Yes, I can bake a pie for preschool’s Thanksgiving celebration. Yes, I can play trumpet for Christ the King day. Yes, I can write letters to the Town Council and show up to meetings in support of Stoneham Bikeway. Yes, I can bring a donation to the food pantry drive and buy pajamas for an 11 year old boy who has none. Yes, yes, yes, I can – and do – do these things. But I look beyond to all the things I could do, and have not chosen to do.

Within my skills and capabilities…

I could run for Town Council myself, and serve my community.

I could resume a leadership role in the church. I could teach Sunday School. I could sing in the choir.

I could volunteer at a food pantry.

I could be part of a community symphony, or a brass quintet, or wind ensemble.

I could be on PTO.

I could form a LeanIn circle.

I could actually chaperone a school field trip one of these days.

I could foster a child. I could adopt a child.

Heck, I look at the Healthcare.gov website and think to myself, “I could do better than that. I have done better than that.”

There are so many things I have the capability to do, so many things that are worthwhile – and I look at them and I do not think, “I cannot do that”. I think, “I have chosen not to do that. I have decided that is not more important than what I am doing now.” And you know? That’s a hard thing to realize. I am out of energy, and anything I add to my list requires something to be taken off. I, and my family, pay a steep price if what I take off is any time to relax and recharge.

What about you? What could you do, but don’t do? How do you deal with the choices you don’t make?

Bright Mocksgiving Morn

The turkey is in, the house is clean, the pies are done and only slightly squished by non-edibility-impacting malfeasance. The cats are exploring the new living room configuration and the children are under strict instructions to play quietly without messing up their room.

I think, while I cook, a lot of you. And I feel grateful. So in a stolen moment between turkey and dishes, let me shrae some things I’m particularly grateful for this morning.

* The complete recovery of Tiberius-cat. Yesterday he got his feeding tube removed. He had gained weight since his last checkup, and is pretty much completely recovered. Fatty livery rarely recurs, so… for the most part we are simply done, after a very difficult month. I’m grateful that our hard work and love paid off with health.

* The long, joyful service of the pastor of my church. He’s an amazing preacher, excellent minister, kind person and rollicking honkey-tonk piano player. His only fault is in being an awfully hard act to follow.

* The embarrassing riches of friendship that are mine. I have few lonely moments. My life is filled with close friends, acquaintances, friends of friends. I have friends of long-duration, new friends, parent friends, single friends, geek friends, faraway friends and friends close enough that I sometimes forget to knock when I invite myself into their house at 9:30 pm. I never thought that this wealth of friends would be my lot, and still find myself looking in disbelief to discover it’s true.

* My work is so many of the things I want out of my labors. It is interesting, important and educational. Every day I have more to learn than I can master. I had the flexibility to take care of my cat, but I go to work every day feeling like I will have important things to do, and that I am growing in my career. It also allows me to afford things like veterinary care for my cat. It comes with a hard toll to pay in fatigue and absorption, but I try not to complain about getting what I have asked for.

*Finally, of course, my family. I love reading advice columns, and the stories I hear make me grateful of loving, thoughtful, undemanding parents and in-laws. My own little nuclear family is made up of people I find interesting, and whose company I enjoy. My sons are fun and funny and growing more independent. My husband is helpful, thoughtful, kind and loving.

As Calvin says, Halcyon days are usually only awarded retroactively. I do feel as though, perhaps, I’m in the midst of a halcyonic stretch myself right now.

October is Over

Sometime around Halloween, I usually start to despair. My life is such that I’m always busy. But between September and November I’m not just busy, I’m epically busy – and it’s been even truer than usual this year. Contributing factors include four birthdays in six weeks, apple picking and preserving, Halloween and the last good weather of the year (see also: raking time!).

This year I added to that normal busy mix a cat who requires tube feeding, soccer-which-requires-practices, a new role at work that has me travelling fortnightly and the World Series (I didn’t miss a game this year, at the cost of sleep, relationships and using my spare time for anything that wasn’t baseball). Somehow I felt just a touch busy, even with the strong effort by my husband (and mother-in-law for the past week).

So this is a catch-up post, where I get back on the horse and update on you a few activities.

Grey striking, surrounded by two of his good friends.

Soccer
Stoneham has a great town Soccer club. We haven’t done it in the past because it’s on Sunday mornings. But this year, it really seemed like something we needed to do. (It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that all their friends are in the league.) We showed up to church in cleats a lot, and only missed a handful of Sundays. It was pretty great. Grey was on team Greece, who pretty much rocked it. They lost two games (I think) and won several quite decisively. By the end they were doing things like “passing” and “having a strategy” and “knowing what they were supposed to be doing”. There were a few actually thrilling moments of soccer! It did involve practices, but Grey’s coach understands that I’m coming from work, and so it was relaxing instead of stressful. Greece will hit the fields again in Spring, and I’m excited for it. Thane did soccer too, but his version seemed to involve a lot of falling down.

My best preserve, I think, is the autumn pear.

Canning
This year I made: 2 strawberry jam, 3 pesto (frozen), 4 plum jam (shiro, red, Santa Rosa & mixed spiced), 1 plum compote, 2 autumn pear, 1 ginger lime pear (remind me never to accept a bushel of pears again), 1 crabapple jelly (from wild crabapples on the soccer field), & 1 apple butter. I think that’s it. I missed making a second batch of apple butter (I usually make two) and pepperonata (the red peppers didn’t do as well this year). Next year I hope to have damson plums from my tree.

Thane listens to Grey read a very sick Tiberius a story about cats. You can see Grey petting Tiberius.

