And a picture for fun

Update

Hi Sweetie,

A dozen times a week I notice something you say or do and think I want to write about it here, now, before you stop saying and doing such wonderful spontaneous Ava-things. But alas, I'm human and bogged down by the limitations of physical time and space and sometimes I write them down but not always.

You started in the big big girl pre-K class at your school a couple weeks ago. New teachers that don't adore you on sight (yet) but most of the same friends as your last class. Along with the move to the new class there are no longer three teachers 'fighting' to be the chosen one to hold you momentarily as I walk away. Momentarily, because you run to the windows to give your trademark two arm one leg wave, which I gleefully return, not concerned in the slightest at decorum or propriety of a grown woman looking silly.

Yesterday we saw a picture of a caterpillar in one of your books and you told me, quite insistently, that a caterpillar goes into a racoon to become a butterfly. You were so sincere, I really didn't want to tell you that it's a 'cocoon' not a 'racoon' but I absolutely loved it.

Other Ava-quotes from a couple weeks ago:

"Mommy, when I grow up bigger like you I could hold a cat. A little cat."

You: "Mommy, baby rabbit doesn't want to go to sleep."
Me: "Maybe she's not tired."
You: "Yes she is!"

"Do you want to do the shaking all over dance?"
Yes, absolutely, yes. How would I not want to do the shaking all over dance?

Speaking of dancing, for a couple weeks you originated a "Sun Dance" that was a flowing yoga-ish modern expressionist dance with waving arms and body. Absolutely beautifully hilarious, especially with the serious look on your face.

Alas, I'm hit by that time/space crunch and need to go fetch you from school.

I love you,
one hundred thousand one hundred thousand
(and that's A LOT)

Mommy

I love you game

Me: I love you
You: I love you too
Me: I love you three
You: I love you four
Me: I love you five
You: I love you six
Me: I love you seven
You: I love you eight
Me: I love you nine
You: I love you ten
Me: I love you eleven
You: I love you twelve
Me: I love you thirteen
You: I love you fourteen
Me: I love you fifteen
You: I love you one
Me: ?
You: You have to say I love you two!
Me: I love you two
You: I love you three
Me: I love you five hundred and eighty seven
You: I love you one hundred and one
Me: That's a LOT!
You: I love you hundred and puppy.
Me: I love you one hundred and lion.
You: I love you one hundred and your hair.
Me: I love you one hundred and your feet.
You: I love you envelope in the car.
Me: Laughing

My sweetie, you are all over the board this week with a tantrum every other hour over something that nobody can predict. Despite the tantrums, the mood swings, the stubbornness, the fixation on getting what you want and screaming about it,

I love you one billion and three.

Party of Two

Four years old

Hi my sweetie,

Last weekend you became four years old. Yes, it took 365 days between three to reach four, and 4 x 365 days to reach four from the day I gave birth to you, but as all parents seem to say, it sure went fast.


You are quite the manifesting delight! You asked Daddy a couple months ago if we could go to Disneyland for your birthday. He said yes. What can only be a testament to your manifesting powers, was that we were at Disneyland on exactly your birthday, which fell on a Saturday this year.

When I asked you "what do you want to do at Disneyland?" you replied, "I want to play games and win tickets and have a parade." When Daddy asked you "what does Disneyland look like?" you replied "triangles and squares." So I'm not sure you knew what delights and surprises awaited you at the happiest place on earth, but the Disney marketing folks call it that for a reason ...

When we walked up to buy our tickets, Daddy told the ticket booth attendant it was your birthday and they presented you with a big round button exclaiming "Happy Birthday Ava" (okay, they wrote in the AVA with permanent marker, but still!), and said if we went to Town Hall you could hear your birthday message. We dutifully toddled along to Town Hall, sat you on the counter near a big old-fashioned phone where you were told happy birthday by none other than ... Goofy! "It was Goofy," you told us, "he said Happy Birthday!"

What a brilliant start to a wonderful day. We all got hats, including Daddy's peter pan and Jacque's minnie mouse. Mine was a gift from Auntie Brie - one I'd wanted since our trip to Mexico in November when I gazed jealously at hers ... we rode rides, we played games, didn't win many tickets, but your favorite ride, you tell others now, was the ROCKET CARS! Yes, you say it loud and exclamatory every time! Yes, that's right, Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster cars were your favorite ride of the day, or perhaps the most memorable.

My sweetie, you are a wonderful delightful sometimes stubborn but altogether lovable girl. you talk and talk and talk and if I'm not listening to your satisfaction, say louder "Mommy I'M TALKING TO YOU." I'm slowly patiently teaching you about interrupting people when they're talking, but as with most parental lessons, feel like I need to clean up my act first.

