My Back Yard

2011-04-03T13:00:00.000-07:00

Spring Break Fever

Has it been ten days already since we all last had classes. More than that, about six weeks, since I have found time to provide any updates. The thing about winter in Florida is that it plays a deceptive hand. Some days rainy and cool overcast and even a frost, and then a teasing almost springlike for weeks. Finally this past week we got rain. A lot of it. Since then, three days of sun.

Outback, the coral honeysuckle have begun to bloom, deep orange pedals with bright yellow stamen. In the winds that blew on Thursday, a large Bromeliad tillandsia was forced out of an elbow in the live oak and fell to the ground. It is an endangered plant species, so we installed it on the trellis as well, affixing it with wire on the north side of the lattice. Maxim also decide it was time to tent and when she could not convince me to pull out the real camping tent, she made one of her own.

On Friday, Maxim turned ten. 10. She invited about ten girls and they had a dance contest, a water balloon fight, got to swing on the tire swing and get sprayed, ate pizza and cake, and then went out to the movies with Lanita, Alana's mom. Yesterday she attended her friend Sophia's birthday party, after spending the afternoon ice skating with another friend. Birthday weekend. Noah mentioned his desire to drive all of the girls except his sister out of the yard after a few hours, but he had Demarco, Brandon, and Jonah to play with on the side. And they all got cake, water balloons, and a swing on the tire swing of cold water, too.

But he's eight, so he doesn't see it quite like that. He's a boy who loves superlatives, and comparisons, out of which the true essence of things emerge. "I didn't have this many kids at my birthday party," he says forlornly. "You had exactly as many." I remind him. "Not if you don't count sisters and friends. I didn't have this many girls!" he says with extra emphasis and contempt on the last word. But Noah is doing well in the real world. He is enjoying playing baseball and he and the boys in the neighborhood play epic games of get the bad guy around the houses with their nerf plastic rifles and the dogged seriousness of pre-adolescent boys. Sometimes they don't even notice I am walking among them. The game just goes on.

And then there's Marcela, who has just received the largest painting in the world to fix and preserve in her small studio. It is called "I Don't Paint Feet," and she has been commissioned by Saratoga County to stabilize it, repair it where possible, and house it for display. Four years ago, Papa and I built a work bench for Marcela (2' x 5'). This painting exceded its size (it is 3'9" x 6'10"), so this morning, I went to the lumber yard and got a nice piece of hardwood plywood to provide enough surface for the work she intends to do. The piece needs flattening, repairs with Japanese paper, and work on the painting side, too. It's exactly the sort of project Marcela trained for in Buenos Aires. She is excited and nervous and ready to get started. I am excited fo her.

And then there's me. I'm good. Six more weeks until summer. :)

KAC

2011-02-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

The Sounds of Spring
Hundreds of migrating robins descended on my backyard this morning. After weeks of grey and overcast and dreary weather, these sounds of spring light up the air. Here is a short clip of the music filling our day here in St. Petersburg. We'll remind them to continue north if they stick around too long. Enjoy:

2011-02-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

Winter Grey
The overcasts of January and February. Cool and even chilly air. Sometimes rain, but clearly not enough. We have some of the mildest weather of the contiguous United States, which explains the filled up roadways and endless false turn-signals everywhere I go, but except for a day or two here or there, winter has not delivered a very sunny face this 2011. The storms that have battered almost the whole of the other 47 states, have also pulled moisture from our climate. Day after day of not enough rain and not enough sun.

The changes have come, nevertheless. The stump, you might note, is completely gone. Burned out at last and now used as the burial ground for the Spanish moss that drops intermittently into the yard. The whole scene looks dead or dying, but the truth is that if you were to bend down close and look between the dead pieces, you would see that everything has suddenly started to grow again. (Which strikes me as fine metaphor for the happenings in North Africa, if I may digress.) Seeds are sprouting everywhere, vines and trees are pushing out their buds. Another week, or three, and this landscape will be more obviously turned toward spring.

The start of spring means changes for the kids, both of whom have been playing soccer in the Southside League since late fall. Maxim did not have a very productive season. Her coach was a 16-year-old high school soccer player who had a difficult time seeing the U-10 girls as anything other than little kids. And the absence of leadership took the spirit out of her team. Noah on the other hand, who seems to want to fulfill his mother's dream of playing for the Argentine national soccer team, has been chosen to play on the U-8 All star team, playing for a regional championship in two weeks. He also started baseball, with tryouts last week and formal practices beginning this past Wednesday. He's not very focused when he's in around the house. But put him on a playing field, and he seems to come alive with attention. Today he scored four of the nine goals scored by his team. Maxim, for her part, has decided to return to dancing. She reminds me of me when I was in my early teens. She wants to be a performer. Unlike me, however, she has some genuine talent. She is artistically very brave and creative. She wrote her first real song this week "On Your Side" by Maxim:

And the rest of us, Marcela and me and the two cats, one dog, and one goldfish, continue along our way. Marcela has been working for the Pinellas County School system as a substitute teacher. Last week in a third grade classroom, after she returned from escorting one of the students out of the room, a young girl had her hand raised. Marcela called on her and she said, "Dariem said that you were a green toad when you were outside." Without missing a beat, Marcela acted surprised and exclaimed, "He did! How did you know Dariem?" To which a third child said with wonder and perhaps a small amount of fear, "Are you really a green toad." "Yes I am," she said in her delightful Argentinean accent. "Do know Lake Maggiore? That's where I live. When I leave here I'll turn back into a toad and hop on home." There was a pregnant, uncertain pause and then one of the students, Olivia, who was in pre-K with Noah and has been to our house, shouted, "Noooo! I know where she lives. I know where her house is, she isn't a green toad! She isn't!" And another looked at Marcela and asked again, "Are you really? or Aren't you?" "She's not! She a person!" And, so, as you can imagine, she got along pretty well with the kids after that.

Out in the yard things are starting to flower. This Spanish needle, a native annual flowering plant, some would call it a weed, is blooming everywhere and is the greenest thing in the landscape at the moment.

This potted plant has also just sent up its first flower. An orange sunset of a bloom, but not yet fully exposed to the day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Our butterfly flower, a colorful milkweed and the favorite plant of Monarch butterflies, has itself decide to begin a blooming cycle once again. You can see the giant pods containing feathery seeds as well as the reddish orange future flowers to its left.

And our beach sunflower has been blooming like the Spanish needles, at a steady rate for weeks, well-adapted to the varied winter climate.

Spring will not formally arrive, according to our shared calendar, for about six more weeks. But here on this heap of sand covered limestone, spring is upon us, the snow banks are melting, rivers are swelling, and the air is thick with a nose-swelling pollen. We welcome the arriving season with a renewed spirit of hopefulness and an anticipation of great things to come.

2010-11-14T16:08:00.000-08:00

November Rains

The greens have returned. Stump gone. New primitive area under the eucalyptus tree. That's snowflake sauntering across the yard, in search of anoles. It has been a busy fall. Maxim with an injured knee just before soccer season. Marcela with her comps and final classes. Noah with the trial and tribulations of second grade life. And me, well, my troubles are nothing in comparison. The back deck has proven popular and well-used, especially now that the climate has turned to what one might call a mid-spring delight in the north, days that we try to find the time to enjoy.

There is an osprey that visits a snag on our giant eucalyptus. Perching in the late afternoon and letting out the spine wrenching screech, distinctive among raptor calls. The fish eaters are never very hungry in these parts.

Maxim and Noah are learning how raise a puppy. Rex, our new dog, turned six months this week. He is mostly house trained and generally comes when he is called. He has a pecking order, based on who feeds him most frequently. It begins with Marcela, moves through Maxim, then me, and finally Noah -- sometimes he even prefers the cats before Noah, as their food scraps are frequently devoured by him. This is most distressing to Noah, who wants the dog to be his. He wants to be as gifted with animals as his sister. Instead, though, he man-handles the puppy and, honestly, scares him at times. We keep reminding him. "He's an animal. A living thing. Not a stuffed toy." And he is learning.

Maxim, on the other hand, is training Rex to sit and lay down and jump. He is quite good at jumping. And likes to play with her and sleep on her bed, given a choice. But no one ranks close to Marcela, who has been studying at home this year, and spends the most time with what she calls her "new baby." He is happier for it, I'm sure. We all are.

St. Petersburg, Florida is a land of unusual extremes, seasons out of order, people out of place, and an entrenched despair. And yet, through it all, life persists. The love of my life and my children, a growing gaggle of pets as we circle the wagons and keep our power dry, our time is precious and fleeting and rich. We are glad for what we have together, sustaining tenacious joy.

2010-10-02T09:32:00.000-07:00

Spring(fall)

Week after week through the Florida summer the sun beats down too hot through heavy wet-blanket air. Plants wilt by midday and we all jump quickly from box to air-conditioned box, escaping to the high-pressure cool of our energy intensive indoor habitats. But, then, from one day to the next, the gods forgive us, releasing their fury to other parts of the world and opening the way for Edenic delight. Fall in Florida brings eternal spring. The air cools as if a global compressor has hummed into action. Flowers appear and the pale green of overheated vegetation sinks into a richer hue of renewed vegetable growth. And so, last night the new weather arrived; it had blown in through the afternoon, you could see it in the clouds whose heavy mass began to fade and lighten and wisp away by sunset. And it remains today, where you can see it in the grass, the complexion of the landscape. Welcome spring.

This week we faced challenges in school as fourth grade came with new faces and new teachers and some of the same old problems. We had solved them once, in other quiet ways, but changes in the school made old solutions worthless and so new ones had to be devised. In the process, Maxim was asked to talk about her experiences to adults in an adult setting with grown up language and she answered with a clarity and a grace and generosity that made me proud to be her father. And she took part in figuring out solutions, and we believe, for the time being, until things change again, we have arrived at a solution that serves the circumstances. Maxim also measured for the string orchestra this week and has been assigned a viola, which she picks up next week. This week, like the sudden arrival of spring, Noah began to draw. From one day to the next. As if he had been doing it his whole life. We bought him a journal during the summer to write in and he wrote in it once and decided that was "too boring." Then it sat until Tuesday, when the drawing began. He will draw for pages in a sitting. The life changes so suddenly sometimes that we don't have enough time to stop and marvel and savor and rejoice.

The primary producers make sugars and cells and feed us all through photosynthesis, the miracle chemical conversion, sunlight captured. This butterfly bush has yet to attract the monarch caterpillars that are its symbiotic insect. Orange and yellow are the themes this week.

This Purslane is about to flower. I believe it will be yellow.

This Bromeliad flower is leading the way for a slow fireworks display of color over the next several weeks from our backyard patch.

Fall in Florida brings eternal spring.

2010-09-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

Leg-less

I'll begin by pointing out that the stump still smolders, leaving me in awe at the size of the root ball built by that tree over the years. Maybe tonight it will finish. Maybe its time has not yet come and I will have to burn again next weekend. There was much less rain this week and so the grass did not grow very much, keeping me from having to mow. The lack of rain made it easy for the kids to walk to school, though, and walk home, which they did several days. The school rhythm is on. We wake, scarf down breakfast, put on our uniforms (well, they do), and head off to school. Marcela would gather up to her desk as soon as they were off and begin her own work. She has two graduate classes to finish, and the reading has begun. For my part, I'm still in denial. Monday at 8:00 a.m., I will present myself to a class of students and get the semester underway, and today, in between painting the fascia and repotting some plants, I glanced at the syllabus and the introduction notes. All is in order.

And now the story to which the title refers: Two years ago I decided to dig into my compost pile for the very first time. It seemed dry and I feared I had put too much brown and not enough green. Two shovel drives into the pile and I was suddenly looking at the writhing half of a snake that I'd just cut in two with my spade. I'm easily bothered by things like that so I threw the shovel-full of dirt back on the pile and retreated and did not look at it for two years. When I finally moved it a few weeks ago, I found no more snakes. Next to the original compost we started another compost, for kitchen waste alone. Today I started digging into this pile to gather soil for our planters. Three shovel drives into the pile and I see another snake, trying to get out. I step back and as it slithers along the fence I note that it is the strangest looking snake I have ever seen. It took me a second and then I realized that it was the other half of the snake I had severed two years before. Its chopped off tail was squared off like his head, which was what made him look so strange. But there he was, alive as the day, having learned another easier lesson about the safety of compost piles as homes.
I'm going to admit to some relief. While I'm no fan of snakes, I'm glad to know I did not unnecessarily kill, and only unnecessarily handi-capped the poor thing. I said nothing to Maxim, Jasmine, or Noah. They would have been grossed out. And, anyway, they were busy covering my porch in talcum powder paste.

2010-08-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

Rainy then Hot

Our lawn gets greener and greener as the skies carried rain almost all week. And not just Florida, it's the end of the day and a thunder storm is rolling through rain, this was like Portland January I haven't seen sun for two months rain. Heavy dark grey clouds keeping the day underlit. Rains and spittle and driving downpour and then rains again all day long. Maxim said that since it didn't rain like that here very often when it did it seemed to last forever. Rain forever last week. Monday through Thursday. Then Friday the humidity set in to stay through the weekend. The smoldering fire pit in the foreground has turned ablaze and I hope to finish burning out the pine tree stump tonight. The goal was to do so this summer. The goal was met, we hope. The kids signed up for fall soccer today and Noah has been invited to play fall baseball. Maxim visited with her friend Tootie and complained yet another day about the injustice of being an older sister. School began last Tuesday, so the kids and our schedule has begun to make that steady shift into fall. I have one more week and then the summer denial has to end, because they expect me in the classroom Monday, Labor Day. This week we hope to get the soil we need for the planters and get our fall crop in the ground. I hope the sun can reach them. The morning light is coming later, evening sun is falling sooner, the shrinking days are palpable now. Fall is on its way.

This coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) has put out just one flower since we transplanted it farther back in the yard. We expect more next year. The hope for a finished stump is washed out as a torrential, it's dusk in Florida so it's going to pour buckets, down pour has arrived. The fire is out. Tomorrow perhaps.

2010-08-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

Finale

Summer winds down for all of us this week. The theme is transition and novelty. The kids' school voted to be a school uniform school, so the kids purchased matching polo shirts and kakis. A fourth grader. Maxim is nervous, anticipatory. The buzz among her peers is that the rubber really hits the road in the fourth grade. No more cruise control. No more easy homework. Everything up to now has been a dry run, going through the motions. The learning start now. So she's understandably nervous. But we're sure she'll do fine. Noah, the second child, the seven year old boy, has some idea that school starts on Tuesday, and will more than likely do just as fine as he did last year. But today there is no school and so he's not going to put his mind on such distant future matters. Marcela begins school this week as well. The textbooks are purchased and her nerves as well are turned up a little more as she breezes her way through the restoration of a blue print for a Lakeland client and then offers the last touches to our back yard restoration project, stringing cross rope for the climbers on the trellis and raking eucalyptus leaves into the trenches left by our former driveway. Depending on a few contingencies, we may get the planters filled and under way today (planting season begins now in this climate region) and may also finally paint the fascia along the roof. I learned this week that I won the 2010 Oscar Winther Award for my first published essay, which lifted everyone's spirits and provided the needed elixir for the final push on the book.

As much as we complain, sometimes, about this maddening heap of sand they call the Sunshine State, there are perks and benefits that cannot be denied. Many summer evenings, one need only step out the front door and look west.

2010-08-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Home"

Is indeed where the heart is. Back after two weeks of touring that other landscape, where home feels more grounded in soils and granite rock. The house has been well-cared for. The rains fell most of the days during the weeks we were gone and our lawn had sprouted significantly. You can see the images before this piece was mowed at our Flickr site. The completion of the deck project and its residuals left us needing to throw everything together into the shed just before departing. Yesterday we remedied those conditions, actually throwing things out and repacking carefully. There is something incredibly satisfying about a well-organized shed, thinned of its excess. It won't last.

Now in the middle of August even the nights are humid. We set up the fans and try to keep mosquitoes at bay. Which works to a point, but the rains from the past two weeks has hatched a voracious new generation of blood suckers. There is still painting to be done and soil to fill the planters before the new growing season is upon us. But, as Marcela said when we returned, "this time it feels like coming home."

2010-07-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

Our new dining area

Yes. It's a nightime shot and so it's difficult to see everything. We've been busy, though. We finished building the trellis on the old frames from the second carport roof. We put more dirt and other material out onto the space where we removed the gravel stones -- the old driveway. And we managed to move the compost and put it behind a vanity fence, which you can just barely see in the far left corner. Maxim likes it. She says it makes the yard look nice. The grass is also coming in some more as we have had a little bit more rain (although still far less than what is expected this time of year). Friday we completed installing the ceiling straw panels (as you can see) and a ceiling fan and so we had a small deck-opening party to celebrate. We moved the dining room table out to accommodate everyone, but now that it's out there, we haven't moved it back. We have to move it in on Tuesday when we leave for New England. But we intend to move it right back out there when we return.

I did not get the stump burned out, although we are down to the very last remnants. One more burn (perhaps even tonight) and it will be ready. We intend to set up a small "primitive area" with log seating and a fire pit out under the eucalyptus tree. You can see in the last shot that new facing is on as well. I installed the new joists and put on the facing during the week. I intended to paint it, but I could not find my paint chip sample when I arrived at the hardware store and I didn't want to guess. I'll get to that in August. We have more landscaping to complete and a couple of blue planter boxes to fill. But we're closing in on the final stages of our summer renovation of the back yard.

2010-07-13T06:37:00.000-07:00

New Deck (or, how to recycle a roof)

You might remember (or be reminded by scrolling down a few entries) that the back carport had two roofs. When Ken and Cor visited last April, Ken and I decided to remove the second roof. It was an eyesore and it leaked and it just seemed to take up space for no good reason. We didn't keep our car back here and we usually just stuck a few things to store, careful not to put them under the leak. Removing the extra roof set off a chain reaction that went something like this: once the roof was on the ground and we began cutting it up, I noticed that the joists were made of pressure treated lumber in good shape. I could make something... Marcela and I have been tossing around different ideas for the space out the back door for three years. Having lumber on hand helped decide it. For two weeks I sunk footings, squared frames, and installed joists. For another two weeks I attached decking. Viola! We have a deck. 12' by 16', plenty of room for us. We are covering the ceiling with reed (you can see it piled on the edge of the deck) installing an outdoor ceiling fan and lighting, and will seed the area that used to be the gravel driveway under the old roof with grass. When the Abuelos visited over the winter holidays they brought along a woven hammock. I decided to see if it would fit between our palm trees and (as you can plainly see) it does. One of these days we will upgrade to a real hammock, but for now, a camping pad inside the woven cloth makes a very comfortable place to rest. Marcela has said for some time that all we need to do is fix up a few things and we'll have a great backyard. She's been at the plants for a long time. And this summer we discover the back yard. Morning breezes come in off of Tampa Bay and we sip our coffee and mate and nibble breakfast while the cats chase anoles across the back yard. Yesterday a pilated woodpecker lumbered it way through our oak tree. Crow-sized with a brilliant tuft of red jutting out of the top of his head.

