Inauguration

(I wrote the following for the boys' memory boxes, as I sometimes do when something momentous happens. I will share it here as well, because today was an important day that needs to be acknowledged here if this is to be anything other than a scrapbook with pretty pictures and stories. That has it's place, I know, but I don't really have it in me all of the time, so forgive me --today you'll have to accept a little politics along with the quotes and milestones. I am hopelessly behind on editing pictures, but I'll catch up from early December as soon as I can.)


Dear Noah and Oliver,

Today, Barack Obama was sworn into office as this country’s 44th president. I was at work at the hospital during the inauguration. It’s not always easy to be there lately. It is my job to help people who need a little extra help, and we have fewer resources to do that with than ever before. Sometimes, we stitch people back up or bring them back to health only to send them homeless into the cold. Sometimes we do not even have a coat in the clothes closet to hand out, or a pair of gloves to cover the frostbite that brought them to us. Sometimes it feels like the little we have to offer is so very far short of what is really needed, and my heart aches to know it. We are experiencing cuts, and more people may soon lose their jobs. The mood has been gloomy, at the hospital and everywhere else. These are difficult, often terrible times, and there are few places where that is more obvious than in an urban safety net hospital where the holes in the net are growing ever bigger.

I wasn’t really happy to be there today, but I didn’t take the day off as planned because I was off for a funeral last week, and needed to catch up on work. As it turned out, I was just where I needed to be. I snuck across the hall at 11:30 and took my break in the radiology waiting room. More and more people came, all crowded into the little space. Behind me stood a group of janitors, all Hmong women, hearing the speech with the help of an interpreter. Their were doctors, mostly African-American people visiting the clinic with babies on their hips, Somali women in hijabs, and rad techs in scrubs holding their clipboards. By the end, we were almost all crying, all just looking at each other and the screen, listening to that beautiful speech. All of us knew that Obama’s speech, given by the first president to ever break through the color barrier in this country, was for all of us, and it was all that mattered. I doubt I will ever forget those 15 minutes.

One of the sad symptoms of how low public discourse has sunk is that patriotism has become equated with refusing to question our government’s agenda, so let me be very clear: Your father and I care very deeply about the people that make up the United Stated of America, but over the last eight years, America has become known largely for excess and might-makes-right, arrogance and myopia. We believe that history will see the Bush administration as a shameful era in our history, but we also have hope that this very day will be seen as a turning point beyond the reach of that era. Your father and I hope that America will again become engaged with the rest of our world, based, as Obama said, on mutual respect. It is our hope that we will indeed dust ourselves off and make the changes necessary to allow for a healthier, more sustainable economy and planet. It is our hope that we will again prosper as a nation, but that prosperity will be defined first and foremost as a basic level of security for all Americans willing to work hard, and that we may never again fall victim to the extreme unregulated excess that defined the Bush administration and took us all down with it. It is our hope that the Americans that crowded into that waiting room today and indeed in living rooms and coffee shops and theaters and numbering many times the population of our city at our nation’s capitol will still feel included in that new vision months and years from today.

When I got home at lunchtime today, your daddy and I talked about that speech while you boys ate your sandwiches in our sunny kitchen. We both cried a little, again, and then we explained that sometimes, grownups cry when they are relieved, or happy. At your early childhood class, you made Obama necklaces and counted to 44 with your teacher.



As dinner was cooking, we watched the speech streaming on the computer, each of you on one knee. I wonder if I will always remember the feel of you in my arms as we watched, as I answered your urgent and insistent questions with my arms straining to hold you in my lap. You are so big now. Your limbs no longer feel as fragile as bird bones, and I can no longer contain you entirely within my arms. You are so sturdy and strong, so full of hope and life. For once, today, I didn’t feel like the reality of the world was a terrible secret we’d someday have to break to you, even as we also share the source of our truest hope through our faith in God. For once, I could say, look, there, at that handsome brown-skinned man pointing his long finger with smart, fair words. Listen.

Love,

your mother

Christmas Program

Happy New Year! May you remain healthy, and happy (and solvent and employed, should that be what you desire). We had a very nice trip east to see my parents, brother and grandmother, especially since the rest of the flying population seemed to get stuck at the airport this year and we had not so much as a delay. I will catch up on pictures soon, but if you wish to see the boys and their buddies in the church Christmas program, you can go here.

Ollie and a little bit of No*ah

Out of curiosity, I asked the boys the other day what they were hoping to get for Christmas. Ollie wants a pink tractor. No_ah wants to be able to be invisible. Just in case you haven't got your shopping done yet...



They also want to have a baby. They play this game a lot, often after reminding me that my tummy only has food in it. When I gently remind them that boys don't carry babies inside their tummies, they say they will be a "daddy kind of mama". Glad we got that all worked out, boys.



