’tis the season

As a family, we’ve tried to establish a series of traditions that mark the passing of the seasons, hopefully reminding us to be thoughtful and reflective as days and weeks and months go by. At Christmastime we choose a local tree from Arthouse Gardens. We walk as a family in the East Nashville children’s parade. We do most of our shopping in the neighborhood and at the last-minute. (This year not a single gift was purchased until Christmas Eve day. I’m not proud of this fact, but I am coming to terms with it being Daddy’s way and beginning to appreciate a wee bit of its slacker charm.) We decorate the tree together, and this year, because you’re older and taller and because you have a distinct and certain opinion about nearly everything,
your input was significant.

This ornament here.

These bells there.

“I wanna do it!”

“I can reach it.”

Nightly, we read Christmas stories, light lanterns, talk of baby Jesus’s birthday and do the advent calendar.

We get out your wooden nativity set and place the Bethlehem manger scene on the hearth below our mantle hung with a red-ribboned wreath Papa taught me how to make and stockings–this year one for you and an anticipatory one for sis. True to your new abilities and expectations, you set up the nativity your way–all animals huddled together. Mary and Joseph further away from baby Jesus than the camels. Bethlehem-y trees all in one topsy stand.

One day I noticed baby Jesus (affixed permanently to the manger in this set) was missing and asked you where it was. Your reply:

“I took baby Jesus to timeout in my room, because he did something wrong.”

Hmmm… what did he do—denounce the Pharisees and challenge the status quo?

Sweet boy. Funny boy.

bumblebee fami-lee

Several weeks ago you requested to be a bumblebee for Halloween. Heeding the warning of mommas with older kiddos that you would change your mind several times before the actual eve of dress-up, I held off on ordering your costume. You stayed consistent in your request and even got more certain when you learned that we could be a bumblebee family. So, you were a cute little bumblebee. Daddy was a carpenter bee, and I was a queen bee. With the lure of pots of homemade chili, we invited friends to gather at our house before setting out on our all hallow’s eve adventure. Your neighbor Tanner was a ladybug, and your friend Simeon was a spider. Together, the “Bug Squad” set out. (Yes, we are aware that a spider is not a bug.) We walked the few blocks around our house, mostly to other houses we knew. Forty-five minutes later, you were thirsty, had already checked the candy in your bat-bag at least every 3 minutes or so, had enough candy to satisfy and were ready to head home. It was a good night, and you are already asking when we are going trick-or-treating again. Next year, little man.

colorful hearts

For a Valentine’s Day gift for your fellow ECC Bluebirds, I co-opted an idea from a fellow momma’s blog: melting broken crayons in heart-shaped candy molds and creating a hodgepodge heart of colors crayon. It was a craft that had elements you could do, and we shared the tasks with your cousin. You very much enjoyed the process, though you were steadily distracted as we attached the crayons to cards, asking: “Me gonna get one too?”

We went Saturday to a workshop at Riverwood House, a new Montessori program on the eastside, called “I heart cookies.” You were remarkably patient with each of the steps of the process, all-the-while containing your eagerness to eat the sweet heart-shaped sugary treats.

Daddy planned a lovely finale to our weekend of valentine activities by taking us to Art and Invention Gallery so you could design a wooden heart for my gift. Ever so slightly guided by Daddy’s suggestions, you chose a perfect heart, a wonderful pallette of colors that suit my tastes perfectly, affixed some stick-on hearts and finished it off with some orange feather accents. It sits in the kitchen window, just above the sink, and I look at it every day. I absolutely love it! It might just be one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten. Thank you, my favorite valentine.

like me

Daddy and I were unsure about the best way to share the meaning of MLK Day with you. There is the march, of course, and Daddy needed to be there with TIRRC so the immigrant voice is a recognized part of the thinking about Dr. King’s Beloved Community. The morning was foggy and cool, not freezing and rainy, as it had been in the past. Despite this being kind of a tradition for us, I just wasn’t feeling it. I get the symbolism. I appreciate the solidarity. I just wanted to do something with you. You’ll learn soon, little bug, if you don’t have a glimpse of it already, your momma is a hands-on kinda gal.

Knowing meaningful service, community building and real change come–especially for little people–when they can see themselves as able to make a difference in places that matter to them, we headed to one of the neighborhood playgrounds. It’s one you love and one that gets a lot of foot traffic… and litter. We took rubber gloves (which can entertain you for a good while) and plastic bags (from trips to the grocery store where we forgot our canvas bags) and headed out, chatting along the way about the Reverend’s message: “Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve.”

It didn’t take you long to make friends with Jamarius (4) and Eric (3), who were quite interested to know what we were doing with those gloves and bags. I had extra. We invited them to clean up with us, put gloved hands in the center like we were a team rallying for a big game, shouted “Go, Team Clean!” and then cleaned up by playing a game of “I spy the trash.” Curiously, it took a good deal of effort on my part to help you guys identify what was trash and what wasn’t. A pretty squishy pile of dog poop took some serious convincing; you guys were certain it need to be picked up and put in the bag. That would’ve been particularly gross, since you all had trouble remembering to pick things up with your gloved hand. The service project lasted for under ten minutes–quite an accomplishment for your attention spans, and then the playing and teasing one another commenced.

I walked over to talk to Jamarius’s mom to see if it would be okay for us to share fruit strips with your new friends as a “thank you” for their help in the clean-up. She wasn’t sure her boyfriend’s son would eat it, noting that his daddy’s idea of breakfast this morning was a sugared Kool-aid juice pouch and a big bag of potato chips. I cringed and said quiet thank-you’s to your Mammy and Papa for instilling good nutritional habits in me as a child. She and I talked for a while, as you shared healthy snacks with your new friends: snap peas, veggie booty, raw almonds and pecans, sesame sticks. That sweet momma was so stunned at how much her kids liked the stuff. They honked down everything offered! I made her a list of the snacks and where she could get them easily. She said she would get the kids some; I really hope she does. Breaks my heart.

As Daddy put you to bed, he thought he might try to help you process the meaning of the day by imparting some knowledge to you about the civil rights movement. He asked you to tell him about your day, about the playground clean-up, about what your new friends looked like. You said simply, “They look like me.”

I think we discovered our MLK Day tradition of service, bugga-boo. You certainly found the meaning in it and shared it with us. I think Dr. King would be proud.

happy birthday to you!