There were extra pieces of pressure treated lumber when the deck was finished and those were fashioned into two planters, which we painted blue. We will grow kitchen herbs and flowers in these. I built a step down into the yard which still needs decking to be finished. Marcela painted both back doors as well. She wants me to close in the electrical box and water heater. And if you scroll back to the top picture, you can see in the far right side the old metal frame for the old second roof, now being strung to carry the weight of corral honeysuckle, a Florida vine that produces a bright orange flower.

2010-01-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

Overcast Weekend

Last week passed without having time to say a few words. This week I promised myself it wouldn't happen again. Last Saturday it was freezing, literally, and drizzly. It could have been October in New England. The early soccer game was canceled, but Maxim's game was played. She scored three goals for the fourth time this season. Then this past week the cold continued. Noah's team made up their game on Tuesday night. Also cold. Thursday morning Marcela left for Boston, where she is until tomorrow. But the weather improved. Here. There, she says it is still cold. She has a workshop for professional development as a research librarian. This morning Maxim woke me up at 7:00 because she was worried that she was going to be late for school. She forgot it was Saturday. Noah played goalie in his game and stopped four or five pretty good shots. Maxim's team had this week off, but all of them were sad to hear that Coach Spencer has been called to Haiti for the next 45 days. This afternoon, the kids play in the dirt patch that once was our side yard. Noah, Maxim, Demarco and Jasmine. First soccer, as you can see here, and now an extended game of war in and around the house. They are fortunate to have friends their age and some space to make their own.

2010-01-02T15:15:00.000-08:00

Oh One Oh Two, Two Oh One Oh

Rains and cold this end of the year season. The kids have been out of school for two weeks and Marcela's family has been visiting for even longer than that. The house has been full. Lots of love and good spirits. On January 6, the Three Kings come and then, after more than a month, the high winter holidays can be put back into the storage boxes, out to the edge of the curb, and otherwise somewhere else. Monday, the kids return to school. Me too. Marcela's school starts in another week. You may notice some changes in our back yard. (Or you may not.) Our slash pine died last spring and in June we had it cut into pieces. I was hoping to have pieces big enough to cut a few beams for a future second story, but there were too many random nails in the trunk and the tree service only had a small Bobcat, so I opted to let him cut it smaller. You can see it in the back there. We have been burning the remaining trunk and branches since then, although not much during the fall. Our past year, 2009, was probably our busiest yet. Graduate school for Marcela, publications and gardens for me, and soccer for the kids. Plus their usual elementary school. We look forward to the many visits of family and friends that will fill our home again with the sounds of laughter and joy. Happy New Year everyone!

2009-08-11T16:35:00.000-07:00

The Climb up Bald Knob
(or, how I spent my birthday.)
08/08/2009
Groton, NH

The clips are short...the climb was long.

2009-06-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

Soft focus
Since school has ended for all of us, the rhythm of the home has transformed. One could say it slowed, but that would be incorrect; its energies have been re-focused. Where we once scrambled out of bed and rushed in our various directions and took or taught classes and tried to get our work done on time, we now sleep in just a few more minutes and begin our days with a little more graduation. We nap, too, in the afternoons, if we find it necessary. But this does not mean repose. No. For example, the Edible Peace Patch Garden was left to grow for a few more weeks. This was a fruitful time during which cucumbers and yellow squash, zucchini and pole beans, watermelon and sweet potato, and more tomatoes than anyone knew what to do with thrived and ripened and fed teachers and students and even us. But the time has come to close it down and so we four have been working two or three hours in the garden each morning, once we get moving. There we have pulled bolted lettuce and broccoli. We have remixed compost and turned soils. And we have begun covering the beds (to preserve the soil) for the summer.

The kids have taken to baseball, and so at least once a day, I am recruited as a pitcher for hotly disputed and often tearfully lost six inning (708 Field rules) games of real-pitch T-ball. Noah is tough to strike out anymore. Maxim too. They always want to play twelve or fourteen innings, but Marcela and I usually turn to some long-neglected yard task before too much time has passed. We have replanted many of the orphan vegetables from the school garden. Marcela has pulled most of the dead material from under the beach sunflower in the back garden. And we have been raking and composting the leaves, sticks, bark, and fruit lying about in our backyard. I hosed down the front porch and mopped the spring dust away, vacuuming the kids toys while I was at it. Marcela re-imagined the kids' room and yesterday we took down the bunk beds and created room configuration #3. I've posted photos of most of this at our Flickr page. This is not to mention the neighborhood kids who hang out for hours each day or the laundry that just keeps coming or the professional work that both Marcela and I are doing. Maxim points out that it doesn't include her piano practicing or the sketching she has been doing, either. She is correct.

We have decided to make a few repairs to our car and use it to get us north this summer. Some trepidation. But life has been giving us many gifts, one of them is the patience to let things happen as they do. To be at ease with the bigness and out-of-my-hands-ness of so many things. To look on that not as some kind of transcendental injustice, but as the very fundamental condition in which we float.

We miss our home soil with an empty longing that can overwhelm us sometimes. But we are finding our way toward peace upon this narrow heap of sand.

2009-05-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day

We ate yummy traditional foods:

And the kids swam:

2009-05-10T14:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Mother's Day

The children play:

Mother sleeps.

All is well.

2009-05-02T11:37:00.000-07:00

"Duck and Panda and the Show-offs Go to New York
by Maxim and Noah

15 minutes of childhood fun!

2009-04-15T09:17:00.001-07:00

Sunday at the Beach

It feels obligatory occasionally to celebrate the one nice thing about this town, its gorgeous beaches:

2009-04-12T05:18:00.001-07:00

Saturday in St. Pete

Today Marcela took the kids to a local toy store so that they could cash in their birthday gift certificates.

The kids played swords in the street after that.

Maxim, however, eventually came up with games of her own.

Later Noah showed us how to use the new toy.

Marcela reflected on the day.

2009-04-11T06:36:00.000-07:00

The Report

Maxim practiced her report the night before:

2009-04-08T19:01:00.000-07:00

Maxim has a report due tomorrow. She is finishing the paperwork:

Noah was playing with Branner:

2009-04-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

South St. Pete

NPR Driving:

2009-04-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

"It's A Hard Knock Life for Us..."

In case my kids ever complain that they had it rough in Florida, here's my case against it:

Noah is getting bold and starting to do some off road cycling:

2009-04-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

Days in St. Pete

We had several of Maxim's classmates for a sleepover.

The next day, Q, who couldn't swim during Maxim's party, came by and had a swim. Noah took the opportunity to make his first video:

Today, Saturday, Maxim caught us all hard at work:

But then we took a minute to practice a new song:

2009-04-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

The Sugar Cycle

The sugar begins in one form and is distributed to the children:

Whereupon, the effects are quickly expressed in loco-motion:

2009-04-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Maxim!

Maxim turns eight today. We let her design her own birthday cake. This is her design:

And here's where her art talent comes from:

2009-03-29T18:36:00.000-07:00

Communication at the Estevez-Curtis household is always an adventure:

...but we usually get there.

Noah is relearning how to ride his bike since breaking his arm:

2009-03-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

Backyard videos present:

We Go Camping

A Digital Short by Maxim and Noah

[NOTE: Written, Videoed and Performed by Maxim and Noah. Edited by Daddy.]

2009-03-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

Friday Afternoon (a video montage)

My Backyard:

Introducing Demarco:

And Maxim:

And Noah:

And the riding up and down...

2009-03-25T19:56:00.001-07:00

The New Tent

We're trying something new. We set this up tonight.

2009-03-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

Birthday Party At Last
Noah turned six last month. February 24th, to be exact. But on February 24th, Noah had a blue plaster cast on his left arm. We thought it was better to wait to hold his party. He was a good sport about the cast on his arm and he has been a good sport about waiting to have a party. He is a good sport of a kid. The day finally came. Today, Sunday. This morning I tried to convince him to water the Peace Patch garden with me, but he didn't want to. He and his mother decorated the carport instead. We rolled out the linoleum, covered the new bureau in party paper, and tied another piece of paper over the plastic table. Balloons tied to rafters and other party favors hanging from the ceiling. Marcela made a list of games and I made an ice cream cake.
We had to make a second run for the pinata. At 2:00 pm all the kids showed up. We played red-light/green-light, which provokes an unusually high level of competition among 6-8 year olds. The kids ruthlessly sent back the flinchers and the fallers. Everyone tried their hardest to win. I called the game one time and have to admit to being a little bit afraid as all the kids began tearing in my direction. After the fifth round I had them stop for fear that someone might get hurt. We ate snacks (sandwiches and fruit) and then played a game where you get to unwrap a present being passed around a circle if (and only if) you are holding it when the music stops. I took control of the stereo and Marcela passed them a pre-wrapped box of gift pencils, with seven or eight layers of wrapping paper. The kids had fun with that game and everyone got a pencil. For each of the games, marcela had the kids go to the bureau where baskets of prizes were available. The kids got to build their gift bags. In between all the games, everyone got a turn on the tire swing. Truth be told, we could have had the kids in line waiting for turns on the tire swing for the full two hours. They liked it. But I might not have survived that much tire swing pushing. I might have gotten (ahem) tired. We had the parents drop the kids, which made everyone happy. Two of our friends stayed and enjoyed the warm afternoon.
Noah seemed to have a good time and was sufficently grumpy near bedtime just to prove his exhaustion.
Maxim's birthday is next.

2009-01-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

The January yard. Grasses is at it's peak brown, few things are growing, although the Spanish needles seem to thrive. There is some grass greening up, but there just hasn't been the rain to support growth. Last week I noticed that lots of little things were sprouting because of the heavy morning dew. But that will be a few weeks or more before it starts to really show. Marcela has begun her second semester of graduate school and I am underway with an organic garden project at the nearby elementary school. We both have piles of work to do, but take a few hours each weekend to keep the yard clean and get some extra projects completed. We raked the whole back yard Friday and Saturday. No small task. We take the piles by wheel barrow to the base of the eucalyptus tree where we pile it to break down. Marcela pulled the three oleander trees that died in the transplant last spring or summer. Something else is growing out there now, woody and oak-like, but not necessarily an oak. Last year we put seeds from the beach sunflower and gaillarda in our native garden at school. They have grown into quite a tangle of sunflowers and gaillarda blooms, as you can see. I trimmed the sunflowers back to the brick face perimeter of
the garden we had laid out. Three of the plants had volunteered in one of the empty pots next to the garden. We put those in the ground in the front strip near the street. At the back of the garden here are some red flowering plants whose name I forget. These have grown very well. We had to trim them back a little bit so that they did not fall under their own weight. We also cut down a couple of oak frames to frame two paintings that the kids did last year. Marcela bought a canvas and gave them a lesson and they went to work. She wants them framed and hung on the wall. Step one is almost completed. The kids are happy to be back to school after three weeks away and a long drive around New England. Maxim was allowed to play offense during her soccer game yesterday and managed to kick three goals. Noah was on his usual tear. We are visiting friends for dinner tonight, but both working on school work while the kids play quietly. DeMarco, Noah best friend next door, is over and they play light sabers in the back yard. Maxim has her animals set up on the floor of her bed room. One day rest before school starts again. The weather is delightful.

2008-08-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

One [fill in the blank] week
That lawn not mowed in two weeks now. The pool in need of shock. The front lawn, now a tangle of spurge and flowering grasses so thick I worry that my reel mower won't cut it. This week has been a blur. Both of us were teaching every day. The kids were attending Art Camp downtown. We piled into the car every morning at 7:45, me to school, Maxim, Noah, and Marcela to the Art Center. I taught class from 9:00-12:00 and then graded and prepared for a new class the next day. I took my class on several field trips around the city this week. We also (the class and I) talked about the geology of Pinellas County and systems as a way of understanding the city. Marcela helped 5-12 year olds from the middle-upper-crust of St. Petersburg sketch and assemble several thousand pieces of art, a job she came to enjoy more when she realized they only wanted 'camp' not 'school.' Maxim and Noah each made a dozen or so pieces of their own, which they toted home in decorative bags yesterday. We piled back into the car each afternoon and returned home where the kids would swim or play while we assembled dinner and prepared for the next day without really recovering from the one just completed. Now it is Saturday and we sleep later and ignore the to do list that won't go away just a little bit longer. But we have much to do. Next week will be one of transition. The kids start school on Tuesday. Marcela has orientation for graduate school on Thursday. And I have another full week of field trips and classes. As an aside, I got nearly perfect student evaluations for my environmental history course last semester. That felt good. And now, to the lists...

2008-08-10T05:39:00.000-07:00

Busy week

I left my camera at school, so this photo of the new orange purslane plant that we bought last week and hung on the front porch will have to suffice. This has been a week of beginnings; Marcela began teaching her art class at The Art Center, three classes a day. The kids went to their own classes, and Deontae, one of our neighbor's kids, joined them. On Thursday I began day long workshops to prepare for Autumn Term, the three-week freshman course that all Eckerd freshmen attend before school starts in September. I am teaching a course called Urban Ecology in Florida: St. Petersburg, and that began yesterday morning (yes, Saturday) at 9:00 a.m. It also marked the beginning of a new friendship for Maxim, who met Emilie Novo Riesing, the daughter of graduate school friends of mine who were visiting from Germany. They are both seven years old. Emilie speaks German and Spanish, but also understands English. Maxim speaks English and little Spanish, but understands Spanish well. They managed quite well. We decided that we would play exchange when they both got to high school in a few years. One year with Emilie here in the United States, and one year with Maxim there in Germany. Maribel is from Galicia, in Spain, and we expect that we will see them next in Spain some summer in the not too distant future. This week was also the beginning of my 43rd year. Coincidentally, Maribel was born precisely one year to the day after me and so it marked the beginning of her 42nd year. Marcela made us a cake and the kids bought me a Red Sox t-shirt and Red Sox "born into it" magnet. We put the kids to bed and then sat up until 1:00 solving the problems of the world and sharing parenting stories and tips. Of course, this left me five hours to sleep before I had t wake up and prepare for the first class. So, also the week of the beginning of not enough sleep. This week we managed to get Noah up onto a bicycle, mostly by giving him one that had belonged to Maxim and custom painting it. So, hopefully, this is the beginning of Noah's learning how to ride a bicycle. He seems to enjoy it so far. With the training wheels all the way up, the bike is very stable, which he liked, except when you turn, which he doesn't. The plan is to gradually raise the training wheels, introducing more and more wobble, and forcing him to stay balanced. Noah did feel left out this week as Maxim spent the day with Emilie and her family and there were no boys for him to play with. Last night he cried a lot about that. Ellen, the youngest, is only three, so Noah couldn't really figure out how to play with her. We are bracing ourselves for an even busier week ahead as classes are now full time for all of us. This will be true until December. So this is the beginning of school, for real. The Novo Reisings left for the beginning of their journey across the American South,this tenth anniversary of their wedding. And so for them, we wish a most delightful second decade of marriage just as it gets under way. More again next week.

2008-08-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

July's End

Mom said that I had to start putting up something again. These days, no one knows you exist if you don't post to the web. So, ok, I'll post. Hello. Missed you. This is the backyard. You'll notice the pool. More green, as it has rained a great deal since I last posted. The plastic table is often out there on the grass. It serves more as a towel hanger than a regular sitting place. The thing about Florida grass is that it attracts all kinds of Florida insects and you often get bitten by annoying little flies if you sit there for too long. But we do it sometimes. Especially at night when it has cooled down and we can light the tiki torches. We have done a lot of work on the yard this summer. You can't see any of it in the photo above. Except for the new grass we seeded, which you can't really see, but is there. The flowers you see on the right side have been there since last March and April. Many of them were grown from seed. The kids are two weeks from starting school. They will spend them participating in Art Camp at the The Art Center, where Marcela is also going to be, teaching classes on bookmaking. They are a little bored this past week. We have seen some friends and done a lot, going to visit a new earth friendly home being built in Manatee County south of here, and watching a terrific story teller at the public library, but they are done. They are ready for kids their own age and structure and all the trapping of school. Who can blame them? Yesterday Marcela and I transplanted a bunch of flowers that the kids and I found at a roadside flower stand, cheap of course. I've put photos at our fickr site. The summer, so far, has been mild, a few real scorchers here and there, but nothing too persistent. More next week!

2008-06-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Home Again

Our return to summer has been busy. We had quite a bit of yard work to do and then a pool to install. You can see the progress at my Flickr page. Watch a slideshow of Pool. The kids were great about it all. The process was a long one that began with the removal of sod from a fifteen foot diameter circle, was followed by the leveling of the underlying sand, and ended with the oh-so-gradual filling of the enormous pool with water. The kids have been happy to be home. Us, too. Although we are busier than we had been during the past month. But we are happy to be in our own space again. Things will be busy starting in just a few weeks, so we want to get ready for the chaos by laying a good foundation in our homecoming. Literally. We are planning to have a slab poured underneath the carport roof where, one day, a brick walled addition will extend. Both of the kids seem to have grown up in an accelerated way in Buenos Aires. They seem more settled somehow.

2008-05-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

The semester has come to its close again. Three and a half months of utter insanity. And then closure. The kids finish up first grade and pre-k respectively and look forward to the prospects of attending the same school next year, Lakewood Elementary, for the first time ever. Marcela taught her first Eckerd course and survived. She also completed a big project for the Ringling Museum, including rebinding four giant books. She also began substitute teaching in the nearby elementary schools. There is not enough time to do all of the things we plan, but we certainly find a way to stay busy. Last weekend we had a bunch of students and faculty from the school for a barbeque. Tomorrow I go to California for the weekend. In two weeks we leave for Argentina where we will spend four weeks getting caught up with Buenos Aires. Life is moving past at a seemingly rapid rate. Transitions are fleeting and then on to the next thing. We adopted kittens last fall and now they are grown almost into cats. And the house has been rid of all of its small and medium sized anole lizards. We planted a lemon tree and several flowering bushes. We also planted a magnolia. In back our gaillarda and beach sunflowers have each begun to flower. Plants started as seeds last fall. Now coloring the west side. We have put in three ferns on the east side. We'll see how they fare. I screened in the front porch, which has moved many of the kids toys up there and shifted the way they play. And we plan to lay a slab under the carport and put in some temporary walls.

We will be home all July -- hot! And back to school again at the start of August. I must write this summer.

2008-03-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

New gardens. Plans for this type of deck, and then plans for a different type. The back yard hasn't changed much in the past year, but our ideas for it keep changing. We have priced out concrete slabs, but just this morning Marcela said she thought a wood deck would do just fine. We have strung a clothes line and keep threatening to put up a hammock. Marcela has planted beans and squash, and we have dispersed seeds from a colorful native flower and transplanted a few butterfly bushes. In the clay pots I gave her for her birthday, Marcela has started tomatoes and broccoli and wild flowers. The rains came in January and intermittently in February, and things are sprouting and starting to grow. The past week has been cold, which seems to have slowed everything. Something eats the plants. We don't know what, but it has an appetite. On the east side we have a fern started and an orchid (if it lives!). In back we have started a small yard waste compost and I am growing worried that we have to do some expensive trimming of the Eucalyptus. The kids play out here a lot, as do the cats. Maxim still loves her pretend kitchen and Noah builds blocks on the linoleum surface, pretend towns where his matchbox cars can drive and race. It has been busy, but the spring warmth is upon us.

