Today is Noah's birthday. He turns three. He is quite happy about it, but wishes he did not have to wait until tomorrow to play with his friends. We will have cake and candles tonight with just us, and then the party tomorrow. Noah's friend Nico has his party on Sunday; his birthday was a couple of days ago when he turned four. We sang to Noah this morning and snuggled in bed. Marcela had a small present for him, and of course for Maxim, too. But Maxim had announced yesterday that she was going to be jealous, and she knows herself well. For a good part of the early morning, she followed Noah around just to bug him. Little subtle things like a push here or taking a toy he was going for there. By mid-morning they were both in a bit of a tizzy, crying, complaining, yelling. "I wish it was my birthday!" Maxim kept saying. "Why can't it be my birthday?" "It's my birthday!" Noah would scream. I pick up Maxim and tell her a story. She likes it when I make up stories or recite memories. "Three years ago I drove home from the hospital and I found you upstairs eating breakfast with Nico and Coralie and Ken." Her eyes light up. "You and Daddy went downstairs and got dressed and got in the car. Do you remember?" "Yeah..." she says just to keep the story going. "We got in the car and we drove to Boston. You looked out the window when we went over the bridge and said, 'Hi Boston!'" She laughs at the story of herself. "And we went to the hospital and we went inside. Remember we bought that plant, the plants upstairs now that have grown so big?" "Yeah," she says remembering her own detail, "and the purple bear." "And the purple bear! Yes. And we went upstairs and there was Mommy and baby Noah. Do you remember?" "Yeah." She says with daydream eyes. "And do you know what happened on that day?" She looks at me, surprised, "What?" "You became a sister." She smiles. Gwen had asked her just yesterday what it was like to be a sister. For his part, Noah has decided to acquire a street-toddler look by getting himself scratched on the chin yesterday in a tussle at Carmela's and then landing on his cheek in a fall here at home today. He seems to be overflowing with energy to jump and run and push things over, but he has more weight and more strength than he has coordination at this point, so he's bumping up against it a little more often. And just in time for the birthday! I asked him how the scratch had come about. "The boy did it." "What's his name?" "I don't know," he says. "What happened?" "I cried." "You cried when he scratched you?" "Yes." "Why did he scratch you?" "Because I don't like him." "You don't like him?" "No." "Did you do something to him?" "Yes." "What did you do?" "I did very strong." "Very strong? You hit him very strong?" "No, I did very strong. Like this," and he clenches his fists and straightens his arms and flexes his shoulders and makes a mean grimace face like he's either squeezing someone as hard as he can or holding someone down as hard as he can. "And he didn't like it when you did that?" "No." "So he scratched you?" "Yes." "You have to be more gentle with people, Noah." "Ok." He's a very agreeable boy in the end. It got cold for his birthday, and we had some snow flurries this morning. But you can see in the pictures, there's no snow on the ground. The sun comes and goes today behind rapidly moving clouds. We slowly begin to gather our belongings, sorting out things we won't take with us to Florida, packing up things that we will but will not use before we leave. Massachusetts has been very good to us. We will not think to much about goodbyes until we have to. Spring is almost here!

Well, the blizzard came and the blizzard left. These pictures are two days old. The ground is bare again back there. But today when I look into my back yard I have a nagging nostalgia. This is my backyard for only five months more. And then we move. Last Tuesday Eckerd College, a four year liberal arts college in St. Petersburg Florida, offered me a job as professor of environmental studies. In five months, this back yard will be someone else's, and my back yard will be filled with live oak and cabbage palm. No more snow. Maxim learned that we were moving by listening in to conversations Marcela and I were having. She asked about Florida a few times on Wednesday and told us she would like to move there. When Marcela picked her up from school yesterday, Maxim had explained to everyone, teachers included, that I had a new job in Florida and we were moving. "The boys cheered, Daddy." Maxim told me. "They said it was good cuz there would be more boys in the class now." "Boys are silly," I responded. Marcela asked if I had given the news to the teachers; I hadn't, none of Maxim's teachers had been in when I dropped her off in the morning. She said the teachers had all the details. That the program director, Sara, had taken her aside and asked her about it. Marcela said to Sara that she was sorry we didn't let them know first and she worried that they might have thought Maxim was telling tall tales. "No," Sara responded, "Maxim is always dependable in what she tells us. We knew she was giving us news." We beam with pride to hear such things. Yesterday morning Noah climbed into bed with me in an excited state of mind - unusual for him in the morning. "Daddy, do you bremembah the fire?" He asked wide eyed. "Was there a fire?" I queried. "Do you bremembah, Daddy? The castle was burning?" I realized he had had a dream, "I think I remember," I said, "What happened again?" "The fire was burning, and the castle was burning, and then Maxim fell into the fire. Do you bremembah?" "She fell in?" "Yes!" "What did you do?" "I shout, 'Daddy! Daddy! Maxim fell in the fire! Get her!'" "And what did I do?" "You ran in the fire and got her." "And she was ok?" "Yes." "Wow, I remember, that was scary, wasn't it?" "Yes." "But everything was ok. You did a good job and helped Maxim." "No, you got Maxim." "But you told me; you yelled." "Yes...it was a scary fire." It is a wonderful thing to be the hero of your son's first nightmares. Better than any job anywhere, these kids are the real stuff of life.

