Four random observations from the weekend:
Grumpy children (or teenagers) can fill up space like little else.
Sleep is not overrated. Sleep is not so easy to get enough of.
Family is rich, complicated and holds magnetic qualities.
Getting around on a bicycle is fun.
**
Saturday held some major grumps here, there and not everywhere, enough that I hope for a grump-free Sunday. Dear husband is going to see the Red Sox and so I am due some smiling happiness.
My eight year-old can get into a funk like no others and yesterday, it turned out that Yahtzee helped cure him of the down-and-out mood. Besides, as has been proven before, Yahtzee’s a very addictive pastime. You can print your own score pads (thank you, magical Internet). I have this great idea now to print them in different sizes or fonts or on colored paper and get some nutty dice for a much hipper DIY Yahtzee game.
Sometimes, when the moods are miserable around here (as can happen), I go to a favorite line in a Lui Collins’ song and just hold it in my consciousness: the only way out is through.
Sometimes, I remind myself that the Three Good Things approach does help us shift our minds and moods (ultimately) around and I make myself—in the midst of someone else’s funk—come up with the good. The more you practice noting three good things, the easier it gets (I kid you not).
**
The elder teen and I went to get some sleep counsel on Friday. Beth Haxby educated us, brainstormed, and gave us two things we needed: a sense of what to strive for and a lot of empathy. We left after an hour with her equipped (information, ideas for alarm clocks that might actually work for an overtired teen), some goals and some tools—and encouragement.
Reminding me that getting help is a smart thing to do. Reminding me that sleep is an uphill battle in a culture that’s become so enamored with the 24/7-ness of everything (no thanks to you, Internet).
**
We (the parents) took Saskia to meet up with her family for supper—midway, dinner with Caroline, grandparents (although to Saskia right now everyone’s a grandparent except for cousins, a concept she totally gets), aunt, uncle, cousins—and it was so nice to see them all. Saskia started off shy and then relaxed into some center stage performing.
As her awareness grows about adoption and this family that is hers, I realize—because it’s all a process—that her family is our family because we are her family and the in-law analogy kind of holds: we didn’t know the family before they became family, but family they are and that’s kind of exciting. The great bonus I always feel when I see cousins I just like is this: wow, they are kind of mine.
I was reminded of that last evening. I felt grateful to Saskia for making our life richer (more complicated, sure, but ultimately richer).
She really grooved on her cousin, Adam (no wonder: like her brother when he’s cheery, a kinetic, playful bigger kid is pretty much the bomb) for a kinetic, playful smaller kid.
**
Although there is too much paperwork in modern life (requiring, amongst other things, a desperate trip to the copy store to copy health forms and insurance cards and such), getting to the copy store on a bicycle is a pleasure.
In other bicycle news, Saskia was bequeathed a purple (“my favorite color—and pink, too”) two-wheeler from Naomi’s daughters (thank you!) and now she just wants to grow bigger in order to ride it. Naomi’s kids are terribly quotable, so much so that Saskia must aspire to their eloquence and quirkiness along with their bicycle riding abilities.
**
Three good things: seven hours of sleep, cutting into a delicious cantaloupe, reading this account of a time capsule recovered.