2007-05-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

The house is feeling ever more like a home. Just in time for us to head out the door. We're slowly cleaning up the yard, trimming the palm trees and raking eucalyptus, oak, and various other leaf debris from the ground. Florida, in case you do not know, is one big pile of sand. The grasses can take and cover here and there, but this yard is like the beach without the ocean. Sand everywhere. All around us, neighbors have geen lawns of thick grasses, but we know their secret: they spend a king's ransom on irrigation, making pretend that they live in a well watered soil district. We do not care to. We are making what will be a gradual transition to a xeriscaped yard, low water needs, native plants, etc., but it will take a few years. Last week we put two baby long leaf pine trees in the front. They have already started to shoot skyward. The kids are coming to like the new home. Some days they play in the back, under the carport roof with their various toys, but lately they have taken to playing on the front porch. The back get dusty and the surface is asphalt, the porch is tile. Maxim finishes her first year of kindergarten next week. Noah completes his first year of nursery school. They are both excited for the trip north and seem to look forward to our impending two months in California. Noah can pick out Massachusetts and California and Florida on a map of the United States. Maxim wants to know if there will be girls her age in California. We hope so, but you never can tell. Marcela has completed work on the books and materials she had from the Ringling Museum as well as just finished her work teaching book binding to the special collections librarian from Eckerd. I am done with classes this week and have two sets of final essays to collect next week. We head out two weeks from tomorrow! We cannot believe it has been less than a year since we moved from our home in Maynard and sometimes we all still think of this a little bit like a dream that we will wake up from to find ourselves again at Sudbury Street. Florida has been different, and interesting, and full of new experiences. We are happy to be settling into our new lives.

2007-04-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

New Home
Well...we're here. We moved all day yesterday with the help of four students from school. They were convinced to help when they were offered money. The kids were great, they only fought six or seven hundred times during the day. ;) Today our backs and legs and hands hurt, but we have begun the slow work of unpacking and arranging and wondering where everything will fit. We moved up in terms of yard sized, as this picture shows, but we diminished our overall inside space. This was done for financial reasons, but we are happy to be closer to each other...for the time being. It reminds us of our Hull house, with the living room melding into the diningroom, melding into the kitchen. But Marcela has a studio, and we have space to expand the house in a few years if all else goes well. The best part, though, is the yard. This time, our backyard has room to kick around a soccer ball, strike a tent, and even put a pool. We will probably build a ground level deck in the next few weeks under the carport roof. Right now, as the picture below shows, we have put our outdoor chairs and sundry other things there. Today was windy, which blew it all into a pile. Ken R. and I assembled the plastic shed in the background last weekend. Too much house work has set me behind in grading papers, which I must return to shortly. The kids are playing ball in the back yard. Maxim has asked that we never move again. Noah still thinks we might be hiding the Maynard house somewhere. Although he has slept soundly during the night and during his nap, so the arrival has settled something in him. We are all tired, but relieved to be in.

2006-12-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

The tree is now in its third year. The tradition is to be seven years, if we can keep its pieces for that long. Marcela works away at an old lithograph or cuts the new holiday cards we have just finished. The weeks in which we hoped to slow down have continued to present us with more to do. Is it a busier life here in Florida? It is too early to tell. This week Noah's pre-school class put on a Christmas pageant. Ms. Daughtry, Noah's teacher pictured here, announced that this was the end of her 38th year as a pre-school teacher in this school. That makes her first graduating class two years older than I am. Noah is in the center of the photograph, a little-dour faced in his reindeer antlers. He decided he did not want to be only friends with Elizabeth that morning. This had led to some bad feelings. That's Elizabeth to his right, who got her way, mostly. Noah is still full of interesting questions. This morning after he and Maxim had sung Twinkle Twinkle Little Star a couple of times, he asked me, "Daddy, how did they do that song?" "How did they what?" "How did the people make it?" He wanted to know how the song was written. "They made it up, like we sometimes make up songs." "Oh." Yesterday I had to do some work on campus and they joined me so Marcela could have some time to do her own work. At first they did not wander very far, playing in their tent and wandering to the edge of a nearby pond. After a while I looked around and realized they were nowhere to be seen. I walked over to the pond, no sign of them. My heart sank as that instinctive parental panic sets in, I scanned the horizon. There they were. They had decided to climb Mount Eckerd, a 40 foot pile of dredge material covered now in three years of successional growth. Later they disappeared into the Palm Hammock, a five acre successional hardwood forest on the west side of campus. Same situation, I worried and went after them. They were on the far side, following a transect ("We were following the pink flags, Daddy," Maxim told me matter-of-factly"). They came home exhausted and we had a barbeque with some of our new friends. Maxim's school also had a holiday pageant. Maxim was the first candle of Hannukah. The kids sang almost a dozen songs and then all the kids and parents ate cake together. It is quite a crowd of five year olds. Maxim has many friends, but the kids are also still at an age where they bounce around and sort of recognize each other. Three girls sat together like friends for a few minutes when we started eating the brownies. After a few minutes one of them said, "What's your name?" "Dominique. What's your name?" "Amanda." "Hi." "Hi." "What's your name?" "Maxim." "Hi, Maxim." "Hi." Later the three posed with Ms. Wester, Maxim's teacher. We watched video of the kids when they were younger. The are fascinated, we are amazed at the rapidity of their growth. Just yesterday, It seems, they were helpless babies. Now they wander fearlessly around the wilds of Eckerd College campus. How quickly they grow.

2006-12-11T17:00:00.001-08:00

It has been far too long and too many things have occured since the last time I posted. Silence can sometimes mean quiet, calm, unhurried, perhaps inert. Not so, however, for us; we have been more than busy during the whole stretch. Classes and running around with two growing kids and starting a business...we have barely had time to take a relaxing breath; our weekly visits to the beach had to stop as every possible second got swept up in a mad frenzy to survive the first semester and plan for the holidays and get through the final weeks of classes and deal with the new things going on almost all of the time. We did survive, however, and we are better people for it. We have missed you. Let's try to get caught up. ** On the "big decision" front, we have decided to invest in a small home-shop/studio for Marcela. She spent weeks on the web and on the phone getting prices, comparing shipping rates and quality. Her first press, an antique, arrived broken and had to be sent back for a refund. This is her second book press, 180 pounds worth of cast iron and grease. She also found a used board cutter in Canada for a very good price and a new nipping press, hand made out of maple. A beautiful piece. She has work already, although not enough to make her comfortable, yet. At night, now, like when we were in Buenos Aires six years ago, she sits up in her smock late at night and slowly caresses the dirt off of fading lithographs. She stands and looks for long stretches; how should this repair proceed? What do the tears and smudges tell me? There is a rhythm there that suits her. The work will come. She was contacted by Eckerd's Art Director to act as a consultant on a book arts independent study that one of his students will be doing this Winter Term. We will look for a house with ample space to build a real workshop. Our minds are made up about this. Our hearts are set. We are certain. ** It is every parent's prerogative to feel boastful about their children and so we do with ours. Our gifted daughter Maxim continues to astound us. She has taken to the camera and snuck almost a hundred shots in the past few weeks, mostly a series of beautiful portraits of her brother, who loves to be photographed. She has learned the fundmentals of reading and is quite skilled and will be joining the first graders during reading time after the holidays. She misunderstood when Miss Wester told her what was going to happen and so she came home believing that she was being promoted to the first grade half-way through kindergarten. She was disappointed to learn the truth. In late November, just before Thankgiving, she played a little girl in the party scene of the Nutcracker. Long rehearsals for a couple of weeks leading up to the show, but a very professional production from the participants point of view; we knew what they wanted her to do and when and how to help get her ready; a sharp contrast with the experience we had in Massachusetts. She really liked getting all dressed up and she especially enjoyed seeing all of her friends in the audience during the second afternoon matinee. ** Noah Manuel is more of a character every day. He came from school today telling Marcela, "I asked Mrs. Daughtry if she knew Templeton {the rat in Charlotte's Web which we are now reading at bedtime}. And she said she didn't." There was pause. "I told her that's ok." He asked me a few weeks ago, "Daddy, where do... what are the... how do dreams go?" He asked Marcela a few week earlier where his thoughts went when he wasn't thinking them. He's an interesting boy. Very gregarious at times, engaging in long conversations with perfect strangers. He does seem to believe everyone is somewhat interested in the things that have happened to him that day, this week, since moving to Florida. He is still very much enamoured of superheroes, especially Spiderman and Batman. And he was for some time convinced that Troy Cott, one of the other Daddys among the parent set at Eckerd, actually HAD a Batman cape with which he could actually fly. This was one the tidbits he shared with people, perfect strangers, for quite some time. "My friend Troy is Batman, and he has a cape and he can fly!" He doesn't seem to be boasting, so much as offering them a chance to be part of such exciting company. When he was in Maynard he used to recite, "I love my Mommy, and I love my Daddy, and I love my sister, and I love myself!" and then give himself a big hug. I would not call him arrogant, however, but rather full of self esteem. ** For myself, it has been quite an adventure this semester. I survived. I think I even taught a few young adults a few things they didn't know they wanted to learn. I have a stack of final papers and exams to grade and I will be able to put my first semester on the tenure track behind me. I sidestepped a few unmarked mines and I think I managed to salvage a class on its way to the bottom of the north Atlantic. Time will tell, as evaluations get passed out in January. I shift my own energies from the frenzied hurry of one class to the next to the more gradual pace of house and family and book about mining. I am, without too much extra emotionalism, proud of myself. This was what I wanted. And now I have it. Life is wonderful sometimes; persistence and steadiness towards a goal, it turns out, is the best gamble.

2006-10-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

"Spiderman." That's the answer to just about any question in Noah's world these days. "What's your name?" "Spiderman." "How old are you?" "I'm spiderman." Here he is protecting his sister from dangerous photographers. Notice the web technique. Very important. Tomorrow night he will have to take these techniques on the road as we go trick or treating in the warm Florida evening. Being spiderman has been important to him as we make our transition from New England to New Spain. Maxim has done even better. She takes life as an adventure and worries really only where her parents are next. She is sounding out words and beginning to read. Her favorite thing to do it to have me hold her hands when she jumps in the air and lift her farther. "Jump me, Daddy." She says, meaning, lift me up in the air. She has made new friends in school and one in particular through our parents' collective at Eckerd. Still, she misses her friends from Massachusetts. They both often mention Maynard and we all think about the north a lot.

2006-10-20T05:52:00.000-07:00

Florida! We have been quiet here on our blog, but not because our lives have been quiet. What a set of changes. Let's see... Let's begin with the children. Noah is at last in a pre-school, a place called "Lad -n- Lass" where, as his teacher told us after the first week, he acts like he has been going to school forever. At school his best friend is a girl named Elizabeth. "I don't like the boys," he told me, "they're too rough." This is our Noah - cautious and certain. Two weeks ago, Marcela bought him a Spiderman costume for Halloween, mask and all. He feels complete. His face was aglow when he saw it come out of the box. He puts it on to sit on the couch and watch movies. He puts it on to be "savey." We enrolled Noah in gymnastics and three weeks ago the teacher, Coach John, promoted him to the next level. He said that Noah was excellent at listening and following directions. I said, I don't think he got that from me. Noah is still just small enough to be picked up and want to be picked up, still snuggle-able. He refers to himself as a big boy, but he always makes a beeline for my lap when he gets up in the morning. "I will miss you, Daddy," he says to me when the family drops me off for my 8:30 class on Tuesdays and Thursday. "I love you." Of course, my heart melts. He is a loving and compassionate soul. We are blessed. The girl, our Maxim, is no longer small enough to snuggle. She is growing in leaps and bounds these months. The Florida sun seems to cause her to grow faster. She is light enough to hold, but she is all bones and growing muscles, long stretches of body and limb with pointy angles and edges. She has my hip-back rotation, causing her belly to jut out slightly, and my skinny thighs, which will wear much nicer on a girl than a boy. She loves kindergarten and has great fun learning hand-clapping games and rhymes from the girls in her class. "Welcome to McDonalds, Let me take your order, fit fat chitter chat, ice cup, milk shake." She informed us that she has a boyfriend, Nathan. "Finally!" she exclaimed, as if it had been a concern of hers. She has learned to swim underwater and was herself promoted in the gymnastics classes to the next level. She is also taking ballet nearby and will be among the cast for their Nutcracker show in late November. Her newest accomplishment is the ability to read. They have been doing phonics in school and she got it, like we knew she would, in no time. She has already read a short story for the class and written a short story on my dry erase board in my office. Marcela and I are exhausted. My work is demanding and adjusting to a new set of students (I had really just gotten used to the Emerson crowd) is more work than I anticipated. One can write a syllabus, but when it gets executed by real people, you realize the challenges of communication. Now that I am tenure track, I do not have the luxury of ignoring faculty meetings and school social events, of which, lots. Who knew they would cut into my time so deeply? But, we are getting there, me and my 71 students. Marcela is busily making contacts and meeting people who work in and around book and paint conservation. St. Petersburg and Sarasota have several impressive museums with various interesting collections. She is nervous about being in the limnal stage of things, and anxious to have something decided, but excited about each new thing she finds. She is also running the household practically without my help at all, an enourmous job to which she devotes a lot of love and attention. And sometimes, when we are lucky, we have a stolen moment to exhale and say hi and remember each other. It has been a crazy six weeks since I last wrote. The semester ends on December 14. We're at the halfway point of the first big push. They say it becomes easier as the semesters roll onward. We believe that.

2006-09-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

Sunday, September 10, 2006
The existence of these seemingly endless beaches out at the western edge of land is the saving grace for what would otherwise be a less-than-inviting town. St. Petersburg itself has a distinct quality of landscape. One drives along the main thoroughfare and tries to decipher the mysterious architectural codes of a culture forced inside by heat and insects and thunder storms and hurricanes. Is that a gas station? No, it's an art gallery. Is that a supermarket? Nope. A church. We find the hidden gems slowly, for they hide them well here in western Florida. Noah is becoming his own kind of naturalist of late. "Bumblebees," he explained to me after watching one buzz around for a while, "Daddy, the bumblebees ate their broccoli at night so they are really strong." We have been convincing him to eat his vegetables at night by telling him how strong they will make him. It is important for him these days, to be strong. It is the high virtue of the three-and-a-half-year-old, to be strong. Noah has started gymnastics with Coach John here in town and in addition to talking his ear off throughout the entire class - "Was that a good one, Coach John?" or, "Those bouncey things are for the big kids, not for the little kids, right Coach John?" - he gets the coach to tell him he's strong, "Was that a strong one, Coach John?" Maxim continues to enjoy school; she is begining to work on phonics and writing and dates and time. She asked Marcela to buy her a watch so she could begin learning how to tell the time herself. She also started ballet at the Ballet Academy two blocks from the house. She practiced her first and second positions for days.There is still an ongoing transition issue, however. Whenever she comes home from school, and often when we come home from visiting with others, she and sometimes she and Noah, behave horribly. They talk back, they hit, they yell at us, they disobey, they scream. We think a lot about adoption in these moments. Just kidding. But getting from being in a social situation to being in a private situation at home seems trying, or perhaps, the social stuff is trying and then we, the folks, pay for it when it is over. Nevertheless, Maxim is growing up quickly. She gets her own cereal in the morning and gets dressed all the time by herself. She misses her friends in Massachusetts. But as she plays more times with Iris and Becky and Maggie and Alexandra and Emma and as she finds more in common with some of the girls at school, she seems to be settling nicely into the rhythms of our new life. I promised clouds, and there were plenty this week again. They towered on the horizon, grabbing the eye, pulling the imagination as they create well-needed afternoon down pours. Without them, this is a desert, this verdant peninsula, this Florida. I had my first week of classes this week. It flew by, but also did not. It felt nice to be beginning. The waiting was starting to wear badly. I presented an introductory and first real class for all three courses. The introductions fell out on Monday and (earlier than I anticipated on) Tuesday. I was busy, but I succeeded at remaining relaxed about school. The students are earnest, so far. In the first time through any course as a professor, you feel like you are driving at night without your headlights on. There is a familiar road ahead, and you know your vehicle well, but the curves are impossible to navigate. There is no worry about getting to your location, but you move with extreme care so as not to careen off the road altogether. I am advancing cautiously, feeling the road as I go. We found a delightful Italian restaurant in Gulfport last night. We ate fish and lasagne under a palm-frond roof as the sea breeze cooled the evening air. Our life is settling into regular rhythms, it seems. The semester has begun.

2006-09-03T04:18:00.000-07:00

What I haven't mentioned enough are the clouds. This week, I have no pictures. Next week, I promise to post some. The clouds are majestic here. Towering into the stratosphere through the afternoon and catching all of the various reds and oranges as the sun falls behind the curve. I find myself dangerously turning my head as I drive along the highway to see spectacular erupting water vapor. I went back and looked at some of the Maynard My Backyards and decided that this back yard photo has to go. There are other views that make more sense. Tune in next week for that one (and, btw akb: escribo una vez cada semana...o, voy a prober, [wink]). This week has been a good one. We attended a pot luck for faculty and students Sunday night. On Monday, the emergency committee at the school initiated an evacuation order - NOAA was saying Ernesto would reignite as a hurricane on the other side of Cuba. On Tuesday, they rescinded. Ms. Wester said the public schools would evacuate on Tuesday or Wednesday in the event that the hurricane winds returned to Ernesto and he was heading toward us. They didn't, he wasn't. He saved his biggest fury for the mid-Atlantic states. On Thursday, we dropped off Maxim at school and Ms. Wester wasn't there. When Maxim discovered that she would have to be in a classroom with other students and only a few of her own classmates - they split the kids up among the other kindergarten classes - she panicked. She cried and grabbed Marcela and said she wanted to go home. Marcela, bless her heart, overcame her Italian mother instincts and told Maxim she would have to stay, that this was real school now and that they expected you to be there every day. Then Maxim's friend Jada arrived and the two took their new desks together. I was proud of both mom and daughter. For his part, Noah seems a bit out of sorts. He is staying home all day and there aren't young kids in the neighborhood. When Maxim comes home from school, she is often either crabby or feeling a need to boss someone around and either way Noah gets the brunt of that. Quiet play never last more than a half an hour and then the fussy whining and aggressive fighting begins. We are thinking up ways to get Noah into playgroups. On Wednesday after school we all went to the beach in Pass-a-Grille. The water was a touch warm, but everyone had a great time. Noah's floaty suit ended up irritating his underarms and he howled for a while at the end, but we got to see laughing seagulls - they look and sound like their name - and what I am pretty certain was a ruddy turnstone (you can see it in the background of the gull photo). Friday, Lloyd Chapin, the Dean of Faculty at Eckerd, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Devil Rays/Mariners game - given their names, this one should have been a cinch for Seattle. The school got a bunch of free tickets and everyone decided that the game would be more fun than the Tavern, and we went with hordes of students and faculty. We are suddenly part of a vibrant community. It is nice, but also exhausting. We lived a relatively quiet life in comparison in Massachusetts. On Saturday, Marcela, her parents and the kids went to the St. Pete Museum of Fine Arts, which Marcela reports is a very good museum all things considered. Marcela said that the kids did well for quite a while, but eventually started running and jumping on things in the museum causing one woman to ask the docent to ask Marcela to take the kids outside. At the end of the day we took a drive to Ft. De Soto Park, a Pinellas County park comprised of a couple of keys and a long stretch of beach. It was just stunning. Maxim is learning to navigate waves and starting to swim underwater. Noah is getting even more used to the water. We are in the midst of a life transition, we all feel a little bit lost and anxious to have our bearings. But we are grateful to have arrived amidst the people and in the landscape where we are. We miss our home in Massachusetts and our friends and the pattern of our life, but we feel a growing sense of home among the cabbage palms.We have also discovered the quiet secret of St. Petersburg, Florida; it contains more New Englanders than just about anywhere outside of New England itself. The largest cohort of freshemen at Eckerd, after the Florida cohort, are from Massachusetts. If I could just get over the fact that there is no soil anywhere. It is one huge sand pile from start to finish. And for the second time, the Rays won a game that I attended by driving in a walk-off run (2-1 in 9). They should pay me to go to the games. Until next week...