And I'll end with Emerson today, whose Idealism has quite an appealism: "Idealism...beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture which God paints on the instant eternity for the contemplation of the soul." Nature 1836

Ok, by now you all know the story. It doesn't look like this anymore. The long spring of January 2006 has faded into a genuine winter February. Weren't the kids thrilled? We went to bed on Saturday night and there was not a speck on the ground. The weeks of warm weather had assured that. Even the last circle of snow from the snow fort we built when the last run of wet heavy snow fell in January was gone by the time the sky turned dark. They began warning about this storm on Thursday; a low pressure cyclonic spin was crawling northeastward sucking humidity off the surface of the warm ocean and sneezing it in light fluffy flakes across the cold land to the west. These big storms move toward the northeast, but they spin counter-clockwise, scooping up toward the northeast and dumping down toward the southwest. It seemed like magic, the world transformed overnight. Maxim woke up first and wandered into our room. Look out the window, honey, tell me what you see. Snow! She yelled. Can we play in it? I don't know, mumbled Marcela from under the covers, it's cold out isn't it? Remember that Marcela didn't see snow until I dragged her to this part of the world in 2001. We'll bundle up and go out for a ride in the sled later, I say. I roll over to sleep another few minutes but then someone is pounding on my back. Good morning Daddy. He always smiles a playful smile pursing his lips as if he is trying not to smile. Look out the window, I say. No, I wanna get in the middle, he shoots back; he has no interest in the snow, only the warm bed between his parents. Daddy, he says when he is comfortably ensconced. Yes, Noah? Daddy, there was a, there was, Daddy the monster did not eat me. It didn't? I ask. No, he says proud of himself. He lived in dread fear of monsters for months, going to sleep under his sheets and not wanting to get out of bed in the morning for fear that they would get him. These are big steps for him. Maxim, for her part, has decided it is time to learn to read and write. She practices by copying things she knows; here she has transcribed most of the first page of The Cat in the Hat. When she finished, she ran to me with the paper and said, read it Daddy, what does it say? "Thesundidnotshineitwastoo wettoplaysowesatinthe..." She knows letters and gets writing but hasn't fully put the two together. We sound out words, and Marcela and I have talked to her and modeled for her the way the sound of the letters' names can give clues to the sound it makes in words, but that connection isn't quite being made yet. She can write before she reads. The snow came down for hours, the heaviest snow on record in New York. Not so further north, but a lot of snow nonetheless. Plows worked through the night and everyone has a clear path to work today. Shucks.

Is it February already? Did the groundhog see his shadow? We are slowing down a little bit today after another busy couple of weeks. At first it did not seem like we would be able to gather the rhythm we needed. The switch to full time for Marcela means three days of parenting for me. It also means we all leave the house everyday and 7:10 to go to the train. "Hi train!" Noah always shouts. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the kids go next to their 'schools' and I race home to complete whatever lectures, assignments, discussions, or readings I have waiting for the courses I teach those days. Mid-day I drive to Alewife Station, the farthest west the Red Line subway goes, and put the car in the lot. I call Marcela to tell her where it is. She leaves work at 3:00, picks up the car in Alewife, drives back to Maynard and picks up the kids. On Tuesday, she and the kids then drive back to the train station and leave the car, taking the Clock Tower Shuttle back to Maynard. I return at 11:30 p.m. pick up the car and drive home. On Thursdays I finish much earlier, and Maxim, Noah, and Marcela pick me up at the station at 7:00. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday by comparison are much easier. The three of us, Noah, Maxim, and I return from the train station and we spend the day together. On Wednesday, Maxim has gymnastics, and we drove to Stowe and Noah and I sit in the waiting area and watch her tumble and jump and climb and balance. On Monday, I am usually behind in my class preparation, so I try to work, as best I can through the morning. The kids play well these days, but are still quite young and want and need parental attention and help and mediation and the like. We eat lunch together, play for a while and read books, and they nap. I insist. There is a ritual. "I don't wanna nap," Noah always says. "I'm not tired." He slumps his shoulders like Kwazimodo and slouches into the other room. "I'm not going to nap. I'm not going to." Maxim says as a follow-up. But then I herd them upstairs, grabing requisite dolls and blankets and stuffed animals and books and whatever else they can think of on the way. Without fail, they are asleep within 15 minutes. Afternoons are not my best times of day for productive work, but I try to take advantage of the time to finish preparing my course and getting ready for the next day's classes. When it snowed last week, big heavy wet spring snow, we rolled snowballs in the back yard and built a fort. We built three large snowmen at the front end of our yard as well, knowing that the middle school boys who walk through everyday would take them as enemies of civilization and destroy them. They were in tatters by 3:30 p.m., decimated by 5:00. Last Wednesday (last week) Maxim registered for Kindergarten...KINDERGARTEN! Sarah, the director of the Community School where Maxim has attended for two years, told us that among her peers, Maxim was the most ready for school. She nearly burst when she went into Greenmeadow. While she was using the potty, Noah wandered off. Marcela found him down the hall talking with a teacher. He thinks he's ready for kindergarten as well, but it'll be another two years. He is registered for the Community School starting in June. No mishaps this week. More of a rhythm. If we hand't decided to take a trip to New York over the weekend last weekend, we probably wouldn't have ended up feeling still exhausted at the end of this week. But now we are confident that we can catch up. We survived the roughest parts of the transistion and squeezed out work and play and meals and love despite being overscheduled for two full weeks. We can *almost* breathe a sigh of relief. Aaah. Friday.