lucky

I am 34 years old, and I've been told many times (and expect to hear many times over the coming days) how lucky I am to have had my grandmother in my life for so long. I absolutely know this to be true, and it's a fact that I'm hanging onto today. Gram died last night, and all day I've been reminding myself of how lucky I've been, not just that our lives have overlapped for so long, but that she was the grandmother I got. I could give you a million different examples of her bravery, compassion, and unwavering belief, but I'll save that for another time; instead, you'll just have to believe me when I say there's no better example than hers that I could follow.

This blog is, above all things, a love letter to my boys, who can't fully grasp what's going on now, so I'll tell them here now what I'll be telling them when they can understand: Your "Grandma Okie" was an extraordinary woman. I hope you will remember her, but if you don't, I'll hold the memories for you. She was kind and beautiful and funny, and yes, we were so lucky to have had her in our lives.

Gram's obituary can be found here.

atta boy, liam!

Liam has a best-friend-slash-nemesis at school. We'll call him "T.R." For months, Liam has been coming home and complaining that T.R. beats him in races "because he has faster shoes." In fact, the last time we got Liam new tennis shoes, he told everyone who would listen how excited he was that he would finally beat T.R. because his (Liam's) shoes were "super-fast catchers." And sure enough, he won a couple of races against T.R., and each time, he would come home and proudly tell us about it. But for the most part, T.R. is definitely a faster runner than Liam.

So yesterday, Liam's teacher told me that the boy has found a way to even the score: academics! For the past couple of weeks, the two boys have continued their races, but now Liam has come up with a spelling game in which they challenge each other to name the most words that start with a particular letter. Liam, being a better speller, wins almost all of these contests, which, in his mind at least, makes them even.

Funny enough, we also heard yesterday that T.R. might even be on Liam's soccer team (he missed the first practice). If so, their own personal competition should add an interesting component to the games!

first soccer practice

Liam had his first soccer practice tonight, and boy, was he excited about it. When we got there, he was a tiny bit shy, but then he recognized one of his coaches (she was a teacher at his preschool last year), and the shyness disappeared. From then on he was kicking a ball against a wall, doing the "duck walk," stretching, running, and shooting goals with all of the other (mostly bigger) kids. Whenever he had a slight break, he would turn to me (I was on the sidelines with Max, Jimmy, and Gracie, who were happily sharing Fruit Loops) and either give me a big thumbs up or yell out, "Mom, this is great!" As an added bonus, cousin Emma is on the same team, so we get to see more of Laura and family (along with the added bonus of carpooling whenever necessary). The next practice isn't until next week (normally there are two per week), but I'm sure Liam will be busy practicing his kicks out in the yard all week long!

oh, the humanity!

The boys were eating dinner last night when we heard that timeless herald of summer, the song of the ice-cream truck. I looked out the window, and could see it across a few fields in a subdivision a couple of blocks away. So the boys quickly finished their dinner, and we excitedly rushed outside to wait.


And we waited.


And we watched.


And we waited some more.

We would hear the music get louder, and jump up in anticipation, only to hear the music get softer again. It was maddening. We waited for a whole hour, until I had to come inside to work, and the ice-cream truck never came into view. And oh! I never saw two boys look so sad as Liam and Max when they realized that there would be no ice cream from the ice-cream truck.


Fortunately, our story has a happy ending. About half an hour after I started working, Loni came over to hang out with the boys, and she was quickly persuaded by their pleading little faces (and really, who wouldn't be?) to take them to DQ to get some soft serve. Now, if only those cones had guaranteed their good behavior for the rest of the evening...

just because

spring!

The weather was just beautiful this weekend, and all four of us were happy to be out in the sunshine. Saturday morning, I cleaned the inside of my car (which was pretty messy from a whole winter of little fingers smudging everywhere) while the boys rode their bikes and played with sidewalk chalk, and Mike took out all of the mesh we had put over our bulbs when we planted them to keep the squirrels from eating them. There are a lot of plants starting to sprout, which is such a fine sight after the endless cold and snow. Liam and I took the car to vacuum it, then we picked up some lunch and headed over to my Gram's house to eat with her while Mike and Max ate at home and then took a couple of much-needed naps.