2006-08-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, it rains in Florida. This week the common late afternoon rains returned with regularity. I knew it was time to close my computer and head for home when I heard the distant rumbling of the arriving storm cells. Another week, another class prepared. One more to go, and then school starts for me. (!) Marcela has been busy putting together a class on book binding to teach this January, if it is accepted. The kids have been busy being kids. Maxim has organized each of her different collections of dolls and accessories in their various places around her room. She will sit sometimes for more than an hour taking off and putting on doll clothes, building houses out of the modular doll house, and fixing hair. Noah is still on his Spiderman kick. He had his mother take out a spiderman comic novel when they got their library cards on Tuesday night. I have been trying to read parts of it to them, but it is really for adults. Lots of violence. On Thursday morning we drove in to Tampa and picked up los Abuelos at Tampa Internation airport. They will be here through September 20. They are sleeping in our room and we are on the air mattress in the kids' room. It is much roomier than when the family visited us in Hull, but an air mattress is an air mattress. We keep asking ourselves when our adventure is going to end. On Friday night we all went to the Tavern, the gathering place for Eckerd faculty and their kids. Faculty have a beer or soda, the kids ride their scooters around the huge adjacent parking lot. From there, we set out on what proved to be a futile adventure trying to find some place to eat in downtown St. Petersburg, a town seemingly designed to be navigated from a Hummer. One of my colleagues, who admitted that she was bad at directions, gave me directions to get to a kid-friendly place. After an hour and fifteen minutes of parking and walking and parking again and walking, we headed for home, defeated. Not only was the named restaurant nowhere to be found, but there were simply no other adequate venues. We met with much more success on Saturday. In the morning, Paco and Natcha went with the kids to their gymnastics class. We ate a pasta lunch and then everyone napped for almost three hours. We dressed and headed out to St. pete Beach, the ocean, to have dinner and take in the sunset. We returned to a place we have been to twice, but will not go to again. Nevertheless, the food was fine. Better still, the ocean was serenity. The sunset, divine. I am posting pictures at Flickr. As you can see from his posture, Bones is happy that there are two more cat lovers in the house and is especially glad that he no longer has to move around in a cat cage every few days. He decided to shed almost an entire second cat's worth of hair since arriving in Florida, but he is generally content and eating well and even enjoying the outside a little bit. The rain this morning kept people from the weekly jaunt to Passe-a-Grille beach, but we are already prepared. We got our own beach umbrella and goggles for the kids. The first hurricane of the season, Ernesto, has gathered south of the Dominican Republic. They say its headed this way, generally speaking at this point. We hope it either misses us completely or passes us by peacefully. For now, we'll enojy the cooling effects of the late summer rains.

2006-08-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

Well, the first full week of school for Maxim went without a hitch. Marcela drives her in in the morning and either she or I pick her up. She is doing a lot of activities and says she is enjoying herself. The worry I felt last week about her having a tough transition have faded. She will do fine. We have her on the waiting list for two other schools that offer Spanish langue instruction, but it is likely that nothing will change until next year. The first grade has more seats to fill and one often has a better chance in the school choice lottery - the last noun is really the only important one to understanding how school choice works in Florida at the moment. We also decided to keep Noah out of pre-school for the time being. We were not thrilled with the set-up or the teacher at the place where we had reserved him a spot. He is next on the waiting list at a closer school, but they also have an intermittent drop-off program which may work better for us this semester. For the time being, he's quite happy being home with Marcela most days. Marcela had an interview with the fine arts program director at Eckerd early in the week. He would like her to design a bookbinding course for Winter Term this coming January. There are still some budget questions - he has no bookbinding equipment so things will need to be purchased - but she is enjoying thinking through a course and putting together the proposal. We are still trying to work out how to get to all of the places we need to be in a day with only one car. I took the bus one day, but the buses are not wed to the schedules they print, so you never know if you just missed a bus or if one is about to come. I missed the bus one day and waited a half hour for one another day and then yesterday I put air in my bicycle tires and will try riding to school as another option. Yesterday the kids started gymnastics with coach John at Gold Medal Gymnmastics, a one-person gym facility for children. Half of my colleague's were there with their kids too. Which is the reflection of the sort of group we have fallen into, professionals with children our children's age. People with like concerns and similar interests and the same dedication to their children. It is, of course, too early to tell, but we are pleased so far. This morning we will go to the beach for the Sunday morning swim.

2006-08-12T06:49:00.000-07:00

Has it been two weeks since we arrived? The time has passed in a strange way, seeming to go by fast, but being so full it feels as if we have been here much longer than two weeks. Maxim has already made two friends at school - Jada and Amanda. And she says she loves it, although she does have stories about eating too slow in the cafeteria and having half her lunch thrown away. We are having her practice eating fast at lunch time at home to help her get up to speed; they aren't as relaxed about timing in elementary school as they are in pre-school. We took Noah to an open house at his new school and decided we were glad we put Maxim in public kindergarten. It will be fine for Noah for pre-school (although Marcela has put him on waiting lists at other schools). Marcela has been hard at work finishing up unpacking the house and setting things up. We are literally down to a very few boxes and some storage decisions. The living room needs a new piece; I am going to make a shelf similar to the others I made for our Maynard living room, but bulkier for the televisions, VCR, and DVD players. (Marcela also wants me to make a puppet theatre for the kids, which I think is a fine idea.) Speaking of the kids, they also have a great set up here and everything is unpacked. They can even put up the small yard tent in their inside play area. The down side of having this large a space behind the beds in the room is that one or the other of them wakes up in the night and is frightened by the dark. We don't mind nightly visitors, but they are getting so big it does start to crowd out the bed. We spend a lot of our time in the kitchen, sitting at the table, standing around the island (peninsula?), preparing food. Marcela set up this room first and it has been our comfort zone ever since. We do like the living room and use it more than we did the living room in Maynard, but the kitchen/dining room is the center of the house. It all gradually begins to feel like home.

2006-08-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

It has been a comedy of errors and a few missteps, but we seem to have achieved success in getting our next tier of arrival matters in place. We got high speed for the house - but not cable. Our [semi] expensive stereo, which had stopped working when we lived at Sudbury Street, has begun working again (?), so we have radio. Last week while admiring the new 2006 Prius driving in front of me on 34th Street North, one of the main secondary arterials in St. Petersburg, I ran into it. First accident ever. Tuesday, when we drove halfway to the next county to get our car registered in Florida and to exchange our Massachusetts licenses for Florida licenses, Marcela failed the vision test at the counter. Yesterday, as Marcela was having her eyes checked by the optomitrist making small talk about how we were trying to decide whether to put Maxim in pubic school or to stick with the private kindergarten, we learned that school began Tuesday...two days ago. (Oh, and it turned out that Marcela's eyes were fine. (!) ) By the time we got home, the schools had closed for the day, so we decided to enjoy the evening. We harvested the last pineapple of the season, boiled some pasta, and tossed up a delicious lima bean and cottage cheese salad. (By 'we' I of course mean Marcela, except for the pineapple; I harvested that.) After dinner, we scrambled to do our research on the Pinellas County School web site (it's a 'school choice' community; about which, more later.) and this morning it happened. Maxim began kindergarten at Lakewood Elementary School. We'll post some pictures on Flickr later on today. We were heartened by the fact that her kindergarten teacher, Miss Wester, is a native of Leominster, Massachusetts and a die-hard Red Sox fan. Noah doesn't begin school until Monday and my classes will not begin until Labor day, so Maxim is our pioneer into the wider St. Petersburg life. We are very proud of her.

2006-08-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

Well, we're here. This is the backyard. A raised deck surrounded by tropical fruit trees and native bushes. The kids are happy we are next to the park, because this is not a yard designed for children's play. We took everything from our storage in north St. Petersburg to our house. It took two trips and about five gallons of sweat. Keith Castleman, an environmental studies senior who will long be in my debt, helpd haul the roughly 7,000 pounds of random household goods. The boxes have been moved inside and mostly emptied. The kids are unpacked in their room. We went to our first ball game as a family yesterday only to watch the Red Sox blow a four run lead and then lose in the 10th. The home crowd was ecstatic. The kids enjoyed the circus atmosphere and sat through all 10 innings. They went to see the tank of sting rays held in the centerfield bleachers, but the exhibit was closed for the afternoon. They decided to dance on the stage instead. Any chance to ham it up seems to thrill them these days. We have to tell them often to keep their voices down. This is not because they do not have adequate play space at home, mind you. We gave them the master bedroom, put the bunkbeds near the door and have encouraged them to contain their toys to the back part of that room. There seems to be enough space for them to play separately and together and it has diminished (although it will never halt) the incessant flow of toys into the rest of the house. They like to pretend they are going on vacation, pack up suitcases, take things elsewhere and unpack them, which requires other rooms and will more than likely run against the grain of our wishes. But that's the trial of parenthood. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and repeat again. When it cools down in the evening, which, contrary to popular myth, it has done now and again since we have arrived, we wander out to the park, Seminole Park, where Noah can pretend the jungle gym is a train and Maxim can jump from her swing high into the air. We kick around the soccer ball and talk about what to eat for dinner. The kids love to use the water fountain, although the water is not New England water in that it tastes every inch of the limestone calcine it has come from. The night before last the sun went down and kissed the top of a storm cell, cumulus maximus, out on the distant horizon. What this landscape lacks in topography it makes up for in sky, as far as I can tell. Beauty. A fine welcome home.

2006-07-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

Goodbye, house. Goodbye, yard. We're one month gone next Friday. I'll only confess this: while one should never get too attached to a piece of property, I stood in the yard and shed a tear on the evening of June 28th. Feeling the melancholy of last looks. For the kids, this is an adventure. A long ride in the car. It has meant seeing their friends and our friends, cousins and family in an extended vacation. We started in Hebron, New Hampshire. Groton, actually. The cabin. It rained one of the nights, but was beautiful the other. We vacationed as if it were a cabin and not a place to work, spending one day on the beach and another. Eating out. The cabin was almost finished. We shed a tear or two as we parted from there and onward to Brunswick, Maine where we caught up with other friends and their new baby and gave ourselves a needed break in a hotel - shower, television, swimming pool... We took the time to think, because moving requires thinking. Living on the road for four weeks requires thinking - and lots of packing. From Brunswick we went north to Brewer. Another sister and her family and their boat to watch fireworks over the Penobscot River. North again to the Farm. Clean air, crisp nights. The kids catch their breath and swim. I remember why I love this place, Mustard Seed Farm. North again to P. Russell's camp outside of beautiful Millinockett, Maine. Then south to Lamoine State Park. Our campsite. A day to visit Acadia National Park and swim in the arctic current of the Gulf of Maine. The first night in Lamoine it rained like the great flood, but then it dried off. We returned to the Farm and from there headed to Family Camp 2006. Six nights and seven days in our cabins by the lake. Two shifts of siblings and others and lots of cousins to play with for hours. Maxim made friends with Sam, a six year old visiting the camp with her grandparents. Noah played hard with his cousins. Our lives intersected again. All of us, moving together in rhythm for a few precious hours; our once-a-year check-in. We miss our backyard. We miss our house. I drove by yesterday and was overjoyed to see nothing had been changed yet. Sunflowers grew where we left them, and cosmos and the red oak. Our landscape of plants lives on without us. And our home, we have learned, is among those who we love. And our back yard to come waits with anticipation.
Until St. Pete...

2006-06-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

Well, the time has come. We are amidst boxes and disassembled furniture. We are working to be finished packing on the evening of June 27th. The movers come on the 28th, we sweep it clean and the next day it all passes hands. The kids are doing great, all things considered. They do not like to be left at school on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and they seem to want a little more attention at night than usual. But they both talk about Florida and moving and recognize that our stuff will soon be on its way. The kids and I wandered downtown on Monday, Maxim on her bicycle and Noah by foot (mostly), and we found a colorful string of paper lamps and garlands at the local variety store. We hung them in the kitchen. A spontaneous idea that has somehow charmed the space for the past few day. We have to duck (the grownups of us) but we leave it hanging. The yard still need mowing, and with the rains, I calculate at least two more mows before we go. The swingset is being taken apart and packed on the truck, as are the sandbox boards. Most of the rest of the kids stuff is going up for sale at the yard sale tomorrow. We are winding down. Next weekend, one week from today in fact, we leave for the Cape a for a three-day camping weekend Marcela planned back in January. These years here have been kind to us, we are grateful and will leave with fond memories and heavy hearts.

2006-05-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Has it been two and a half weeks? One of them, at least, it rained. Our open house was a wash (*snicker*) that weekend, and we broke down and went to the Salomon Pond Mall in Marlboro. We had taken the kids to see the Curious George movie when it came to Maynard. We took them to see Ice Age in Marlboro. It rained for seven days. We have had regular visits to see the house none the less. So, regular cleaning up. Marcela and I now joke that we ought to make the weekend mop down a regular habit. It certainly leaves the place clean all of the time. Outside, in the yard, everything is returning and regrowing. The grass has come in thick since the rains. Violets are growing everywhere. Two weeks ago, after trying all day just to get a balance, Maxim mastered riding her bicycle without training wheels. You can imagine, she was thrilled and now cannot wait for warm nice days when she can ride back and forth on the right-of-way. Twice, now, we've ridden all the way downtown. Noah is being equally ambitious and has decided to begin the transition away from diapers. Hooray! He also continues his officious ways. When we visited Zach, Shanna, and Erik last weekend, Shanna sat down on the living room couch and started typing on the laptop that Zach had earlier been working on. "Hey!" Noah said stepping into the living room. "You're not supposed to play with that! That's Zachary's!" Maxim has incorporated two new phrases into her conversations. One, when she doesn't want to repeat something she has said before, "I went downtown on my bike, THE END," she will say. Or, adding her other favorite: "I went downtown on my bike, blah, blah, blah, THE END, ok?" We have managed to grill twice already this season. And we tried for a third last night, but the thunderstorms they warned about blew in just after the coals were ready. We had to open all the windows to blow off the steak smell from the house before the showing this morning. Spring drifts into summer; school starts again tomorrow for me. Six weeks.

2006-05-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

Yes. Too long. Hello. The kids are great. The yard is growing in, as you’ll see. It has been a busy month, as much for trying to figure out what to do next as for having actual things to keep us busy. The kids are excited about the changing seasons. We have done more things outside, which is exhausting, but fun for them. The past two Fridays we have taken a walk in the morning through downtown Maynard and back. Maxim got a red scooter for her birthday that rides. Noah insists on us taking the carriage, although he will often get out and run on his own. All the way Maxim shows off her new tricks. “Look daddy, see how I can make it turn by leaning?” “That’s great, honey.” “I can balance almost standing still, Daddy, did you see what I did?” Noah likes to play “red light green light” when he’s up and running. He isn’t quite in sync with the game – he is still just barely three – so when you say green light, he takes a few seconds to get moving. Likewise when you say red light, although when he eventually freezes, he puts his body into a form as if he was running. We round the corner near the Maynard ice cream shop. “Daddy, can we get ice cream?” Maxim asks. “It’s 10:30 in the morning,” I reply. She looks at me with a look that says, “and…?” “We don’t eat ice cream in the morning.” “Please Daddy!” “No.” Today we pulled out the swimming pool. Maxim insisted. At first I said it was too cold, but it was quite warm and she knows how to read the thermometer. “Look Daddy, look how far onto the warm side it is.” “Ok. In the afternoon.” I say. For the next twenty minutes: “Is it the afternoon yet?” And so by mid-morning, they were both in bathing suits playing in the water, making mud of sections of the backyard, despite my objections. And then they ate lunch with that hunger that comes from playing all morning in the sun. Summer hunger. And they went to sleep almost without a peep after a story about a girl and her imagination. Noah has finally decided to begin using the potty. This is a nice change. He has boundaries, times, places, etc., that only he knows when he will cross, but we are off to a good beginning. Today, he awoke from his nap, took off his diaper, and sat on the potty himself. Baby steps and big ones. What else? The house is still on the market, we are still tired of cleaning it, and spring is still coming in. The yard needs a regular weekly mow these days, and the recent rains have caused everything to leaf and flower and fill in with a sudden pop. I looked out the door this morning and swore it was summer. Wasn’t it winter just yesterday? The long light is welcome.

2006-04-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

We have tried to keep the yard neat, but we can't seem to keep from using it now that the weather is warming up. It has been a rapidly moving April, rolling out of a very busy March. We keep waiting for things to slow down, for a break or a breather, but we are on hour-glass time now. When it runs out, it is out. We have to be in St. Petersburg at the beginning of August. We want to be out of our house at the beginning of July. Lots of interest in has been generated for the house, many visits through our doors, but that fatal attraction needed to clinch the sale hasn't occurred. Marcela thinks that after a few more weeks of people looking at the abyssmal choices available in Somerville and Medford, someone will fall in love. We can only hope...and keep it clean. That's the part that seemed like it wouldn't be too very much work after the first time we cleaned, but has become a pretty insistent set of activities. Clean for you is one thing. Cleaning for a potential buyer, however, is another thing altogether. I mean, who vacuums their basement twice a week? Or keeps their toaster oven in a cupboard? You could eat off any one of our floors. Then a couple of days go by without a visit and what seems like normal living turns out to be hours of rearranging again, putting things back in place, dusting and vacuuming and mopping. Life is messy, there no getting around that. But, really, who needs to be that clean all the time? There were a few days at the beginning of spring that felt just like spring. And then it got cold and it snowed. They were big fat wet heavy spring flakes that plopped in little icy explosions when they hit the ground. And although it did manage to accumulate on top of the mulch bark around the cedar bushesin the yard, when the sun came out, the earth dampened and dried. And then started to green some more. The town sent the street cleaner down Front Street mid-week to sweep up the piles of sand they threw out over the snow last winter, and everything looks a little neater around the edges as true spring sets in. The kids have taken to playing in the right-of-way again, which means skinned knees. They forget after a winter of being able to fall on snow and fall inside without too much to worry about, that asphalt just doesn't give in the same way. On April 8, Erickson's Homemade Icecream shop opened and we were were among the first to get our scoop that day. Our weekends can not be spent at home until the house sells, so we travel around by train and by car and visit Massachusetts before we say goodbye to these seasons and this landscape and these winding roads.