Interestingly, the baby is always a boy.


But actually, I do have a suggestion if you live around here and love these two and want to make their day around Christmas or anytime: Take just one of them somewhere. Anywhere. It is so rare that they get time without a brother and having a beloved grown-up all to themselves, and the other boy left behind will equally benefit from a little special time with a parent. Our schedule permits very little of that, unfortunately. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to receive a few gifts at Christmas, but they need that time way more than they need more stuff. (For those of you with kids, I'd even be happy to trade kids (1 for 1) for an hour or two.)


These are taken through the kitchen window, so they're not the greatest pictures, but it shows our Ollie going out all by himself in the morning, letting the girls out of the garage henhouse and into the run for the day.

He is so proud of this, and it's quite a little job for a kid at an age when two-step directions are just being introduced in preschool. He has to get himself dressed, get the bowl of scratch, go outside, open the coop, unlatch the door to the henhouse, prop open the run door, then spread the scratch. I used to think of No*ah as more of an animal lover, but Ollie sure loves chickens! He talks about them all the time, and is determined to get our shyest hen to like him.


Speaking of which, we've had a fair number of "double-yolk" eggs recently. The eggs are enormous when this happens! I guess it's more common in young hens, poor things. We call them "twin eggs".



The above fried eggs are from 3 eggs.
.

And yes -that's a blue-green egg.


When Zo*e and Aug*ust came to visit, it was too cold to go see the ladies, so I brought one in. Polly preferred it to walking in the snow, I think. Now that they're laying, the girls are as gentle as can be, and even try to get in the house. One afternoon, Coco got in between Ivy (dog) and the screen door and suddenly ended up in the kitchen! She was quickly evicted - it feels too much like a barnyard in my house as it is.





On Saturday mornings, we've often gone to the story time at our local library. Ollie has a little routine: he likes to go sit by the nice library lady and smile up at her until she says, "Ollie, it's so nice to have you sit near me, but if you sit over there, you'll be able to see the story!" Then he picks up his pillow and goes and sits with the other kids, giggling the whole time.

At our Early Childhood classes, there's an alphabet rug that we sit on during "circle time". We have a tradition of having N sit on the "N", O sit on the "O", and me sit on the "M" for "Mama". On Saturday, Ollie sat on the "L" instead, and No*ah started to object. Ollie leaned over me and smiled at N*oah saying, "I'm Loliver!"


We have snow, and this year the little hill in front of our house is a big hit. I found these two sleds sitting against someone's garbage can this summer and threw them in the car. I'm glad I did -they're perfect!

I know this, because I can see it from the warmth of the house while listening to public radio and drinking tea. Motherhood is such hard work sometimes.

Ten Thousand Villages needs your help!

Dear Friends and Family,

You may have already heard of the nonprofit gift stores, Ten Thousand Villages. For those of you who are not familiar with Ten Thousand Villages, it is a nonprofit organization founded by Mennonites that is dedicated to providing vital, fair income to artisans in developing countries by marketing their handcrafted products and telling their stories in the United States. Ten Thousand Villages sells a wide range of gifts, personal accessories, jewelry and home décor in over 81 stores nationwide and online at tenthousandvillages.com

As a result of the recent financial crisis, Ten Thousand Villages artisan partners around the world are experiencing skyrocketing food and energy costs. They are also facing the reality of fewer orders due to declining retail sales in the U.S. Artisans are relying on Ten Thousand Villages and its supporters now more than ever. Your support directly benefits families that depend on the income it produces.

As my closest friends and family, I would like to offer you 20% OFF your next purchase at Ten Thousand Villages. If you e-mail me at minksundsethATgmailDOTcom, I will forward you the coupon. Bring it to your local Ten Thousand Villages store, or use the promo code FRIEND at tenthousandvillages.com to redeem your discount online.

Please also feel free to share this special offer with your family and friends by requesting the coupon and forwarding it to them -especially if you know people that live near the St. Paul store:

Ten Thousand Villages St. Paul, MN

867 Grand Avenue St. Paul, MN 55105

email: stpaul@tenthousandvillages.com phone: 651-225-1043

On behalf of the artisans Ten Thousand Villages represents, I thank you for supporting them by shopping and spreading the word about our very important mission!

