Well, she’s not the Speaker of the House anymore, but as the first woman to hold it, she’ll always be Madam Speaker to me.

This morning when faced with the choice of visiting the Museum of the African Diaspora in honor of Martin Luther King Day, or going to see a movie with some friends, Jared chose the latter. Go figure.

So it was just Ethan, Matthew and I for a trip into the city. We had to keep it short so we’d be back when Jared got home.

The Museum (http://www.moadsf.org) turned out to be thought-provoking for Ethan, but not targeted for Matthew’s age. After our short visit there, which was free to the public today along with several other museums in the area, we made our way back to the 5th & Mission Garage by walking through Yerba Buena Gardens. There was a speech going on and a huge crowd of people. Of course Ethan had to see what was going on, so he snuck through the crowd, Matthew and I doing our best to follow.

Next thing I know we are standing 25 ft in front of the stage with an audience of 100 seated in chairs behind us. Oops! We sit down on the grass quickly!

The speech is fantastic. The speaker is a man who worked beside Martin Luther King as a student, holding one of Dr King’s personal notebooks, talking about freedom for all — including Lesbians and Gays (knows his crowd!). (I find out later he is the Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, a former student of Dr. King and national board member and president of the San Francisco Chapter of the NAACP, and he was honored for a lifetime of service to the civil rights movement.)  Matthew is trying to fall asleep on me, but Ethan and I are entranced, clapping and hollering. Ethan even gave him a standing ovation with everyone else at the end. (I was still holding Matthew.)

Wait – is that Nancy Pelosi on the stage???

So once I told Ethan that, then we had to wait until the speeches were over and see if we could shake hands with Congresswoman Pelosi. Matthew and I didn’t make it over, but of course I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that Ethan did.

Now he wants to be a politician. Again. I told him I hope he follows in Martin Luther King’s footsteps – a “community organizer” (just like Uncle Daniel!), a crusader for rights. I warned him that he can’t get rich as a politician unless he gives in to corruption. He said – “Sure, I can mom. What about the speaking engagements? The book deals?”

Pic by Sue Exley at graduation

Matthew and I graduated from preschool yesterday!

Matthew is moving on to kindergarten after 2.5 years at Carlmont Parents Nursery School (where Glen worked with Irene Carvajal to redesign the Website. They made the templates I populated all the content).

6 years in a row for me of working at the school at least once a week, doing a family job, attending night meetings. 6 years in a row of a strong community around us, people who share our values, family potlucks, picnics and concerts and being able to always find a playdate.

I’m really happy that we made the commitment to this school and to El Cerrito Preschool Cooperative before that. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.

The PTA Board at Laurel always has at least one former CPNS parent on it. Next year it will be me and Ed Coady.

Anyway – more about MATTHEW! He wanted a pair of crocs, those rubbery, flimsy sandals which can be worn in water. I bought him a pair but said I would return them if he wasn’t good during graduation. He was SO GOOD! He sat quietly at attention the entire time. I was SO PROUD of him! I couldn’t believe it.

I guess he really is ready to move on to kindergarten. He thinks he is. He seems to think it starts any day now! Maybe today!

A song, it’s BooBooDee* and

trick or treating and

having playdates at Aidan’s house and

birthdays I go to and

birthdays I stay at.

As told to Teacher Leslie and written in a Thanksgiving card.

* BooBooDee is The Cowboy Song, which we have recorded by a local artist. We listen to it OVER and OVER in the car.

Matthew: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Any random person he can get to answer: Why?

Matthew: Because it went across the road and into the house. It went in the bathroom and sat on the toilet. It went pee and poo. Then the little boy came in and pushed it down the toilet and flushed the toilet and it said “aaaaah! aaaaaaah! aaaaah!”

(Matthew and Jared can incorporate potty humor in any joke. How naive I was to think that since Ethan never engaged in potty talk that I would get to miss it altogether…. *sigh*)

———————

Matthew: Knock knock

Anyone around: Who’s there?

Matthew: Interrupting cow

Anyone: Interrupting co…….

Matthew: MOOOO!

Courtesy of Erin Coady

———————-

Then Glen tried to expand on the interrupting cow to interrupting chicken or interrupting pig. Matthew LOVED this idea. But he couldn’t execute it!  He’d say – interrupting pig, and then he’d say MOOO by accident instead of OINK! And each time he’d smack his forehead and laugh and laugh, exclaiming – oh no! or Doh! or Hey!

He tried about 20 times before he finally got it. He did NOT give up.

Or not sleepy enough?

Matthew and Jared both took pretty long naps the other day, and for the first time I can remember, they couldn’t fall asleep that night!

They tiptoed into our room twice. “Our tummy hurts,” they said in unison.

“You share a single tummy? It’s the collective tummy?” we teased.

I went to check on them and both children were lying next to each other in Jared’s bed. They didn’t hear me sneak to the door and poke my head in. By the light of the snowflake lights, Jared was reading Go Dog Go! to Matthew.

It was SO CUTE!!!

With Ethan out of the room, Jared gets to take on the role of big brother. I think he’s enjoying it.

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!)

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.

The boys recently went to the east coast for their cousin Jessica Lipka’s bat mitzvah. Glen took them all by himself!!!! Yay Glen! He said he realized that I usually take care of 90% of everything that needs to be done on these trips. That was nice. I had rehearsals for Magic Flute opera chorus at Opera San Jose so I couldn’t go.

Allegedly, the boys were great! Energetic as always, but well behaved overall. They got to see Nana, who was visiting from Florida, and Shana, and stayed with Bapu and Susu and Auntie Abigail and of course saw Aunt Lindy and Uncle Daniel and cousin Molly. They got to play with cousins Genessa and Elizabeth. All of these adults tell me that the boys were great. I think it’s a conspiracy. How could they be well-behaved without me there yelling at them and mutchering them?

Matthew had a fantasy that he had to share with everyone. He is going to the moon. He is taking a rocket to the moon. There will be a party. There will be a swimming pool and a flag. There are many details to this fantasy. It is specific. Abigail asked, “How do we get to the moon, do we take the elevator?” Matthew rolled his eyes at her and patiently explained, “No. You take a ROCKET to the moon.” He did not stop talking about this plan of his the whole trip!

Unfortunately when they were in DC for the celebration, the line for the Air & Space Museum was toooo long. Man, that would have been a perfect place for them to visit!

They all had a great time and I was so sorry to miss it.

DeeDee Clarke says to Ethan: The girls love monkey bars. When they see monkey bars they have to climb on them.

Ethan says: I’m like that with soccer. When I see a soccer ball, I have to go kick it.

Matthew says: Yeah! Me too! When I see ice cream, I have to go eat it!!!

One of the moms at summer camp noticed Matthew playing in the water:
“Matthew sure is excited about that water!”

Her four year old daughter responds dryly:
“Matthew is always excited.”