Lessons I wish they didn't have to learn...

We are blessed. Our lives are filled with Elmo and Dragon Tales, Legos and Scooby Doo. Our boys (and family, I suppose) live in a mostly sunshine-filled bubble were everyday is mostly the same glorious experience over and over again. I am so thankful for that.

But we’re moving into an intimidating age with Boy Wonder—one where he’s beginning to sense that everything is not always right with the world, that people aren’t always kind and patient. And that superheros (fictional and real) can’t always save the day for us.

We don’t watch much violent television in our house. Truth be told, Boy Wonder and Boo dominate the channels and they choose either Sprout or Cartoon Network (and even then, it’s usually Chowder, Scooby Doo or Phineas and Ferb.)

But every once in a while, I need to see something, anything, not animated and I turn on the news hour while I’m making dinner. And sometimes our local news is scarier than any horror movie Wes Craven can come up with.

Last Saturday in the small village of Hoonah, Alaska two village police officers were chatting in a parking lot with their families and were gunned down. On the spot. In front of their children and mother. (You can read the heartbreaking story of the village’s police chief’s reactions and remarks here. But keep tissue handy, especially if you dare view the slide show. The officers were larger-than-life, good people that Alaska was privileged to call their own the past four years.)

So when the news is covering the lives of Anthony Wallace and Matthew Tokuoka, it breaks my heart. It’s senseless and violent and so horrendous it shakes your faith in human beings. I’m standing in the kitchen glued to where I stand, dinner boiling over, tears streaming down my face.

My reaction was not lost on my sensitive, all-seeing first grader, who wanted to know what had upset me. What had broken the hearts of all Alaskans...

How do you explain this to someone who stills sees the world in black and white? Where bad guys and good guys meet on epic battlegrounds, where good always prevails and the heros go home to their families every night for dinner.

I included the information about Officers Wallace and Tokuoka for folks to remember them, their families, and the Hoonah Police Department in their thoughts and prayers. I’m sure they could all really use them right now.

I don’t have the answers when Boy Wonder wants to know how such bad things can happen. I try to explain that God’s got it all in control somehow and we’re not ever going to understand, but it’s not our job to worry ourselves into a frenzy over it.

And Boy Wonder, our little “rev” said he was going to pray for the policemen—and did so, right on the spot in his beautiful, simple prayerful way. He asked God to give the policemen who were killed hugs and to help their families stop crying.

Maybe he’s got it down. Maybe Boy Wonder and Boo really need to teach me a little more about blind faith and not losing hope in humanity. But every now and then, I wish my son didn’t need such a highly developed sense of empathy or understanding.

Sometimes I wish the world really was Dragon Tales and Transformers and would stay that way forever…

And to Wallace and Tokuoka, rest in peace. Thank you for your service and your selflesness. You will be missed by an entire state of grateful, heartbroken people.

Crowded Kitchen: Nanny's Ginger Crinkles

My trip to Texas this month was better than I could have imagined. Good times with my dad and my son. Good food. Hella sunshine. A chance to spend time with my Donna Lynn after a five year absence. Sleeping in my old bed.

And note cards? Recipe cards to be exact.

This year I've slowly become fascinated with cooking. And baking, though the results are mixed and vary, depending on whether I accidentally skip over the "baking soda" line in the ingredients.

In my dad's house, I was pawing through the old bookshelf and stumbled across three recipe boxes FULL of my mom's recipes, handwritten on index cards. Here's the thing about finding these...for years, my mom had the most beautiful handwriting. She had such pride in it, that she did her best to pass it on to me, even if it meant making me re-do my sloppy homework. (Oh, how I cursed her then!)

In recent years, since her diagnosis of the brain disease, her ability to write in the neatly rounded print has dwindled, and often times, when she's quickly jotting notes, I have a hard time reading it. But these recipe cards, well, they tell a story. Not only do the contain all the things I grew up eating, they show the progression of a brain disease of sorts, along with highlighting my mother's fascinations--cranberries, biscottis, cranberry biscotti. You see where I am going.