2006-03-31T05:40:00.000-08:00

The slightest hints of spring can be seen in the very slow change toward green in the back yard. It can also be seen in the very subtle lift in the kids, knowing they can play outside. For Maxim, knowing her birthday is upon her and the ice cream store will open. Yesterday Marcela bought the kids a play tent that they can use indoors and out. They are excited to put it in the yard later this morning. Maxim has been making wonderful drawings lately, colorful abstracts that are maps of the world in her telling. "This one is Maynard," she says pointing to a dot she has drawn along a swirling line. "This one is Florida and this one is Belize. And here's Argentina." She has me take another map she has drawn with our house and the hardware store on it with us when we go to the hardware store so that I can find my way. Noah has developed an extreme generosity. He turned three in Feburary and has the careful habit of sharing food. Everytime he has something besides a meal plate, he looks around at how many people are there and he breaks it into pieces handing them out. "This one's for you, Daddy," he says giving me a ripped piece of toast or part of a pretzel. "Here you go, Mommy." He gets upset if Maxim won't take her piece. I have to confess to believing there is something hard-wired about this behavior because it mimics exactly Marcela's father, who we only see once a year at most. Her father and grandfather started and ran a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Las Delicious, for almost 50 years. Paco was the always greeting people at the door and checking in himself on tables. Noah has a lot of Paco in him. We have had five people look at our house in the past week. Another big weekend of open houses this weekend; the Globe runs a special spring houses for sale section today. We have a photo there. There is still a lot of uncertainty among real estate professionals about what the market is going to do this year. For now, we're not worried.

2006-03-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

Spring cleaning came a little early this year. Yard raked, mulch laid, tiki laterns placed. You can see the red cedar mulch outlining the cedar bushes in the corners. We also repiled the sticks and branches again at back, and in order to make more room in the basement, we moved out the big grill that Ken left us last summer. It's mostly all still just barely recovering from winter, but we got a lot of the brown stuff cleared out, making room for the green. The lillies are now pressing up through the ground. Spring is here. Today was our first open house which meant Marcela took the kids into the city while I finished all of the last details around the house. Washing, waxing, last touch ups, etc. You can see some of the details at the online listing. We painted the wall behind the sink the same color blue we had painted the wall underneath the cabinets, just for continuity. Ken and I picked out the color one day when we were at a warehouse home store, trying to remember what color Marcela had used last summer. Once it was done I realized we had accidentally matched the color of aluminum screens that come with the window. And, yes, that is a new curtain rod. We also built a door for the bathroom medicine and towel cubby. This one we hung with real offset cabinet hinges and drilled a real cabinet handle. It was tough to get it to hang right because the opening is just north of square, but we built it piece by piece, making sure each one fit before the next one was added and it works great - or, it opens and closes without a hitch, anyway. I hadn't even really noticed before that the cubby was missing a door, but Ken Resnik pointed out where hinges had once been and it suddenly seemed obvious to me. The bathroom does look nicer now. We think the kid's room looks nicer too. The pink was almost too heavy, shrinking the size of the space visually. We miss the mural - although Catherine doesn't; she told us the other day that it made the wall look "too messy." - and Maxim misses her secret stories on the side wall, but this neutral pale yellow doesn't commit the room to being a kids room the way the pink did. It makes it feel bigger in there. Maxim said the other day, "Daddy, it feels like we already moved." "Because you think you're in Florida?" "No, because my room looks like a new room." She's mulling over each consequence and change. Noah has schemed to build a "Big big big big big big um holdin thing to um put on top of the car to take our house to Florida. Can we do that Daddy?" During the week, we stained the hall floor and went to the mall to buy Maxim some new pants. Later in the week, we coated it with a semi-gloss finish; it gets a lot of traffic. Then we went out to the hardware store, paper store, and pharmacy. It wasn't quite dry when we got home, but it had lost all of its odor. Then when everything was all ready, the putting away began. Boxes of this, boxes of that. We had realized last summer when camping that we really did need all too very much to live. Now as we put things away that we know we won't use for the next four months, we wonder why we have so much stuff. Boxes of this, boxes of that. Then a cleaning of the windows and floors, a dusting, a vacuum, top to bottom. I think it's ready. Whew! Time to relax.

2006-03-17T05:25:00.000-08:00

Well, even though spring is right around the corner, we still see some snow. This photo is actually a couple of weeks old. The snow fell, the sun came out. You know the rest. It has been a very busy two and a half weeks since we met with our real estate agent. This backyard is about to go on the market. To make it ready, we had to line up our five-year plan for house improvements and do as many of the projects as possible...in two weeks. (Is this starting to sound like one of those HGTV shows?) Last week was spring break at school, so I could stay home and do repairs. The result has, temporarily, piled all of us into the master bedroom while we finish the details. The 3/4 bathroom in the basement hadn't had a floor. Here you can see the one I installed on the first day of work. It required re-setting the toilet, but it came out pretty good. And everything still works! We started at the bottom because the biggest paint job was there (or so we thought). The basement, which holds the washer and dryer as well as this 3/4 bath, hadn't been painted for forty years. We put gray concrete paint onto the floor and in patches around on the walls. Here you can see how it looks, with real-life clutter on top. It brightens up the space and seals the concrete. Being us, and it being winter, we moved a couple of things outside, but mostly painted by moving everything to one side of the room, letting it dry, moving everything to the other side of the room, letting it dry, and putting everything back. The basement stairs, which are the original house basement stairs (110 years old), hadn't been painted in a while either. We did some repairs and gave them a brown paint. You can also see where we painted the wall to the right of the stairs. There is still more painting to be done down there, but that's now the very last project we do after everything else that still needs to be done. At first we thought we would paint the wooden cabinets in the kitchen white. Then we floated the idea to three different friends and got a resounding, "No!" So we left them as is, and have scrubbed them from top to bottom. We have matching stains to touch them up in places, but they are in good shape. These appear to be original cabinets for the house. The house rennovations that were done in the 1950s or early 1960s - when the asbestos siding went on over the clapboard outside - appear to have included putting up paneling in the kitchen and side room and building the pantry. But the cabinets look like they preceded that work. And we have decided to leave them in their original color. We also talked about replacing the hardware on the cabinets, but the pewter handles (which may or may not have been orginal, we think they were) cleaned up very nicely, so we have decided to leave those as well. We still have about a dozen of them to polish, but the primary ones, the ones you see as you come in the side door, are polished and glimmer a bit now. Last Friday, Ken Resnik came over and helped me install two new storm doors. The ones we had were tarnished aluminum and had gone in with the 1950s era rennovations. The new ones are white and have a wood core. There is no difference in the storm-protection value, but they round off the paint job we did last summer and make the outside look neat and complete. This is the kid's playroom, the side room off the kitchen, after we had taped it but before we painted it. It is now all white and looks very nice. We don't have pictures, but the window sill in this room and the two in the kitchen had all been loaded with plants by various occupants of this house. We sanded them, restained them, and gave them a fresh finish. The faucet in the kitchen was also quite old, so we replaced that with one that looks vintage and fits the style of the room. My "This Old House" moment came when I figured out how to build and install this door for the hall crawlway closet. I used 2 x 6's and z'd them together from the back. The top and bottom of the 'z' give the door a snug fit into the frame. It sits on two hinges. I have to make another for the bathroom cabinet and I think I will follow the same design. Speaking of the bathroom... I looked up and noticed that it seemd to be chipping in some places. 'I'll just climb up an chair, knock a couple of those chips out of place, repaint, and be done with it,' I thought. Then I started poking at the chipping areas. And not only did they fall out in large chunks, but as I got closer to the ceiling I could see there were chipped areas all over the place. The previous owner had patched a couple of areas and then thrown a thick coat of paint over the top of failing paint. I didn't notice this when we moved in. Now I could see the whole ceiling really needed work. And so I scraped the entire bathroom ceiling. This was an unanticipated add-on and turned out to be the biggest individual job of all. The bad news was that the whole ceiling needed to be scraped down to the underlying horsehair plaster. The good news was that the underlying horsehair plaster was in amazing condition. 110 years of hanging there, and it was still rock solid. We did not finish scraping until Sunday night and then I threw the first coat of paint over it. One more and it'll be, literally, as good as new. We painted over the pink paint and mural in the kids bedroom. We thought it would take several coats to cover, but the paint we inheritted from Ken's sister-in-law did a great job. And now it is covered completely, including this beautiful illustration of Maxim and Joey and her friends and Bones at a party that we found drawn in indelible ink in the corner behind the bunkbeds. This room still needs a second coat around the edges, but the body of the walls are complete. All the while, we have also been packing small things and cluttery things to make the house as empty as possible for the open house. We still have to paint the kitchen walls, finish the bathroom ceiling, touch up the pine floors, wash all the windows, re-stain the stairs, and replenish the cedar mulch around the outside of the house. Then, if there's time, we will finish painting the walls of the basement. Whew! The kids have been great through it all. We hope it sells fast, but to someone who will care for it as we have, our first home.

2006-02-24T10:17:00.000-08:00

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!

2006-02-17T03:37:00.000-08:00

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

2006-02-13T03:32:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-02-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

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.

2006-01-20T05:08:00.000-08:00

First of all, Whew! What a week. Everyone is back to work full time and the kids' schedules changed from a full and two half days to two full days and with all these new schedules something was bound to go wrong, but mostly everything didn't. We had a lovely lunch last weekend with old family friends, John and Carol Brewer, who drove all the way up from Hull. Noah and Maxim hid at first when they came, but were friendly before they left. Monday was Martin Luther King Day and everyone stayed home. I would like to recall some of the things that happened at home between Monday morning and today, but until last night at 7:00 when I got home from my Thursday classes, I was pretty much face-in-books trying to finalize lectures and syllabi. I know they were all around me all week, playing well, visiting friends. Maxim's first crush (such as it is) a boy named Joey Luciano came to visit Monday afternoon. I caught Maxim trying to kiss him in her room, much to her embarassment. Later that day, Noah called the fridge the 'frigalator" and we all got a good laugh and made him say it several times. Try it. Say it out loud. It is funny. Wednesday he decided we should fight the cold (it wasn't really cold) by building more indoor tents, "We can make a tent and camp inside so the winter won't come in our head," he told me. I love the way he constructs compound sentences and finishes them, even when he doesn't have all the right words for the concepts. Then the snow returned, sort of. It snowed at the same time the air was just above the freezing mark. It left another new layer on the ground, but not for long. The weather has been unusually warm, in the 40s and 50s, even coming close to the 60s the day before yesterday. It wasn't long before everything melted again. Tuesday, the snow was still on the ground when I went into the city. It was on the ground when I walked home from the train station (6 miles!) at 10:30. It was on the ground the next morning. And then, it was gone. "I think they must have heard me when I said I wished that it could be warmer," Maxim told me. "Could be," I said. Wednesday all day writing another lecture. Marcela home with the kids. We will get this rhythm, but it will take another week's practice at least.

2006-01-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

Just to show what I mean, here's the yard from the end of the day yesterday and at the bottom of this post, I will put another picture of the yard midday today. It is spring, in January. The opportunity to play outside again without multiple layers of clothing made Maxim delighted. It seemed to make Noah delighted too, until the plastic wheels on his plastic car got wet and covered with sand. That condition violated one of those aesthetic hangups that he has, like not liking to see doors left open and hating to have things on his plate that he isn't going to eat. "Clean it, Daddy!" he screamed. Most assuredly, no, I thought. He screamed more and ran into the road. Tired, I thought, grabbed him took off his shoes and put him in his bed with a small cup of warm milk. "I don't wanna sleep," he muttered as I walked out of the room. "I know." I said without stopping. Maxim made round-trips up and down the right-of-way for a half an hour. She would ride by me sitting on the porch with a new trick each time. "Look Daddy, I can pedal with my feet up here." "Wow!" "Look Daddy, I can hold the handles like this." "Isn't that something?" "Look Daddy, I can make the back part spin." "Mmmmmm" Then she parked at the base of the porch and asked about the book I was reading. "Should we get chalk?" I asked. "For what?" she said. "To draw on the street." She looked at the street and thought about it for a second, then nodded. "We could get the big chalk," she said following me inside with her instructions. "This is my favorite day in my whole life," she exclaimed, looking for superlatives and finding a few too many. She drew heart-headed stick figures and clothed them in t-shirts and skirts. She drew a sunflower and then copied the word 'sunflower' from the side of her bicycle. Catherine came by after 3:00 and the two of them composed a masterpiece of chalk art along the street by the side of the house. Later they played quietly in the playroom while I worked in what has become my new office. It is part of a convertible set, the office components tuck away for meals and family time, and I feel less awkward eating at my desk. Anyway, the snow melted. Completely. The kids asked if they could camp outside. Another week behind us. Another strange January.

2006-01-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

The snow has melted today even further than in this photograph. The January thaw has been unusually long, it seems, and we're expecting one or two more warm days before it's done. The kids don't mind. It means they can play on their bicycles and cars outside. Tuesday, we drove into the city and visited my school, they got to see my office and classrooms and walk around downtown Boston a little bit. Noah's favorite part was the Red Line subway, or, as he called it, the "red train." He was great. He walked up and down stairs and escalators and sidewalks and elevators, never once asking to be picked up. Maxim also absorbed the city with excitement. And paid attention to everything that was going on around her. That night we finished taking down the Christmas tree, packing everything into boxes for next year. Yesterday Maxim and Noah both did a half day of school, grudgingly, and then came home and napped with me. They napped, I worked. Before her nap, Maxim found a cut-out puzzle in one of the magazines she got from school. Without asking for help, she figured out how to cut out the pieces and then assemble it into the final product - a picture of a girl that, when held up to a light, showed her bones and internal organs. "Daddy, can I have some glue," she asked me after everything was cut out. "For what?" I thought she was making Valentines cards. "To make the girl. I need to glue it to a paper." I gave her tape. She assembled it. The kids have also gotten an early start on camping season. They drape blankets across their camping mats and crawl into their sleeping bags. If they leave the tent assembled, Bones will always crawl in for a nap. Today they moved the tents upsatirs to their bedroom. "Daddy, tonight I want to sleep in my tent. In my sleeping bag." I look at her without response. "Can I?" "Sure." "I wanna, I wanna, I wanna sleep in my tent too," Noah stutters. He likes to be like Maxim. "Can I, Daddy? Please can I?" "Sure." These kinds of questions and ideas and questions run along all morning long. We walk to the Post Office, the dialogue continues. Coralie and Nico visited us for a few hours this afternoon, but by 3:15, everyone was in bed, in their tents... I could use a tent myself today. But this quiet time is too tempting to sleep through, so I'll keep building a syllabus, listening to the afternoon traffic slowly pick up, and watching the bright yellow sun warm the winter landscape like a Durham winter.

2006-01-07T18:37:00.000-08:00

There has been a little more snow since last weekend, a wet snow in the middle of the week, followed by rain and more wet snow. This has been a week of changes as we prepare for the upcoming winter and spring. It has also been the final end of our holiday season. We had brunch with our neighbors Kerry, Jason, and Emmeline on Monday. We didn't see the Healey-Weeks as much in the second half of 2005 as we had in the first half. Maxim goes to school with Emmeline, but our schedules didn't overlap for months. It was nice to catch up, and indulge: homefries, grits, bacon, blueberry muffins, and poached eggs. Emmeline and Maxim play together. Noah wishes he had more friends his age and gender. On Tuesday Marcela got another promotion at work, she is now the full time Preservation Specialist at the Schlesinger Library in Cambridge. This means switching Maxim and Noah from Monday, Wednesday, Friday, to a Tuesday - Thursday childcare schedule. And it means I'll have the kids at home on the opposite days. We moved Maxim's gymnastics to Wednesday and stopped Saturday dance for the time being. They will no doubt build dozens more tent structures until warmer weather comes and they can ride their bicycles again. "Daddy?" I don't look up, I know the question. "Daddy." She walks in closer and taps me on the shoulder, "Daaaaaadddyyyyyy!" "What is it, Maxim?" "What day do the camels come? Is it tomorrow?" "No, not until Friday, sweetie." Following Argentinean tradition, we celebrate Three Kings as our gift giving day. January 6 was the twelfth day after the birth of Jesus, when Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, three wise men, astronomers of the highest order, arrived by camel in Bethlehem bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh. On Thursday night, the kids left their shoes under the tree along with some bread and water for the camels. Maxim was smitten with excitement in the morning when she found gifts with her name and Noah's. Noah was less enthusiastic. He sat on my lap and let Maxim open everything - her gifts, his gifts, the gift for both of them. "I'm cold, Daddy." He fussed. After some warm milk and the opening of his new train tracks, he became a little more animated. This year, we remember Christmas 2002, when Jodi, Jim, Nathan, and Amelia stopped in to Somerville and left us with, among other things, a plush giraffe child's chair. This has become not only Maxim's favorite chair, but Bones's as well, who will sleep most mornings, including Three Kings, in the giraffe's arms. Today we took down the lights, Marcela went into Cambridge to take a placement test for an English class she wants to take this spring. Catherine stopped by and we all went to the library. The tree comes down tomorrow. They predict there will be more snow. The temperatures dropped today back to a seasonable 20 degrees F. Winter is here.

2005-12-31T18:17:00.000-08:00

We have had a busy holiday season this year. Maxim began thinking about Christmas before Thankgiving and grew more excited as the day approached. "What day is tomorrow?" She would ask me randomly several days before Christmas. "Tomorrow is Wednesday." I would say. "Oh." She would go back to her things for a few minutes then, "When do we go to Grammy's house? Is that Wednesday?" "No, not until Thursday." "Oh." I try to figure out how to wrap six sided boxes again and then, "After we sleep tomorrow, then it will be time to go to Grammy's house?" I have to think for a second, "Right," I finally say. Noah is less specific about his excitement, but he does bound about the house with a little more lift in his feet. "Wrestle with me Daddy!" he says, trying to goad me into a chase. "Get me!" We spend Wednesday night with Coralie and Ken and Nico and then Thursday packing up things and running last minute errands before heading north. By the time we get on the road, the kids are exhausted...but still excited. We drove all the way to Hampden, Maine where Auntie Amity is building her own growing family with Jeff. Auntie Nikki and Uncle Arty joined us with Nicholas and Amanda and we had a delicious dinner of Jambalaya with all the fixin's. The cousins played well together; Noah, Tom, and Nicholas hunted ghosts, Maxim and Alison played dolls. We stayed the night and were treated to a blueberry pancake breakfast the next morning before heading north to Grammy's house. The kids stayed awake most of the highway drive and then lolled off to sleep along the rolling stretch of road along Route 6. By the time we crested the hill at the top of Talmadge Road, they were fast asleep. But it was nice to finally be at Grammy's house. There were spruce trees out front, covered in colorful lights. The big windows that look out across their fields were outlined in white lights. The tree stood proud in the window. Maxim got the gift of her 2005 Christmas when Grammy handed her Kaitlyn Kate (Maxim's name for the doll), her new baby doll. Only a Grammy would know how much a four year old girl might like such a doll, and in her eminent wisdom, Grammy gave it to her at the very beginning of the visit, so she could play before Christmas. And play with her, she did, first taking stock of every item that came with it - a bottle, a carrying basket, a bib, change of clothes, spoon, fork, plate. She changed her diaper and put her to bed, woke her up and fed her lunch. For the rest of the weekend, when Maxim wasn't playing with Kaitlyn Kate, she was somewhere perfectly assembled for eating or sleeping or whatever Maxim had just been doing with her. Nor was Maxim the only indulged grandchild at the house. Noah also got a pretty great gift, a huge toy firetruck. It is a beautiful red ladder truck with a working ladder and lights and sounds. He plays with it a lot. But the very favorite gift for Noah this Christmas was the plastic axe that came with the fireman's vest. This tool, Noah has informed us, is not for fire fighting, but to fight monsters and ghosts. Noah stalked them all weekend and continues to do so back here at home. Both kids had a wonderful Christmas. They loved visiting their grandparents and their cousins and spending time with their new cousin, "Baby Erik," Noah likes to call him. "He's too small to play baseball." Noah said. Having a littler boy cousin is nice for Noah, who can finally feel like he's not always going to be the baby. They got a chance to see Jean and David's hand-built house at the edge of Pocomoonshine Lake and walk out into a fog that seemed to conceal the edges of the earth. We had a delicious Christmas dinner, played cut-throat Scrabble, and packed ourselves into the car the next day to head back to Massachusetts before the storm. We just made it, according to eyewitness reports. We were treated to a third meal at Amity's, a delectable chowdah, as we passed through Hampden on our way south. We arrived home after dark on the 26th of December. It has been a quiet few days at home since then. New Year's is mid-summer in Argentina and so a tradition of spring-cleaning has taken place. Everything is washed top to bottom and all the rooms are in order. We had a nice dinner with our friends Lisa and John and their son Griffin the night before last. The snow in the backyard has nearly melted off now. We enter the new year with warm memories from the last, a relatively clean slate, and comfort in the knowledge that our cycles continue once again. We wish peace to everyone in 2006.

