angels at work

With a healthy dose of uncertainty that didn't devolve into tears, the younger lad started preschool this morning.  He was familiar with the setting from Vacation Bible School this summer, and he was buoyed by the hope of seeing his brother the first grader on the playground.  They did in fact see each other, which was the declared highlight of their respective school days (that and lunch, according to the newly-minted preschooler). 

After school we visited my sister all moved into her spiffy dorm room.  This brought back a wealth of memories for me of her as a wee lass about the age of my preschooler visiting me in my college dorm room.  Those weekly visits she and my mom paid me were always highlights, and it's an honor to return the favor now.  We love having Babycakes so close by.

Enveloped in the grace of God and the protection of his angels and ours, we have so much to be thankful for such a relatively smooth transition to the school scene and this latest round in our Game of Life.

getting organized

School starts this week. Yesterday the elder lad started first grade.  The younger lad starts preschool tomorrow. So long as we weather the adjustment to the earlier wake-up calls, I think we're in for a good year.  I just have to get myself organized.

Along with the new school year has come the influx of handbooks, procedures, forms, and paperwork to be read, completed, signed, returned, filed, and otherwise digested. Then there are the calendars.

Snack duty * Cafeteria lunch menu * Parent volunteer schedule * School year * Birthdays

Instead of posting all the various calendars that come home in plain view, I try to glean the pertinent information from each and put it on my central calendar. Otherwise, it's apt to get overlooked as all the calendars become part of the visual landscape only to be dealt with accordingly when I just can't stand it anymore (or company's coming).

In the past I've tried several different printed calendars, but in the end I've always defaulted to a computer-based calendar and have been using Google calendar for a while.  I'd like to get back to an actual calendar, though, if only as a means of preservation.  Enter this little cutie...

 It's a simple spiral-bound calendar I can tuck in my bag meant really for students but with plenty of space to write on each day to suit my purposes. Along with my Google calendar, I intend to use this paper calendar to keep track of our family doings and developments. Wish me luck.  I've kind-of fallen off that wagon.

I like the tangible aspects of the spiral-bound calendar not only for its aesthetic appeal but also for the example it sets to the bambini -- that of writing down what's important and not relying on technology to the exclusion of everything else. The convenience of being able to access my Google calendar from my phone is huge, though, and makes it my default calendar.  Still, I endeavor to strike the proper balance between technology and posterity.

My strange fixation on calendars is becoming more evident the longer I yammer on about mine.  As for what to do with paperwork that needs my attention and response, I'm still refining my system. Generally I try to respond as quickly as possible when necessary and send it back so it's off my plate, so to speak. If I have to wait to return something, I tend to stick it on the fridge (where it is in danger of becoming, like the calendars, part of the visual landscape). Still, it's my not-so-failproof way to protect it from getting lost in the shuffle or falling victim to my deck-clearing compulsion, which seems to have intensified with each child I have borne. Hmm.

Lots of information comes home from school that I like to hang on to for future reference (including those calendars). Presently I have a three-ring notebook in which I try to file things in as I receive them. This reverse chronological order (i.e. most recent first) system is one I learned as an intern at Lyric Opera of Chicago, and I've applied it to pretty much everything I've tried to organize into notebooks, including children's health records and household paperwork. Things like school handbooks that don't easily lend themselves to being three-hole punched are tucked into a plastic envelope that itself is three-hole punched and held closed with a hook and loop closure.

I have come to realize that not every piece of schoolwork needs to be archived. For the past two years, I have collected the elder lad's work in those plastic zip-up cases that sets of sheets, curtains, or comforters come in. I slide the case under the elder lad's bed. A few times he'd trot out all the work (much to my chagrin, as it usually coincided with happy hour) and play trash truck. It finally dawned on me to have him actually sort through the work he wanted to keep, stash that back in the case, and put the rest in the household recycling sack. (I went through it myself later to save things I thought were "keepers" from the recycling bin fate).

Backpacks and lunch boxes live in a low kitchen cabinet for bambini to stow and retrieve themselves. I try to assemble as much of the next day's packed lunch after dinner is cleaned up so that there is less to fuss about in the morning when all bets are off as to my lucidity and the availability of both my hands for food preparation.  Backpacks are readied for the next day with contents like homework, school library books, things for quiet rest time, and correspondence with the teacher.

We're not to the season yet of having bambini going in opposite directions to activities, which simplifies the family calendar a lot. In trying to hone my organizational skills now, I hope to be well-poised to take on that logistical quagmire as it comes our way.