To make a good find even BETTER, one of the boxes I found had a different penmanship all together. Can you tell where this is going? Oh yes, the motherlode of all recipe boxes...my grandmother, Margaret. Nanny is a woman after my own heart. She devotes precious little space to nonesense like main dishes and vegetables. No, my grandmother gets down with the baking. Muffins. Breads. Biscuits. Cookies. Candy. Pies.

I sat on the phone with my mom on a recent Sunday afternoon reading off the recipes and getting whatever stories went with them. Hermits are Pop's favorite cookies. Penuche is Nanny's favorite candy. Anything with raisins in the recipe was definitely made for Pop. The god-awful sounding things in there like "Cabbage Casserole" and "Minced Clam Lunch" were from an era when Nanny was religiously shedding pounds with Weight Watchers. (Phew!)

Nanny's penmanship is classic cursive they must have taught back in school. It's slanted. It's tightly spaced and feminine. Her s's are perfect. Her f's are elegant. And her recipes? Fantastic.

My mom has made ginger crinkles before. I remember them well, so when I found Nanny's recipe...well, I had to. Consider these my new favorite cookies. And they went well with the boys, too, so I can talk myself into them more often. After all, molasses has a lot of iron, right?

The magic thing about this is that I never grew up close to Nanny. She and Pop always lived on the opposite coast as me, but something happened during that first attempt to cook from her recipe. I learned to trust.

I squinted at the recipe card a few times when I didn't see butter. I saw a whole lot of oil. A lot of the recipes were different than what I'm used to out of today's magazines and recipe Web sites.

"Are you sure?" I asked nobody in particular.

The card was stained and worn. It had obviously been used before, and obviously the results were good if the baker came back to the card time and time again. So I trusted. And I used the nearly one cup of oil. And it was good. Earthy and spicy and crunchy and sweet. So good, I wanted to share Nanny's recipe.

This discovery lit a fire under my butt. I wanted more family recipes. I want them in a book. I want Pam's buckeyes and Dee's peanut butter cookies. I want Cheryl's pie recipes, instructions for my mom's rustic apple tarts, and I want the stories that go with them before nobody wants to tell them anymore. I want my kids and Jeff's kids and Brandy's kids and Justin's kids and Carissa's kids to have this piece of our far-flung, odd, and beautiful family, too.

And I'm working on it, people. :)

Ginger Crinkles

2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
1 egg
4 T molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/4 cup sugar for coating

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix oil and sugar thoroughly in large bowl. Add egg and beat well. Stir in molasses. Sift dry ingredients to oil mixture. Make walnut-sized balls and cover in sugar. Put on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Do not overbake. Cool on rack. Store cookies in tightly covered container. Makes about 3 dozen.

The education of me and the meaning of grace

I was getting a bit tired of writing about baking and cooking, even though I'd planned to do a post today about food (and I still might. You never know...)

I figured it had been a while since I did a post with any sort of substance, you know...the stuff friends and family members read to get a sense of what's going on in this corner of the world. I thought about lots of stuff, and really, everything has been overshadowed in the last 23 hours by the fact that my son, Boy Wonder, called another woman "his mom."

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about it. I ran it past a couple friends last night...do I correct him? Or do I let it go? Do I let the kid call us all whatever he wants. High road? Low road? Off ramp short cut to enlightenment?

I got stuck writing this post, and like I do anytime that I get self-inflicted writer's "goldfish" brain, I cruised around blogs. And cruised.

And I came upon one of my favorite crafty-ish blogs and there was a video about forgiveness and taking God's messages seriously. (I'm not so good at that, you see.) The video is here.

It's about a man who in one awful accident, lost his pregnant wife and two of his four children to a teenaged drunk driver. The video goes on talk about how forgiveness and grace was never NOT an option for this man, Chris Williams and how it has changed not only his life, but every one involved in the horrific accident...including the young man that killed his family. He likened it to how forgiveness and grace is never NOT an option with Jesus Christ either... and it was one of those A-ha moments. (They're rare these days, I guess.)