2005-12-13T04:54:00.000-08:00

The snow has hung around for days now, despite promises of warmer weather from the television news. The kids have been busy building tents in the livingroom. Maxim wants to know when we're leaving to visit Grammy and Noah lays on the couch, strumming the guitar and listening to Raffi. We have made chocolates this year to send around to family and close friends. Maxim helped mix and drop pieces into the melted chocolate. She was also an excellent taster of all spoons and forks and chocolate drippings. The week was filled with visits here and there and elsewhere. There was Micaela's sixth birthday party where we saw all of our Argentinean and Brazilian friends. We went to a play in Jamaica Plain with Juan Pedro, Gabby, and Steve and the kids hung out with Esperanza. We went to Joey's parents house and saw Lisa and Brenda and Kerry and Jason. We went to Jeff and Krista's house and met a whole bunch of new people.
We went to the Schlessinger Library holiday party and caught up with some of Marcela's colleagues... It feels like we haven't been home in days. But that isn't true. In addition to making the chocolates, we made holiday cards and printed photos. We gathered addresses from papers everywhere and started making our lists. Settling into our own home lets us finally gather together some things that have lived in boxes or in various places apart from each other for years now. We can make permanent lists, we can begin regular rituals and traditions. We feel that sense of things as we engage in our visits and put up our lights and rebuild our tree, life has come to a certain amount of rest. Things move, mind you, but they move around a fulcrum instead of chaotically or intermittantly. It is a different sort of rhythm for our family than we have felt since returning to this state almost five years ago.
The air stays at the freezing mark, but the sun takes layers from the bed of snow, now more than a week old. The ground begins to show through in places. The kids and I go shopping to find a Christmas present for Marcela. Maxim wants to get her a jewelry box. Noah wants to get her jewelry. Perfect. We stop by Carmela's on our way to downtown and they bring her a gift of chocolates. Carmela takesa care of Noah three times a week, but seh always sends him home with a small bag of snacks to share with Maxim in the car. They both want to hand her the gift and walk up the driveway holding it together, which Carmela melts to see. "They're adorable," she exclaims. "Merry Christmas Carmela," they say I unison, holding up the gift. "It's chocolate," Noah says. "I helped Daddy make it," Maxim tells her.
The solar year ended Wednesday with a very short day. The calendar year still has a week in it. The kids only know that these are festive days. They get to see friends and family more than usual, and eat sweets and goodies all through the day. They see their cousins and grandparents and everywhere they go people seem to give them things. What could be better for a child? We leave for Maine Thursday some time. Catherine will care for Bones and watch our house while we're gone. Another year done.

2005-12-10T10:53:00.000-08:00

Did I mention it snowed yesterday? It started before we awoke, before the sun even came up, and it persisted through the morning in a steady dusty fall, inch upon inch. We got in the car as we do every Friday morning to drive Marcela to the train station. The snow continued to fall. We made our way out of our neighborhood and onto Main Street. The snow was really coming down. The plows hadn't been out yet and it was already 8:30 in the morning. As we inched toward the train station we decided it wasn't going to stop snowing any time soon and that it was probably too dangerous to be out driving. We turned around for home, stopping by the supermarket on the way. We also stopped at the five and dime to replace Maxim's tiara, which had broken on Thursday. We drove home very slowy. We were supposed to get a major snow earlier in the week. Every news station warned about it, some schools in Massachusetts even closed in anticipation of it. Then it didn't come. The snow and weather skirted south of us. In response, none of the local news stations made too very much of a big deal about yesterday's incoming snow, even though it packed an even bigger punch. No one seemed prepared. Just after lunch, I tried to get the kids outside, but Noah would have none of it. So I took Maxim and Catherine only. I cleaned snow from around our doors and along the side of our house and our car while Maxim and Catherine cleared large areas of snow from Catherine's back yard and tried to build a snow fort. We worked and played outside for about an hour, maybe more, and then the snow really started getting strong, blinding us. "Who wants to go inside for hot cocoa?" I asked. Both girls accepted the offer and came inside. When we entered the house, the front and back stairs and the entire car and space around the parking area were clear of snow. Outside it became a white out. You could barely see the house behind ours through the snow. "That's quite a storm," I kept saying, as if no one else noticed. "It's really coming down out there. Would you look at all that snow?" "It's a lot." Marcela would affirm. "Can I go back outside and play?" Maxim would ask. "Please? Please, Daddy, please?" The snow kept coming down, layer after layer in rapid succession. "Look at all that snow. It's like the Pleistocene never ended...well, of course, it hasn't...but I mean, it's like the glaciers are on their way back." "What are you talking about Daddy?" "There's a lot of snow, sweetie." "Can I have a bowl of snow with maple syrup, Daddy?" I get her one and then we build a big tent in the livingroom where I ask her to lay down. "I don't want to sleep, Daddy." "I know, sweetie. You don't have to. Just lie down a little." Within ten minutes she is asleep. They are good kids, Maxim and Noah. I guess, though, that is what all parents think about their children. They are all good kids. How can you not love them? We look at our children and feel this love without even trying. I see their every move as somehow beautiful. In an earlier time I might have sneered at such sentiments, at such sentimentality. But now, there it is. There are Noah and Maxim, my children. Young lives who depend upon me, who feed on my presence and mimic my actions, whose introduction to life and the world is mediated by my choices right now. It is an enormous responsibility, one that I reflect upon every day. When the snow ended, as it finally did at 4:00 p.m., the western sky opened just before el sol dipped behind the trees. Outside, the street and the walkway and everything else I had shoveled clear earlier was covered in six or more inches of snow. There was work to be done, but we were treated to a stunning sunset and the quieter calm of cold, high-pressure air. How much snow? Look at the cedar bush in the upper right hand corner of the three backyard photographs above.

2005-12-09T04:06:00.000-08:00

The winter season is upon us. The snow in this picture hadn't melted before the storm swept in this morning. An inch an hour is falling today. Light fluffy flakes, chilled air. Yesterday we put the rest of the back yard toys back into the sandbox and moved the rest of the things inside - except for the sled. Now that December and the snow is upon us, we have begun to do more things inside. This past week has been one busy with preparation for The Day of the Virgin, the tradition tree-decorating day in Argentina (December 8). On Tuesday, Marcela, Maxim, and Noah, with help from Catherine, made snowflake ornaments out of popsicle sticks, pressed foam board, and sparkles for our Christmas tree. Marcela tied strings to each and every one. The next day we began assembling the tree. We have modified the traditional Christmas tree for our house. We like to build things with our hands and with random stuff. Last year we built a tree out of dowels. It was the fourth year in a row that we had made a craft tree for Christmas, but last year's tree was built to last. It is a holiday decoration and a minimalist sculpture. Dowels of increasing diameter are inserted through perpendicular holes along the length of a closet sized dowel cut at about five feet long. The holes are offset about ten degrees clockwise from each set of similar sized 'branches.' A green string is tied top to bottom around the ends of these 'branches,' giving the outline form of the tree (ours is a spruce as well). When I first assembled it Noah said, "No, that's not a tree. I want a...I want a plant one." Maxim remembers this one from last year and enjoys the fun of assembly; she couldn't wait to hang the globe ornaments on the ends. "This is going to be the best Christmas ever," she reiterated as the tree went up. "Can we hang the other ormament?" she asks. "I want to put a star on." Wednesday and Thursday they decorated and Marcela made a star for the top. Thursday night it was ready to go; the lights had been put on, the star, and all the ornaments were on as well. We even had our first two holiday cards to hang on the crossing strings. Maxim thinks we should add tinsel to the 'branches' as well and we are considering it. Right on cue, the snow started coming down over night. And now a blanket of fresh powder layers everything outside. Photos of that later. Our warm house echoes with childrens' laughter and and warm spirits.

2005-12-04T11:46:00.000-08:00

Almost without warning, winter is upon us. We knew it was coming, Maxim has been anticipating it for weeks now, but now it is here. It is right on schedule with the new month. We decided, at Noah and Maxim's insitence, that we ought to put lights on our house. It takes more than you would figure - more than I did figure. After two trips to the hardware store, we had the unbiquitous icicle lights around the bay window and an outline of lights on the front door. "The upstairs windows look too dark." Marcela said. Two more boxes of lights and now the top has illumination, but I haven't photographed it. It's a slipperly slope; on the way home from the train Friday I wanted to buy two more strings of lights to outline the windows on the bottom. Marcela had better sense and insisted we just go home. "This is going to be the best Christmas ever," Maxim said when I told her I was going to put up the lights. She has no idea how funny that sounds coming from a four year old who only vaguely remembers last Christmas. I stood or laid out on the bay window roof to attach the lights, and Maxim stood inside the bedroom window, asking her run of questions. "Are you scared, Daddy? Do you feel like you could fall? I would be scared. Can I come out?" "No. Stay in side." "I don't think I would be scared. Are you hanging the lights, Daddy? How are you going to light them? This is going to be the best Christmas ever." The weather has certainly cooperated so far. Today, as Maxim awoke remembering she would be going to the Nutcracker in Boston, she looked out the window. "Daddy! Snow!" "Look Daddy, snow!" Noah mimicked. "It's really covering." All day long it fell. Not heavy enough to cover the still-warm asphalt roads, but certainly in volumes to cover grass and trees and soil. Maxim, Marcela, Gordon, Marie, and Gwen left for Boston just before noon. Noah and I stayed around the house, ate some lunch, wrestled, took a bath, and now he's down to sleep. He's grown in leaps and bounds these past few months. He speaks with clarity and in complete sentences. Last night at Esperanza's birthday party, he walked into the room where Esperanza's aunts and grandparents were chattering loudly and said, "Hey, be quiet! We're trying to watch a movie." This morning when I was walking around with the digital camera he said, "take my picture, Daddy," and posed with this piece of blue plastic that he found in Esperanza's toy box yesterday. "Thank you," he said when I showed him the picture. The other day when I was sitting at the piano he came into the living room and said, "I want to play, Daddy. Let me play." I gladly put him on the stool and he gently plunked the keys, one or two at a time, making a suprisingly nice sound. We, of course, praised him. He jumped down from the stool, "I'm done. Your turn, Daddy," and left the room. The big excitment this weekend, however, was Maxim's and Gwen's first dance recital. They dressed in black leotards and red and green skirts, they put on make up and danced in front of a full middle school auditorium. Each of them had a number with their class and then they got to be together during the finale - "Jingle Bells." After the show we went out for a late dinner and the girls danced some more in the middle of the restaurant to the great amusement of the Friday night customers. There are busy weeks ahead of us as the final days of 2005 wind down. Two weeks and three days until the winter solstice and longer days begin to set in. Four weeks until the first day of 2006 is upon us. Maxim, of course, can't wait until Christmas. Which, for her, will be the best ever.

2005-11-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

And then it snowed. We thought it might, and so piled the toys back in the sandbox before we headed out the door for the holiday. This morning we tried to take Maxim and Noah sledding at the golf course on the other side of town, but Noah would not put on his snow pants or even a winter jacket. He stood in the hallway and screamed. Marcela took Maxim herself, two novice sledders on a pretty steep hill. They said the sled went faster than they expected, but they really enjoyed it. While they were gone, Noah and I played with blocks and with his trains and watched his "Here Come the ABCs" DVD and then he complained some more for a while. He really wasn't feeling well. When Marcela and Maxim got home, Catherine came over made books with Maxim and then snow forts. Marcela and Maxim made the first snowman of the season, this little fellow who survived the afternoon, but had lost his head by morning (Friday night in Maynard, you never know what's going to happen). We saw the squirrel that lives in the big spruce tree in back carrying mouthfuls of dried leaves to insulate his home better. Winter has really set in. The snow melts at the edges and will go away in another day or two, but there is more to follow, I think. This year Maxim seems ready for snow play. Noah may need some more practice. He did willingly put on his winter jacket later when he realized he would otherwise miss a trip in the car. We'll see how he responds to a sled ride. Today Maxim went to her friend Gwen's house. Noah enjoyed some alone time with Mommy and Daddy. We make chili and desserts that have to be cooked in the oven. Warming the house with the production of tasty treats and delicious dinners. Maxim makes piles of snow in an attempt to recreate a snow fort we made last year in the corner of the yard. Maybe not today, but it should be possible before the year turns.

2005-11-22T04:07:00.000-08:00

The lawn toys were put away and the toys were taken out again. The fall keeps sending us pleasant days and we keep finding ways to enjoy them. On Saturday we visited our newest cousin, Erik William Beane, a handsome plug of boy who came into the world less than two weeks ago. He is being well cared for by his father Zachary and his mother Shanna. Maxim and Noah thought he was terrific and cannot wait to see him again. Marcela and I thought he was pretty special too. It has been along time since we held a brand new baby. It is difficult not hold another and daydream... Erik is the most recent in a long line of cousins, he's number 11 and counting. The drive to Portland and back in one day was ok for the grown-up (mostly) but a bit too much for the kids, who seem to have forgotten how to go on car trips. "How much longer, Daddy? Are we almost there." Maxim would ask just about every three minutes. Eventually, we got there and we returned without too much trouble. Sunday, our friends Ken and Coralie came to visit with their son Nico. They just learned that they have been placed with a baby to adopt. They will be going to Russia in early December to meet their new baby and then returning to wait an agonizing three months before they can bring her home. Coralie loves to read to the kids and they love to sit and listen. While we were all outside (the day was fantastic) I finished painting the final details on the house. The bottom part of the front porch, its runners and the crossed-slat covering needed small brush work. I also discovered that some of the door frame had not gotten even a first coat. I painted it all, with some help from Nico, and have now finished the house completely for the season. In the evening Ken used our web connection to search for affordable hotels in Moscow and Paris for their trip to meet the baby. We made fresh pizza dough and had cheese, blue cheese, wild mushroom and pepperoni pizza for dinner. Every one ate heartily before calling it a night. Monday, back to work again. Soon the snow will be upon us. Four more weeks until winter solstice and the light and longer days creep back. We are happy this holiday season. Surrounded by love.

2005-11-16T12:30:00.000-08:00

The ladder has finally found its way home. It has been unusually warm this week. As a result, the kids get to play outside, and we even got so inspired that we stained the cross-beams on the inside of the fence. The wood had become exposed after last winter and was graying. We don't have enough stain or enough time to do the whole thing this fall (unless there is another weekend like this past) so Marcela suggested the conservationist approach of treating the areas that are in most need. Maxim followed me around the yard as I painted. "Can I paint too, Daddy?" I told her she couldn't since the stain was oil-based and hard to clean up. "Look at what I can do," she said climbing the wrong way up the slide. "Look, Daddy." I would finish a brush full and turn around. "Wow!" I'd exclaim. "Are you gonna paint the whole thing?" She'd ask. The fence looks less intimidating than the house, but it is actually more square footage. Yesterday, Maxim's best friend Gwen came over after their gymnastics class (they have the class together) and they played all afternoon. Marcela said they slept together with Noah in our big bed at nap time. Later in the afternoon Marcela gave them our plain clay pots and some paint and each of them painted a pot. Gwen got to take hers home, along with the aloe plant inside it. This afternoon as the rains drizzled down and warm moist air blew through the region (it was 62 degrees at mid-afternoon!), the kids watched a movie about a giant peach, part claymation by Tim Burton. "Are you gonna stay for the scary part?" Noah asks. "I don't like the scary part." I did, printing some emails and web pages while I was up there. Always something to read. Always something to write. The kids fell fast asleep without argument, as a flood of schoolchildren made their way home past my door.

2005-11-13T04:07:00.000-08:00

The ladder has got to go back to our friend Dan, but for the moment it sits in the back yard. Next spring we will have to purchase one of these for ourselves. There is gutter work and roof work to do. It was a cold week compared to those that came before. There was frost three nights. But many of the days were sunny like this one and so the kids have played outside at mid-day. Marcela raked the piles of leaves and, shortly after this picture was taken, I put them in a lawn bag. I would like to compost them. We can use the soil. For the fall and winter we switched the kitchen table back to the end-against-the-wall set up. It leaves more room in the kitchen for the kids to play. Yesterday Maxim did not want to go to her dance class when we got there in the morning. "I don't like to dance the whole time," she said. The school is getting the girls ready for the Christmas show and they practice a lot. "That's what dancers have to do," I told her. "Sometimes they don't feel very much like dancing, but they go and practice anyway. That's how they get good." She thought about it for a minute or two and then said, "Ok, Daddy, I'll go this time." I told her I was proud of her. Noah and I went to the coffee shop while she danced. He walked along the front of the baked goods display and said, "I want this and this and this and this and this." I bought him a banana muffin and me a bagel with cream cheese. He ate the bagel, I ate the muffin. We are facing a small pet crisis these days. Bones somehow got fleas and before we realized it, he had slept in our bed and Maxim's bed and Noah's bed and on the couch and on just about every carpet in the house. We treated him a month ago and the buggers seem to have jumped ship and found their way to Noah and Marcela. About a week ago, they found their way back to Bones. For now, Bones is banned to the first floor, we vacuum every day, and wash sheets and pillows all the time (I even vacuum Bones some times). When we go away for Thanksgiving, we will treat the carpets with borax. Poor Bones. He's 17 and barely has the energy to scratch. The cut light of November is here and the kids cannot wait for snow.