Sometimes you don't want to go to school. I laugh, Daddy laughs, and we say to nobody in particular that you are of course the first child to ever say that in the history of modern education. So then I tell you that you can go to work and fix computers and I will go to school and play with your friends and paint and play with playdoh and play on the playground. You then shake your head, predictably, and say "No, I am going to school and you are going to work!"

I also love it when you ask "Why?" You're reaching the age when you ask "Why?" frequently, and a good friend who is also a parent said his son does this a lot so I shared my secret for reducing frustration. I may answer "Why?" if I know, but if I don't know, then I say "I don't know, what do you think?" I love, love, love to hear the variety of answers you deduce. Your favorite, of late, is to ask "Mommy (Daddy), Why do tigers have stripes?" Daddy responded the first time with "Because if they had spots they'd be leopards." So now if I say "I don't know, why do you think?" you respond with "Because if they had spots they'd be leopards or baby elephants or mommy or daddy elephants." Most amusingly, a few weeks ago we saw a tiger presentation at Marine World and Daddy said a bit too loud "Why do tigers have stripes?" and the tiger trainer, standing next to a very large tiger, responded "so they can be well camouflaged in the jungles where they live." Daddy looked a trifle embarrassed and said he wasn't really looking for an answer.

What else can I tell you about you at four? One of our (mine and yours, but definitely not Daddy's) favorite meals is ... noodles and tofu and carrots. I boil soba noodles and then cut up tofu and a few different types of veggies and throw them into a shallow pot with a bit of water and seven minutes later ... dinner. Yes, my sweet, you ask for tofu by name. You like it even more than me. But being a normal kid, or normal enough, you also love pancakes, french toast, your Nana's tortillas, rice, but not ... beans. I like beans, Daddy likes beans, but you, no way no how, not in a boat not with a goat.

Which brings me to your favorite books of the month ... Chicka Chicka Boom Boom was the running number one favorite we both have memorized but it has been usurped in popularity by Green Eggs and Ham. You just got a new book from Grandma Bear called "It's hard being a bunny" which you also love, and read to your Baby Rabbit last night before bed. Well, to say you "read" it is a slight exaggeration, but you told the story from memory. You read letters, but not words yet. I look on, smile, and mumble to myself how your whole world is going to open up as soon as you read your first word. For now though, I tell you that letters make words and words make sentences and sentences make paragraphs and paragraphs make books.

But now, it's four o'clock and I said I'd pick you up early from school to get a haircut. I may even surprise Daddy and get it cut Dora-short to make our morning grooming rituals easier.

I love you, more than there is water in the ocean.
Mommy

Cherry Blossoms

San Francisco Zoo

Yes, these are in chronological order. Always good to end with a smile, before the long walk to the car!

Three letters

Ski Bunny

Princess Ava

Loving what drives me crazy

Hi my little growing one,

There are a few things on my mind these days. I wish sometimes I collected all the Ava-isms you expound on daily. Like tonight, when we were reading books before bedtime and you said "we don't eat books, only vegetables and fruit" or at other times when you throw your arms around me and say "I love you." Times like these I think for anything I've done not quite up to par as a parent, overall I'm doing well.

Funny thing about people I love, and possibly people you will love in your lifetime. The closer you are to someone, you can find 12 million reasons to love them, but five minutes later you can find 12 million reasons not to love them. Sometimes the reasons are the same, meaning you might love someone today for being social and independent, but tomorrow that might drive you crazy. That's the funny thing about love.

So in any day, the choice is yours. I remember many years ago when I was going through relationship trouble, my Grandma Susie told me that I had to think of the good things about that person. She was right. Finding the good in someone has magical, dynamic power and can move insurmountable mountains. The shift happens first in me, because thinking bad of someone brings me down, and then that gets thrown onto the other person or some bystander or bystanding cat and everything starts to catapult into enemy territory.

So my practice is to choose. It's like yoga for the brain - one of my favorite teacher these days says something along the lines that you can do a pose perfectly but if your brain is bouncing like the ball in Pong (a game I don't expect most to remember) then where is the yoga? But if you're struggling physically in a pose, it's not some kind of ideal, but your brain is calm, that is yoga. I try and often succeed in finding the yoga brain when my asana looks imperfect. Looks aren't everything, and I trust feelings more than looks.

