And now...

...for a minute of rest.

Have I Mentioned

Have I mentioned that it feels like, all of a sudden, Nolie is just growing up super-fast?  And that she's doing just great?  I look back on the last year, and though it seems overly-dramatic, I feel like she was on a downward trajectory, health-wise, and was heading toward failure-to-thrive land.  She wasn't gaining height; her skin didn't look right; her hair was thin.

I was at my wits' end.  Terrified for my kid.  Not sure what to do next.

Now she is tall, maybe even a little glowy, and her hair is thicker.  She isn't throwing as many monster tantrums.

Perhaps all this would have happened anyway.  Maybe she would have grown out of the food intolerances and the tummy aches and the epic behavioral issues.

But I have to say, the Great Nolie Turn-Around of 2013 very closely coincided with our decision to get her NAET treatments with an acupuncturist who specializes in working with kiddos.  I take her once a week to this cutie-pie in Denver, who muscle tests her for some different ingredients, gives her some fancy-schmancy back rubs while she does some special breathing, and then does some acupressure on her arms, legs, and tummy.  She passes out in the car on the way home, and then she can't eat that particular ingredient for 24 hours.

And then she can eat it.  Pretty much all she wants.  Without all the tummy aches and diarrhea and eczema.

Okay, so I'm primed to be a bit woo-woo myself, and to believe all this is helping her.  It could also just be that she likes having a special treatment once a week (who wouldn't?).  It could be that all of us are less stressed, what with the marital apocalypse and the tenure behind us.  It could be that it will come raging back and then we'll end up back on the hospital treadmill.  I don't know.

Whatever.  It feels like a miracle, any way you slice it.

Hizzle Pizzle World

We were going to do that thing where you lie to the kids about why they're going to the airport, and then you get to the gate, and you're like, GUESS WHAT, FOOLS!  YOU'RE GOING TO HARRY POTTER WORLD!  And then they run around screaming and pulling their hair out and you catch it all on video and win a prize.  A video prize.  Then a parenting prize.

But I was telling my friend N. about this plan yesterday and she reminded me that, um, hello, my older kid is one of those kids who needs transitions.  Like, she needs a five minute warning if you are asking her to move to another room, much less asking her to get on a plane and go to another state to have a completely overwhelming sensory experience featuring the one literary character about whom she knows more than any other human being on the planet.

Right.

But I'm the kind of parent who still has to fuck with her kids sometimes and who might have a few drinks and then hatch up a last-minute-plan for surprising her kids and husband about a huge vacation she bought on the d-l.

Short version made long:  I went out for happy hour with the ladies, and on my way home called E., and he says he's taking the girls to Macaroni Grill for dinner, and I'm like aw, yeah.  So I race home to get these:

  Harry Potter Invite by Jen Davies Schneider

and this:

and burst into Macaroni Grill like my pants were on fire.  Luckily, at that crazy place, they're always hiring drama students who were more than willing to 1) scout out the table where E. and the girls were sitting 2) hang out behind their table while I approached, groaning and dragging my foot like a deranged soccer mom zombie 3) shout "Look out for that Dementor!" as I staggered toward them and then 4) "Expecto Patronum!" as I collapsed onto the floor, while 5) placing the invitations on the girls plates.

E. said he was in so much shock he didn't know what to do, but that there was a table of elderly diners next to us who about had heart attacks.

I also totally ruined the dinners of all the families sitting nearby, whose children looked down at their lame-ass breadsticks and were like, this is not a trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

As predicted, Addie cried, because our trip will take place the same week she is supposed to make a presentation in class.  We already cleared this with her teacher, and she can make the presentation when she gets back, but she still said she wasn't going to go on the trip because she didn't want to miss her presentation.

This morning she did wake up excited.

Some kids just need a little transition time.

Addie, Nolie, and me with our Macaroni Grill Wizard.  Yes, that is a lightning-shaped scar on my forehead.

Earth Day, Everyday

"When I first joined the Franciscan order in 1961, my novice master told me we could not cut down a tree without permission of the Provincial (the major religious superior).  It seemed a bit extreme, but then I realized that a little bit of Francis of Assisi had lasted 800 years!  We still had his awareness that wilderness is not just 'wilderness.'  Nature is not just here for our consumption and profit.  The natural is of itself also the supernatural.  Both natural elements and animals are not just objects for our plunder.  Francis granted true dignity and subjectivity to nature by calling it Brother Sun, Sister Fire, Brother Wind, and Sister Water.  No wonder he is the patron saint of ecology and care for creation.


Once you grant subjectivity to the natural world, everything changes.  It's no longer an object with you as the separated and superior subject, but you share subjectivity with it.  You address it with a title of respect, and allow it to speak back to you!  For so long creation has been a mere commodity at best, a useless or profitable wilderness depending on who owned it.  With the contemplative mind, questions of creation are different than those of consumption and capitalism, and they move us to appreciate creation for its own sake, not because of what it does for me or how much money it can make me.  For those with spiritual eyes, the world itself has to be somehow the very 'Body of God.'  What else could it be for one who believes in 'creationsim'?  As Paul puts it, 'From the beginning until now, the entire creation has been groaning in one great act of giving birth' (Romans 8:22), so it is not only an evolutionary body but an eternally pregnant body besides.  God's creation is so perfect that it continues to create itself from within.  The Franciscans were not wrong in not cutting down ordinary trees without a very good reason."

--Richard Rohr

Magnolias

Snowing here, but the Magnolias are blooming in Nana and Papa's yard in Idaho:

Addie, 9

I love it when someone's self-portraits magically appear on my camera.

This is one awesome kid.  Funny--her favorite thing right now is to make people laugh.  Loves comics.  Reads them, makes them, draws them.  Sensitive and sweet.  Sarcastic.  Very much in kidland, but also so grown up in many ways.  I forget she is a kid sometimes, and have to remember the power of my words to wound, and also to build up.

Beautiful.  Red lips.  Thick black hair.  Long, long limbs, always going everywhere, falling, hitting things, knocking things over; also graceful, goofy, fun.  Pure potential.

Loves legos.  Loves television.  Loves books.  Reads books until they fall apart, until pages fall out, soaked wet from being read in the tub.  Has questions about words and meanings and jokes and everything.  Knows everything.  Corrects you on everything.  Sleeps through anything.  Still knock-kneed.   An infectious giggle.  Still wants to cuddle.  Can't get comfortable being cuddled.  Would rather be naked than anything else, because all clothes itch.  Hates having her fingernails cut.  Always has stuff in her hair.  Loves her friends.  Loves her family.  Loves her teachers.

I love knowing her, and being around her, and having her in my life.  Lucky beyond words.

Kitty

E. was tearing apart the deck this weekend, you know, before ANOTHER SIX INCHES OF SNOW decided to fall, and found this:

Happy Tuesday!