Happy Holidays!

wonder

In a couple of places recently (a book and a magazine, to be exact), I have read reference to “fostering a sense of wonder” among one’s children, complete with accompanying bullet point suggestions. It kind of got me thinking, because that idea didn't really resonate with me. It wasn't that any of the suggestions in particular were so awful, just that the whole idea seemed a little off base. Now, don't get me wrong--I don’t see my kids as perfect little self-contained beings that can raise themselves if we just provide them with an optimal environment. That kind of thinking kind of drives me crazy, actually. Kid do need our leadership, they need a healthy legacy of tradition and knowledge and values that are both explicitly and implicitly taught over time. They need limits and loving, consistent discipline. But a sense of wonder? They do come to us with that. It really does take care of itself if we provide a good environment for it and we really can get in the way of it.

Little kids are usually absolutely full of questions and ideas and amazement at all they learn every day. They are full of wonder if we don’t get in the way, but we do. We get frustrated with the incessant chatter and blow off their questions. We expect them to appreciate the grand vistas when they are full of wonder at the tiny details of life. Sometimes we give them only scripted crap to play with instead of encouraging authentic creative play. We over-indulge them and over-schedule them. And in the process, we forget that occasionally, our children can show us a thing or two.

Seeing life through their eyes is, in my opinion, one of the most real and true joys of life. The small, tiny things that we adults miss in our hurried busyness areworth stopping and paying attention to. The drip of a faucet. The changing shape of the moon over days. The smell of the wind. The squishy pull of mud on our shoes when we hike in the woods. The feel of sand between fingers. Tiny ants and flying insects, shadows, birdsongs, animal tracks in the snow. Kids are full of wonder at everything from the mundane to the spectacular. And the questions! For every bunch of repetitive silliness there's a gem. Did it stink inside Noah's Ark? What is the biggest number of all? Does God get tired sometimes? Who made God? How many worms are there in our backyard? Why do we have wars? If everybody in the world closed their eyes at the same time, would the sun blow out? Tuning into all that with them, appreciating their mostly micro perspective and all the big questions, is to be connected to all we tune out when we rush through our daily obligations.

So why do we spend so much energy trying to give them spectacular experiences? Why do we think we need to impress them, to load up the space underneath the tree, to try and create that manufactured burst of enthusiasm? I think there are several reasons that lead to this impulse. Marketing to both kids and parents is a big one. Misguided guilt can be a factor. Sometimes, perhaps, we just want to be able to take credit for our kids' joy because we're more ambivalent about how we're contributing to their development. There isn't much in our culture that gives us the message that our time and best loving effort as parents are enough.

There are lot of things on my To Do list this season. The shopping will be minimal, as we're keeping things simple. As we have done before, we will adopt a family who has less than we do through a local nonprofit. We will light the advent candles and say a simple prayer together every evening. We will pack, and visit family, and bake cookies, and sing in church and at home, and participate in the Christmas program. We will put up a Christmas tree, and hang peanut-butter and birdseed covered pine-cones in our front yard tree, the same tree that is now covered in lights, that we cover in dryer lint for the birds nests of spring, that gives us crab-apples to play with in the fall, and squirrels and birds to watch all year round.

I will not, however, have "creating a sense of wonder" as an agenda item. Our job during Advent is not to inject our children with some elixir they might be deficient in, it is to resist the temptation to overdo everything, from shopping to what's on the calendar. If J and I don't get lost in the busyness, if we answer Noah and Oliver's good questions about what this season means, if we just take time to appreciate and spend time with each other and breathe, the wonder will be there for our children. If we're as fortunate as we've been for the last 3.8 years, Noah and Oliver may even share a bit of it with us.

job descriptions

It's so funny how the boys go back and forth as to how cooperative they are about helping. O is in a lovely phase as far as being helpful goes. He loves to be given a little job, or to pick something up for me, or to sort the silverware. N, well, at 18 months, N would clean the room up as fast as his brother dumped stuff out, and until recently, he kept his room very neat most of the time. He has an enduring appreciation for tidiness. Cooperation, however, is not so high on his to-do list at the moment, and we have to be a bit firmer to get him to help out than we used to have to be, unless it's something novel. I swear they hide from me to make their plans for taking turns, because that's just how O was until pretty recently.

We talk a lot about how everybody in a family helps keep a family going. That's made for some interesting conversations. Let's see: Mama and Daddy both work, clean, cook, drive, "wash things" and take care of kids. Mama and the boys do the garden and chickens, but "Daddy sometimes lets out the Ladies (hens) and digs". The Ladies poop for us (er, make compost for the garden), and give us tasty eggs. Our black lab guards the hens from hawks, "walks us" and protects us from monsters. Our cat catches mice and keeps our laps warm. I'm sure the boys would feel insulted if I didn't tell you that they make their beds (I know it doesn't look like it, but they try), set and clear the table, wipe the table when asked, pick up their clothes and put them in the hamper, and pick up their toys.