Which brings me to feelings. When my brain is calm, and mostly quiet, that is a good time to trust feelings - good feelings, bad feelings, indifferent feelings. When my brain is crazy, there is no room to listen. I read recently that prayer can be considered my requests to God (or whomever is on duty in the great cumulus cloud in the sky) but meditation is listening to God. I've taken a break from teaching yoga because I want more yoga for me, and I want more meditation, more quiet brain. Quiet brain, I find, is a happy brain. But I was talking about feelings. If, and it's a quite likely if, you're like me, you can feel what others are feeling around you. So sometimes the challenge is in figuring out whether a feeling is mine or I picked it up from someone at work like a gallon of milk at the store on the way home.

Some people will like that you can see through the bullshit and choose to tell the truth even if it's not easy. Some people will be scared to early retirement by this. The latter group usually chooses to stay away from me, which is just fine. Some people like their illusions and delusions; others are ready to shed them like winter clothing. Please remember that just because someone doesn't want to be around you doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you.

Feelings, especially strong ones, are best sorted out, waited on, and waited out until they're not quite so urgent. The urgency of really strong emotions, like the ones that say RUN! Run NOW! well, question those and often do the opposite. I don't mean when you're in a dark garage and you get a funny tingle in the back of your neck or gut ... follow those feelings. I mean the unfounded ones when safety isn't an issue, when really the issue is that fear is trying to take over and when the hardest thing to do is dig in your heels and stay put.

I get that I'm talking rather philosophically and abstractly but hopefully one or two of the tangential messages ring through.

The short version, edited and summarized, is I love you. Sometimes what I love about you (like you want to do things 'all by myself') is exactly what drives me crazy. Sometimes what I love about Daddy is precisely what makes me want to run. When I want to run, I tell myself to stay. I breathe in, I breathe out, I calm down my chaotic brain. I stay put. Sometimes when one of my friends is all bent out of shape about work or relationship or something else, I feel like I'm upset right along with her. These times I ask "Is this (feeling) mine or is it not?" If it's not, I breathe in, breathe out, and find a dozen things I love about my life. Then I breathe love into my heart, warming that place in my chest, and think of someone I know to share that love with. I think of that person until the world shifts and I feel good again.

love,
always,
Mommy

Trick or Treat!

The afternoon started with a party at your school with Daddy dressed as a nun. Honey, I can tell you, your Daddy is just not like other people. Someday I'll tell you the story of how we met on Halloween five years ago today and he was dressed as a woodland fairy.

We got home and had about an hour before his class would start so he got to work carving the pumpkin I'd scraped out the day before. After 30 minutes, there was a bat carved into the face of the pumpkin. Then he was racing out the door to class.


I thought for sure that my computer class homework would take me all night and we were stuck at home watching Pixar movies. But no, all it took was for the duration of Bug's Life for me to get it done "good enough" and prompting from you even though you had no idea what was in store if we left the house!

So it was your first real trick or treating Halloween. All the lights were off in our 'hood so we headed over to St. Mary's Park, the area known for being easy to walk and trick or treater friendly. Last year we tried this, but started at our friends' house, got invited inside for a drink, and never left! This year with Daddy in class, you and I headed out to see how long our enthusiasm and energy would hold.

We started with one house, you excited, no doubt, and I prepped you to say "Trick or Treat" to get candy. We got up the steps, rang the bell, and a boy about ten answered the door. Stage fright struck and the practiced words wouldn't come out. He thought you looked so cute he gave you four or five mini candy bars anyway!

We went to two more houses, this time you did squeak out the candy getting phrase and everyone thought you were cute beyond words. One house was "too spooky" for you decorated with orange lights, tombstones, and dry ice, so we wrapped up the evening with a visit to Amy and Jack's house. We hung out for a minute and after that I asked if you wanted to go to more houses or home. "I want to go home." Fair enough.

Now you're in the bath tub, I'm typing this blog, and I just need to format my homework and start packing for my cruise in two days!

Happy Halloween, my little Tinker Bell fairy. I love you.

Falling

It's funny to me, little one, as you're learning more words, how to use the words, how to combine words into new exciting ways, that there are two seasons that are verbs, and two that are nouns.

I've thought about writing to you so much over the last couple months, feeling guilty about not writing, telling myself not to feel guilty, feeling momentarily inspired but nowhere near a computer, feeling uninspired when I am.

Computers are work to me; for many they're a fun tool to learn many things, connect with others, but me, in my line of work, they're work. It's hard sometimes to do more work when I've done work all day.

Your Nana was playing with you all weekend as I escaped with my two wonderful friends down to the Santa Cruz mountains. When you're older, my love, and escape seems impossible, it will be then I'll call you and say "go!" I was reaching a breaking point, where I was so stressed out at the end of the day after giving everything at work, more than I had, and all that was left when I got home was stress and upset at you and Daddy for doing nothing, and this is when there is the need for escape. Perhaps you will become a caretaker like me, I can't say I do or don't wish that on you. It's good taking care of others, but the forgotten one is usually wearing my shoes. I don't know what I'd wish really, except that you remember you. That you put yourself before your manager, your job, your mate, your children, your mother. Your Daddy is pretty good at this, but I get upset because who's taking care of me? Ah wait, that's my job.