I admit that I cried when I watched it, and I even forgave the fact that it was a huge ad for the Church of Latter Day Saints at the end...really, the message got through and that's what it's supposed to do, right?

In comparison, my problems are small, my friends, and in the end...anger really isn't an option. When it comes to our children, the high road is really the only road if you want to do it right.

I have two sons. One is blessed and has his parents together all the time. The other has to make do with the reality he was given--based on choices his father and I made. It was never Boy Wonder's choice to live with his heart split across the continent. I'm sure he'll look at Boo someday and feel the smallest bit of envy that everyone he loves is right there under one roof.

My heart caught in my throat when he told me he had to ask "his mom" (the stepmom) to take a picture of his toothless grin, and I won't lie and say it didn't hurt. It stung like hell. But guess what? So does having to up and leave every few months and say good bye and hello four times a year.

Good on you, Boy Wonder, for making the best of this situation and embracing everyone in your life as your family and not some ridiculous label with stipulations and explanations. Moms, dads, brothers, cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles...they come in all shapes and sizes in your life and you are wise enough to see it even when we can't.

So, thank you anonymous Mormon video poster for furthering my education today and getting me to think a little less about me...and a little more about the ones that matter most.

The Wednesday Baker: Boule Bread

A few months ago I bought all of the necessary equipment and ingredients for bread, according to the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day."

Bread and I have a long history. According to local legend, I used to take naps in a laundry basket on the floor of the bakery, Baba A Louis, where my mom worked. Bread is a weakness. It's a blessing. It's something I seek and destroy when in the mood.

Except I've never really been that great at baking it. I manage hockey pucks. The occasional door stop. But never fantastic, earthy bread.

So when I bought this book in the Spring, we were weeks away from moving into Anchorage and I never really got to turn loose in the book. Until now. Until today. The day I deemed Wednesdays as "baking days."

The concept of the book is that artisan bread is actually possible without having an advanced degree in chemistry or fancy equipment. No back-breaking kneading. No nonsense. You mix your ingredients. You let them set overnight. You bake your bread. You eat your bread. Bada-boom...bada-bing.

The Master Recipe makes four 1-pound loaves, so I always halve it.

3 cups lukewarm water
1.5 tablespoons granulated yeast (2 packets)
1.5 tablespoons kosher or coarse salt
6 cups unsifted all purpose flour.

The book goes on to have you mix the water, the yeast and the salt. Add the flour. Mix very loosely until there's not dry spots. And then...well, that's it. Put it in a container. Leave it in the fridge. Let the yeast work its magic. In the morning, you knead it very lightly. Let it rest. Bake your bread (with the help of a "steam bath") for 30 minutes. And you're done.

The book is amazing and highly recommended...eventually you can work yourself up to making cinnamon rolls and other super fantastic-ness. But for now. The bread.

It had the bakery-guaranteed"skin" that crackled and broke when you tear into it. It's chewy. It's yeasty. It's perfect for a rainy Wednesday in Alaska.

The authors have a site here. Just so happens today they blogged about baking in Tuscany without their normal equipment. Nice, right?

Happy Wednesday!

The Joy of 32

I've had about a week now to walk around with my new identity and it's about as anti-climactic as any birthday has been.

It just sorta is. The day came. And it sorta went. (But not without some FANTASTIC birthday love from my facebook family out there. THANK YOU!)

(I'm pretty sure the most exciting birthday so far has been 25...the year I was allowed to rent a car! 21 doesn't really count...because, honestly, who hadn't been drinking since the day they arrived on their college campus? But rental cars...well, there was one place you couldn't cheat.)

My husband had flowers for me. Boo had an Elmo balloon that he shared with me, and there were two cakes and lots of princess-themed partyware. I love my husband, have I mentioned that lately?

It was low-key and when it came time to figure out the birthday gift, the practical nature of 32 became very apparent when I asked my husband not to buy me a fancy espresso machine and to let me purchase a new vacuum instead. (The horror!!)

