Sunday Slivers 4/17/11: Four

(Warning: picture overload)
We sent off my mom today, and for the first time in eighteen months we are home alone--just the four of us--without the prospect of a grandparent coming to live with us in the next few months. We knew this was coming, and we've prepared in all sorts of small and bigger ways, but tonight it still feels strange to imagine a tomorrow without the smell of grandma's coffee in the morning, without the dinner dishes put away before we have even woken up, and without an extra pair of eyes watching Raya to keep her from racing down the stairs/gouging her eyes on an edge/drowning in the toilet/climbing on the window/you-imagine-it-she's-done-it while I prepare breakfast or make a pee.

  A ritual of our airport trips, which Raya today enjoyed for the first time: riding the Red Line of the Airtrain for a full loop before heading home. They're sitting in the front car, looking straight at the tracks while zooming around the airport. Seriously cool.

 

We've been very lucky to have had free help for so many months, and from the most loving source possible--the grandparents. True to our Eastern European roots, we take our parents' assistance for granted while feeling immensely thankful, but true to the immigrant spirit which drove us to venture life on a new continent, we feel it is time to try this whole family-of-four roller coaster on our own.

So, tonight's slivers will be a meditation on good happenings, as we recharge for a week of novelty. The novelty of only the four of us.
*****

At lunch today Sava declared: 
Tati, I like fancy things better than just things.
In the conversation that followed, it became clear that he meant exactly what he said. He likes fancy rather than simple. He is one of those people, he said, who prefer fancy things.

Ahem. It won't be too long before he realizes he was born into the wrong family, which worships at the altar of simplicity. Then what?
*****

Raya has a new friend. Phoebe, who moved into our neighborhood only a month or so ago, is less than a month older than Raya. We all visited a fancy spring garden, where the most fun thing everyone did, thanks to Sava's initiative, was to drop tiny gravel stones into a drain full of water and hear them go, in Sava's words, kerplop. Worth every bit of the $15 admission fee.

 

Our little girl loves to name people, and she is more than ready to have some friends. She calls Phoebe "Heebe," and knows all of Sava's friends' names, as well as the names of their parents and siblings. She'll even tell us, when informed that we are going to a park, who she'd like to meet when she gets there: Eidi! Eidi! Eidi! for Heidi, with an expression of uncontainable excitement, or some such...

 

She pronounces almost all names perfectly, except that she insists on calling Rado "Dado" and Sava "Hawa."

If we are out and about, and I stop to speak to a stranger, she comes over with the speed of light, grabs hold of a pant leg or a sleeve, and begins shouting: "Yaya! Yaya! Yaya!," followed by, "Mommy! Mommy! Elle! Elle!" in what is without a doubt her effort to introduce herself and her significant others to anyone who might not know us.

I wouldn't call it exactly play, but she and Sava are starting to engage with each other more and more. Given her reckless impetuosity, it might be months or years before we can leave them together in a room without worrying that she will hurt herself or him, but it is still nice to witness the changing dynamic.

And yes, among other fancy things, Sava really loves flowers. He is becoming increasingly aware of "gender-appropriate" things, and will often say, as if to test my response and see whether his observation is correct, things like, Mommy, boys don't like pink. To which my reply, and Rado's, invariably is, Well, many boys don't like pink, but some do, and that is perfectly alright.

 

For his birthday crown at school he picked a huge glittery stickers with princesses, and I witnessed an exchange with a good friend of his, which went something like this: 

Other boy: Yew...Sava! Boys don't like princesses!

Sava: Ummm....

I stepped in immediately, of course, and assured Sava that it was perfectly great for him to put pink princesses on his bright red crown, and that princesses are not the exclusive property of girls, but the episode left me with a small pit in my stomach. I hope we are able to give him the confidence as he grows up that our boy can be whatever and whoever he feels like being. That four-year olds should be made self-conscious about gender stereotypes created and marketed by a ruthless and self-serving entertainment industry infuriates me as much as it makes me sad. 