Anyway....

You are delightfully, completely, intoxicatingly three. You love the movie Cars and if we let you, it would be on every night. In fact, it was on every night while your Daddy and Nana were watching you. For me, I need a break sometimes. I need days and nights without TV, where you play in your room while I clean up, or you say "we could play peek a boo and hide and seek and stop and go" as if they're all one big sequential game.

You love hide and seek... I count, you hide, and when I get to "ready or not" then you reveal your magnificent hiding space.

You're becoming a bit less shy. The manager at Hobee's still scares you but not like before. Someday you may actually tell her goodbye when we leave, or as you do to others, make the psssbbbttt sound like a hippo.

You love wearing your schooldresses to school. Given your choice your preference is first school dress, second skirt, third and only as an absolute last resort, pants. I suspect it's because you're a ballerina and you know ballerinas don't wear pants onstage.

You have learned how to take your room from clean to disaster in 2.5 minutes. This isn't a good thing. The good thing is that you're pretty good at taking your coat and shoes into your room and not leaving them in the kitchen when we get home. My many requests are paying off!

You love things "like Mommy." Your toenails are painted purple right now, "like Mommy" and you point this out every time your toes are uncovered. Sometimes you want a ponytail "like Mommy" you remember and say aloud frequently that Mommy and Ava are "big girls" and Daddy is a "big boy."

Your favorite plush animals are little rabbit and purple bear. Purple bear loves little rabbit because she's a baby. They each have their own blankets and chaos reigns when we can't find them. One of them always accompanies you to school, and it's usually little rabbit. There are also sister rabbit and mommy rabbit, when little rabbit needs more love.

Your friends at school are Tatiana and Inwoo. When I asked what you did at school each day, you predictably say you played with one of them or both. If I pick you up from school, you're with them playing ballerinas and wearing tulle tutus.

You love to take pictures with your camera, or lacking a camera, build one out of legos and take pictures. I asked once, of a green tower of connected legos, whether it was a castle or a car? "ITS A CAMERA!" you replied, implying, how could I not know that?

I adore you, I love you, more than there is air in the sky, more than there is water in the ocean, more than there is earth on this planet. I love you.

Mommy

Little Einsteins makes kids smarter

Hi little one,

Yesterday you were watching your latest favorite movie, the Little Einstein's HUGE Adventure, and when the little caterpillar climbed up the tree and made his cocoon I said, "Look, he's in a sleeping bag!"

You replied, with the wisdom of a three year old,

"No, it's not a sleeping bag, it's a metamorphosis!"

I stand, stunned, corrected.

love,
your mommy
who's intelligence pales in comparison to yours

Time

Hi my little love,

I just noticed that it was two years ago this month that I started this blog for us, and as I began reading the first posting July 2005, I was deeply grateful that I wrote those words, so much so, that I want to write more words now.

You are such a big girl, so big that when Daddy teases you and says you're a baby, you object, saying "NO I'm a BIG GIRL!" Even recently you've abandoned our traditional naked baby dance/naked jumping dance before taking a bath for the one legged yoga dancer/flamingo pose.

You love bath time, to be sure, and sometimes you convince me to join you so I can add more hot water and make it go in circles to warm up the cooler water. You like to do things, like wash, "all by yourself" and I do wonder where you learned that phrase.

You know all of your numbers up to twenty in English and Spanish, you can recognize all of them up to 9 (the 1 and 0 together still don't make ten). You know all your letters by sight although occasionally trip over G and Q. You know all your colors in English and some in Spanish. You say "ayudame" for help and "mariposa" for butterfly. You understood your teachers at your Spanish school with "no problemo" after a month.

You love your plush animals...Doggie is your predictable favorite, and even has his own blanket - the white one with yellow ducks. Last night he couldn't go to bed, or you either, until we found his blanket. Little rabbit had to have her blanket too, and you had to have yours. Then we laid down in "Mommy and Daddy's bed" because Daddy was away and you said I could sleep with Rabbit and you would sleep with Doggie.

Sometimes I'll ask you do do something, like put your coat on your bed, and to my shock you do it! Other times you throw your shoes on the ground and tell me to pick them up. This is only predictable because you're three.

You love Mater from the movie Cars, and love it when Daddy "does like Mater" and winks, saying "I'm keeping my eye on you."

