It is only now that I’m less busy in a big way that I’m able to ask the girls to help load their dishes in the dishwasher or make their lunches. When I was feeling busy all the time, then it felt easier and faster to do everything myself. I’m embarrassed to only now be having them participate regularly in loading their dishes, but better late than never. Sarah now makes her lunch every evening in preparation for the coming school day. Amy and I share her lunch preparation depending on how much homework she has. On weekends they each get their own breakfasts, unless Carl or I make something special. I’m sure many kids get their own breakfast all the time, and I’m sure we will get there. For now, school mornings seem rushed enough that I prefer to save time by making their breakfasts, and I also like having control over what they are ingesting. It is astonishing to me how much I had to reduce my own load to be able to offload more. I expect I’m not alone in the feeling that doing something myself is often faster than asking someone else and needing to explain anything about what I want to happen.
Amy (who is now officially my height!) and I had a wonderful shared birthday, filled with donuts, cupcakes, thoughtful presents, laughter, and love. Amy made a card for me that includes a drawing of her in her cat bathrobe. Somehow she manages to get earnest personality into her drawings in a way that reminds me of Mo Willems. I marvel at my two sparkly playful girls and how much sunshiny creative radiance they spread in the world. Amy makes the best faces, which I’m told aren’t too different from my own expressions. Amy routinely rewrites songs to be about cats, and she pretends to be a cat, either rolling on the stairs, taking a bath (she is flexible enough to get her leg up next to her face), or zooming from room to room. I look back at pictures of her young self and I see that she has always been her same sparkly self, it’s just that every year we get to know and appreciate that self ever more. I suppose that is true for most of us, but it doesn’t make it any less remarkable.
Speaking of Mo Willems, Sarah’s favorite book to reference lately has been Elephants Cannot Dance. She likes to grimace (with a big grin) and say she is doing the wrong thing and is so frustrated. Last night she spent at least half an hour pretending to be Gerald doing various dance moves. It was hilarious, and as so often happens, I marveled at this sparkly, playful, balancing, headband-wearing elephant in front of me as I remembered the early years of wondering if she would learn to do. . . anything.
Just as Amy rewrites songs to be about cats, Sarah routinely merges books and ideas to make a new sentence that has probably never been uttered before in the history of the world. As you know, she loves red Xs when on the road. She also loves the books by Ian Falconer about Olivia the pig. Sarah has archives in her mind a mile deep about all the books she has ever read, or so it seems. In Olivia Goes to Venice, there is a moment when Olivia really wants to live in a palazzo on the Grand Canal. As I drove Sarah to acting class, my attention mostly on the traffic, I realized she was saying, “Please oh please, can’t we live in a Red X on the Grand Canal?” I cracked up for a solid minute.
Speaking of traffic, when you last traveled with our heroine, the car-less Jenny, she had gone through two tunnels at rush hour unnecessarily because her car was still not ready. . . Well, on Monday I tried to get through to the service department, but only succeeded in reaching people who emailed on my behalf. They even emailed managers. I received no call, no information, and no car. Tuesday morning I called when they opened and I did reach a human being in the service department. I explained my miniature saga. I was told they could give me a loaner car later in the day after it had been inspected. When they finally had the loaner ready, timing was tight but I thought I could just make it to uber to the dealer and drive home before I needed to be at home for Sarah’s bus. When I got in the car, the gas gauge was on E and my range was estimated at 5 miles, so I had to get gas. That plus the tunnel traffic (Hallelujah! It was my lucky day!) meant that I got home late – but I didn’t realize I was late until I looked at my phone. The car clock was off by 15 minutes. Luckily, Sarah was even later getting home so it all worked out. The ridiculousness was that Wednesday morning I was told that my car was ready. If they had told me on Tuesday that it would be done on Wednesday morning I would not have bothered going out to get the loaner. I only wanted a loaner because at that point I expected them to possibly keep my car for another week if not forever.
Yesterday, with my preferred set of wheels, we drove to Amy’s Six-themed birthday party at Urban Air, a trampoline park that also has a Zipline, bumper cars, and various things for people to clamber over. Sarah tried the bumper cars while Amy did the Zipline and obstacle course. All of the kids bounced on the trampoline. We had pizza and cupcakes and a wonderful time. In the evening Amy had two friends come over for more hanging out, watching a version of the musical Six that she found online, and a sleepover. Sarah watched Six too, and I was impressed by how little I heard her talking. This may mean we could attempt to attend the musical together if it comes back to Pittsburgh.
Lots of love to all of you. May you enjoy some radiant hilarity.
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