Lorelei is turning out to be quite analytical. Last week she asked how much she weighed and needed to weigh for the booster seat. I told her she weighs about 37 lb and the booster seat has a minimum of 40 lb. She said, oh, and without a beat, so I need to gain 3 pounds. ... She did the math in her head! I was kinda blow away. She hasn’t been particularly precocious in math so this was really cool. Example two was this morning. We have a family with 2 kids who live nearby and wanted a playdate. The girls wanted to play at the friend’s house, and the boys wanted to play at our house. Sanda doesn’t drive the van so she was stressing about moving the kids around with the sedan booster seats chaos. Lorelei suggested that Sanda drive just Lorelei there, drop her off, then bring the big brother friend back in Moriarty’s booster. Pip and I also came up with that solution, but Lorelei did independently. Once again I was blown away.
Now, this is where analytical goes into the well here we go phase. At some point in (hopefully) every parent’s life they get to give “the sex talk” to their kids. I’ve been expecting Moriarty to have questions for a while now, but no, it was Lorelei. I grounded everything in the evolutionary drive to pass along our genes and make babies so that’s why adults want to have sex. But my baby, who already knew that it takes sperm from a man and eggs from a woman to make a baby, asked deep questions into the mechanics and purpose of sex. This included such gems as “why do people have sex?”, evolution makes us want to, just like we want to eat food and it tastes good. It’s all about continuing the species. “How does the penis know when to get hard?”, um… when the man and woman decide to have sex his brain makes it hard. “How do men and women decide to have sex?”. Well, they often talk about it. And then Pip interjected with “is now the time to take off my pants?” which is a quote we both love from a comedy TED talk about a mom having the talk with her kid. So of course I said “yes”. By this point Lorelei had covered all the mechanics she was interested in, then proceeded to tell us she definitely doesn’t want to have a baby so she’ll have to marry a man who doesn’t want a baby either. Or better yet, she should marry a woman because two women can’t have a baby. She was quite self-satisfied and went off to play so we left it there.
The kids have both been having a fun summer of camps and friends. Moriarty did a week of Ranger Skills camp, then Survival Skills. He learned how to stalk through the woods undetected, use a fixed knife to whittle, and other miscellaneous woodland activities. He had a blast and is whittling many sticks around the yard. Lorelei did a week of circus class (tightrope, stilts, fabric arts, etc). She loved it. This week she’s doing a Disney-themed dance class. The rest of the time children were coming and going and Lorelei went to the big trampoline park 3-4x/week. We’ve been playing lots of board/card games on the porch and of course the kids make up games. We got a potholder making set and the kids have gone nuts making potholders. I’ve bought a couple other weaving types and they can’t get enough. I’m a sucker for buying art supplies. It’s the maker activity for kids. They use crayons, we use power drills!
Moriarty is getting more responsible. It’s really cool. For a long time he had the chore of cleaning the bathrooms, but for the summer we wanted to add more so he took over the dishes. The first couple weeks he whined about “not knowing how to do it”, or he’d start too late in the evening then panic, but he’s got a good rhythm now. No complaining. Clean dishes. It’s SO COOL. Getting Lorelei to be consistent is harder. I don’t really remember what Moriarty could do at 6 so I feel like I’m relearning what is “normal” for a 6 year old. She’s also the baby which makes it mentally tricker, but I generally expect them to help however they can. Her weekly chore is gathering all the trashes and putting in new bags. She can’t physically open the plastic bags so I do that part for her, but she’s getting pretty consistent and minimally whiney. Somehow she “forgets” how to sweep every week so she might have serious memory issues.
We invented a new term. Sonic it. It means to rip off really fast. Lorelei likes Sonic the Hedgehog and would ask us to pull off her bandaids “fast like Sonic”, which has devolved into Sonic this. The children are losing teeth left and right. I’ve offered to Sonic their teeth but they continue to decline. Lorelei is currently missing both her front teeth and Moriarty lost one a couple days ago. His mouth has grown…oddly. His lower jaw is shaped like a U, but his upper jaw is more of a V. He started wearing a palate expander to reshape his upper jaw and it’s creating space for his teeth! That’s allowing some to reorient, and others to fall out. No Sonics involved.
Lorelei and I took a trip to Minneapolis to visit Lisa Francine, the aunt for whom I am named. We hung out, ate some food, visited the cool children’s bookstore and art studio. We did a night of improvised dance with Lisa’s friends. It was a great visit, and clearly, the purpose was to hug Lisa. Loli and I had a fun easy flight. She has escalator fear but was very brave most of the time. During the flight, we chatted a lot about the plane, and the trip, and she asked a million logistical questions about the order of how we park, walk to the terminal to get the tickets, then TSA, etc. She’s very interested in understanding every detail about how things will happen but I like teaching her things and enjoy her curiosity. That said, after the flight the woman (mid 30s) next to us said, "watching you two was the first time I thought having kids might be fun". I think it’s the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten.
Today Lorelei put a large purse on her shoulder and did a sauntery walk telling Pip she’s a cool person but enunciating it as purse on. I take 100% credit for that wit. My last magical Lorelei moment was on the way back from Minneapolis. I was really overwhelmed from the travel, noise, people, so I asked, “can we have not talking time?”...and she kindly replied, “I don't know how to stop talking”. I hope this is a skill she can learn someday. She also got her first pair of glasses. She has weak distance vision so they’ll mostly be used at school but she feels SO grown up. Maybe the days of learning to not talk are on the horizon.
We’ve had some downs too. One of our chickens, Catchphrase, showed signs of illness. I thought she was eggbound (an egg stuck inside her) so Moriarty and I nursed her for a while but didn’t see any improvement. We decided to take her to a chicken vet who diagnosed her with either heart or liver failure. We opted to put her down and it was a very emotional day. Hugs, tears, and talking about our memories of her. We buried her in our woods. Moriarty has big feelings about the chickens and is lobbying for a special headstone.
Next week we all go to New Mexico to see the bats (w/ Phil). Moriarty is super into the bats near our house. He’s been spending time at night looking up hoping to see them. We’re discussing getting a bat box. As soon as we’re back from NM, school starts.
New Photos, password mal
Videos
Moriarty and cousin Noah playing basketball on the trampoline