Sunday was even warmer and sunnier. I ended up having a couple hours of work to do in the morning, but Mike and the boys made the most of their time outside. Liam made a couple of new friends, even: a boy who lives down the alley (both of our yards back up onto the alley, although our house is on the opposite side of the block from his) came down with his dog, and ended up staying to play for a couple of hours. They made up games to play on the swingset and played a few rounds of soccer. Mike kept an eye on them from the deck, where he was planting seeds for some flowers. Max and I had to go and do a little shopping, and on the way back, we drove by Laura's house and saw that all the kids were outside playing (plus Maria and Cassidy!), so we stopped and hung out there for a while. Max and Jimmy had a good time attempting to assemble a folding picnic table, and there were popsicles all around. What could be better on a warm, sunny day?


Sunday night, my mom and Loni stopped by for a visit before they went out to dinner -- with my dad and brother in Washington D.C. at the National Fire Academy, it was the perfect opportunity for them eat Chinese food (which my dad hates) and enjoy some mother-daughter time. As for us, we enjoyed a feast! Mike made corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage, and we definitely did it justice. Both boys had worked up quite an appetite with our outdoor adventures. Also, they worked off plenty of steam, so they went up to bed and crashed shortly after dinner, which gave the grown-ups time to actually sit together and watch a whole movie (a rare occurrence). Based on that alone, I would call the weekend a definite success!

parks update

As promised, I took Max for a walk to the park yesterday before we picked Liam up from school, and I realized that it was most likely the first time Max had ever gone to the park by himself. I mean, of course I was there, but that's just not the same as having a big brother there to direct the play and keep things fun. I'm pretty sure the visit was a big disappointment to Max. He kept looking around as if to say, "Okay, I went down the slide. What am I supposed to do now?"

We took Liam to the park plenty of times before Max was born, and after Max was born but before he was big enough to actually play at the park instead of just sit in the stroller and watch. And it never seemed like Liam had any trouble at all finding ways to entertain himself. I guess it really illustrated for me the difference between first- and second-born. Max did mostly the same stuff he'd done at the same park the day before, including jumping off the bottom of the slide into the pit of mud, but without his brother there to whoop and holler with him and egg him on (a process that definitely works both ways these days) there was just something missing.

in the mucky mud

It's like a compulsion with me these days: If the weather is even halfway decent, I have to take the boys outside somewhere. We're so sick of being bottled up inside the house! Yesterday, it was about 45 degrees (heat wave), so Liam hopped on his bike and Max hopped into the stroller, and we set off for the nearest playground (at the elementary school). Unfortunately, when we got there, we found it filled with kids in an after-school program. Big kids. Who wouldn't let Max climb up the slide, and wouldn't let Liam go down the slide (he managed to climb up). We were there for about three minutes, then I made the executive decision to make the trek to the second-closest playground (at a former school that's now a community center). On the plus side, there weren't any other kids there, so the boys got to play freely. On the minus side, it was a giant mud pit. But having gone all that way just to play, the boys were determined to make the most of it. So they slid, and they swung, and they teeter-tottered until they couldn't teeter-totter anymore. And they whooped and hollered.


And Max discovered that disembarking from the bottom of the slide was much more fun if he stood up and jumped off -- splat! -- into the mud every time. By the time we got home, the boys were tired and exhilarated and starving -- they inhaled their dinner in record time! Today, it promises to be even warmer, but unfortunately, Liam picked this morning to throw a huge fit before school, and his consequence is that he doesn't get to go to the park tonight. Luckily for Max, today is his day at home with Mike, so I should be able to take him to the park for a little while by himself before we go pick up Liam. There's always a downside, right?

a rocky start to the weekend

We kicked the weekend off with a visit to our local library to enjoy a presentation on space rocks and fossils. The boys (or at least Max) may have been a bit too young to fully appreciate them, but they certainly enjoyed touching and examining all the specimens. In Max's case, he enjoyed it a little too much -- I had to stop him from banging one of the more fragile specimens on the table. Our cousin Cole is doing a school project on fossils, so we were able to meet him, Janis, and Cassidy at the library and enjoy some family fun, while learning some things along the way. After the presentation, the boys visited the library's playroom, where Max did puzzles and Liam played with the dolls in the big dollhouse. And by "played with the dolls," I mean, "set the dolls up in various scenarios, and then yelled 'Fire!' and attempted to get the whole family out of the house before they were consumed." What can we say? The kid's got a passion for fire safety. And if he thought that was fun, he'll be *really* thrilled when he gets the "Fireman Sam" poster that Mike ordered for him a couple of weeks ago (it's coming from the UK, apparently by slow boat).