Visual aids for the lost months

Reverse chronological order and all . . .

Car.ina after frolicking in the summer rain at a bday party.
Sop.hie after said rain frolic.

Hen.ry channeling Angus Young.
Car.ina about to ride a horse, and apparently feeling quite the badass.
Car.ina.

Sop.hie's first day of *real* summer camp. She loved it.

Hen.ry in sensory overload, eating delicious free cupcake at our neighborhood 4th of July parade while watching the firemen spray kids w/the hose from the ladder raised way up high.

Soph and friends at her small 7th bday party.

In the tub in May.


Celebrating the planting of the Obama sign in April.

At the Park 02/08

The lost months, Part I : 2/08 - 8/08

So even though I'm trying to focus more on the present, on the here and the now, so as not to go more insane, I am a historian at heart, and I just cannot jump into the now without correcting the chronological deficiencies here on this blog. So, this entry is an "in previous episodes" re-cap that precedes the current drama - kind of a postmodern format for such a thoroughly fuddy-duddy modernist.

February 2008 - a crisis in my family (not the family I created) shakes me to my core and I don't remember a damn thing about what my kids did, except that I thought a lot about how much I loved them, even though I was often too stressed out to show it. I do remember a lot of planning and registering Sop.hie for summer camps in the midst of it all. That's what February signifies in my mind, not Valentine's Day, or winter, but summer camp registration time. It is a Very important time because if you miss it, you're fucked come June. I'll see if I can come up with some pictures to jog my memory.

March 2008 - See February. I turned 40! I had a B-day party. It was fun. Sop.hie stayed up so late she was a zombie - she could never hold her own with the Latino kids in NYC that we used to party with until the wee hours of the morning - I always thought it was a genetic thing that white kids wimp out early, but the Latino kids have the stay-up-late gene. I could not test my theory at my bday party.

April 2008 - Hen.ry loves trains and erplanes on our trip to celebrate Passover in Philly. He talks about the erplane, the train, and the shuttle bus for weeks. He's obsessed with vehicles, the bigger the better. He's so male and so American. But still cute. My niece, "Baby Onion" turns one. I work feverishly for Obama in anticipation of the N.C. primary. I take the kids canvassing. They hate it, but I still feel hopeful. I make appliqued Obama t-shirts for the twins, getting back to my inner-crafter. We go see Obama. I feel really really hopeful. I know it won't last, but I savor it. Sop.hie is the questionator. She asks me so many non-stop questions, all the time, that I decide that her role in Bob Black's abolished-work-world is to be a torturer at Gitmo.

May 2008 - 5/5 - Hen.ry and Car.ina turn 3 on 5/5. They have a little party. They love cupcakes. Hen.ry sleeps with his big new Tonka "flower-truck" he got from my parents for his b-day. Car.ina loves to open presents and loves candles and singing happy birthday, but doesn't care about the stuff. Obama takes N.C. in a landslide. I meet Bill Clinton on election day at a local poll and tell him "Welcome to Obama Country." He asks my middle-aged white neighbor, "do you think I'm a racist?" He appears to have dementia, or turrets. Sop.hie finds out about Hannah Montana. I tell her she can't watch it. Sop.hie goes to her first slumber party and calls me in a state of pure delirium and sadness at 12:45 a.m., but stays the night. My dad has heart surgery. I start to let Sophie watch Hannah Montana when I'm weak. I tell Sop.hie about sex. She doesn't care. Not even a little bit.

June 2008 - Sop.hie is diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive type, confirming what we already knew. Obama breaks my heart (FISA vote) - I'm distraught even though I knew it was coming. School's out and Sophie's summer camp Odyssey begins. Sop.hie really, kind of, sort of, learns to swim and the way she wiggles her butt when she does the crawl fills me with gIee. I give Sop.hie a Hannah Montana CD for her Birthday. And an American Girl doll and a bunch of other excessive consumer-culture bullshit because I feel guilty that I'm a bad mother and that she'll never recover from the twins' dethroning her as the center of my universe and I think I can buy her happiness. She's 7, going on 14. We spend a week at the beach with my family and Sop.hie is consumed with ennui, while Hen.ry is going for the full beach experience with gusto, and Car.ina loves the beach as long as someone is holding her. My mom has reefer madness when she busts certain family members consuming the evil weed - she is convinced that everyone will be a heroin addict by the end of the week, because Oprah said so. But Oprah was wrong, no one shoots smack at the beach house, or elsewhere, that week or since then. Sop.hie and I negotiate a deal where we take turns in the car listening to NPR on my turn and Hannah Montana on hers. I take all 3 kids to Target by myself one day after work and decide it's like the Mt. Everest of parenting - I feel as tired as if I'd climbed, but somehow I don't feel victorious, just grouchy. He.nry now calls my niece "Babian," moving yet closer to "Vivian," I feel sad he doesn't say "Baby Onion" any more, but I like "Babian" almost as much. He also stops saying erplane. But Car.ina still says "I want to pick you up" every time she wants to be picked up. We don't correct her.

July 2008 - July 4, potty trained. Car.ina holds her pee from 8am to 5pm before I cave and give her a diaper. I make a cake to celebrate the goodbye to diapers. He.nry surprises us all by being a potty prodigy (well, not really, he was 3, but he got it so quickly). Cari.na holds her poop for 3 days and then poops on the potty in an act that can only be accurately described as sphincter-defying. I find myself secretly listening to Hannah Montana's "see you again" even when Sop.hie is not in the car. I find the tabs to the song on the web and play it for Sop.hie on her new kids' guitar she got from Grandpa for her b-day thinking it will be a good bonding point - I'm meeting her where she is (besides, I like the fucking song) - but I am sadly mistaken - "this is SO boring." Sop.hie is relentless in her pursuit to get me to say I love her more than her siblings. "Just a smidge more?" "Just a teeny, tiny bit?" We finally settle on I've loved her longer. It's a truce. Hen.ry discovers the joy of playing with his penis - freed from the confines of his diaper, he discovers he can make it erect and does so over and over, proclaiming, "Big Penis!!!" and then "bye bye big penis" when it's back to normal. My brother wants to vomit when he hears this story. I forgive Obama. I tell Sop.hie there's no Santa. She asked. Sop.hie gets stung by a bee at camp. It's okay. I have my first jury trial. I feel like a rockstar even though it was a shoplifting case and the jury was hung - but I never thought I could make it through and I did. My kids hear about criminals more than is probably healthy. Oh well.