Nana was concerned that there wasn’t enough room in the boys’ bedroom for all of their clothes. I hadn’t replaced the diaper changing table with something that would fit the larger clothes that Matthew wears now. She also felt that having a guest room in a small home was a waste of space. It doesn’t get used often enough and we don’t have enough room otherwise.

The biggest drawback was our music. The room also served as the music room where I could practice singing and the boys could play drums and sometimes work with me on rudimentary music theory. Also, the room served as our library and we would have to find a new place for all of our books.

We have moved Ethan into his own room now! We bought some bureaus for clothes in both rooms. We are slowly trying to remove the extra things in Ethan’s room to make it his own. Ethan loves having a place to put all of his sports and chess trophies. Jared and Matthew are happy with their new bureau. Matthew picks his clothes out every morning and brings them to me to dress him without being asked!

All in all, I miss my music. But I think the psychological benefits of splitting up the boys at this time are more important.

I hope Glen makes millions of dollars soon to buy a 5 bedroom with a music room/library. Then we could have a guest room AND a place for me to sing AND each boy could have his own room. Nana thinks we could afford that in Florida without millions of dollars and she said she’d do all of our laundry if we moved to Florida!

Glen likes it here though. A lot. Something about people in line at Starbucks talking processing speeds.

(You better like it here honey - I figure we need at least $2 million to buy a house the size we need - $1 million down payment on a $1.5 million house, plus a million in the bank to earn the money we’ll need for taxes and upkeep!!! And that’s not even in the neighborhoods I’d like!)

While one can expect Disneyland to be fun, I didn’t realize that my children would grow from the experience.

Ethan had never been on the big, adult roller coasters. He had never had the chance. He loved every minute of them! He not only went on the fastest roller coasters there, like California Screamin (which includes a loop de loop!) but even on Tower of Terror - 13 stories free fall! Thank goodness for Uncle Daniel who accompanied Ethan on most of these rides.

Ethan’s favorite rides: Tower of Terror, California Screamin, Indiana Jones

Jared was terrified of many of the rides. After trying the Matterhorn early on the first day, which is very jerky and has “scary sounds,” he was really nervous about getting on any but the mildest rides. Over the next 2 days he found the courage to try some rides that scared him, particularly Orange Stinger and Mulholland Madness at California Adventure Park, and actually enjoyed them! The thrill for him was not how much fun he was having on the rides like Ethan, but in how proud he was in himself that he had conquered his fear. I could see a huge change in him during that trip and in the weeks since. Conquering that fear at Disneyland gave him new confidence in himself. And it made him happier.

Jared’s Favorite Rides: Orange Stinger, Pirates of the Carribean, Peter Pan (he especially enjoyed Uncle Daniel’s commentary during this ride), Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Gadget’s Go Coaster, Mulholland Madness, Redwood Creek Challenge Trail

Daniel also had to draw on character in this story. On the last night, as we sat lined up on the curb watching the Electric Parade, Daniel reached back to get his video camera and threw his back out. It was awful. He was in such pain and couldn’t move. On our last vacation with him, everyone in the house except Lindy threw up in the space of 48 hours. Then he had a kidney stone and Bapu had to rush him to the E.R. I hope he doesn’t decide not to visit us anymore, although I could hardly blame him! WE LOVE YOU UNCLE DANIEL!

Uncle Daniel’s Favorite Rides: ???

Aunt Lindy and I both had some favorites from childhood, including The Tiki Room, which wasn’t such a hit this time around.

Nana’s Favorite Ride: Definitely NOT the Toon Town Roller Coaster, Gadget’s Go Coaster

Aunt Lindy’s Favorite Rides: FROM AUNT LINDY: “My favorite thing about disneyland is reliving my childhood experience with molly and the lipka boys- it’s so fun to share all the things i loved so much as a child with them. Altho i’m sorry i had to miss it i’m SO happy that they got to see the electric parade - for me that counts as a ride. My other favorites are Pirates of the Carribean, the Jungle Cruise and the Tiki Room. The Tiki room appeals to me not just because it’s pseudo historical- it opened in 1963 and retains it’s 1963 cultural references- i also like the corny jokes, the family friendliness and the international flavor. I am also a big fan of Space Mountain (the inclines and declines are just right for me and it’s like an intergalactic chiropractic adjustment). It was closed this time- perhaps next time all the kids will be tall enough to accompany me!”

