Sunday Slivers, 5/16/10

Today we mailed back a Netflix copy of "Juno." That in itself would not be worth mentioning if not for the fact that: 1) we rented that video in February 2009, and it sat on our bookshelf, unopened, until a few days ago; 2) we have not yet seen it, but we were able to finally send it back because...well...use your imaginations because I am not allowed to say it online. At about $10 monthly subscription, and fifteen months later, that has to be the most expensive rented video ever. Why have we not watched it yet? The simple one-word answer is kid(s). The less straightforward answer is that, in the ladder of ever multiplying priorities, movies just don't cut it to the top rung. In the rare moments we have to ourselves, we prefer to talk, read books, listen to podcasts of favorite radio shows, and other such.
So, to all of you dear friends out there wondering what life with a kid or kids feels like, our answer this week is: renting a movie from Netflix, at ten dollars a month, and not having seen it fifteen months later.
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My favorite image of the week is Sava washing his poopy underpants after a small 'incident'--

Yew......It got on my fingers, mommy!
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It was a relatively uneventful week, if we don't count reflux and vomit as events, which I suppose we no longer do. Sava had four slices of pizza last weekend--the most he has ever had--and this week he vomited one breakfast and three dinners. Not one dinner, but three. Much as we'd like to wish his allergies away, and even though he is able to handle small amounts of the offending foods, more than a bit still hurls him way over the edge of normalcy. His symptoms have morphed over the years, just as the GI had warned us, and he now gets massive head congestion, as well as the good old reflux, triggered by simple things such as mucus in the lungs. A congested Sava lying in bed with mucus in his chest after a nice dinner equals long minutes of coughing, followed by the inevitable vomit. Thankfully, potties do well at catching all sorts of bodily excretions.

Not feeling well meant lots of playtime at home when not in school; he's really figured out how to build the marble mazes:

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And, even so, we still managed a couple of outings to parks.

 Cuesta Park

After years of feeling intimidated by them, Sava is slowly starting to feel comfortable with the "big boy" swings; he won't sit in them for long, but he likes to ride them on his belly--

He feels victorious whenever he masters a new climbing structure, which is no easy feat for his apprehensive nature--

And much of the time when we are in parks, he likes to just hang out and watch other people; that's how our boy learns--by watching others do something for a long time before he will attempt it himself; he'd rarely try anything unless he is sure that he'll succeed in it, which is unlike many other kids his age; we've learned, after many hours of watching him, not to push him to do anything until he feels ready to attempt it; doing otherwise is a recipe for conflict--

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In the world of Raya, watching Sava, being held by someone, or riding in the stroller still count as the bulk of her life experiences;

She rather enjoys the back seat of the phil-n-ted, which has to be the most ineptly designed expensive stroller ever (Rado says she looks like a little nun with her white lacy hat)--

She is her usual refluxy, now-I'll-eat-now-I-won't kind of girl, but her smiles and her irrepressible giggles whenever we look at her funny--let alone tickle or snuggle her--make it all worth it; such a doll.
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In our pile of books on the floor this week, a number of great new finds. Snow by Uri Shulevitz is a dreamy half-fantastical account of, well, snow, or a snowy day. For a boy who's never clapped his eyes on snow, Sava has certainly read a lot about it. In this book he likes pointing to the individual snowflakes, as snow begins to fall one snowflake after another.
Another book we all have enjoyed is What Do You Do With a Tail Like This? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page. It's a nonfictional account of various animal body parts, which serve quirky, unconventional functions: the platypus digs mud with his mouth, the cricket listens with his knees, the scorpion bites with his tail, etc. Smart and informative and engaging.
Just the last two nights we've also been reading The Gardener by Sarah Stewart and David Small. It's the first "epistolary" picture book Sava has read, written from the perspective of a little girl who goes to the city to live with her surly baker uncle, because her own father and mother have lost their jobs and no longer have the means to support her (Sava especially likes it that she travels to the city by train). While she learns to bake, Lydia Grace indulges her passion for gardening and creates a profusion of color in the city. Hard to tell yet what Sava likes about it, but he seems entranced.
Ella Sarah Gets Dressed by Margaret Chodos-Irvine tells the story of a little girl who dresses in wildly mismatched clothes despite her family's loud protestations. And Kindergarten Rocks! by Katie Davis has managed to give Sava some reasons to look forward to kindergarten, despite his overwhelming anxiety about it.
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This week I had my first parent-teacher conference ever, with teacher Michelle. In the little report she gave me, she had written: "Sava always comes over to comfort other children or to show concern about what has happened. He is eager to help at clean up time and asks others to join in. Sava has also found his voice and will stand up for himself as well as others in the classroom." If someone can tell us the same things about our son when he is twenty-one--treats others with compassion, does his duty and encourages others to do the same, stands up for himself and others--we will consider our stint as parents to have been a wild success.