The real challenges both now and in the future will lie in
*not taking on too much,
*remembering what's most important to us as a family on the path to Heaven, and
*making the organizational system work for us -- not the other way around.

My system is working for me so far, though I know there's always room for improvement...

lost in translation

Judging by the books littering the living room floor late this afternoon, the younger lad was looking for something else to thumb through.  He settled on the foreign language dictionaries that I kept handy for translating the arias, songs, and lieder of the students whose voice lessons I accompanied when I was a piano major in college. 

"What are you reading now?" I asked him.
"It's a mystery."

seventh anniversary

Holding a bouquet of white roses like these in one hand and with my other hand tucked inside my beloved's, I walked toward the altar of our diocesan Cathedral.  These first steps on the path of our shared vocation seem both recent and long-ago, with so many blessings,challenges, joys, and sorrows to have come our way since that morning seven years ago today.  By God's grace we are still walking hand in hand.  For this and for so many reasons to celebrate every day, I am more grateful today than ever before.

sisterly advice

unsolicited advice to my sister starting college next week (and all those embarking on something new)...

Give it a chance.
Trust in the Lord.
Seek his will for you.
Keep the faith.
Say your prayers.
Listen for the answers.
Be the face of Christ to others.
Look for Christ in the faces of the people around you.
Take the high road.
Get some sleep.
Make your bed.
Be yourself.
Have fun.
Know you are loved!

famous last words

The Lord has blessed our region with abundant rainfall the past few days, bringing relief to parched land (and fried senses). Temperatures in the 90s are a welcome reprieve from day after day (after day after day, and into the nighttime hours) of daytime highs upwards of 110 degrees.

With all this rain, it's mud season revisited.

Standing at the window watching the rain (for which we are so grateful), the lads can barely contain themselves and their desire to get out there and play in the rain. I can understand that. I also know, though, that the deluged planter boxes with what was our vegetable garden before the heat spell scorched it now thick with mud will prove too tempting to lads who claim they only want to go outside to wash their dirty, dusty trucks. As I was not in a position to clean up a huge muddy mess this morning, their request was denied, with empathy.

They promised they wouldn't get in the mud, which I believe was sincere. Such a promise is no match for the kind of mud we're dealing with, though. It's the stuff of mythical monster truck rallies.

Acknowledging their disappointment but holding my ground, I tried to offer some equally enticing indoor activity ideas, such as putting their clean laundry away.

(I'm a kill-joy, remember, but the elder lad at least did oblige.)

In a last-ditch effort to obtain the elusive permission by promising (again) to stay away from the mud, the elder lad made one final appeal.

"You can trust me. I'm a six-year-old."

Epilogue: The bambini reveled in the soggy sandbox at my beloved's parents' house this afternoon while I went to get a haircut.  When we got home (and with my permission), they practically ran straight from the garage to the back door to their happy little mud hole.  Just as I expected -- and just as it should be, they were soon covered in enough goo to warrant the moniker "mud bugs" when they came in.  They knew to head straight for the laundry room, then the shower. 

And every day the elder lad is growing in trustworthiness, becoming more and more of a "big kid."

foley artists

Ours is not a quiet household.  If anything, the baseline decibel level has increased in the last few months.  (The lassies may have something to do with this.)  In a typical day, the garden variety truck zooming, space ship blasting, and animal roaring to which we've grown accustomed co-mingle with the hum of the refrigerator and whir of the washing machine.  

In the movie industry, the people who recreate natural noises to add reality and depth to the soundtrack are known as foley artists.  I know this bit of trivia because I wrote a research paper on the movie production process when I was in high school at the pinnacle of my interest in film scores.  I fancied myself a future composer.  The one composition course I took as part of my music degree in college helped me reconcile with this not being God's path for my life.

Highly imaginative and truck-obsessed though he is, the elder lad hasn't historically been given to making sound effects to accompany his maneuvers.  (This is in keeping with his somewhat reserved nature.)  The younger lad has long been more likely to provide some vrooming, zooming, honking, beeping, and clicking noises to add reality to his generally more energetic play.  (He is, generally speaking, more expressive.)  They both, however, have lately taken to replicating a type of natural sound that is categorically- and stereotypically-speaking universally funny to boys age six (or so) and under.  I'd offer three guesses, but I bet only one is necessary for most people.

I can only imagine highly successful foley artists began their careers in a similar manner, and look at them now.  Their mothers must be so proud.