2005-11-06T06:06:00.000-08:00

It was a busy October for all of us. It will be a busy November too. The sun came out a few times during the past couple of weeks, although it was mostly rainy. Noah, Maxim, and Catherine are playing school in the backyard in this photograph. But the kids have begun shifting their play inside. We have removed most of the summer stuff from the back yard and put it into storage. Once the leaves fall from the saplings in the yard, I will cover them with plastic for the winter. We have stopped cutting the grass, and are about half done removing the dead growth from this past season. Our sunflower stalks still stand in front, as does one of our tomato plants. The big excitement came last Sunday when we inherited a new piano from Vic Lalli! We dead-lifted it into a small pickup truck and drove it over. It needs some aesthetic work but it sounds great. Noah likes to walk his fingers up the notes. He calls the low notes the "the scary part." "Don't play the scary part," he says when I play bass notes. Maxim is trying to pick out "Twinkle, Twinkle." I'm pretty excited, too. It meant shifting around the living room a little bit. The piano goes where the couch used to be, the couch goes under the north window, the stereo goes to the place where the bookshelf was, and the bookshelf was moved out into the hallway. Everything rotated 45 degrees. But, inexplicably, it has made the room feel bigger and more welcoming. For Halloween, downtown Maynard closes the main street and all the shops participate in a trick-or-treat bonanza. Maxim dressed as Tinkerbell, but would not wear the sweater under the costume. Noah was a clown. Marcela and I wished we had had more time to get dressed up ourselves. Hundreds of people filled the downtown. It was great fun. But because of the holiday, there has been far too much candy in our house the past two weeks. Far too many tummy aches, and far too much crying about wanting more candy. It was easier last year when we spent Halloween in Buenos Aires. Instead of candy, we had cake for Nacha's birthday. (It is spring there, so you can imagine a seasonal holiday like Halloween wouldn't make sense.) A week ago last Friday, as if to remind us that summer was really and truly behind us, it snowed. Not a lot and nothing really stuck, but down it came in great sloppy flakes that crashed to the ground in icy kerplunks. It shaded our grass a little bit white for a few hours. Maxim wanted us to put some in a bowl with maple syrup. "I love snow," she said. "I love to eat it with maple syrup. Can you get me some, Daddy?" "It's not light enough to eat," I told her to her deep disappointment. The trees on summer hill are finally turning too. They are mostly oaks, so they come along later in the season. The fall is rolling through with its last display of colors. No killing frost yet, but we are pretty sure it will be upon us before the next full moon. Our rhythms change, we close windows and replace screens, and put on more clothes, and scramble around to make the most of the shortened days and impediments to movement.

2005-10-20T03:07:00.000-07:00

Fall has come and the white ash next door has dropped its leaves, many of them making their way to our back yard. This photo is actually a week old. After I took it it continued to rain and the children had to find things to do inside. This wasn't a problem because Marcela had picked up tickets to the Children's Museum in Boston and we all rode into the city together. I taught my class and the kids played around the museum. There was sand to be molded and trucks to be driven around and groceries to be purchased and giant bubbles to be blown and so on and so forth for almost three hours. We all met back at the Alewife station of the Red Line and drove home together along route 2 and 62. The rains continued. On Friday I went to Maxim's pre-school class at the Community School and taught the pre-schoolers some science concepts through story and song. One of the stories I told began, "Once upon a time in the great kingdom of Maynardia there was a very spoiled little princess..." "Hey!" Maxim shouted. I usually tell the story I told with Maxim as the main character, "Not you, honey," I assured her. It kept raining, water gathered in small but growing puddles in our basement. Bones couldn't get to his litter box. On Saturday I drove to Sandwich for a workshop. It poured. Marcela took the kids under umbrella through the rain downtown to Diana's Dance Zone. Maxim is learning dance steps for the Christmas show they will do at the Middle School auditorium. She likes to practice. Noah is fascinated with trains. He likes us to wait in South Acton for Marcela's train to leave on the mornings that we drop her off. He holds his hand out the window and waves. "Bye train!" He shouts, "Bye train!" He usually gets a wave from one of the conductors. He always asks if we are going to the train when we get in the car. He has a small plastic train set that he plays with in the living room and a conductor's hat that he got from his Grammy. Saturday afternoon, it poured some more. At the end of the day, just as the sun was going down, the clouds broke at the western horizon. Sun light is like a breath of pure oxygen after ten days of cloud-diffused light. And then, just as quickly, the sun set and the winds came. 45-50 MPH winds all day Sunday. The leaves that had turned by then were all blown from their trees. Sunday night Marcela and I dropped Maxim and Noah at Griffin's house with his parents John and Lisa (bless their hearts) and went out for a Mother's Day (Argentina) dinner. Marcela is a wonderful mother to our children, and we celebrated that fact and talked about the kids and laughed at the joy they bring us every day. We have the mother to thank. Gracias a la mama mas mejor, gracias Marcela, por todo. Te amamos mucho mucho!

2005-10-11T17:21:00.000-07:00

More rain. It does wonders for the remaining plant life and sends earthworms tumbling into our basement, but it hasn't been ideal outside weather at all. Yesterday morning, Maxim's friend from Community School, Joey, invited her over for a play date. Having only one child for the middle of the day kept it quiet in the house. I tried to balance the checkbook and moved things around in the basement. I found puddles of water under the plastic from painting and around a pile of odd-sized wood. I put the fan on it to hurry evaporation. Noah enjoyed having his parents to himself and Maxim had great fun at Joey's house. I made artichoke heart marinara over penne and whipped up a batch of butterscotch brownies, which I haven't made since I was 13 years old and which Marcela had never eaten before. We started downloading tape from the summer and fall to send along with Marcela's mom Nacha's birthday package. She has a birthday on October 31st. This morning was as gray and rainy as every other day this week. I went on a long walk through the school woods and then took Maxim to her gymnastics class. The kids played very well today, almost without fighting at all. While we were at gymnastics, Marcela and Noah harvested our small carrot crop from the front raised-bed garden. There were nine or ten in all, not too big, and we managed to finish them by mid-afternoon. After dinner - Marcela had made a delicious barley and corn soup and fried spinach - we put the kids in their pajamas and drove over to the library for Tuesday night storytime. We have a wonderful children's librarian in Maynard; he remembers every child's name and offers these weekly evening story readings. Tonight, Noah's best friend Aron, who used to go to his daycare, was there. Noah shared his blankie with Aron, but not another little girl who also wanted to sit there. "Mommy, the baby is on my blanket," he cried out. Maxim showed Mark (the librarian) the pictures of princesses on her new pajamas. They didn't want to go to bed when we got home, as usual, but they fell asleep quickly. We can't wait to see the sun again. I think we are all tired of these dreary rainy days.

2005-10-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

Rain. Now in the third day. The kids find ways to play and scuttle up and down from room to room, picking things up, making up games, putting them down somewhere else and moving on. But they miss being able to run. Noah runs anway, around the loop through the hall, kitchen, and living room. Maxim makes up more complicated play and moves more things. Last night Maxim and Noah made a dancing train around the loop. Noah dances by bouncing his squat little body and moving his arms alternately and separately up and down. Maxim made sure the train would have to stop in the kitchen so she could show her new dance. "When I go like this," she says to Marcela and I while showing her best bow, "You clap, ok?" She opens the kitchen door halfway into the room and goes 'back stage' behind it. Noah continues into the living room, moving well to the music. We are listening to Vic Lali, our local children's musician. During the summer Maxim and Noah went almost every Thursday to Vic's morning music sing-a-long at the Knights of Columbus Hall downtown. Vic is giving us a piano, if we can get it here to our house. Marcela had several booklets with circles and squares of sample book materials. She and the kids pulled the pieces off and built another train collage to add to the wall in the kid's room. They have just begun their work in this photograph. They will finish today by adding glitter to all the things they painted and glued yesterday. You can also see the mural Marcela painted on the wall behind the sink in this photograph. Maxim found a deck of my playing cards yesterday and asked me what games you played with them. "Lots of grown up games, sweetie." I answered.
"Can you play kids' games, too?"
"Well..." I tried to think if I knew the rules to any kids' games. "You could play go fish."
“Go fish?" She asked. "How does that play? I never played with these before, that’s why. Do you have to take all the cards? I want to play beat the fish.”
“No, not beat the fish, go fish.”
“Can we play go fish? Is it easy? So you take all the cards? Well, what about these ones because these don’t have any fans on them. Daddy can you help me play beat the fish?” We played and she won.
They also watched movies. Once Upon a Potty is Noah's favorite one right now, even though he still won't sit. We had ravioli with an asparagus cream sauce for dinner last night and each of us had another of the spice cookies that Marcela and Maxim made yesterday morning. We talked about going to Hull this weekend, weeks ago. The rain has disuaded us. If it is not too wet, we will carefully rearrange the basement to accomodate the yard things we moved into it on Friday. They have forecast rain through next Saturday. We will have to rent some more movies.

2005-10-07T06:33:00.000-07:00

When you are backcountry camping, you put your sleeping bag into what is called a "stuff sack" before you put it on your pack. The stuff sack is the smallest possible nylon bag into which your sleeping bag can compress. Your goal is to make the sleeping bag as small as you can so that it fits into your backpack. As summer suddenly becomes autumn, and the daylight loses out to nighttime, our daily activities begin to feel like that sleeping bag. Where we once had ambling days full of morning light and daylight and evening light when we could play outside and still have time to do the dishes and make dinner, we now rush home from work and hope we can get a snack into Maxim and Noah before sending them outside for a twilight ride up and down Front Street. It doesn't take longer to finish things, but the shorter days makes it feel that way. We have finally put away everything that was brought out for the barbeque. Today we will finish putting away summer yard items - the grill, the round table, the plastic chairs, and many of the kids' toys. We may have to mow the lawn one more time or twice more, but that should do it before winter. These shorter days and compressed activities have had an effect on the children this week. They don't seem ready to sleep when bed time comes, they wake up irritable and grumpy. Transitions are challenging for anyone, harder still when you are too young to understand. Over the fence to the north toward Summer Hill, you can see the colors just begining to emerge. This change was as sudden as the shorter days, and part of the same cycle of fall. The kids have sudden changes as well. Yesterday we asked Noah for the third day in a row to try sitting on the potty. He has been celebrating the fact that he is "a big boy" for a couple of weeks now. "No," he said matter-of-factly, "Because I not big enough." Maxim was in our bed this morning when we woke up. "I had a bad dream," she told me. "I dreamed a dragon took you away," she said. "But then I was here when you woke up," I said. "I wanted to make sure," she laughed, a little nervously. They play until it is dark, Noah running his car as fast as his little legs will take him and Maxim speeding back and forth on her bicycle and learning to stop with precision. "It's too dark kids," I holler from the doorway where I am correcting papers. "Ooohh," Maxim whines from the bend in the road, "We want to play more. Just one more daddy," Maxim pleads. "One more daddy," Noah parrots. "Ok, one more." Then we gather together at the table, the four of us, for dinner. Noah yells and makes monster noises and Maxim talks non-stop about princesses and fairies and where we hid her Halloween costume, and together we eat until our plates are empty.

2005-10-02T06:21:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful October 1st. This Saturday may have been the nicest Saturday weather-wise since winter broke last year. The sun was shining, the air was warm, but not hot, there was a light breeze. In the morning, Marcela took Maxim to her dance class and then met up with Marie and Gordon and Gwen to walk around downtown Maynard for the annual Maynard Fest. All of the stores put out sidewalk displays, there were sing-a-long's for kids and face painting and lawn-mower-pulled trains, and music. The Maynard Fest is trying to become a unique regional outdoor festival - a one-of-its-kind, end-of-the-year celebration - that advertises the town. Marcela returned with Noah close to noon and said Maxim had stayed with Gwen. We ate some lunch and I went back to what I had been doing in the morning: cleaning up the yard and the house, shopping for food and drink, and generally getting things ready for an afternoon and evening of children, food, and fireworks. I moved everything to one side of the yard and mowed. Then I moved everything back to the other side of the yard and mowed. Then I brought out my work table from the basement and a couple of table cloths and I set up a food area in back. I pulled out the bicycle, tricycle, and plastic car from the basement. I cooked potatoes and bacon for potato salad and chopped carrots and mixed dip and swept floors and moved things in the kicthen and moved the car and bartered with neighbors for parking places. All of this while periodically checking in on the Red Sox getting beat up by Randy Johnson. The barbeque and party were my idea, so a lot of the preparation was up to me. The rest of the family prepared in their own special way. They needed their rest because it was going to be a long night of excited conversation and play. (Bones would actually spend most of the party hiding in the hall closet, but he needs his rest too.) We invited people over because we discovered last year that our house sits almost directly underneath the annual fireworks show put on by the management of the Clock Tower Place office building that occupies the old factory buildings here in town. People started showing up at our house at 4:30 and we lit three barbeques at 5:45. After I managed to fight off several other alpha males for barbeque cooking priviledges, we proceeded to keep three grills filled with cooking food for an hour, sausages and hamburgers and vegetables and chicken and mushrooms. At its peak we crowded 35 parents and children into the backyard. Everyone kept asking where we needed to go to see the display. Stay where you are, we'd say. The kids were so excited. Fireworks! At 7:45, we started gathering people into the backyard. Any minute now. And then, without warning, the sky above us opened up. At the very same time that the parents all went ooh and aah, the children tried to jump under our skin and hide. We did not anticipate the shear terror it would evoke in almost every child, and they quickly retreated to the safety of Maxim's bedroom to watch through the window. Marie estimated the display must have cost about $500,000, given its length and complexity, and she quipped about how now she knew where her organization's steep rent costs at Clock Tower Place were going. Esperanza, Micaela, and Aron all stayed outside for the whole show. Brave children. We cleaned up a little bit and sent extra food along with whomever we could convince to take it. It was a festive Maynard Fest this year. This morning, only vague traces on the lawn and warm memories.

2005-09-28T17:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was another class of gymnastics for Maxim. Afterwards, Marcela took Noah and Maxim to a nearby playground where they ran around and kicked the ball and played. "I'm a big boy," Noah told another boy's mother as he stood at the top of the slide. Maxim likes to practice being a dancer. Last night she pulled the kitchen door open half way into the room and hid behind it, stage left. She came onto the "stage" in full pose and twinkling along on her toes. When they picked me up at the train, Maxim had still been in her nightgown from her nap and was still quite sleepy. By the time we got home, they wanted to play. Within minutes, Dawn and Catherine wandered by the open kitchen door. Maxim invited Catherine to stay and play and they built another backyard structure, you can see in the photograph. We were delighted to come home and NOT have to paint some huge chunk of the house. We wandered around the backyard, looking at things again. We noticed that Maxim's gourd has produced another fruit. This one is yellow and green. Maxim's teachers have asked me to do a science presentation for the Teddy Bear room. I have been trying to think of ideas. Maxim, Noah and I have a story we tell on the way home from dropping Marcela at the train in the morning. Maxim complains that the sun is in her eyes and I ask her if she'd like me to call the people in charge and have it turned off. She says yes and I relay the message that they say they'll do it, but she's going to be hungry. Then we go through a long series of days that no one knows are days because the sun doesn't come up, and the plants start getting sad and weak, and the animals too, and finally there is no food to eat. "What should we do?" Turn the sun back on, they shout. I may use that one, and a song called Hey Little Ant that gives an ant's perspective on being squished by a boy. Marcela went to work early and returned late today. We ate tofu in coconut sauce and kielbasi for dinner. The kids sat with us for the whole dinner and then played in the living room. They listened to several books and went to bed quietly. Abuela called before they went to bed and Noah spoke to her. Earlier he had said 'Te quiero' [I love you] to Marcela, but he wouldn't say it to Abuela. Having Noah get on the phone was love enough for her.

2005-09-26T12:17:00.000-07:00

Every Friday afternoon we experience a fleeting joy when our work week is done and the weekend has arrived. We will sleep in, we tell ourselves, and take it easy... I did say fleeting. Maxim went to her second dance class on Saturday. Marcela and Maxim had bought the dance "Zone" required outfit - black leotard, white tights - during the week, so Maxim was excited to be dressing up. Marcela brought Noah along too and they walked around downtown while Maxim learned some new steps. Saturday was also our neighbor Jake's 30th birthday. By early afternoon, people were beginning to gather next door. All four of us got cleaned up and wandered over with a small gift for Jake and beverages for the food table. Hot dogs and hamburgers were grilling and salad was spread. We ate a delicious ("Delicioso," as Maxim likes to say.) lunch and met more interesting Maynard people. At 3:00, Noah went to sleep and Marcela brought Maxim to Elizabeth's fifth birthday party, where Gwen and Lauren and Ahwa and Griffin and Joey and Sammy and Connor and Nicole and, well, pretty much the whole Teddy Bear room of the Community School, played and ate cake and played some more. Maxim returned with an extra gift bag for Noah. At dinner time, we noticed that the birthday party was still going strong next door, so we wandered back over and found the grill still grilling with hot dogs and burgers and many more of our neighbors sitting around amidst Jake's friends. We were offered dinner and cold beer, which we gladly accepted. We nibbled in the twilight catching up with people while Maxim and Noah and Catherine and Emmaline ran around under the trees and made houses in the grass. On Sunday, after breakfast, Gordon came over and picked up Maxim so he could take Gwen and her mushroom hunting in Stowe. We distracted Noah and he didn't seem to notice Maxim was gone. He likes to play around in different rooms and make up games that involve grunting and pushing things. Maxim returned from the mushroom hunt exhausted and Marcela had already lain down with Noah, so she climbed quietly into her bed and only bothered Marcela once to look for her blanket. I made curry and Gordon made kuchen and Marcela made salad and we ate dinner together while Maxim, Gwen, and Noah played at the end of the hallway. Perhaps the other notable thing this past weekend is the completion of all the big painting on the house. Front, back, side to side, all of the trim and body and about 1/3 of the basement, is covered. It was a bigger job than we thought, but it is mostly complete. For both of us, Marcela and I, it is a nice relief to know we beat the cold weather and rain and can gear up for next Friday, when for a fleeting moment, we will feel a momentary elation as the work week comes to an end. We can sleep in, we'll say to ourselves, take it easy...

2005-09-23T05:51:00.000-07:00

The first day of fall, September 22, was among the most beautiful days of the past warm season. It rivalled July 4th in being sunny, yet dry and comfortable. It was the first day of fall, but it really felt like the middle of spring. Today Maxim remembered that she had been earning money for being helpful around the house and she asked if she could spend some of it on the coin-operated plastic carousel outside of the K-Mart in nearby south Acton. Marcela thought that was a great idea. But before they could go, there were lots of things to do at home. Marcela and the kids took a walk downtown in the morning, while I put together pictures to show to my class. After lunch, Marcela and the kids took a blanket and dessert and had a picnic by the side of Mill Pond. "This is just like camping," Maxim said. Noah and Maxim fed the ducks, who have gathered by the dozens in recent weeks on the pond. While the children slept, Marcela decided to paint the wall behind the counters in the kitchen with the blue paint we decided not to put on the house. I came home to the smell of drying paint and a nice new look to the kitchen. You can see in the photograph above the structure that Catherine built with the kids even later in the afternoon. Catherine would send Maxim in for blankets or pillows and, every time she went inside, Maxim would ask Marcela if it was time to go to the carousel yet. We need to mow this lawn. It has been two weeks with several rains. But instead, we finished painting the back of the house. It is now done! Only three sides to go. You can click on the photograph to see it a little bit better, but the light is a tad too flat to really show it off. Weather permitting, we will finish everything by Monday. Having been arms distance away from every brush of paint, we stand and look at the finished house and see all of the uneven lines and every place where there is a slight discoloration of paint, looking closer at more pieces of detail than anyone really would. It will take a few days or maybe a week before we can really see it, so our joy is muted today. But our sense of accomplishment is growing. Maxim helped us paint the basement section and described the details of the new paint out loud. "We used to have a yellow house with pink windows and now we have a green house with yellow windows," She said, "Red is my favorite color." Just before dark, they jumped in the car and went to the carousel.

