This Is What Happens

This is what happens when you're running out the door and you yell "Noahy! Hurry up and pick out some socks, put them on and get in the car!"

The Summer That Joshua Became a Boy

One time Jill called Joshua a Forty-five year old man in a 7-year-old body. He think about stuff I will never even dream up by the time I'm 45. And he has a temperament as far from being a little boy as possible. Well he use to. This seems to be the summer that Joshua has become... a boy.

He plays in the dirt. I mean he sometimes would before... but I have a picture where he just got done playing in some mud in his bathing suit. Except he is completely sans clothing, still covered in mud, and hosing off his BATHING SUIT. That's what he was worried about. Dirt on his clothes. Because he sometimes reads this blog, I won't post the pic.

He also is playing sports. Well trying... he is blessed with his mother's coordination and being a few years behind kids that started sooner and then growing several inches recently. But he is playing wildly with other little boys, scraping his knees and coming home covered in pond yuck. He argues with his little brother instead of telling me the psychology behind why he thinks Noah is behaving the way he is.

The one part of summer that has always been a tried and true event for my little man-boy is Day Out with Thomas. Serious. Thomas the Train was the first genuine toy Joshua played with. Before that he would mostly just play in the sink with water and bowls and spoons and funnels and collanders. That's all he wanted to do. And he would do it for hours.

But then came trains.When Joshua was 2, I saw him laying on the floor with a Thomas engine someone had given him and he had some blocks lined up behind it. After I took a picture of proof that my son COULD play with toys, I packed us all up to go get more engines at Target. Immediately. He wanted to play!

And then when we found out a REAL Thomas would come into town... HOLY COW. We were all over it at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI. And when we moved to Washington- HOLY COW. Thomas comes here too at the Northwest Railway Museum in Snoqualmie, WA. The summer Jill was visiting was actually Thomas weekend. She came on the ride- and held Noah who was monsterously beside himself with the crowd. I had forgotten how anti-crowd he was at that stage in his life. Oops.

But this year... Joshua was 7 and Noah was 4, ages that are dangerously on the bubble of not loving things that have always been loved. We got out of the car when we pulled into Snoqualmie with a parking spot so prime the train station and the lines and the crowd were all within sight as soon as we pulled in. The boys jumped out of the car with their train engineer hats on and we started walk-run-skip-walking over to the station when Joshua not only slowed up, but he handed me his hat and asked me to put it in my purse.

He spent the rest of the Day Out with Thomas feeling a little out of place and notably sad that Thomas isn't what he use to be. Noah was happy- but Noah loves this stuff. It could have been a Hello Kitty conference and the kid would have been ecstatic.

Joshua pulled his hat on for a quick picture with Thomas and his brother- and as a mom I'm grateful. But how very sad that my little man boy has officially entered the big boy world where Thomas the Train is a has-been.

It stinks that they grow up.

-Sheryl

P.S. Jill isn't dead by the way. She finally emailed with some weird claim about technology failure after some bad storms.

Too Far Away

I wondered if Jill was dead because there had been zero communication via facebook, email, phone or blog for WEEKS. Ok not weeks. But maybe a span of days which is kind of unusual. However I wasn't dead and I also had gone electronically silent so I figured I should give her a call.

I called her when I was running a little bit early to a meeting that required a 20 minute walk (I had given myself 35 minutes on the assumption/guarantee that I would get turned around and lost). I was worried though and the time zone thing hoses up most chances of catching Jill in the evening. But I got her voicemail.

As much as I struggle to find my way around work... and I've been there three years... Jill... oh my. OH MY. The woman has lived in Oakland County her entire life but please don't let her leave home without her GPS.

You may be wondering if I'm lost at work, then how can I even make a peep about Jill. My direction skills stink- I'm the first to admit it. However, I also work in the largest building in the world. I'm not kidding. Look it up.

But residents of Michigan come with the pre-made hand map. Residents of most suburban Detroit locations come with the benefit of mile roads (8 Mile really is a road, not just a movie...). If you hit 11 Mile and you meant to get off at 10, you know you need to turn around. And most neighborhoods are even lined up in neat little rows- no crazy meandering dead end cul de sacs.

