Sunday Slivers, 8/21/11: Perspective

blackberries along Stevens Creek Trail

On at least half a dozen occasions this week, I had opportunity to reflect on the fact that the small unpredictable things which most exasperate about parenting are often hilarious if one switches perspective at just the right moment. The only blogger whose writing I read regularly and admire deeply, digthischick, wrote about similar stuff some time in the last month or so.

overpass along Stevens Creek Trail, overlooking the highway

For instance, it drives me nuts that each time we head for the door, Raya vociferously follows Sava about, checking out what shoes he'll put on. If he is barefoot and pulls out his crocs, she has to take off her socks and take out her crocs; if he puts on socks and chooses the sneakers, she yells at me to come over and put on her socks and then rushes to find her sneakers; and if he changes his mind mid-way, just to tease her, then both she and I go simultaneously ballistic. I am inclined to chastise her for being such a copy cat, but if I catch myself at just the right moment, it helps tremendously to make a joke about it all.

not-for-climbing wall along Stevens Creek Trail

Or...I momentarily want to cry when Raya asks for a blackberry during our hike, which briefly awakens a flickering hope that the girl is perhaps finally ready to try out a real fruit, instead of a pureed one, and she takes the blackberry, squeezes it, then hands it back to me with a sour face, but wipes her purplish hands in her brand-new hand-me-down sweater hoodie before she is completely done. Then I look at her sweet soured face which is already checking out the next distraction on the trail, and it pays to remember that this is just a sweater, and we don't much care about clothes around here anyway.

reward at end of hike along Stevens Creek Trail: a playground!

Or...I want to howl at the moon when I find out that the bickering coming from the living room just as I scramble to prepare a healthy nutritious dinner has been triggered by arguments over who gets to play with a tiny yellow rubber duck, which Raya got as part of her doll's package. It's a yellow rubber duck like any other yellow rubber duck, but it is smaller than all three other yellow rubber ducks we own, and both children are suddenly fascinated with it. So, I pause for ten minutes in the middle of dinner preparations, as I try help negotiate the possession and handling of Tiny Yellow Rubber Duck. Then, just as I am wondering whether to laugh or cry, it makes all the difference in the world to laugh.

Or...as we warn Sava not to tickle his sister on the way upstairs to bed because, when worked up, she takes forever to fall asleep, and he does exactly what we have told him not to do, from which she immediately collapses in fits of laughter, four out of five times we want to yell at Sava. But if, just at the right moment, we catch ourselves, we seize an opportunity to witness an indescribably tender sibling moment.

The list goes on and on, but the moral of the story is always the same: it pays to change perspective, to put on different glasses, to visualize the earth as a ball in space, and to zoom in on ourselves as the specks of dust we are. Life is short, and annoyance is a wasteful one-way mental state. At least ninety percent of the time, kids are hilarious, rather than exasperating, and our annoyance, however momentary, is completely lost on them.

*****

 This week we finally attended our town's Thursday Night Live, and this is the sort of energy we found:

Raya wanted to dance, too, but her mama didn't calibrate the new camera properly (note the crisp images in the background, and the blurry dancing kid, jumping too fast for the camera's slow speed).

Much better when standing still:

Sava was terrified of looking close up at the open engines of antique cars, so dad had to hold him up and explain from a distance. (He is holding a ragged American flag stuck on an orange straw, which he insisted on bringing to our walk.)

They petted a chinchilla for the first time:

And mommy took a darn good picture without a flashlight in a funky Mexican restaurant with nice ambient light.

*****
Raya, let's play choo-choo train!

 Here, I'll show you how!

Raya, do you want to play Wiggle Fall in my bed?

 Raya, do you want to play house?

 *****
Sava is starting to become wary of the camera, clearly discomfited if I pull it out in the middle of playing or doing something fun, so I am looking for ways to become more invisible, and in the meantime giving him as much space as he needs. I was the kid who is scowling on every photo between roughly ages five and twenty-five, so I empathize with him fully. But...he is one of my two favorite photo subjects, so compromises will need to be worked out.

I am also exploiting the couple of years left before Raya begins to resent picture-taking, too. The light outside has been very forgiving for a novice.

She desperately needs a haircut.

*****
Sava loves flowers, and this is neither an overstatement nor an accurate expression of just how much he enjoys flowers and how often he seeks them out whenever we go outside.

So this week, after a day that seemed to leave him a bit sad and tense for reasons that we could sense but that he could not articulate, we took him to a nursery to pick some flowers for the backyard.

He chose pansies.

We will put those next to a row of pots that we planted with radishes, carrots, salad, and beets about ten days ago, and that are all sprouting and growing like crazy.
*****

Wishing everyone a good new week.