And on the fourth of July when we were swimming at our friends' house in San Jose, you decided you wanted to jump in the pool. You had the super-cool water wings on your arms and you walked past the side of the pool right onto the diving board. Yep, your first jump into the great big swimming pool was from there, into Daddy's waiting arm (the other was holding onto the side - you were in the deep end!).

But it's time for me to go...for now.

I love you,
more than there is water in the ocean,
more than there is blue in the sky.

Mommy

Thank you notes

It says:
Thanks Grandma Bear!
I love my school dresses and
wear them all the time.

Love,
Ava

Picture speaks for itself

A great compliment

A few days ago Daddy, you, and I were watching "The Lakehouse" on video and in one scene you looked at Sandra Bullock and said "Look! Mommy is on TV!"

Thanks honey!

Happy

Conversation, from two minutes ago:

Me: We have to go to bed early tonight because tomorrow we're going to go see a woman who hugs people and makes them happy.

You: Mommy, can I hug you?

Me: Yes, of course, yes.
(My heart melting into a sloppy puddle.)

You: So you can be happy.

Tears come into my eyes and I know I'm the luckiest mommy in the world.

A bit about life and sadness

Hi honey,

You may know this already, but there are days where running and hiding seem like a really good idea. Today is one of those days for me.

Yesterday I found out that the man who founded and funded my small start-up like company has a terminal brain disease. I find irony in writing 'terminal,' because life by nature is terminal, it always has an ending, the question is always, when, never if. The harder part to swallow is that he is believed to have less than a year remaining of his life sentence, if you will, and during the next year he will likely suffer from some really bad symptoms including big time memory loss, dementia, and hallucinations. Then to top that off he has a wife and three young children, ages 8, 6, and almost 3. The good side, if there can be one, is that he has a good amount of money and access to the best health care money can buy.

When I first heard, my response was "I'm in shock, and I'm sad." I mean, I know him. I've talked to him a number of times and even helped with the computers in his home. I've met his kids, talked to his wife, and when I start thinking what do you do, what do you say to those precious young kids to say that Daddy is not going to be around much longer, and in the meantime, he's going to be hard to be around. How do you package up and deliver that message? There aren't enough roses in the world to make that message smell good.

Being a dabbler in Indian religion this has me thinking about karma and this life he's living now. I wonder what arrangement he had with those in charge upstairs that he would stockpile a good amount of money, start a family late in life, and then possibly die, leaving them much earlier than intended. Did he really agree to that? What was his mission for this incarnation and did he succeed? More on this another day, it's too big of a tangent for me to take on right now.

But I also believe in miracles. I believe in the gigantic kind of miracles, like somehow a cure will be discovered or that a switch will flip from off to on and he'll be okay. Those are wonderful kind of miracles, but I also believe in smaller, more obscure miracles. Like this morning when I walked outside to see if blue sky meant warm temperature (it didn't, really) and right at that exact moment a beautiful "V" of Canadian geese flew overhead, honking. Geese flying over my San Francisco house is a miracle in my book. Or when sunlight hits the edge of the diamond on my new ring and sends rainbow spots all over the wall. Sure, I love big miracles, but it's the little ones that I count on to get me through sadness, remorse, and just plain bad days.

I believe that is why, when I knew I would send this family a card but had no idea what to say, I called my friend Becky who is so good at sending cards at all times, good and bad, she said "why don't you say a prayer and then write the answer?" I did, and the answer came this next morning as I was steaming the wrinkles out of my linen shirt. Miracles, what I want to pray for is miracles.

So I wrote on the inside of the card:

Dear _____ and _____,

Thinking of you
&
Praying for miracles large and small.

kindly,
Julie

I dropped the card into the wide mouth of the big blue mailbox, but the sadness remains. I came home early and curled into restorative child's pose, and the sadness remains. I made a blackberry turnover and gobbled it down, and the sadness remains. I picked you up from school, and the sadness remains. I want to run and hide from the sadness, but I can't outrun sadness. Perhaps that's why I wrote before that running and hiding seem like a good idea, but they aren't. The reason is that it's impossible to outrun and hide from sadness, it knows all the good hiding spots already. All I can do is sit still with the sadness, let it come as it will, as an ache in my shoulders, a lump in my throat, and a tear in the corner of my eye. I won't swallow it down and create my own dis-ease. I will breathe the life I have in deep, hungry, greedy gulps and dance with you madly on the hardwood floor.

Someday I trust this will make sense; someday these words will have meaning for you. As for now, know I love you, and you will always feel my presence when you wish. Perhaps that is the answer to my karma question. Perhaps it's about trusting that those we love are always accessible, whether they have bodies or not.