Note to Aunt Lindy: if we go again as soon as I’d like, they won’t be tall enough yet!!!

My Favorite Rides: Soarin’ Over California (you really felt like you were flying! I loved it!!!), Peter Pan, Orange Stinger, Storybook Land Canal Boats (we went at dusk and it was so picturesque)

Everyone’s Least Favorite Ride: The Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage (even though Lindy worked some of her Lindy magic and got all 9 of us jumped to the head of the line with no wait! How does she do it?) Ethan was like - there’s the surface of the water right there above our heads! This thing is not submerged!!!

Smile Disaster

Ethan’s smile took a hit yesterday, but was then glued back on. About 15 minuted before the end of Little League practice, a ball took a funny hop and whacked off half of his two front teeth. Literally about 50%. It looked like the outline of the ball to me. Glen described it to the children’s dentist as an “upside down smile.” (Later the dentist said to me, that was a great description although Glen may not have realized it was. I didn’t bother to tell Dr. Lau that, no, Glen thinks all of his descriptions are great. (And they are honey.)

At first it looked like just his lip was fat, but then they realized the teeth were gone. Luckily 2 of his teammates found the 2 pieces. I was away picking up Glen, but also luckily, friend and fellow CPNS board member Eleni Hulman was there and she called me on my cell and gave me the news right away. Ethan was crying and pretty scared and upset. All of the parents who were there and our fantastic Coach Barney Fahey were so caring and concerned - I really appreciated knowing Ethan had that love and support around him when I wasn’t there.

At first Glen and I thought we would wait until the next day to go see the dentist because dental is SO expensive and emergency anything is SO expensive and it all comes out of our HSA. But we looked online and decided to call Ethan’s dentist, Dr. Terrence Lau.

He is a GREAT dentist. Pediatric dentistry has come so far from when I was a kid, but Dr. Lau is really outstanding. He also charges an arm and a leg and we haven’t seen him for a year because our insurance had changed. Luckily, it recently changed back. He really makes the children feel at ease, explaining everything he is doing and using language that is accessible and safe. When he gives a shot he doesn’t let them see the needle; he just explains that he has to hold the lip so can see and sometimes it might feel like he is pinching too hard because the lip is so slippery to hold on to, so just tell him. That kind of calming technique and the movie (last night was Surf’s Up which Ethan had never seen) on the ceiling really made Ethan feel at ease.

We called Dr. Lau at 6:45 and he told us to meet him at the office - he would drive back from SF. And over the next 2 hours, with no help, he carefully and meticulously bonded Ethan’s missing pieces back onto the stubs. The medical prognosis is good, but we’re not out of the woods. If the nerves in the teeth are damaged, they could die and then Ethan will need a root canal. He put medicine directly on the teeth and also prescribed an antibiotic. He said we could still go to Disneyland next week.

Can’t Stop Smiling

Matthew is a smiler. He smiles all day long. He is always smiling! Almost all of his expressions include smiles. He has his angry look, where his mouth and eyes are smiling but he wrinkles his nose and forehead. He has his surprised look where he opens his eyes and mouth as wide as he can, but the corners of his mouth are still hinting at happy. He has his scared look, where he shakes his head slightly and hunches his shoulders and blinks his eyes, but is still smiling.

Smile though your heart is breaking - learning to smile again

4 was a hard year for Jared. His last year of preschool was really difficult and Jared somehow came to the belief that the world was against him. For a while he could find nothing to be happy about. I would ask him to name some good things that happened to him at the end of the day and he couldn’t.

That’s when I started the behavior modification. That included chocolate in the morning if he could name good things before he went to sleep at night. (Some might call that a bribe, but I call it conditioning.) It also included smile therapy. I felt like I had to teach him how to smile all over again. Opposite of Matthew, he seemed to not allow himself to smile under any circumstances. Now he knows that his smiles are a gift he can give me every day, and he showers me with the gift of his smiles first thing every morning and throughout the day.

