A conversation with Dominic

Dominic can finally talk. That's right -- at 19 months our little prodigee has mastered three words: NO, MORE and BOAT. What this means is that he and I can finally have deep, meaningful conversations about the International Monetary Fund, John Keats and whether Pluto should be reinstated as a planet. Below is one such exchange.

THE SCENE: early (like, REALLY early) this morning. Dominic has crawled up into Vincent's bunk bed, where Vincent is still asleep, and has grabbed his brother's coveted and very fragile pirate ship from the shelf above the bed.
ME (from below, hissing and trying not to wake up Vincent): "Dommie, no! Give Mommy the boat and get down."
DOMINIC (bouncing gleefully on his brother. One mast on the ship has already cracked): "NO! NO! NO! BOAT!"
ME (as I hoist myself up the side of the bed and impale my stomach on the railing): "Dommie, NO. Say 'Yes, Mommy.' Give boat to Mommy."
(I snatch the boat from his little paws and he starts wailing and bouncing harder). 
DOMINIC: "NO! NO! NO! MORE! BOAT!"
ME: "Good boy. Now come down. Say 'Yes, Mommy.'"
DOMINIC: "NO! NO! NO! MORE! BOAT!"
ME: "Down. Now. Say 'Yes, Mommy.'"
DOMINIC (howling and flinging himself all over Vincent, who miraculously is still snoring): "NO! NO! NO!"
ME: "The answer is 'Yes, Mommy.' Now get down." (he swats at me as I try to reach for him)
DOMINIC: "NO! BOAT!"
And then he bites Vincent in the leg.
ME (horrified): "NO! NO! NO!"
DOMINIC: "YES."

The good news is, his word count is now up to four.

A week of memories

How to capture a week of memories into one blog post? How to collapse boat rides and kayaking and building sandcastles -- and a beautiful wedding and a family reunion! -- into one quick post? While I ponder this, I'm going to start at the end: Luke and Kristen are married! The lovely Kristen officially became Mrs. Luke Wind and mommy to wild dog Bruce at 5 p.m. on Saturday. We are thrilled to have her in the family. Luke, you chose well!

Saturday morning we awoke to severe storms, but around noon we watched the dark clouds break into sunshine. Later that evening I watched my little brother's face break from its creases of anxiety into pure joy as his bride-to-be descended the stairs and joined her hands to his. Their pastor gave them three points of advice and one challenge: That God has pursued them and always will, that God is always quick to forgive, and that God loves them regardless. The challenge: To always pursue each other, to always forgive each other, and to always love each other, just as God does.


I can't add anything really profound to that, so I will just catalogue some of my own observations of highlights (and lo-lights) from the weekend:

• Seeing cousins, aunts and uncles we hadn't seen for a very long time! Whoa, my cousins aren't adolescents anymore! Seriously, guys, I enjoyed all the kayak trips, and my kids adore you all. Aunt Karen, Vincent cried when he realized you live "way far away" in Iowa. Mary Kay, I couldn't have done the beach without you. Peter & Matt, thanks for the run! 
• Kayaking: Somebody buy me a kayak, please. On the first night Stephen & I took the kayaks out at sunset for a nice little spin around the marsh. And by that I mean that like idiots we took them out when it was already dark, without knowing exactly where we were going, and Mom nearly called the Coast Guard on us (the Coast Guard being Luke and his boat).
• Watching my kids try new things. They loved kayaking and boogie-boarding (thanks for the lessons, Will!) but the battleship was not a big hit. Catherine only tolerated it because I let her wear her pink tutu (yeah, nothing ironic about that at all). Aunt Karen, she is already begging me for sewing projects. 
• Seeing Luke's childhood buddies. Y'all are a great group of guys (yes, even you, Downey). Even if Catherine now thinks that Texans don't drive cars. And if she is under the impression that she can call Uncle Downey whenever she wants something. Speaking of which, Downey, I need your credit card information. Catherine wants a pony. 
• Using a curling iron for my up-do. Last time I used one: Prom, 1995. The only person amused by the situation was Vincent, who kept asking when my hair was going to catch on fire. 
• Watching Luke & Kristen's slide show with all their baby photos. It finally hit me that my baby brother is all grown up and that Tara and I can't tie him to trees anymore. But really, Luke, I could not be prouder of the man you have become. You are responsible, sweet, funny and a great uncle. Love you, brother. 
• Realizing how abundantly blessed our family is. Mom, thanks so much for renting the beach houses. Family from far away, thank you for making the trip down here. Everyone, thanks for watching the kiddos so I could kayak. And Kristen, thank you for making Luke so happy. God bless you both! 

Houston, we need a shirt

Unless I get my act together in the next three days, this is how Dominic will be attending Luke and Kristen's wedding.

Meanwhile, Vincent has packed his night-vision goggles, metal detector, headlamp, shovels, sword and gun in case he needs to slay pirates and find their buried treasure. I asked him where pirates bury their treasure and he gave me a "Mommy, you are so dumb" look and said, "Where the X is."

So if you see a mom and a little boy decked out in night-vision goggles, carrying a gun and a metal detector and wandering the beach muttering, "Where's the X?" -- that's us.

