threadwalker

My kids. They are beautiful. I am full of marvel.

I have toddler photos of Super N taped to the walls in my shed. I have a hard time reconciling the freckle-faced, sassy, sensitive, smart, insightful boy who wears boxer-briefs with the white-blond, blue-eyed, pale imp who was too shy to smile for cameras, loved balls and tried to fly the first time he wore a super-man cape, ending that experiment with a belly-flop on the family room carpet. I'm having angst at how quickly he is growing from toddler to little boy and soon to pre-teen. Watching him flirt with the twins who were one year ahead of him on track team took me by surprise. (I mean flirting in classic boy fashion, which meant poking them with sticks and trying to drop bugs down their backs.) Listening to him cajoule everyone into choosing movies that he wants to watch on movie night drives home how worldly he is. Listening to him advise his sister on how to deal with school-yard drama also drives home the point that he's an independent thinker and problem solver. He's gone from fighting me on reading to diving into books; he's checking the Harry Potter books out of the school library, among others, and his back-pack feels like it weighs a ton from all the extra books he's reading. We just got notification that he just passed some testing for the gifted program at school. He blows me away.

And to balance Super N is Miss E, who is a stubborn, emotional, willful, sensitive, creative, bossy little girl. She hugs the air out of me and kisses me all over when I look tired because, in her words, her kisses give me energy and make me younger. She is a roller coaster and my challenge is to reinforce boundaries without the kind of direct confrontation that would crush her spirit. I don't think she's changed all that much personality-wise from when she was little, but she's definitely more outgoing and the power of language has channeled her incoherent toddler frustrations into coherent, insightful arguments full of logic-traps for unwary parents. (And sometimes that commentary is non-stop and I ask her to give me some peace and quiet). She is turning into an amazing little girl who's bent on using her titanium will-power to stand up for herself, her brother, underdogs at school, and any other worthy cause she sees. I've been watching her closely and she's so big. I can barely carry her anymore. When she wears her jeans, vans and fitted sweaters she doesn't look like my little girl anymore, she looks disturbingly mature. And not only is she reading, she's writing stories independently and drawing pictures to go with them. She mentioned in passing last week that she and her girl-gang at school are using recess and formed their own "homework" club where they help other kids in their class. Miss E is helping class mates read and write because they want to. Not only does she look mature, she's making mature decisions.

We went for Mexican food last night and Miss E (the "shy" one) spontaneously started to lipsinc and air guitar the mariachi music. I snapped a photo with my camera phone. I could not believe how funny and inspired she was. Super N joined in and I was laughing so hard I was crying. I snapped a photo of him, too. How did I get so lucky?

Who are these kids? Where are my babies?

Several nights last week I dressed for my workouts as soon as we got home, fed the kids, helped with homework and got done early enough to chill out. They piled on me on the sofa - one in my lap and the other curled up against my side/ribs. I have no idea what was on TV because I just sat there enjoying the sensation of their presence, smelling them and soaking up the warmth of their weight on me. We stayed like that past their bedtimes because I couldn't bring myself to break it up. When they eventually went to bed, I'd lost my momentum and it was quite late. Soon enough they won't want to sit on my lap and I'll have all the time in the world to run on the treadmill, so I'm not bummed at these missed workouts. But I think I'm dazed at how quickly I've gone from packing 2 different sizes of diapers to shopping for jeans and talking about conflict resolution at school.

wow