A fu*&ing vacuum, you say?

Yes, dear reader. Our floor was nasty, what can I say? (It sorta reminded me of that Mother's Day back in 1986 when I had my dad buy an iron for my mom so I could sign the card. She laughed then and I didn't get it. Oh, but I get it now...)

Clean floors aside, 32 seems like a magic number to me. It seems to be the nice, well-rounded age I've earned after a few long years of struggle. Fighting against myself, against an ex, against jobs that went nowhere, against rash behavior just because I could. Fight fight fight, strife strife strife. No longer. This is a well-earned age where my phsycial and mental scars tell the story of me becoming me.

32 seems to be the year when I am no longer my own worst enemy, where I have built an incredible foundation around me with friends and family who want the best for me and are no longer afraid to speak up when I'm wrong (though I rarely am, so watch yourself.)

This past week has been like many others in my life. Some good news, some bad. Some drama. Some worries. But here's the thing, at 32 (and beyond, right?) you bend the problem to your solution. At 22, you bend yourself to the problem and try to claw your way out of a hole. That's my take anyway.

At 32 I've become a master at triaging my life. Sure, the electric bill might be late, but the car insurance and the gas is paid, so two outta three ain't bad. Yeah, I might get short with P if we're both lacking sleep...but have you seen Houswives of New Jersey lately? We seem pretty damn normal compared to those fools, and that's a fantastic place to start.

So happy belated 32nd to me...the first of many, many more. I hope, anyway...

The return of something great

Thomas the Tank Engine has returned to our lives this summer. Some of the tracks and most of the engines that Boy Wonder collected between ages 2 and 5 survived the move to Anchorage only to be saved from obscurity in the garage by Boo himself.

Though we don't quite have the language down (he screams "NO!" and hands you a piece of broken track when he wants you to fix it. A sad consequence from the afternoon we spent playing together...I'd build the track, he'd destroy it. I'd tell him "No!" over and over again and repair it. Somehow screaming "NO!!" at his dad with two pieces of tracks is supposed to mean "Hello, Father. Can you please fix this for me? Thank you."

We're working on it.

I missed Thomas and his friends. Boy Wonder and I used to watch those DVDs on endless loops and it was such a treat when we found the more rare episodes that George Carlin narrated. Yes!

He's also discovered plain old blocks. The kid loves them. It's a magic age where the bling-bling lights of battery-operated toys hold no interest to him (nor does the television) and all the kid wants to do is build piles and knock them down. It's a grand summer.

And MEEMAWS. I can't forget "meemaws."

Meemaws are magical creatures. Maybe it's because mama might have a bit of that Texas twang when she says "pillow" but meemaws seem to be any plush or comfy item in our living room that Boo wants to claim for his own and snuggle on top of. If you find yourself over at our house in the near future, beware. He might spot the pillow you're sitting near and come by and snatch it, yelling "My meemaw!" You've been warned.

Toddlers are magical, tiring creatures. How could I have forgotten this so quickly?

In other blackbird news, the fight is off. I know, I know, you're heartbroken, right? Haha. Didn't think so. The stars didn't align for this one and it seems that I am a much different person at 32 than I was at 27. But that's the whole point, right? (And thank goodnes...I'm not sure I was much to shake a stick at in my 20s...I was kind self-absorbed and pushy. Just sayin'.)

Oh, and I rescue Boy Wonder August 12. I bet you're just as excited as I am. :)

MMA and the meaning of life

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SharkBaby and the Night of the Living Dead

No, seriously.

Last night poor Boo and I went to war against an unseen enemy and the casualty? Sleep. It didn't have a chance in hell.

Currently, our 16-month old sweet baby is cutting tooth #4,765. That officially classifies him as a shark, right?

I swear the kid has five rows of teeth popping through. And we've felt every single one of those nasties from inception all the way through the raw, gum ravaging end. I think Boo just has to think about teeth (or a mouth, or sleep) and he starts to drool and the hacking cough returns.

