contentment

Thought you folks might like to see some of the things the boys have been up to the past few days (like this impromptu dance party early yesterday AM) while I prattle on about myself for a bit.

It occurred to me today, as I stepped out in the 5 minutes of sunshine that came between bursts of torrential rains this morning, that I am feeling particularly nourished these days. Like I'm exactly where I want to be, and exactly who I want to be. It's a feeling that's been creeping up on me, so stealthy that I hadn't realized it was here until just this moment, even though I can say for sure that it didn't arrive just today.

(The boys collaborating on a woodworking project, which was a mix between creation and pretend play, Zoo Boy and his Pliers trying to swoop in and steal wooden pegs, which J and his Hammer defended at all cost.)

I spent most of the 90s in a pit of cynicism that I'd dug for myself. I'm not sure where it came from. Perhaps having spent the entire 80s steeped in idealism, it was just a natural backlash effect. It's not that my life wasn't good -- it was good. It was really good. But it wasn't what I'd assumed it would be. I'd spent my entire life dreaming and planning out what my future would be, and even though that dream continued to evolve over time, I think it was a bit of a shock that it wasn't quite what I'd envisioned. So I became cynical of what life was, and dreamed even harder about the future, planned even more extensively, for that day when life would be more than good, when it would be GRANDE.

(J, the "man fairy", as he labeled himself as he donned these large "wings". "Do you know that fairies can be men too?" he asked me. Of course I do, I replied.)

J's birth changed a lot of things for me. It changed my world view. It changed my personal view, of who I am, of who I wanted to be. It changed my priorities. It changed what I wanted for the future. Now I was dreaming for someone else. Slowly the cynicism melted away. Bit by bit, it was replaced with love and acceptance. But still I dreamed of a better tomorrow. For him, for me, for our family.

(Building with their rally dominoes set.)

In the couple of years since I've turned 40, I've felt a shift inside of me. A sense of maturity, of acceptance of myself and everyone, everything, around me. I wasn't sure what it meant in the bigger picture of things, but I knew it was a good thing. It wasn't until today, stepping out in the brief sunshine that promised the return of spring, that I realized what it really was. Contentment. I've arrived at the place I've been moving towards my entire life. I'm living my dream. It's not the dream of my youth, or of my idealistic 80s, or of my cynical 90s. It's the dream of a connected, nourished life. Not a perfect life (if there even is such a thing), but of being truly content with where I am right now, who I am right now, being in and cherishing this moment in time.

It's the dream of not needing to dream of something better, because this, right here, is GRANDE.

Mimi at the museum

Our beloved "Mimi" (aka, my mom!) visited our favorite museum with us yesterday in advance of J's concert. At the risk of her beaning me the next time I see her, I'm going to post a few of the highlights. In this first photo, the kids (read: Zoo Boy) talked her into climbing up into the boat with them for a fishing expedition.

They (again: Zoo Boy) also talked her into climbing up into the loft in the barn room. Here she chats with J about something. (Hopefully it was something really good, making the hazardous climb back down out of the loft worth the effort!)

Zoo Boy was absolutely thrilled to introduce Mimi to his favorite animal friends.





Not Mimi. (Just in case you couldn't tell the difference! Uhoh, now I really AM in trouble!!) But the opossum was just being too darned cute yesterday to not take his photo!


After giving her the grand tour, Zoo Boy enlisted Mimi into Book Reading duty. Which meant they were both tied up while J was doing his pre-concert practice with chorus, which meant that I was able to sneak away and spend some quality bonding time with my friends! Ahhhhh. I really think Mimi should come to the museum with us EVERY day!

winter concert

Today was the Homeschool Chorus' winter concert. The kids had prepared about a dozen songs, complete with multiple costume changes and props -- it was quite the production! J is the kid furthest to the right in all of these photos.

The first song they performed was "Erie Canal", and they were dressed as sailors and "rowed" throughout the song.