We’re still working on the whole world-is-against-me belief, but we’ll get there.

Announced excitedly by one boy to 2 friends: “Hey, did you hear Lucas asked Ashleigh to be his girlfriend!”

2 friends: “Really?!” “No kidding!?!”

“Yeah, but she said no.”

Disbursement of trio.

And so it begins. But at least they felt comfortable discussing it directly in front of a mom!

Sometimes a project takes on a life of its own, going further in educating and providing family time than you could have expected.

Early this year we borrowed an Emeril for Kids type cookbook from the library. Ethan looked through (at my command! “you have to pick something!!!) and chose to try cooking Chicken Parmesan. It is now his signature dish!

It’s actually pretty easy to do and he can do most of it all by himself! And it scales up easily for guests. Ethan takes a lot of pride in inviting over friends and cooking for them.

One of the more detailed parts of the dish is creating a spice mix called “Baby Bam.” It uses paprika, salt, garlic powder, onion powder etc. (Baby Bam Recipe) Since we are growing parsley and thyme in our garden this year (thanks Erin Coady who gave me herbs to plant from her garden!), Ethan is harvesting those ingredients himself and we clean them and dry them together for the mix!

So if you like Chicken Parm, invite yourself over for dinner! We’d love to have you.

I forgot to mention this highlight of Jared’s graduation.

After each of the little students had walked over the little bridge, center stage, and were seated again in their rows of chairs behind it, Teacher Nancy (bless her heart, what was she thinking) decided to create a “moment.” She announced: “Let’s all quietly listen to this song. The children may dance slowly to this music if they wish.”

The music starts.

Nobody moves.

Then, for your entertainment pleasure, ETHAN LIPKA (not a graduate by the way) slowly moves his way onto the stage and then up on the bridge to dance.

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I didn’t want to just yank him off (visions of Mr. Bennett pulling Mary off the piano at Mr. Bingley’s party “you’ve entertained us long enough. let the other young ladies have a chance to exhibit.”).

Finally some other children started “dancing.” Their interpretations, while valid (“All interpretations are valid” Marcelle Dronkers), were not slow or quiet. When Jared and Ethan started hitting each other we yanked them both.

——————–

Anyway. Ethan sold 5 bags of fundraiser coffee at Hometown Days for CPNS all by himself, so I guess those hey-look-at-me skills have their place. I’m hoping Ed Coady can mentor him. Also Bapu, who was such a successful salesman he couldn’t leave the biz though he wanted to. (Golden handcuffs.) Friend Ed, who also tells funny Donkey stories, really loves sales though. He gave Ethan the tip to tell people that we normally sold the coffee for $18 per bag, but that today it was on specials for $11 (we always sell it at $11). It was a very effective technique. (Honesty shmonesty?)

See previous blog post Born Politician.

It’s eerie - like he was channeling Bill Clinton from across the bay where the former president was signing books today.

Today Ethan graduated to the “big kids” tae kwon do class (ages 4 - 7) from the beginners class (ages 3 - 6). He was very nervous that he wouldn’t be able to keep up, especially when they run laps around the studio. (”If you get out of order during the run you have to start over!” he would tell me.)

He ran his laps just fine. Then the dozen or so children sat down to stretch. When this was over, Ethan raised his hand and went over to Master Kim, apparently to tell him that he didn’t know some of the kids in the class. I’m not sure what Master Kim said, but the next thing I know Ethan is walking up to each kid individually, shaking their hand and saying, “Hi, my name is Ethan. What’s yours?” With a few of the kids he actually struck up conversations! This lasted for at least 2 minutes as he went up to each child. Amazingly, all the children stood silent and watched him make his rounds. Some of them even responded with more than a blank stare and told him their names.

The few parents in the waiting area and I were cracking up, as was Master Kim. “Is he running for office?!!” I demanded.

As a matter of fact, when you ask Ethan what he wants to be when he grows up he always says: President.