Jill and Sheryl combined trying to find anything is hopeless. We somehow feed each others directional impairment.

To this day Jill's mother will never forget overhearing Jill tell me on the phone that she will meet me at the corner of Pearson and Leroy. These were streets in the neighborhood we'd grown up in. Parallel streets.

It's a good thing Jill's mother wasn't privvy to our email-followed-by-frantic-phone-call episode a few weeks ago. I'm coming to Michigan this summer and Jill and I have been talking about this trip for MONTHS. Apparently Jill has also been planning to go on vacation for MONTHS. The same week. As we swapped a few emails and finally realized the conflict- me banging my head on my desk and Jill on her child, dog, or whatever comfort from home was nearby, I finally thought to ASK her where she was going on vacation.

Holland. Holland, Michigan. HOLLAND, MICHIGAN. Which is directly enroute to one of my six stops in 9 days during my Michigan vacation which I must have told Jill about at least 17 times in the 6 months I'd been planning this mess. I'm also pretty sure Jill was under the impression Holland was somewhere near the U.P. or Kansas or whatever. But it's on the way. I get to see Jill. And her giant, perpetually growing children. If I had to find the corner of parallel streets or make a detour to China to see her, I would.

I miss that it used to be as easy as looking out my bedroom window and seeing if Jill's mother's car was in their driveway to know if Jill could come out and play. Even the span of two connected back yards was once painfully too far away. Can you imagine what 2300 miles feels like?

-Sheryl

Independence Day

At first glance this picture looks like a toddler toddling. But it's Noah, taking his first successive steps as a walker- on a ferry boat in Seattle where we were visiting for my job interview before finally moving here. It was June 8th 2007 and Noah was 16 months old. 16 months. I was starting to wonder if his inability to walk was due to me wanting to carry him everywhere because he was tiny and cute and tiny. But he walked. And now at 4, he just runs. Runs, runs, runs.

The 4th was always one of those holidays that showed up in the summer and I definitely wasn't connecting any dots to the intent or meaning. As a child, it was a neighborhood bonanza of marginally intoxicated family, friends and neighbors shooting off pyrotechnics and everybody loving them as if it was a Disney level fanfare. We got to run around in the dark and hold sticks of flames in our hands and attempt to not burn up a sibling. Who wouldn't love that?

Wait. Jill's mother didn't. We had to do most of the fireworks at her house in DAYLIGHT because that was the smart thing to do. And the woman had good reason because- geez we lived around some looneys.

But there was that time where Jill's dad brought over a whole box of fireworks to participate in my dad's neighborhood display. He was lighting some off while my dad and other neighbors were shooting some off and suddenly... everyone's attention was drawn to Jill's dad who had somehow caught the entire box on fire. MAN that was a good set of fireworks to watch! 20-some exploding pieces of fireworks going every which way!

The next year I'm pretty sure we returned to the fireworks in the daylight thing with Jill's family.

But anyhow, we landed in Seattle as a family on the 4th of July in 2007. We were spent to the nth degree after 4 days shuffling driving duties between my in-laws and Alan (most days nobody let me drive- no offense taken because paying attention while driving up and down mountains isn't my strong suit). We had everything we owned jammed into a yellow Penske truck. Plus Joshua was 4, and a newly toddling Noah and my giant, loveable golden retriever Max were all in tow. And when we got here... oh my. That was some independence. That was some true "we did what we wanted and we made it happen" level of independence. We moved away from everything we'd ever known. We were doing jobs we wanted. We were living where we wanted. We were in SEATTLE.

At 3 years later, I definitely miss the family that makes up the family part of BBQ's. I even miss the sticky-ness of 4th of July in Michigan, a hallmark that summer is here (it's raining in Seattle this morning but it's suppose to break 80 soon. Sometime next week. Really.). And I'm truly independent in way too many ways on this 4th of July... but... just as all that time ago Noah's independence sucked as he toddled away from me, it's what I wanted for him. It's what needed to happen. Independence is just one of those things that we need and want, but it can just be so, so hard getting to that moment where everything feels... right.

-Sheryl