They also sang "The Bear Necessities", wearing bear masks (except for J's friend, Q, who has an elephant hat on, for some unknown reason). In looking at this photo, it's hard to tell that J is in a bear mask -- looks like his normal face......hmmmm.......

They also did a selection of songs from the musical "Annie". Here they are performing "Maybe", all tucked into bed. They made adorable orphans, and several of us stage moms asked the choral instructor to put on a production of Annie this summer so the kids could play those roles, but she reminded us that Annie isn't really a kids' play, it's got quite a lot of adult content. So, shoot. No Annie. However, she did say something about Seussical the Musical.....

"The Wearing of the Green", each kid is wearing googly shamrock head bands.





The kids as the "von Trapp children", with the eldest choir member as Maria, perform "Do Re Mi". (J is in the closest to the front of the stage.)

J had quite a fan club in attendance -- The Map Man, Zoo Boy and I, my Mom, and The Man's parents. We took up an entire row of seats! And we all went out for ice cream afterwards. Yum! We're all looking forward to the Spring Concert! (Both for the music and the ice cream!)

weekly wrap-up, week #23, winter #11

The collies take a romp during the snowstorm yesterday. The kids followed suit shortly thereafter, and wound up spending quite a bit of time playing in the snow (and snuggling with our new lambs) yesterday afternoon.

This week our rhythms were a bit thrown off by too many outside activities. So we only did our Bear Hunt adventure circle and our curriculum story (The Boy Who Loved Bears, which is a Pawnee Tale that I adapted to better meet the needs of young children) once during the week. We'll use the same materials next week as well to finish up our winter semester. But too much learning happened this week to consider it a vacation week! And our basic daily rhythms were the same as always, just a lot of extra opportunities thrown in.

For example, our trip to Imagine Nation in Bristol. Last time we were there, we underestimated how long it would take us to drive there, so we left earlier this week. But it meant skipping our usual "school work" -- a good trade, though, the kids found plenty of other educational opportunities. Like in this photo, where they are experimenting with using hair dryers to keep ping-pong balls suspended in the air.

We also went to the local children's museum on Monday for the homeschool classes, and on Thursday afternoon for a class J took on Marine Mammals. While J was in class, Zoo Boy and I sat in on a program about animals for a Girl Scout troup. The educator knows Zoo Boy, so included him in all the interactive parts, too. The Girl Scouts didn't seem to mind.

And we went to our favorite park/nature center with our homeschooling buddies on Friday. The kids took turns pushing each other around the facility in a small cart (pictured), did some puzzles, read some books, and spent a large amount of time with active pretend play in the giant tree house and stone wall tunnel. It's so nice to have great indoor spaces like this for them to be active on days that are a bitterly cold as Friday was. But we're still looking forward to being able to do more outdoors once spring comes.

On the farm, we had our first lambs of the season born. Here they are, a whole day old, hanging out with their mom (on the right), and another ewe from the flock who doesn't look nearly pregnant enough. I'm not sure if she's only carrying one lamb, or maybe just missed getting bred somehow. Only time will tell!

And finally, a peek at the 'keet babies! We've named them -- given our fruit theme it wasn't hard -- they will all be blue, so they are Blueberry, Raspberry, and Huckleberry. Their feathers are really starting to come in, and their eyes opened, so they are looking more like little birds and less like little aliens. We just started holding them yesterday so that they will be hand-tamed and willing to sit on our fingers/shoulders. I don't think most parakeet breeders do that (our adults are not tame), but it will make for a much nicer relationship with their new owners if they are already people-friendly when they go to their new homes. Besides, it's fun for us to handle them!

Books read at this week's Family Story Time: It's Snowing! by Olivier Dunrea (a wonderfully simple book about a mama and baby enjoying a snowstorm -- perfect for this week's very snowy weather!); Welcome to the Ice House, by Jane Yolen (one of my favorite books by her), illustrated (gorgeously!) by Laura Regan; and the Three Snow Bears, by my personal favorite children's author, Jan Brett.