Thankfully, there are things that are both helpful and fun, and both boys are equally enthusiastic about cooking and baking. In fact, they apparently have an "infectious enthusiasm" for those things that has influenced how much of it they do in preschool. They made Stone Soup there the other day (real soup made with a stone, along with all the things that the kids were assigned to bring from home), and Miss Karen was thrilled to let us know that Noah ate four bowls of it. She couldn't believe it.


Above, they're making corn muffins, and then, of course, they need a little distraction until the oven timer goes off.



And now that winter weather has set in, we've gone from spending a whole lot of time in the back yard to spending it on the other side of our stucco exterior, at the kitchen table. Puzzles, games, playdough, drawing, eating, more puzzles....















We did have to get outside to check out the 1-inch snowfall we had, though. The Ladies were a wee bit put out: they were lifting their feet way too high just to be dramatic and bok-bok-bokking with extra fretfulness, if that's possible. Listen, girls: we get eggs, you get heat lamp, got it? Not such a bad deal.


Back to this little guy for a minute. Did you notice anything common to the 1st and the 5th picture? Go ahead, I'll wait.

That's right -it's these:


The bunnies, which are probably in many more pictures within four feet of N. That's because they've been within four feet of N for most of his at-home life. My mom gave each boy one shortly after birth, and N spent his first three years trying to get Ollie to take proper care of his. It was not at all unusual to see a two-year-old N try to hand his brother his bunny, and have O reject it and for N to burst into tears.





About 6 months ago, N finally gave up and took permanent possession of both bunnies, giving him, in effect, twin attachment objects. He carries them around, crooning to them and making the "bunny face". He tucks them lovingly into bed. He confessed to me a while back that he loves to have two so he can have a "new cold one" to cuddle when the other one gets too warm against his skin - which freaked me out, because my entire life, I've had an obsessive habit of turning my pillow over all night long to feel the coolness against my chin.

But I digress. N has, in recent weeks, seemed to be showing some signs of a waning, or at least ambivalent, attachment to his bunnies. He keeps putting them in almost out of reach places, like the edge of the fireplace mantel, or pushed back on the counter, and then losing his resolve and running to rescue them. A couple of times, he's insisted that he doesn't need to sleep with any bunnies, only to come out of his room in a panic. several (no doubt tortured) minutes later.

Then, a couple of days ago, I found this:



Well. Who knew how quickly we could go from beloved to rabbit stew? Break-ups can be so messy.

We think they're still good for something, though:



We've all got a job to do. Even the bunnies.

this picture speaks for itself

Foreclosures in our neighborhood. We live at the green dot. In the beginning, they'd have For Sale signs, but now, the banks often don't even bother to list them with a Realtor. The only evidence is that the lights are never on, they look abandoned after a while, or have electrical shutoff notices pasted to the front door. There are blocks on the North side where 80% of the houses are foreclosed and empty.

terrible disease

Oli*ver is pretty sick with bronchitis, and is having to keep quiet. He’s on prednisone to help him beat it, as he was deemed to be in pretty rough shape when the doctor saw him on Friday. It seems to be helping, but we’re all sleep-deprived from the coughing and night-waking and worrying, so it’s been a rough few days. It’s a little early in the cold season to be making to do lists for just how we plan to get 2 very active boys through an afternoon indoors.

N and Ollie may have a seat on the afternoon preschool bus, and to try it out, N had to ride home all by himself, since O was out sick.



He thought it was all a grand adventure! It is nice to see each boy alone a bit more, even if with Ollie it’s in the middle of the night. O is napping 2 or three hours a day (usually it's between nothing and 45 minutes or so). I took just N to the store yesterday when J came home, and to church this morning as grandma watched him. At church, N told people that Ollie has a “terrible disease”. He made an awful face when he said it too—that boy has a flair for the dramatic. In case you’re wondering, I did make him cut it out. Then he told people his brother was “not missing, just very, very sick”, again with the face. It was so odd and funny to be at church with just one boy; it made me realize how much people look out for us. People were always trying to find my other boy for me or offering to watch N so I could go find Ollie--and here I get annoyed because people are always stopping me when I’m trying to get out the door with them.


In any case, we’re surviving, watching Milo & Otis together on the couch with some popcorn, playing with clay, and improvising. In other news, Ollie is left-handed like his mother. N is not.

city life (our version, anyway)

Ollie seems to have a special relationship with this chicken. She won't let me near her, but O picks her up all the time, and she really doesn't seem to mind. We're getting about 3 eggs a day now, but this one's not laying quite yet.

them apples

A recent family trip to the apple orchard an hour away. It was a gray, chilly afternoon, but there were plenty of delicious Harroldsens that are now in our fridge, and we all had a lovely time.