The night went something like this:

11 p.m.: Ahhhhh. Mom takes a Melatonin and starts to feel fantastic. And sleepy. And....*#$%$...was that just the baby I heard? Get up. Resettle the baby. Administer pain relief. Administer Baby Vicks for the hellacious cough. Return to bed.

11:23 p.m.: Again? What now? Give baby back the bottle. Tuck him in. Night night, Boobear.

Midnight: No, seriously. Go to sleep kid. Here's your bottle. Sleepy sleepy, k?

1 a.m.: This isn't funny Boo. You better have a gaping chest wound in there. No? Here's your bottle. Go to bed.

1: 34 a.m.: No, no, no, no! Resettle baby. Tuck him in. Promise him his brother's toys if he'll just stay asleep. He can have his bed if it would do the trick...

2 a.m.: I. Hate. My. Life. I love this baby, but I hate my life right now. Take the damn bottle, kid. Hell, take my car keys and drive yourself around the neighborhood at this point, if you'll just let me close my eyes for more than 27 minutes at time.

2:17 a.m.: C'mon... I just laid back down...this baby is doing it on purpose, I swear. He hears me sigh in sweet relief and jumps back up to see if my reaction time is still on point. He's got a stopwatch hiding underneath the blanket and he's charting my progress...

2: 39 a.m.: Dear God, I'll go to church every Sunday if you'll just...

3:07 a.m.: Fragal;alkjda;sldfkjeowelkafna;lsdkjfakl;gj;l....

3:30 a.m.: By this point, I'm in tears and playing possum, lying as still as I can, while he fusses in the next room, hoping in vain that either he'll give up or I'll just fall asleep and it won't matter anyway. P is sympathetic to my over-the-top pity party and gets up, resettles him and the kid sleeps until 9 a.m. (WTF?!?!?)

I quit.

No, I mean it.

Boo and I can be friends again once all his teeth come in, but until then, I'm holding a grudge.

That's a lie. I got up this morning to the world's sweetest baby, complete with a pirate hat and a big toothy grin. It's nature's way of ensuring the survival of these little buggers, isn't it? So damn cute...

I don't remember what Boy Wonder's story was when he was breaking teeth--but I guarantee it is nothing compared to what Boo goes through, as I will never, ever, ever forget this experience (or the other 4,000 teeth pains).

I'm also going to store this in the memory bank for future guilt-inducing uses when the kid is old enough to fall for it. Just watch me...

Like a stranger in a familiar town

Somedays, when I feel like being really cruel to myself, I browse photos of tropical islands. I look at my pictures from Vegas and the California beaches I visited a few years ago. I look at pictures from my best friend's Facebook profile and dream of finally getting to Italy to visit her and my "nephews." I crack open the Barcelona travel guide I bought for a book I was writing last summer. I paste pictures of Scottish castles as my background on my desktop.

I dream about vacations. I ponder what I'd do with two weeks off and a bank account that didn't threaten mutiny every freakin' three weeks. (Seriously, it's getting old, Alaska USA.)

I mope. I shrug. Whatever, right?

Well, here's a little story about how my husband and Boo opened my eyes this weekend.

Anchorage was beyond beautiful. It was cloudless, sunny days that hovered in the 70s. We'd do our normal morning routine, and when Boo would wake up from nap #1, we'd go. Go go go. Grocery store, Gracie Barra, didn't matter.

On Sunday, we ended up at the Downtown Market. It was empty, compared to the shoulder-to-shoulder nonesense you normally deal with. Everybody was fishing. Everybody was camping. Everybody was, in short, not at the market.

We tried to find Boo one of those bucket hats popular with sunworshippers, but the kid has a man-sized head that hovers between child and grown up. The only toddler sized hats were pink, and we love our child too much to subject him to that sort of treatement.

We love fair food. Love love love it. And althought it's not a fair, per se, the market has that "food row" that smacks of being at a summer fair. Unlike my patient husband, I am unable to walk down one side and up the other before making my selection. I was ready to drop all my money on the grilled corn guy (and his neighbor, Mr. Funnel Cake), but ultimately held out for three more stalls and bought up a plate of fried catfish and hush puppies, complete with Frank's Hot Sauce. Ooohhhhheeeeeee. It was fantastic. (Boo loved Catfish! Boo loved Catfish!)

