heard on the street

"Mom, I have two things I will do for you when I grow up. Brush your hair, and protect you with bow and arrows."

-Oscar, to me this evening

heckling for independence

This year on the Fourth the kids heckled the fireworks, shouting at them to be bigger and louder until they were, and then they ran away and danced in the smoke.

I sat on a bench with my foot wrapped with ice in an ace bandage; it was itchy and doubled in size from when I stepped on a bee when leaving the beach two days before.

We lit the sparklers in anticipation of dusk. After the sun went down the adults wore hooded sweatshirts but the kids that were sitting preferred being snuggled in blankets to stay warm, and who can blame them.

At the end of the night Lucy pronounced herself "Dance Dodge Champion of the World." Four days later she is still blinking to get all that smoke out of her eyes.

my favorite picture of Oscar (right now)

friday cute shot

four

Dear Oscar,
I love you at four.

Your birthday party request was for hamburgers at Nana and Papa's house; your guest list included Lucy, TT, me, and Daddy. You asked for a cake with white frosting, piled high with berries, just like the one I made you last year. You wanted chocolate cake for Lucy, and white cake for Teagan, because she doesn't like chocolate cake.

For presents you had your eye on a toy airplane you spotted at Powell's months ago; you also got pink shoes, trains and a train track, a book of silly stories and a book about polar bears, a tiny polar bear and tiny seal, a box of model magic, and a box of juice.

On the way home from Nana and Papa's I asked you if you had a good birthday; you said it was just exactly what you had expected. You didn't really smile when you said it, but I think that was a good thing.

You are sweet in a really natural way, with no effort, like there is no other way to be. You don't play with our hair as much as you used to, but you still love to snuggle.  Every night I give you a magic Eskimo kiss before you fall asleep. You started preschool a couple of months ago and are still easing in, but we had a conference with the teachers where they talked about you and told us some stories, like this one:

A classic preschool game involves making food, offering it to a teacher, the teacher "eats" it and then the child exclaims gleefully that it is actually poisonous. Oscar enjoys the humor of this game and will play along. However, the connection with the other person is the most important aspect for him--if I say that I've learned my lesson and will not eat any more of his poisonous ice cream, he will become very sincere. He says, 'There's no poison. I'm not going to trick you."

 As much as you are starting to like preschool, playing with Lucy or Lucy and Luca or Lucy and Teagan is still your favorite. You would follow Lucy anywhere, and often wait to make your choices until you see what she is choosing.

Sometimes you guys request a record then dance in a circle around the living room, laughing and running until you fall down. It reminds me of something my brother and I used to do at my grandparents' house, and it makes me feel really happy to be a parent.

I love you!

Love,
Mama

the hunt for yellow flowers

joy-full

I just can't get enough of the way Oscar moves his body right now.



Waverjumper from Amber Broughton on Vimeo.

buried, part 2

buried, part 1

on the patio

"Goodbye, Mama! I'll see you on the patio! (That means I'll see you soon.)"

-Oscar, to me as he left for preschool this morning

now and then, again

Oscar and Grammy, April 2012

Oscar and Grammy, November 2015

three years, 7 months

Dear Oscar,

You sailed past three and a half in October, a big brother now but still almost exclusively wearing costumes and pajamas as everyday clothes. You love bats and fruit and books about superheroes; you are tall and stubborn and often frustrated and very very sweet.

Being newly in the middle is hard--you're not the oldest, and you're not the youngest; you're not big enough to do everything Lucy does but you're too big to get everything Filomena gets. It has been a bit of a rough few months with you: you have trouble not whining about even the smallest things, like asking for an apple or for a place on the couch, and I think you must be growing because your coordination is off--you keep slipping on things, or running into things, or falling down when you're practically standing still.

Yesterday we were sitting on the couch playing with baby Fife and I told you how big you're getting, and reminded you how you said when the baby was born you would not only be a big brother, you would be BIG. Your face crumpled and your eyes got tears and you said in a very quiet voice, I want to go back to being the little baby.

But you are such a good big brother. You love to snuggle her and kiss her; you bounce gently on the bed next to her and make her smile. In the car when the baby cries you sing to her, and you tell Lucy, I'm taking care of this.

After a slow start language has really blossomed for you lately, but you still usually need a little time to get your thoughts out, and you have your own way of pronouncing a lot of things. You get mad when Lucy interrupts you, or when we don't understand what you say, both of which happen relatively often. You say "Mom" a lot in your thinking pauses; sometimes it drives me crazy. You also tell us you love us a lot, just little asides throughout the day. Mom . . . . Mom . . . Mom . . . I love you. When I tuck you in to bed you reach up and touch my face.


Before you knew many words we used a few hand signs to talk to each other. There weren't many signs--there was milk, more, fan, banana, and I love you. Milk is a squeezing motion; fan is just a finger going in circles; banana is one hand peeling the finger of another. At one point Lucy made up a sign for infinity that followed after I love you--it was hands twirling around each other like a wheel. In the mornings when I would leave for the gym, I had to wait outside while you and Lucy climbed the back of the couch to look out the window and sign that you loved me, and I would sign that I loved you back. In your excitement your signs would sometimes get sweetly muddled and it always sticks in my mind--little you standing in the window, blowing me kisses, hands twirling and fingers catching together, signing about bananas and infinite love.

I love you, my love.

Love,
Mama

oscar and us

at the beach

How these months as a mother of three go by! We went to the beach with my parents back in October. It was really relaxing, especially because there was no tsunami, but had there been we were relieved to see that evacuation instructions suggested everyone come to our floor on the hotel, so we would have been as safe as it gets.

While we were there Fife started consolidating her naps, and also falling asleep at 7:30 for the whole night. I think Nana is some kind of baby whisperer, but fortunately, for the most part, the schedule has stuck.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

Anyone who knows Lucy knows she scatters art everywhere she goes, like some sort of glitter monster; this was a drawing I found hanging up on the deck railing at Nana and Papa's room. She sid it was an invitation to the spiders to come and build their webs there.

cousins

oscar and filomena

monday cute shot

portrait of a mother of three

Taken by Shaggy at the top of the Astoria column

Self-portrait in the same place