Mute

I picked up James and Matthew from Mini Gymnastics Camp this morning and everything seemed normal until I asked James a question. He pointed to his tightly closed lips and shook his head.

*sigh*

Oh, it's going to be THAT kind of day.

Well, I didn't think he would be able to keep it up for long. Roll with the punches, Suz.

We drove to a friend's house to play and eat lunch. James' lips remained tightly closed all the way there. He gestured and used his voice, but that was it. I asked a ton of yes/no questions to see what kind of game he was playing...jinxed? don't understand English? under a sealed lips spell? ate glue? smacked his face and got hurt? The plus side was he didn't say anything to upset Matthew. It was a pretty pleasant ride.

We got to our friends' house and he still wouldn't speak. His gestures and grunting weren't very helpful beyond expressing that he wanted to go straight home. No playing. No lunch. No opening his mouth until he was at home. He sat on the couch in the living room while we ate in the kitchen. He alternately played with toys and begged to go home. Then, at some point, he indicated that there was something between his top lip and his gums. He was holding something up there.

What!?

Someone thought to get the boy a paper and pen. He agreed to draw what he was trying to communicate. He drew a flat top with two pointy legs.

Your tooth?!

Mm-hm.

You lost your tooth at camp and you're keeping it in your mouth until we get home?

Mm-hm.

Why?! Oh!! Your treasure chest! The dentist gave you a little tooth treasure chest last week!

Mm-hm.

Did you tell your camp leaders about the tooth?

*furrowed brow* Hm-mm.

Can I see it? I'm so excited for you! Your first lost tooth!

*shaking his head* Hm-mm *emphatic pointing at the car* Then he drew something that looked like a raindrop and colored it in. Blood.

"Did it bleed?"

Mm-hm.

"A lot?"

Mm-hm. *lots of head nodding*

Well, we immediately tried to find other cool containers for him to keep his tooth in. What if he swallowed the tooth before we got home?! He would not be convinced. Even when offered a big piece of chocolate and a shiny new container, he decided it was better to keep his tooth firmly lodged under his upper lip. We eventually finished our time with friends and then headed home.

Once home, James ran into the bathroom, plugged up the sink, and spit out the contents of his mouth: one little baby tooth, one giant blood clot, and oodles of drool.

Dude. If I had known he was carrying around a blood clot that big, I might have cut the play date a *little* shorter. Blech.

And here he is in all his toothless glory:

Well worth the wait (apparently) for that teeny orange treasure chest!

I can already see the grown up tooth coming in. He has another loose one right next to it. Won't be long for that one, I don't think.

At our house, kids get to decide if they want to play "Tooth Fairy." I can give them the money in a boring way, or sneak it under their pillow while they're sleeping. My kids have selected "tooth fairy" style almost every time. James included :)

Summer Magic

In sixth grade, my school district was considering a "year-round" or "balanced calendar" format where school breaks would happen in short bursts of 2-3 weeks every 6 weeks or so instead of one long summer. I can't remember how it all turned out, but I do remember one student asking my homeroom teacher his opinion on the matter and he wasn't terribly fond of the idea. He named a few pros and cons, then said, "But I've always believed in the "magic" of summer. There's something about it."

That made me wonder. What magic? Summer always made sense to me as a kid, but I couldn't think of one reason a teacher would find it any sort of advantage to kids.

In the moment, I thought he might mean the magic of kids physically growing up over 3 months. Then they could sit still better and learn more.

In college, I thought the magic must be the lazing about and getting bored bits that lead to untethered, spontaneous fun.

Today, though, with my kids the ages they are, this summer has felt a little magical. For the first time. Robert and Alice, in particular, have had the freedom/time/energy to explore their curiosity, test their independence, and try all sorts of new things in ways we didn't have the freedom/time/energy to try during the school year. That is what the "magic" of summer is for me this year.

Robert's dark cloud of grouchiness has lifted. Alice is bubbling over with ideas for stuff she wants to try. I love seeing them like this.