Hmmm... I wonder if pirate treasure contains white dress shirts in size 18m. 

I don't do gloves

 Catherine and I were invited to a Victorian Tea Party last weekend (hats and gloves mandatory). I took a loose understanding of the word "mandatory," so when Catherine flung the contents of her dress-up box to the far edges of her room Sunday morning and discovered that she could only find one glove, I wasn't too worried. "You'll just look like Michael Jackson," I said.

"I need TWO gloves," she wailed. "But if you want me to look stupid, that's fine."

So guess who stepped in while I was rolling my eyes over the necessity of gloves? Daddy. He took his princess to the mall just to buy her gloves. When Catherine came home she gave me a big hug and said, "Mommy, I love you. I love you because you married Daddy."

And for this I wore a Victorian wedding dress.

30 Americans, three kids & a baby in mismatched clothes

My Thinkers

To celebrate International Museum Day, and because it was free exposure to art is critical for the development of keen young minds, I dragged shepherded the kids to the "30 Americans" exhibit at the NC Art Museum. It's a total myth that they would rather have stayed home to watch "Jake and the Neverland Pirates."

On the way there I turned down The Wiggles Tchaikovsky and told them a little about the exhibit. "You're going to see paintings and sculptures by thirty African-Americans," I started in my Good Mommy tone.

"I can count to thirty," said Vincent. "One, two, three..."

"Is Africa next to Virginia?" asked Catherine.

"No," said Good Mommy. "It's a continent, like North America. Anyway --"

"Like Texas?" In our house, Texas recently lost the Battle-of-a-Four-Year-Old-Boy-Who-Insists-That-it's-a-Continent.

"Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, twenty-ten..."

We got to the museum around twenty-ninety-two, approximately twenty-nineteen seconds before Good Mommy buckled under the pressure of taking three children ages five and under to the museum.

But let me back up, in case I'm coming across as a cultural philistine. I like art (okay, not modern art). I like the old stuff -- I'm a Pieter Bruegel and van Gogh kind of gal. I like art that means something, that tells a story that doesn't require that modern buzzword "interpretation." I like art you can look at and say, "Lookee them thar potato eaters," or "Just where's the groom at this here weddin' reception?"

Then again, when we got to the museum I realized I had dressed Dominic in a yellow shirt, olive shorts, blue knee socks and red shoes. So much for cultural sophistication.

Dominic: A commentary on Mommy's inability to match clothes

 

 

As I might have mentioned, entrance to "30 Americans" was free just for today, which was a good thing, since it took us less than five minutes to zip through the exhibit. I started off in Good Mommy mode, and whenever the kids would stare at a sequined painting/body with flowers for a head/illegible neon sign and demand, "Mommy, what's that?" I would employ my best Socratic method and ask, "Well, what does it look like to you?"

At an iron post topped with a rock -- that was wearing a wig -- Catherine scrunched up her face and replied, "I think it's a rock wearing hair."

"No, honey," said Good Mommy. "It's a cultural commentary on social issues."

"But it looks like a rock wearing hair."

In the middle of a nearby room Vincent had found a sculpture that looked like white insulation stacked to form a wall. "Cool," he said. "Are they knocking down the museum?" (he's been watching too much HGTV lately, particularly the renovation shows involving demolition and power tools).

"No, honey," said Good Mommy. "That's a cotton-bale and wax sculpture meant to be a commentary on labor."

"Maybe if we throw the hair-rock at the wall we can knock it down," he suggested.

The kids did fine at the Norman Rockwell exhibit last fall, and usually they are content to wander through the museum (which I love, even if it looks like a Coors warehouse). As most kids probably do, they gravitate toward the mummies, although they have yet to realize that mummies are dead bodies wrapped in cloth. I am avoiding the "brain through the nose extraction" discussion as long as I can.

But as we stood there staring at a painting called "Baby I Am Ready Now" which depicted exactly what it sounds like it depicted, I took the kids by the hand and morphed into Bad But Sensible Mommy.

"Are you ready to go see the mummies?" I asked. "I'm going to tell you something really cool."

The case of the missing keys

Red alert! Red alert! Vincent Lorelle, please report to Sector C. We have a case of missing keys!

Vincent the Detective/Pirate/Coal Miner was called upon this afternoon to use his detective skills and metal detector to locate a neighbor's missing keys (he dropped them somewhere in a patch of wet ivy). Vincent added to his professional accoutrements his coal-mining headlamp, night-vision goggles and rain boots for reasons that will remain dark to us mere mortals (perhaps we all need headlamps). He also took his trusty steed, Genie the purebred mutt, who most of the time can't even find her way indoors from the backyard, let alone sniff out some muddy keys.

Well, we didn't find keys. We did find a lot of roly-polys, a millipede, and plenty of poison ivy. And Genie the Wonder Dog? She found her way into a creek, but couldn't find her way back up the poison-ivy-encrusted bank, so yours truly had to descend INTO THE WATER, lure her down about 25 feet of dark, thicket-heavy creek, and CARRY HER UP A SOGGY STEEP EMBANKMENT.

You know, I really should have brought my rain boots and headlamp. 