P got some corn fritters and honey butter and if I thought it might have worked, I would have shoved him off the bench and eaten his lunch, too. 'Cept he's bigger and stronger and better at jiu-jitsu than me. Just sayin'.

When we'd seen all that we could see at the market, I wasn't ready to pile back in to the car yet, so we hoofed around downtown Anchorage. A cruise ship has started docking in Anchorage once or twice a month for the first time in nine years, so there were plenty of middle-aged, fanny-pack and matching T-shirt wearing couples on the streets. Oh, and bums, too. I had to give a holler to my old bus-riding homies in case they wanted to forget the crazy, coffee-wielding chick from the 102 Express. Hi, guys!

Crossing the street, P found a trillion dollar bill. Yes, you heard correctly, One Trillion Dollars (forget that it was some relgious mumbo-jumbo..it was a TRILLION, baby!). I will no longer be reporting to work at 8 a.m. every morning. You can forward all mail to the Bahamas. Thankeeverramuch.

We found the Alaska Cake Studio as we randomly passed by. Hello. Cupcakes in the window? I am so there.

P got a peanut butter brownie. I got a lemon-lavendar cupcake. (Have you ever heard of one of those before? Me either. It was amazing.)

Boo liked both. I think he liked my frosting best of all, 'cause we sure fought over the yellow, delicious stuff.

So while we sat there in the little bakery, with tourists milling in and out with salted caramels and margarita cupcakes, it struck me. The three of us had just spent the last two hours as Anchorage tourists. We saw downtown through their eyes. We explored new stores. We ate obnoxious fair food and paid way too much for it and we were happy to do it!

Spending less than $35, I got an afternoon with my husband (and one son!) that I'll smile about for months to come.

Sitting there with P and with Boo in his little man stroller, it hit me. I don't have to go far to feel like I'm getting away from it all. I just need the right frame of mind, a little adventure in the spirit, and the right company.

Consider me schooled, World.

It's time we say so long, for now...

Can you believe that Boy Wonder’s kindergarten adventure is over ?

It seems like last week when we were dropping him off at school and sending him into the wide, unknown world of school. My "baby" left for Texas last weekend, so I’m starting to feel a little like Demeter, who had to send her child into the bowels of hell once a year. (No, seriously, I can relate.)

So in honor of one adventure ending, and his annual adventure beginning, I’d like to share

“Kindergarten: A Scrap-blog.”

First day.
As much as I wished he’d cry and beg me not to go, he actually looked a little embarrassed that I was hanging out in the hallway with all the other parents. He knew two kids in his class from church and the local playground, so as far as he was concerned, he had a lunch and he had some friends—he was good to go. I was bummed out on the ride into work that day, thinking this was the beginning of the end. My little boy was a “real boy” now in that Pinnochio sort of way…the strings would be harder to pull as he became his own little person.

Taking the Show on the Road

My fears that he didn’t need me anymore were for nothing. I met him and his class at the fine arts center downtown and he couldn’t wait to introduce me to everyone he saw. (It’s sort of his thing. He likes to make connections between people and he wants his enthusiasm to be YOUR enthusiasm). We sat in the darkened theater with about a million other kids from across the school district and I decided right then and there that I really loved elementary school and that I should never have been so impatient to leave.

