Nature Weekend

This past weekend was awash with nature. It started with an impromptu trip by Ted and Joe to Westwood Nature Center while Clara was at a birthday party.  Joe identified and recorded his bird sightings:

The boys ate a picnic lunch along the trail  and stopped in the Center to check out some snakes and lizards.  

An even bigger adventure happened that night when the whole family went on a Full Moon walk at our favorite Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden. No sooner did it start then the wild turkeys flew up into the trees to roost for the night. Who knew they did that?! It was quite a sight to see them take off. Soon after, we heard the owl calling out and after a bit it took off across the park and into a large tree that sat just beneath the (mostly) full moon. Another fascinating site.  We walked further, up to the prairie and caught great views of the last daylight and the moon lighting up the fall foliage. Beautiful.  

The next day Ted took the kids to the park where poking a stick in the lake and finding the ducks are important rituals. 

In all it was a very inspiring, calming, and beautiful weekend in nature together. 

A Heart's Sky

The day after Christmas we all caravaned downtown to see various sights, including the Neopolitan crèche and the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute.  Once in the museum, our route to the crèche took us past Georgia O'Keefe's Sky Above Clouds IV.  Seeing this painting was an unexpected delight as one of our favorite books is a somewhat impressionistic biography of Georgia O'Keefe for children.  Birdie considered the painting for a bit and Julie's heart caught at the sight, thinking of Our Birdie always at her drawing and coloring.

For Christmas, Clara asked Santa Claws (as she charmingly addressed her letter) for a radio-CD-case of her own.  She now has a small boom box of her very own--and the Kidz Bop 30 CD.  She has already been seen rocking out on top of a bed in front of a mirror clad in only her underwear and the chocolate brown faux fur vest that Grandma Connie got her for Christmas.  It made the heart, if not catch, smile.

Chances are Our Birdie will not have her art hanging in a museum one day or sell out arenas with her act.  Time will reveal her talents and that at which she likes to work, and what skies her heart will seek.  But with any luck, she'll see and be seen, listen and be heard, and she'll keep pausing to look up, to draw and color, and to sing and dance.

Good Thing

Fans.  Hello.  We are back after our longest hiatus since this chronicle began.  We have missed the chronicling, and you.

As is our usual practice after we have gone radio silent, we just plunge back in to what is unfolding at the moment.  We come to you from Wisconsin through which we are traveling by car, having spent Christmas in Illinois with Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles, and Aunt Kate, Uncle Scott, and Cousin Nick who flew in from Pennsylvania.

Birdie is in her Santa hat tucked up against her Ariel-shaped pillow.  She has been softly singing to herself (this much remains unchanged), but she's all sung out--for the moment.

Joe is snuggled up against his Thomas the Tank pillow pet, reading Code of the Clans, a companion volume to the Warriors series.

Here, we pause to tell you that the warriors of the Warriors series are likely not what sprang to mind when you read that sentence, Fans.  Rather, these warriors are feral cats, arrayed in clans--not tribes.  (Julie recently asked Joe what was happening with Lighteningheart's--Fierceheart's?--tribe and he said, "Umm, clan?  Tribe!" and then proceeded to giggle himself silly for several minutes.)  There are no fewer than six subseries about these cats.  That means there are six Warriors book with a number one on the spine.  You have to do some research on the interwebs to know where to begin if, say, you are requesting the first few from the library.

The bambini have one more week of winter break.  For the first time, they will be spending the bulk of it at home, with Julie, who recently resigned her position at the law school at which she worked.  Last night Joe commented, "Good thing Mommy switched jobs."  (At the moment, she has a part-time--temporary--job reading applications for a college which she does from home.)  Joe's comment was really nothing more to him than an offhand, understandably self-centered--or, more accurately, child-centric--statement of fact.  But Julie was struck by it.

Her decision to resign was, of course, complex, and, in many ways, difficult, even if she feels certain it was also right. It can be easy to lose sight of the good, and the good still yet to be realized, when one is getting comfortable with Uncertainty and its sometimes companion Anxiety, ushered in by such a change.  What Joe said reminded Julie of the importance of keeping Perspective close, and its boon companion Resiliency.  (Could resiliency be any other kind of companion?)  They can be there, too, helping Change reframe the scene to make more room for Good.  So it is that Julie will spend this next week with the bambini.  Good thing.

Office worker

Our sweet girl has a wonderful imagination and commits to her inventions.  A recent activity is to work on her computer she makes out of paper. A folded sheet of paper makes a nice little laptop. She has made several of these computers in the past few months and she is able to whip one up pretty quick. This model has a mouse which is a folded up piece of paper taped shut. In this picture she is typing on the keyboard, intensely focused on her composition.

Similarly, she also enjoys writing in her journal or making shopping lists.  Her writing consists of scribbled lines, but she always dutifully fills the page with her lines of prose.

Birdie Goes to Kindergarten

Brigade. Brigade! Birdie went to kindergarten today. She said it was "great, great, great!!!" She punctuated this exclamation by throwing both her arms up over her head with each great.  She played some disco alphabet. She listened to The Kissing Hand. She visited the library. She colored. (Joe has already said that he thinks Clara might be a better artist. There might be no might about that, Fans.)

There is no might about it that the day was made easier by the presence of two of Clara's KinderCare classmates in her room. One of them also walked to school today so Clara had a familiar face next to her while lined up against the brick wall by the school's enterence waiting for Mrs. Dvorak to come up with her students who'd taken the bus. It's at that point that the walkers join the stream toward Mrs. Dvorak's room. The buses were running a little late on this first day of kindergarten, so there was plenty of time to stare at Clara and hold back tears. She was there for such a long time--until suddenly, she wasn't. She was off! She was off. Julie was the only one who cried. No doubt no one is surprised by this.

You will all recall that Clara said she was not scared to meet new people! She just loved us so much. So there.  As it turns out, it might be a little hard to talk to friends we haven't met yet. Clara allowed as much just after she'd been tucked in tonight. She talked only to the two people she already knew. But plans have been laid! Longtime readers will recall that Joe had a plan on his second day: to ask someone to do something specific, such that if he or she said no, Joe could be all check you later as he dashed off to do it. Clara has the same plan. The alternative but not mutually exclusive strategy is to tell a friend-we've-not-met-yet that she likes her dress/skirt/shoes/hair/whatever, and see where it goes. Julie reminded Clara to be sure to say yes if someone asked her to play. Clara looked at Julie and said very matter of factly, "It's not hard when someone asks me to play."  Point taken, Brigade, point taken.  Birdie. She'll tell you how it is. No might about it.  That's our girl.  Our kindergartener!

Madonna imitation.