And a Day For Indulgance

Clara and Julie spent Monday afternoon indulging in a series of small treats. They began with a ladies lunch at Chipotle.  Birdie had a whole burrito! Carnitas, peppers and onions, sour cream, cheese, and lettuce for the curious.  Then, they went to the book store where they each got a book as well as one for Joe. That was followed by a smoothie from Starfoxes.

The entire afternoon was marked by intermittent conversation about laws and whether various things were against the law. The conversation began when Clara rolled down her window and pitched out a rock. Oh, you don't gather rocks wherever you go, Fans? The bambini do. It is not uncommon to lift up one of their jackets and discover it weighted down by a pocketful of rocks.  Neither have yet to meet a rock they didn't want to pick up and squirrel away somewhere, except perhaps the one Clara up and decided to pitch out the window, just before a car passed in the opposite direction.  We can only assume that rock was a troublemaker.

Little Leave Takings

Julie has been thinking lately about the little leave takings that mark the days when one has kids and works outside the home. There are other leave takings to come, everything from sleep-away camp to college, that for now remain bridges to cross on other days.  But as she was working outside the home before Joe and Clara were born and didn't stop once they were, a bridge she's crossed many times is the one that ends with her leaving Joe and Clara in someone else's care while she's at that other work.  She's never felt conflicted about her choice to work outside the home after she became a mother the way she knows some parents--mothers, really--are.  She has learned though that her comfort with the choice doesn't mean that some days it isn't still hard to let go of Joe and Clara's little bodies and walk out of their respective schools, to leave them. 

Clara, especially, still has a hard time parting on weekdays, at least when Julie drops her off.  But, quite by accident, Julie has discovered something that makes the leaving a little less hard for  her, and perhaps for Clara.  Many days, Clara will cry, "I want to stay home with you."  On one such day, Julie replied, "Me, too," and there she was in a moment in which she still felt sad, but a little less so, because she was in it with Clara. There was something about acknowledging that she wanted to stay home with Clara and would miss her, something about acknowledging the leaving and allowing the moment to be, that made it less hard to part.

For Care, new to leaving for other work.

A Day for Exploration

Clara Jane was the only one in the family with Columbus Day off, and her handlers thought she could use some supervision. In honor of Columbus, Clara and Ted headed to the zoo for the morning to discover new lands (artificially recreated for us in Apple Valley, MN). We saw otters munching on ice cubes, a tiger asleep next to a gnawed-at pumpkin, a bear asleep on a rock as well as one awake and snorting, wrestling monkey babies, a herd of camels piled up like a litter of puppies, a pair of moose kissing, and a very stoic leopard.

It's always something new at the zoo!

Pumpin' and Cookin'

Julie spent the summer after her first year of law school working at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services where her colleague in the cube next door once said to her, "Now you're cookin' with gas."  She'd never heard that before, thought it was hilarious, immediately adopted it, and has been saying it ever since.  The other week, she was reading in the front room while Joe was working on something at the dining room table, when he said--apropos of nothing it would seem--"Now you're pumping with gas!"  The gas at the gas station being the only gas he knows, his verb choice made perfect sense.  A very loud laugh burst out of Julie who said, "Cookin' with gas!"  Without missing a beat, Our Hero, delighted to have made his mother laugh, immediately followed up with, "Now you're cookin' stew!"

Yar-ing Up the Joint

Keen-eyed observers of certain pictures in the last post--especially those who have been at White House recently--will have noticed that we have finally hung something permanent-looking over the mantel.  For well over a year, what had been hanging there was an enormous sign reading, "We love you Mommy!" that the bambini had made on butcher block paper with Ted's help when Julie was away on a day trip last spring.  We'd hung a good number of pictures not long after we moved in and painted all the walls, but had been struggling with the big space over the mantle, the first wall you see upon entering through the front door.  But recently, some art that had been hanging in Southold arrived, and a cocktail party was in the offing, so we decided to revisit the artwork--old and new--that remained unhung.  A eureka moment resulted in the four black frames going over the mantel with boating pictures in them after we'd hung a metal sailboat sculpture across the way.  (Longtime readers will no doubt recall Julie's affection for all language nautical and the idea, at least, of sailing.  And of course, Ted can sail and she adores him.) Our Fans who knew Southold might also be interested to see the harbor scene painted by one of Grandpa Tom's patients, now reframed and cleaned, and hanging in the pass between the kitchen and dining room here at White House.