Tiberius
One of our new cats (what was I THINKING getting new cats at the beginning of heavy season?) developed fatty liver disease, and required a feeding tube. It was put in three weeks ago (I think?). For the first week, he was being fed four times a day and throwing up five. He was within two days of me deciding that this was no kind of life, and ceasing his pain. The second week we started getting some traction. It’s been up and down since then (it was a great day when I got down to three feedings a day, eliminating the middle of the night feeding). Today, for the first time, he started eating food. You’ve never seen someone as excited as I was about a cat eating cat food. He’s going to make it!

Best friends in line for a roller coaster

Grey’s birthday
Grey turned eight, and I took he and two of his best friends to Canobie Lake Park. I had a blast as we rode very mild roller coasters, hung out in the arcade and made fart jokes. Well, some of us did. Then we had sushi, followed by a Minecraft cake. It felt… older. It was the first time I’ve taken Grey and his friends out to do kid stuff and be kids. I loved it – they were old enough to have so much fun with, but young enough that all of them would hold my hand. Pictures here

Thane’s birthday
I will confess that I just threw an invite out there at the last minute for Thane’s fifth birthday, figuring I’d figure it out as I went along. Two days before the event, I panicked as I realized that it was EXACTLY THE SAME TIME as the Main Street trick-or-treating! I was going to miss it, and all these five year olds were going to miss it too. So I sent out a last minute change asking that the kids come in costume. We spent the first hour trick or treating together. We had a blast, and I felt brilliant. Let the record show that it took 5 years for a kid with a 28th birthday to have a Halloween/Birthday party. I held out that long.

(Does it say anything that I’m going through my pictures trying to remember what the heck I’ve been doing that’s made me so busy?)

Well, that’s about it. I think you’re caught up. Don’t get too comfortable with it though, because Mocksgiving is in (EEEEK!) a week and a half, so yeah…

Anyway, pictures of my super-busy October can be found here!

Thane turns five

Last night I went into a darkened room, as I do pretty much every night I am home, and I kissed a pair of boys good night. I climbed under Grey’s bed to the inviting cubby where Thane has been sleeping since Tiberius took over Thane’s room as a sick-room. In that darkened corner was my four year old (for another five minutes), his hands clasped as though in prayer, lying with an already beloved birthday book next to him. I kissed his forehead. He still sounds like a baby when he sleeps.

Camera “hide and seek” with Thane during apple picking

But that’s all the baby there is left to Thane. As he comes into his fifth year, he comes into his own. Thane has a tremendous sense of purpose and drive, and a deep commitment to his beliefs and ideals. This was somewhat… trying… this year as his beliefs and ideals often included things like “Not going to school” or “Making sure you heard him about what he thinks he smelled in the middle of church” (hint: it’s never good). I have consoled myself through some of his more adamant moments by reminding myself that some traits that are very difficult to parent at four are pretty awesome in an astronaut or CEO or Nobel-winning-scientist-who-is-too-stubborn-to-give-up.

Thane’s favorite time is tickle and snuggle time.

Thane’s personality becomes increasingly clear. His greatest gift is this remarkable spatial/color reasoning. He still loves to do puzzles (he tops out around 100 pieces because he has no strategy) and create symmetrical creations with shapes on our kitchen wall. However, now that he can force his fingers to obey his will better (he’s been frustrated by their lack of obedience for years) he’s really stepped up his game with Legos. For his birthday, I got him a Lego set rated for 8 – 12. I kind of figured his brother would help him. Instead, Thane did the Entire. Thing. By. Himself. I helped him find like two pieces he lost, and put on a few of the stickers.

His smile cheers me up every time I see it.

Thane is very innovative in how he puts his Legos together. He tends to develop more three dimensional creations than his brother. He does love minifigs best, and will often assemble armies of 20 – 30. His preschooler hands undo his work nearly as often as they finish it, but he persists until he matches his mind’s creation. Just for the record, Thane’s drawings and artwork are pretty normal – he seems pretty uninterested in drawing/coloring in general.

When not engaged in feats of spacial reasoning, Thane loves rough-and tumble play. His favorite thing in the whole world is “tickle and snuggle time in Mom and Dad’s bed”. He simply cannot get enough rough-housing, which would be more fun if his head couldn’t be categorized as a deadly weapon. He loves physical play. He’s been doing soccer for the last few weeks, and has done pretty well. With the advantage of a younger brother, he’s gotten to attend a few of his brother’s practices and last week actually did the entire practice with his fellow-four-year-old-younger-brother-friend.

The future’s so bright – he’s gotta wear SHADES!

Lately, Thane has been working very hard on learning to read. He has phonics down (except for period confusion between “b” and “d” – which come on, that’s hard.) His patience and diligence when he decides he’s going to read is astonishing. Just don’t let him corner you for “Hop on Pop” because that takes nearly an hour.

Thane loves Skylanders, even though he never plays – he watches his brother. He still loves Scooby Doo. He loves Digimon. He wants to be read stories about super heroes. He sings songs and makes up new words – and they’re often pretty good ones! He is constantly frenetic, and it is hard to get him to sit still for – say – dinner. But when he gets his focus on, he can sit quietly for an hour. He leads off practically every statement with “Guess what” and is desperate to get his points across. Sometimes he will insistently ask a question three times or four times, but fail to listen to all three answers. He can go across all the rings in the playground, hand over hand. He sleeps with his Puppy, worships his brother, and is 45.5 inches tall (91st percentile). Thane bounces when he walks.

Thane still holds my hold.

Happy fifth birthday, my beloved son.

You can see an album of our family adventures in October here, including a video of Thane reading.

If you want more Thane, here’s an album I’ve put together of some of his highlights this year!