Adventures in canning

From this...

Canning fresh produce like strawberries and tomatoes has long been toward the top of my bucket list. Every spring I would think, "This'll be the year," and then after a quick Google search I'd become cross-eyed from discourses on acidity and pressure. I mean, there's a reason I'm not a physicist.

But this year I resolved that I would indeed make and preserve strawberry jam. The impetus is our subscription to The Produce Box (thanks, Mom!) which brings us weekly delivery of all kinds of stuff we've never heard of, like kale and bok choy (actually, the kids love kale chips as long as I refer to them as "green potato chips." Bok choy -- not so good). But we also get strawberries -- fresh ones, picked the day before. Between the delivery and picking them ourselves at local farms, yesterday our fridge was sagging under seven pounds of berries. Can or rot!

...to this.

So I kicked the kids out of the kitchen for safety issues (lots and lots of boiling water), put Dominic down for a nap, read through the recipe about a dozen times, took a deep breath... and an hour later I had four pints of beautiful red strawberry jam cooling in cute Mason jars. Unbelievable.

And yes, I am totally going to make dorky red-checkered labels for the jars.

Herbfest: Not as boring as it sounds

The Butterfly Princess becomes a clown

Last season on one of the Food Network's competitions the contestants were tasked with naming their own cooking shows. A chef named Herb came up with the incredibly creative moniker HerbTV. You could tell by the judges' faces that the second he said it he was GONE.

Cut to the Town of Cary's annual Herbfest on the grounds of the historic Page-Walker Hotel. We were accidental visitors last year and had a great time, so this year I attempted to round up a group of friends for a field trip. No luck. Most reactions were along the lines of Herbfest? Is that as boring as it sounds? 

The town needs to add a tag line to reflect that you don't just stand around admiring lavender and thyme. There are booths showcasing and selling nature photography, wool skeins, old-timey crafts, plants, natural foods, birdhouses and goat soap (that's soap from goat's milk, not soap to wash the goats living in your garage).

Or the town could just mention that the Great Harvest Bread Company gives away free samples of its blueberry-lemon bread.

There is just as much for the kids as for the adults. My three walked out with flowerpots decorated for Mother's Day and dinosaurs and flowers painted on their cheeks by members of the Cary Teen Council. Vincent finally saw inside his beloved smokehouse (see the Smokehouse Birdhouse post) and while he was disappointed that there wasn't meat hanging from the nails, he did see a drying cotton plant for the first time.

Sometimes holding a butterfly sounds better in theory

The best part, according to the kids, was the Butterfly Lady. She was in a corner booth surrounded by... wait for it... butterflies. And caterpillars, and eggs, and little tiny squiggles crawling around plastic containers that were freshly-hatched caterpillars. And she didn't mind one bit when 18-month-old Dominic pile-drived her mesh butterfly house full of monarchs. In fact, she asked if Catherine would help her release the butterflies by dressing up as one.

Fulfilling a lifelong desire to morph into a butterfly princess, Catherine uttered a breathless YES. A few minutes later, the crowd gathered around the Butterfly Lady for the release and Catherine bounced up to the crowd's front, awaiting her moment of fame. Catherine pranced around when the Butterfly Lady strapped wings on her back. Then the Butterfly Lady explained how well butterflies can hear and took giant ears out of her bag. The Butterfly Princess looked rather nonplussed as she added the over-sized ears to her couture. Then the Butterfly Lady covered Catherine's feet in pink felt (I forget why, as I was too busy snickering at the Butterfly Princess' quick transformation into a clown) and plopped antennae on her head. By the time the goofy giant yellow sunglasses made an appearance Catherine wanted to quit. But she suffered through the indignity and even took a bow for the crowd, and then removed her extra appendages much more quickly than she ever manages to remove her clothes at bedtime.

Dominic contemplating the smokehouse

At the release, the monarchs fluttered around, landing on arms and feet and heads. Dominic did his best to bat them out of the air, and Vincent patiently held out his finger and called, "Here, butterflies, land on me"-- and then promptly screamed when one did.

So seriously, Cary, add a tag line. Families need to know that Herbfest is a fun way to spend a Saturday morning. Something like... 

Hey, I've got one. Herbfest: Not as boring as it sounds.

A pirate turns four

Pop quiz: Night-vision goggles, a coal-miner's headlamp, a metal detector, a slingshot airplane and a bottle rocket are the perfect presents for:

A) a four-year-old boy
B) his daddy

Anyway. Yes, our little pirate turned four and racked up an awful lot of exploration presents. We sent him on a Pirate Present Hunt through the yard, complete with a treasure map (see Catherine reading the map at the left) that had hints like "Run four times around the old pear tree." Hanging on a dogwood branch Vincent found a metal detector, which he plans to use in the garden this afternoon to look for keys, gold coins, and old boots. 

I am very tempted to go to Goodwill, buy a pair of old boots and bury them.


We had a pirateship cake that the kids frosted and decorated with Tootsie Roll cannons, pretzel barristers and sails they made themselves. Family and friends helped us celebrate. Thank you to Nonnie & Grandpa, Gaga, Abee, DD and everybody else for making it a special day to be a young pirate.