They excitedly pull me outside to show me three different kinds of mold that have grown on Matthew's soggy, abandoned graham crackers:

We theorize about why one cracker seems to have grown so many more colonies than the other.

They collect dozens of cabbage worms from the garden and make them their pets, releasing each one as it pupates and emerges as a fully-formed butterfly:

We get to observe and explore together. We make hypotheses and test them. It's the best thing ever! I love it. Love it, love it, love it.

I fall behind on my work...laundry, meals, landscaping, dishes...*sigh*...but I get to see how excited Robert is about measuring his baby trees' growth every week. He has an oak and a maple tree. The oak has not grown taller in a month, but the maple has shot up 2 whole inches!

Alice loves (I mean really, truly LOVES) the "home helper" work she has been doing this summer. She's completely embraced the nurturing/teacher thing. Kid Camp is totally her element.

I didn't get to see their energy and curiosity so much during the school year. I've missed it :)

Whoops and Forgiveness

This week at the farm, I didn't look closely enough at the instructions I was given:

"GH and HT. Wrapping tomatoes higher up their strings."

It took some time to figure out Greenhouse and High Tunnel. I saw "tomatoes" and figured I was being asked to do what I had been trained to do the last time I worked with tomatoes (field tomatoes). There were two volunteers that morning that I directed to prune and trellis the tomatoes as if they were field tomatoes.

Some time later, one of the more seasoned volunteers casually asked what we were up to. The way he asked about it gave me reason to pause. I checked my instructions again. There was no direction to prune. Just trellis. I, and the two volunteers I had personally instructed, had just taken 75 minutes to butcher hundreds of tomato plants. We had pruned off hundreds of dollars of potential revenue for the farm and their mission to feed needy families.

My stomach sank to my feet. I was disgusted with myself. So, so humbled. So, so angry for making such a stupid mistake. A costly mistake. A mistake I couldn't fix. Ever. Not even close.

I couldn't look my boss in the eye. I told him he should fire me, and I meant it. He was kind, though. He didn't get angry, even though he was upset. He said mistakes happen and if every farm hand got fired for making a mistake, there wouldn't be any farm hands left. Or farmers.

If he had docked my pay and condemned me to three weeks of compost duty, I would have gladly taken it. Instead, I got forgiveness. And that was a lot harder to take.

Talking to my friend at lunch today, this incident came up. We both would rather work and suffer to pay for a mistake than accept forgiveness outright. In our discussion, it became clear that repentance (be it earthly or eternal) requires 1) humility to admit a wrong and 2) humility to accept forgiveness when there is no possible way to repair the damage, and when you don't even want to forgive yourself. That second bit is especially tough for someone so fiercely independent and proud as me. Still working on that.

I am grateful for forgiveness, though. Grateful I do get to continue learning at the farm. I certainly won't make THAT specific mistake again, even if I make a hundred others :)

Orthodontist Referral

We had routine dental checkups for all four kids this morning. Alice got a bit of a surprise. No, not a cavity, but a referral to an orthodontist for her eye teeth. Apparently, her adult eye teeth are skewed (growing sideways) and there's no sign of the baby ones coming out on their own :( This was very, very hard news for her. Many, many tears. She's feeling a little better after some time to process it, but there are more unknowns than knowns in this process. She doesn't like to think about it...especially pain, shots, pain, surgery, and did I mention pain?

The dentist seems to think the baby teeth will need to be extracted. The adult ones might come in alright afterwards, but, well, who knows? Hopefully the orthodontist will shed some light on our options.

Jam Session

I loved walking in on Alice and her friend playing a duet just for fun.

Alice tells me it went a little like this:

"I want to play my violin."

"Okay. Hey, what key does the violin play in?"

"C"

"The flute plays in C, too!"

"Let's play something together."

After a few practice rounds they sounded pretty good, so I asked if I could get a movie of their duet. They agreed:



Please stay this way, Girlie. As long as possible.