One more week of Winter semester, and then it'll be right on to Spring! Because, you know, it WILL be Spring, eventually....the lambs say so!

J's recent projects

Figure I'd toss up a few photos of J's recent projects -- as usual, he's been a very busy, self-motivated lad.

Here's a model dinosaur he built from a kit he got at the Springfield Science museum a few weeks ago. (His grandparents gave him some money in his Valentine's Day card, and this is what he decided to buy with it.)

A creation out of wooden cube blocks. He says it's a maze.






He had a dream about having 4 legs, then drew a picture of himself dreaming it. His drawings are always so insightful as to what's going on inside that amazing brain of his. We assume this is strengthened because he's not always able to find the words to say what he's thinking. Pretty cool outlet to get the information out!

I found the valentine's day card that he had made for the chinchillas at the children's museum, hanging from their enclosure, so I grabbed a snapshot of it while we were there this week.



One of his favorite activities these days is studying about various countries in his Children's Atlas. Each page has a different country's map, and boxes with information about the country, and little projects or crafts to do. One thing he really likes to do is to take a little green Lego and pretend it's a person, and move him about the country map, visiting each of the cities. The other day, he made a scale with a piece of paper to measure the distances between cities in Australia. He also learned how to use the grid system to find specific locations (so if he wants to find Rome, for example, he can look it up and locate it via the grid on the Central European map). Geography lessons, designed by J!

Imagine that

We spent the first part of Thursday afternoon over at Imagine Nation in Bristol, CT, before heading over to our local children's museum for a class about Ocean Creatures for J. Thought I'd share a few pics of the fun!

Zoo Boy experiments with some magnets.




J makes himself comfortable in a reading nook.






Zoo Boy checks out the computer room.






J and his friend Q create pictures with fluorescent markers, which they then took upstairs to the dark room to see them glow in the dark.





The "boys club", our homeschooling companions, enjoying an ice cream break together.

first lambs of the season

I know, I'm horribly behind on posting about the stuff we've been doing this week. But before I even think about that, I just need to share what greeted us in the sheep tent this morning. Our first lambs of the season! That's Dana on the left and Melissa on the right. It's tradition for us to use the characters from whatever show we're really "into " at the time we lamb -- last year it was Battlestar Galactica, the year before it was LOST. We recently purchased all 9 episodes of one of our favorite shows of all-time -- The X-Files -- so that'll be our theme this year. (Dana Scully is one of the main characters, and her sister is Melissa.)

For those of you who are just tuning in, these are Katahdin sheep -- a breed of "hair sheep", which means they do not grow wool. The mother is a ewe we call "Ugly Betty", named after the TV character with that name, because she's, well, ugly. Here's a photo of the mom with her babies so you can see for yourself:


You see what I mean? She's just not attractive. But she's a really good, experienced ewe, about 8 yrs old, and I expect to get nice lambs out of her for the next couple of years. We bought her last summer to bring in some unrelated genetics.

The really exciting part of this is that we didn't have lambs due until the end of March/early April. Our ram, Apollo, had died suddenly and unexpectedly at the end of September, we thought before breeding any of the ewes, but apparently Ugly Betty cycled earlier than the rest and Apollo managed to breed her before he died. We are thrilled with this surprise (although we could tell for the past couple of days that she was going to lamb at any minute, so already had figured out that we were getting some Apollo babies). Both lambs look a lot like their Dad, which is absolutely wonderful! (He was GORGEOUS!) The rest of our lambs will be fathered by Mars, the black ram we brought in after Apollo died.

One more photo of the happy family for you to enjoy.

We're having a snowstorm today (of course), and I plan to read the book "Snow Lambs" to the boys before we bundle them up to head out and greet the new babies.

I tell ya, cute little lambs certainly make dealing with a March snowstorm much more enjoyable!