2005-09-21T05:14:00.000-07:00

Today was Maxim's second day at gymnastics. Marcela said she enjoyed it and followed directions well. They have her jumping on the big trampoline now and moving in and out of exercises with poses. Noah really wants to join her in the gym, but he is still too young. After the class, the three of them went to the shoe store and got Noah some fall sneakers ("They look too tight," he said when I held them up in the evening) and new black patent leather shoes for Maxim. When they all picked me up at the train everyone was in a good mood and relaxed. They even sat quietly with me in the car while Marcela ran into a store. It was warm enough to walk when we got home, so Marcela took the kids downtown while I finished most of the rest of the body of the house. The kids got back at the same time that Catherine came over and the three of them played in the front yard while I painted. Catherine likes to bring out the kids' guitar and make up songs while Maxim makes up dances. Noah likes to run around and see who will wrestle with him. Catherine is around so much these months that it is amost as if the kids have an older sibling. They have found their rhythm together and enjoy each other's company. Unfortunately, almost immediately after the sun went down, about a half an hour after this picture was taken, a downpour floated through. Heavy steady rain for twenty minutes. This morning, I peeked my head out the door and saw the results. The house has long yellowish streaks along both sides of the bay window where water runoff tore through the not-yet-dry paint. Fortunately the sun is up today and the sky is blue, so everything will dry and we can try again. This is one of those lessons we've learned as parents; sometimes you work hard to complete something and other forces have other ideas and you have to just smile, sigh, and wait for another opportunity. Everything gets completed in its time.

2005-09-19T05:04:00.000-07:00

Up at the end of the right-of-way, where it turns north in front of our neighbors' houses, you can look out through some trees, across a placid mill pond, and at a large brick factory complex. Digital Computers once had its world headquarters here, before Hewlett-Packard put them to bed. We watch a colorful sunset paint the clouds in the eastern sky behind the factory. It was a very nice weekend for us. On Saturday, Maxim began her dance classes at Miss Kathy's Dance Zone right in downtown Maynard. We walked there from home, through the Farmer's Market and past the new pharmacy. Maxim got new white tap shoes and a smiley face for her ballet slipper - because she had done a good job, the teacher told her. It stayed overcast, but the weather web site said it would not rain, so we put more paint on the front of the house. We are quite nearly finished with the body now. Just a couple more stripes and chunks around the bay window and then we can finish the trim. On Saturday evening we jumped in the car and visited our friends John and Lisa, whose son Griffin is in Maxim's class at the Community School. We ate grilled tuna and grilled potatoes and fruit pudding and ice cream. Maxim and Griffin played very well, Maxim adapted to some new games and she convinced Griffin to dance a little bit. Lisa, who is a musician, played piano music for Maxim to twirl to. Noah hung drums around his neck and beat out a rhythm. Lisa and John worry that their son is too hyper and disobedient, but he seems perfectly four to us. Griffin is a very smart kid, and it seems that with intelligence comes intensity. On Saturday before we headed over to Griffin's house, while Marcela and the kids napped, I decided to paint a little on the back as well. I got another two stretches of the strip at top and both of the second story windows. I almost fell asleep in the rocking chair at the end of the night in John and Lisa's living room. You can see the new paint in this photograph. On Sunday, we piled in the car and visited Boston. We ate delicious southern cooking and listened to loud jazz music with my father and some dear old family friends. Then we took a short walk around Boston. We ambled through old neighborhoods and warm memories. Three generations. Those who saw me grow, watching me take my turn with grandchildren or near-grandchildren. Marcela and I are happy with the colors we have chosen for our house and we are pleased with the tenor taken by our life together.

2005-09-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

Rain for two days. They expect rain for two more. It is good for the plants, but it slows us down, and it makes the kids a little antsy. They want to be outside, riding their bikes or otherwise running around. They are slow to nap because they haven't had the same exercise they usually have. Today I realized that Noah is suddenly evolving into a young boy. This is good, in that it means he tries harder to do big kids things and he's getting good at them. But it is bad, because it challenges us to set new kinds of limits. He is emotional, making him warm and loving and (sometimes) irritable. Marcela and Maxim have begun drawing a mural on the wall of the kids' room. More accurately, Maxim has drawn a mural on her wall with a little bit of help from Noah, who drew a 'train,' ('No it isn't,' Maxim whispered) and from Marcela, who drew clouds, a bee, a bird, and a train. Maxim drew butterflies and dragonflies and flowers and a sun and two upsidedown ballerinas. Marcela is going to pick up paints this afternoon and make the best of a rainy weekend by putting color into the drawings. I painted one more small section of the front of the house, right above the bay windows, but beyond that, we haven't put a dab of paint on the house since last Tuesday and may not be able to paint again until next Tuesday. We have stopped working outside, but the squirrels haven't. This is what remains of the smaller of the two sunflowers growing by the back fence. The squirrels bit it off cleanly and dropped it to the ground, where they broke it in half, ate part of one side on the spot and took the other half with them up the backyard Norway spruce tree. I didn't see this with my own eyes, instead I found these sunflower seed husks and pedals caught in this spider's web in the nook of the fence directly below the squirrels' nest in the Norway spruce. The squirrels were no where to be seen. The spider was probably as annoyed with the squirrels as I was. I did not want them to eat my sunflower seeds. I wanted to eat those myself. And the spider needed that web to catch insects, and look at it now (you have to click on the photograph to see it full-sized). It is filled with the squirrels' compost pile. But I do not think the squirrels are very bothered by that. "What's a spider and a human got to do with anything?" They probably ask themsleves.

2005-09-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

Today Marcela took Maxim to her first gymnastics class of the fall term. Maxim got to jump on the big trampoline and Marcela said Noah wanted to go into the gym and play too. They sat outside with the other mothers and siblings and watched. The three played the memory game in the afternoon and then Maxim and Noah slept a good nap while Marcela painted a couple more windows with the trim paint. The kids looked tired when they picked me up at the train station; Noah had just woken up and was a little bit grumpy. Maxim was in a good mood and told me she only didn't listen to her Mom twice today, "Once when I pinched Noah and one time when I pushed him," Maxim told me. It was so warm today that we pulled out the kiddie pool when we got home and the kids put on their bathing suits. Maxim, Noah, and, a little later, Catherine, played games in the water that included the slide and the business cards from the house next door's for sale sign. You can see the results of that game still drying in the lawn in the photograph above. You can also see the ladder stretching up to the very tippy top of the of the roof, the highest point we have to paint on the house. We finished three sides now, north, east, and south and have about half of the front finished. The front is more difficult because it gets sun during the longest stretch of day, and you really shouldn't paint in direct sunlight. We also finished the frame around the kitchen door and the top of the triangle of trim on back. "No one paints their house themselves anymore," Cynthia, our neighbor from the bikeshop, remarked as she was out walking her new dog. "Not no one," I thought.

2005-09-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

What a Saturday! In the morning we painted a little bit and then Marie called and invited Noah and Maxim to go to Stow and visit Gwen. They gladly accepted and Marcela and I took the opportunity to go out for breakfast and choose the final colors for the house. We had a lovely walk through downtown Hudson, one of the hidden treasures of metro west Massachusetts. Maxim did not want to leave Gwen's house, but Gwen's grandmother was there and Marcela wanted to give her time to visit Gwen, so we all jumped into the car and returned to Maynard. The kids ate and napped and then Gwen came to visit us. She brought her pink bicyle and red tricyle and red helmet. She rode the tricyle, Maxim used the bicyle, and Noah drove his car. Maxim and Gwen play very well together; they discuss and pretend and negotiate and arrange in a seamless dialogue that sometimes lasts hours. About an hour after Gwen arrived, Catherine came by and played a little bit with Noah. "I think he has a thing for girls," Catherine said to me as Noah chased her around in his car. "I think he has a thing for you," I teased her. She seemed delighted. The whole time, from when we got home until after Catherine arrived, we painted. Marcela worked on details, window frames. I painted the walls. We finished the back wall and almost finished the south wall. Only the front remains, and the trim. You can see on the bottom half of the pantry window the final color for the trim. It is called Chestnut Beige by the company that makes it. Marcela likes it (and I agree) because it has a subtle hint of red, the compliment of green, and so it matches the basement color (a rich burgundy) and pulls out the green in the body paint. I think it will take two coats to cover things. We are closing in on the last stages of this summer's painting. It has been a good, growing summer for all of us here. Maynard has been a fertile place to land.

2005-09-09T04:44:00.000-07:00

It was another beautiful day in Maynard. Sun and cool weather. Marcela took the kids to the playground in West Concord where Noah played on the big slide and Maxim chased him around. They were so tired that they slept almost three and half hours in the afternoon. Later in the afternoon, when I came home from the city, Marcela and I painted different parts of the house for a little while and the kids played in the right-of-way with Catherine. We invited Emmaline to come over too, but she went to the library instead. First, they played policeman and Noah had to be the policeman and give them tickets. Then Maxim and Catherine drew pictures on the porch while Noah kept driving around in his plastic car. Later Catherine showed Maxim some dance moves on the front lawn. The yard is cleaned up again, and mowed, but for some reason the pool is burning the grass wherever we put it down. You can see the brown circle in the upper left of the photograph by the swingset, and the pool on the table. Marcela has just finished a small section of the front of the house. She and Noah are putting the paint and brush away. You can see the area around the door where Marcela painted. I did about five rows of shingles on the back wall. You can see that the windows on front are all ready now too; we trimmed, caulked, and painted them last Tuesday, which took all morning. We expect to finish the body of the house by Sunday and we will be choosing a color for the windows and trim this weekend. It has been a good process to work our house this way. Not only does it begin to look nicer, but it feels more and more like our home.

2005-09-06T04:41:00.000-07:00

Twighlight in the yard. A long day of painting and playing in the yard with the kids. They were relaxed and well-behaved all day. We cleaned up the back yard and Catherine made a new structure, hanging the cloth across the chairs and building a wooden teepee over it. Maxim and Noah played around and inside it for a long time. They also played in the street with their bike and plastic car. Back and forth, forth and back. Maxim and Catherine pretended that Noah was a police officer and he gave them tickets for driving on the grass and skidding off the road. At dinner we made sausages, which are the kids' favorite. We made ten, they ate six between them. They were so hungry because they were outside all day. So were we. You can see how we finished the north side of the house and got the top and bottom of the back of the house done, plus (and you cannot see this here) all but a thin strip on the south side as well. We finished the upstairs windows on Sunday, you can see them trimmed and painted. We will finish the upstairs windows on the front on Tuesday. Our house slowly gets its new look. The neighbors are beginning to remark at the changes.

2005-09-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

Catherine and Maxim tried to make a teepee that would hold all three of the kids at once, but it was challenging. I tried to help for a little while, but there was painting to be done, and windows to finish. We hoped that we would finish painting our house this weekend, but it will take us a little bit more time than one weekend. We did a lot of painting anyways. The weather was very nice, the air was dry and it was sunny all day long, except for some fluffy clouds. The kids played very well and then napped. Catherine came back over before they were awake. She couldn't wait to play some more. Maxim is trying to learn dances from Catherine. Noah chases them around. Marcela and I wish that they were just a little bit bigger because someone needs to mow the lawn and neither of us wants to do it. You can see how long the grass is getting. With all the rain, the grass grew a lot this week. With all the painting, we didn't feel like doing anything about it. We finished scraping, sanding, and puttying the front windows. We also painted two stripes along the top and bottom of the south side of the house. I suggested that we paint a black stripe through the middle, but Marcela did not want a striped house. Only Maxim and I thought it was a good idea. We ran out of trim and the local lumber yard is closed Sunday and Monday. We'll finish the front windows by next weekend. The house feels different when you know it this well, when you work it this closely. We like that feeling.

2005-09-04T05:21:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a busy day for everyone. Lots of work on the windows, although we didn't quite finish them yet. More exciting was the fact that we bought our paint and started painting. Marcela worked along the bottom on one side. I worked along the top on the other. The kids had a blast being outside all day. Maxim and Marcela went to the farmer's market on their bicycles. Noah played around in the yard and house while I sanded and caulked. Everything got moved around into messy piles in the yard. Later in the afternoon, Catherine came by and played hide and seek with the kids. On Saturday there are many people who walk by our door to get to the farmer's market, so we say hello and have short conversation with many people. Maynard is a quiet, friendly town. Lots of kids and folks like us with lots of ideas and very little money. Perfect. Catherine learned how to build tee pees this summer at camp so she and Maxim took the larger sticks we had piled in the back of the yard and made one of her own. The kids played in it for a long time. You can see the new paint along the bottom of the side of the house. All of our neighbors wanted us to go with the bluer paint, we opted for the green, which was our original idea. We are excited to be moving into the final stages of this project. Little changes are finally adding up.

2005-09-02T18:25:00.000-07:00

The kids do not seem to want to go to sleep this evening. It is a cool evening. We had a quiet afternoon. Catherine visited again. She had no school today. She came along with Maxim and I when we picked up Noah. She and Maxim drew pictures while Noah thought up ways to bother them. They napped well, but woke up fussy. Are they sleeping too much? Are they not eating enough lunch? Noah had two servings of eggs noodles with cheese and asked for a hot dog. They drank plenty of fluids. We talked about going to the supermarket when Marcela came home, but decided to stick with what we had on hand. A delicious vegetable stir fry with wild rice. Everyone ate dinner well. The back yard is just as we left it last night, except for the picnic tale, which I turned over this morning. This morning after I dropped off Maxim, I picked up paint samples for the two colors we had narrowed it down to for the body of the house. Some people have suggested the blue (the left swatch) is a brighter choice, but we want green, so we're going with the right color, called "Halifax." They are mixing up a big batch of Halifax for us in the morning. We will paint all weekend and make the house even more ours.

2005-09-01T18:17:00.000-07:00

It was a school day on a non-school day. Usually Marcela is home on Thursday. Today she worked. I walked to the Community School to pick up Maxim at 11:30. The winds were still blowing, cooling everything off. We walked home and then picked up Noah at noon. He drove around in his little plastic car, and she pedaled her bicycle until napping. When they awoke, Ken, Coralie, and Nico were here. They did not mind that I left them behind to pick up Marcela at the train. We barbequed chicken and sausage and asparagus. As the twilight set in, the kids chased each other around the yard and we all began to get bit by mosquitoes. I have known Ken since 1985. We roomed together in college. Our kids play together now, twenty years later. I noticed the leaf that had fallen off my jade tree had something on top of it this evening. If you look closely, you can see it. A new jade tree sprout coming out of the top edge of the leaf. A small root reaching for the ground. Maxim learned another dance with Catherine tonight. Noah and Nico built buildings out of blocks.

2005-08-31T18:45:00.000-07:00

It continued raining this morning, and the winds picked up. The car choked out on the way to the train station, so we all stayed home while Mike replaced the battery and changed the oil. Noah and Maxim went to the Maynard Public Library and played with Mark, the world's greatest children's librarian, while Marcela looked for new books and videos. It started to warm up and grow humid in the afternoon and everyone got grumpy. Noah took a nap early. Maxim went to sleep later and woke up earlier. When Catherine got off the school bus (she started third grade yesterday), she stopped in and visited with Maxim. They drew and painted and then learned a dance, which they showed us all. After Dawn picked up Catherine and I put out six weeks of recycling, we stood in the backyard and enjoyed the cooling wind rushing through the trees. All of the rain has soaked the recently stripped windows so they can not be sanded until at least Friday. But taking out all of the recycling made a lot more space in the basement. Marcela swept the floor into a pile and I cleaned up my tool bench and swept up the pile of dirt from the floor. Maxim and Catherine had played in the yard, but most of the things got moved by me because otherwise they leave footprints in the grass. You can see one that got started by the slide, it is the light oval you can see in the lower left corner of the picture of the yard. Out in the front of our yard all three sunflowers have bloomed. The original bloomer, the big one in this shot, hangs face to the ground. The other two still look east into the morning sun. I pulled the horseweed that had grown to over six feet tall, leaving just the sunflowers to conceal the fire hydrant. You can see the long line of recycling in this photograph, the flowers on the squash plant that just won't squash, and the long row of houses just like ours lining Sudbury Street.

2005-08-30T17:52:00.000-07:00

Two days of rain here in Maynard. It is what we needed, but it keeps the kids out of the yard. The other sunflower in the front yard bloomed in this rain. Maxim went to her friend Emmaline's house for an hour and came back talking of cinderella and dressed in a blue dress. Noah took all of the 2x4 blocks I made for him last Christmas and put them in a row in the living room. "Look Daddy, a train track." He drove his small plastic train up and down. This evening we played music, Maxim on the recorder, Noah on the drums, and me on the guitar. Then Maxim and Noah took a bath, which ended abruptly when Maxim decided to kick Noah hard enough to knock him into the wall, face first. Now they gulp down rice milk and finger their blankets. Bedtime awaits. "Here you go, Daddy." Noah says handing me the empty cup. He bites his blanket and bounces on his knees as Marcela tries to comb his hair. Maxim sings "Puff the Magic Dragon" as if everyword began with "Bl." They race to the bathroom to brush their teeth, hair still wet from the bath. The rains squeezed us inside, Marcela refiled all our bills, and we made it through another day together at home.

2005-08-28T18:47:00.000-07:00

Today we started off in a good mood, but as the humidity got heavier, everyone's mood soured a little bit. The kids ran around, Maxim on her bicycle and Noah in his plastic car, while I worked on the last window. The neighbors across the street had a yard sale and Marcela bought their wooden file cabinet. This led to a flurry of changes in the house as piles that used to rest on the kitchen counter got moved into the new file cabinet on the second floor, and other things were moved so that the counter next to the stove can be used for food preparation instead of bill storage. Piece by piece, things are findng their place here in the house. This afternoon Sarah and Diego with their daughters Laura and Julia, and Hugo and Carina, with their daughter Micaela and son Arron, came for dinner. We made pizzas and empanadas, sauted vegatables and homemade salsa, plus I barbequed some sausages, chorizo pan. We tried to eat outside, but the skies would not cooperate, so we moved into the kitchen. We ate like it was a feast and the kids played around. So much Spanish (Diego, Hugo, and Carina are from Argentina, Sarah is fluent in Spanish) is good for my ears. It reminds me of what I do know of the language and puts me in the mind of Buenos Aires, which is a good mind to be in. The windows are finally scraped. I finished just after 1:00 p.m. today. I started to sand, but Marcela said it was keeping Noah awake during his nap time, so I'll save that messy job for tomorrow. Marcela is looking out the window on the left in this shot. Maxim and Noah are brushing their teeth and I am putting the last of the garbage outside. We like our house. We like the people we have met since moving here. The rest of the houses on our side of the block are covered in plastic. We are stripping down to wood.