Watch this, Kobe!
Can you believe I coached kiddie basketball? Me? The girl who can’t hit the rim to save her life? Lisa Leslie I am not, but I still managed to get six kids through 18 games with minimal tears and hurt feelings. We even got a few baskets, and though we weren’t officially scoring, I’m pretty sure we won most of our matches. Just sayin’. Dominic wasn’t much of a shooter. Or a dribbler. But the man could rebound like the scrappiest alley cat and he lived for snack breaks and Capri Suns. He was the one who came up with our team name “The Rhinos” (along with his little buddies). They learned sportsmanship, teamwork, and how to have fun. I learned that I’m not the biggest fan of most other parents in the sports world. True story. P had to teach Boy Wonder what to do when people crowded your space. My suggestion to poke their eyes out obviously wasn’t going to work…

Trick or Treatin'.
No, it wasn’t his first Halloween, but it was his first Halloween CARNIVAL at his official school. We packed up the family, dressed the kids as a shadow ninja and a lion and hit the town. Boy Wonder and P braved the haunted maze and came out with relatively few wounds to show for it. Maybe a couple of fake webs stuck to them, but no worse for the wear.

Winning the school art contest
Did you know our little man could draw? Sure enough. In the fall, his school held a contest for all the students to design a bookmark for the city library. And our man Boy Wonder beat out the ENTIRE school. He got a T-shirt with his design on it, a chance to bask in the spotlight at the front of a school assembly and one proud mama in the audience. He also won first place in the food art sculpture contest with a huge clay chocolate chip cookie that we cut a big bite out of. We skipped the science fair out of sheer protest—I was annoyed that fizzy volcanoes had to include some sort of hypothesis to test. I’ve got one for you: Fizzy volcanoes are COOL. Test that one…

Yellow Days are Sad Days
As the year got rolling, Boy Wonder began to learn about consequences. His teacher had a rating system for their days and every afternoon, he’d have a colored stamp on his folder letting us know how it went. Green was good, Blue was fantastic. Yellow was not so good. Red was principal’s office-material. We did our best to let the first few yellows slide, but when they started showing up a little more frequently, he started seeing his after-school cartoon watching disappear. I hate being the bad guy with him, because honestly, he’s probably one of the sweetest humans on the planet (he and his brother are), but that’s the whole parent thing in a nutshell, isn’t it? It was a crash course in actions and consequences for the child and his parents alike.

“Can Sam come over and play?”
He started (somewhat) talking to his friends on the phone this year. It was mostly “Dude….dude….DUDE! Wanna come to my house, dude? Awesome!” But still, there he was, asking to call his buddy Sam. With it came the failed attempt at a sleep over I wrote about a few months back, but mostly it was afternoons at a buddy’s house (or ours) with snacks, the WII, and a mountain of legos.

I Double-Dog Dare You
It wouldn’t be a complete scrap-blog without mentioning the ol’ Flick incident, would it? Inspired by the 24 hours of “A Christmas Story” on TBS, Boy Wonder stuck his tongue to a pole on the frozen playground and hilarity ensued. I saw a mom at the last field trip and somehow that came up. She said her kindergartner came home and told the family all about it. Boy Wonder is famous!

Kindergarten winds down
This past month has been a whirlwind of moving across town (way way way across town), field trips to the zoo with Team Wolverine, Field Day to celebrate the end of school, and preparing for the long journey to Texas. As Boy Wonder said his good byes on that last day, he was mobbed by his classmates and I was quick-thinking enough to keep my camera handy. I can’t explain the genuineness of this age—they really are that sad to see a buddy go. Boy Wonder posed with his teacher and it hit me. As bummed as I was that he’d grown up enough to enter kindergarten, I was having trouble fighting back the tears now that he’d OUTGROWN it and was leaving it behind.

But that’s how it goes isn’t it? I sat back and watched Boy Wonder win his sack race and remembered the day my best friend in 4th grade and I won the three-legged race at our own field day. I remember the epic catch I made in sixth grade to win our class the kickball game. Time is our biggest enemy and our greatest ally. Without it, I’d never get the chance to be the proud mama bear of one Boy Wonder and I’d forever be stuck in that awkward, bony-kneed, mullet-wearing phase I was so fond of in the late 80s. (I’ve still never forgiven you for those god-awful haircuts the first 11 years of my life, Mom. Just so you know!)

So now it’s time for Boy Wonder to go and soak up some summer sun. He’ll come back a little taller, a little tanner and his mama’s very own first grader.