 Now is the time for them to play. Now is the time for them to imagine freely being someone else.

*****

One of the things that most deserves space on this blog right now is Raya's unbelievably fast language development, but so much is happening so quickly that I feel daunted at the prospect of describing it. The What to Expect book that so many people make fun of, and that I crack open about once every two or three months, notes that by eighteen months, your child "may even" have 50+ words. Well, ours definitely does. She has a wide range of verbs, many many nouns, and as of today, seems to recognize black, brown, and white colors. She puts two or three words together, as in "tati...socks...none...buy!", to describe the fact that her dad is barefoot and she believes he needs new socks, and she'll repeat anything she hears that her little tongue can articulate. Her words are mostly Bulgarian, but there are several words which, if she hears someone say them in English, she will immediately translate them in Bulgarian to show that she understands what we are discussing. She understands absolutely everything, and will follow at least two-step instructions, often more. It's mind-blowing, really....A year ago this time she was a blob. Today she is a semi-articulate, fully communicative human being. 

Oh, and our favorite, which we hear on average five-hundred thirty-two times a day (I kid you not) is, "Yappi! Yappi! Yappi!", frequently shouted in a most desperate voice, to indicate "Raya, please!". It started as, "Yaya peeez!", morphed into "Yapeez!", and now she has figured out that there is no need to waste breath and say the whole thing, because everyone knows that "Yappi!" means she wants that thing in your hand this very second, and don't you dare think about not giving it to her.

*****

We have a problem with the Easter Bunny, not unlike our problem with Santa. We find the bugger a bit creepy. We don't know how hunting for eggs hidden by a bunny has anything to do with a religious holiday, and we don't celebrate the religious holiday anyway. We cringe at the look and feel of plastic eggs, and we dislike the idea of stuffing the eggs with candy or, even worse, useless trinkets.

Problem is, Sava loves hunting for eggs, and now it appears that Raya does, too. 

In typical American fashion, where holidays routinely wear off their welcome before they have even arrived, what with gaudy decorations, Disney impersonations, and marketing ploys to make one spend at any cost, we "celebrated" Easter this weekend a week early by going to not one, but two egg hunts. First in downtown Los Altos, and next in Sava's friend's house. 

The first had one saving grace, which was the injunction by the town of Los Altos that every child was entitled to only five eggs. There were eggs everywhere on Main and State, so the temptation to take not five, but twenty-five, was great. I was amazed at how amiably Sava and Raya behaved when I told them to stop collecting after they had gathered five, and I thought a lot afterwards about ethnic stereotyping, having to be one of three parents who chastised a mother who was encouraging her school-age kid to load up on eggs

after he had already collected at least two dozen. 

I think all the time about how to keep my chlidren from making any assumptions about people based on their gender, or color, or race, and this little episode left me very worried. There is nothing worse than witnessing a person act out every bit of the stereotype that I'd resist applying to them and that I'd hate to see my children presuming about them also.

As for the house hunt and the egg-coloring...words can't convey the hilarity of the experience. Suffice it to say that there was lots of flitting about the garden, peering in bushes, creeping under lemon trees, exclaiming over the next great find.

Best moment? When Lily and Sava dove for one of the last eggs, hidden in a bush, and came out of it holding one half of the egg each. The look of profound sadness on Sava's face speaks volumes. Lily generously let him have it.

 "There are more, guys!" "Where?? Where??"

 Look! Kyle got a jelly bean! 

They did engage in some highly creative, educational activities also...

*****

After illness last week, today we also fulfilled the second half of Sava's birthday, which was a kite-flying party with some of his friends; it was Sava's first time flying a kite, and he did a darn good job of it.

 

 

*****

And lastly, some pictures especially for grandma. This was Raya after we woke her up to take grandma to the airport. These were taken as the two of them talked, and Raya's face shows the bond of deep affection that developed between the two of them over the last three months: 

Happy new week, everyone.