Letters from Lucy

Remember there is no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end. - Scot Adams

This past week was a rough one. As I've written before, our family is prone to stomach viruses, which is all sorts of awesome. And last week was an especially brutal one. It started on Sunday night, when Noni spent the whole night throwing up. Then Lucy and Toby got it. (Snapshot of our family at midnight: Lucy throws up in the hallway. Toby gets up to throw up in the toilet and wipes out on Lucy's vomit.) Then Evie got it. For some reason they all managed to get sick at night, right after I had drifted off to sleep, so I spent three nights up all night and washing sheets and towels all day the next day. When I finally got sick on Sunday morning, I was actually just relieved because, unless our cat comes down with it, we have finally moved on from this nasty virus.

At any rate, about mid-week last week I sort of forgot that my life consisted of anything but washing vomity towels and comforting sick kids. When you're sleep deprived and stuck in the house all week, you start to lose perspective. (Note: I would be horrible as the mom in Room.) But just when I was feeling overwhelmed with fatigue and laundry burn-out, Lucy started leaving notes around the house for me. She left a note for me to "Loc on the fireplas", where she left me a drawing of a cardinal, my favorite bird. Then I found a note on the kitchen counter wishing me a "good morning!!!" She left goodnight notes in my bed and drawings on my desk.

Lucy began to read and write last year, but this year she's suddenly at the point where both are less of a struggle and starting to be fun. As a result, she's taken up more of an interest in doing both at home. Her timing couldn't be better. Her notes to me got me through the week. They also reminded me that being up for a week with sick kids is a small price to pay for all of the joy that they bring to my life.

Good night my mom, I love you.

(For some reason I can't get my photos to fully display on my blog - the right side always gets cropped off. Working on that!)

Lucy's Invitation

Most of you have probably seen this already on Facebook, but for those that haven't, I had to include it here as well. This is a photo of Lucy's invitation for Toby for a father's day breakfast/show at her school. She explained the photo to me as "a picture of me and Daddy and Daddy wants beer so Noni is selling beer." (Daddy to the left, Lucy in the middle, Noni with the beer...) Christine commented on the expressions that Lu captured - Toby does look like he needs a beer in the picture. And I loved Karen's rescripting of the caption as, "Noni, get daddy some beer NOW before he BLOWS!"

Update: My little mermaid

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Lucy learning to swim. I wrote, "I just want her to be able to swim to the side of the pool if she falls in. Though I'll admit that what I'd really love is for her to jump into the pool fearlessly once again - only this time to resurface from her jump and swim to the other side." My friend Erin read my post and wrote a response, suggesting that we try The Jim Herrick Swim School (http://www.jimherrickswimschool.com/) instead of the Y. We made the switch. Lucy's had all of three twenty minute lessons there and I swear I should be their new spokesperson. Today I watched her swim from one side of the pool to the other, lifting her head up to breathe, with no help at all from the instructor. She can swim! Los Angeles summer pool play dates here we come!

The art of parenting from sink to swim

My mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, "Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim." - Paula Poundstone

Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old. - R.W. Emerson

Two summers ago, we rented a house in Duck, North Carolina with some friends from Maryland. The girls were in heaven spending a week with three of their best friends at a house near the beach, with a pool in the back to boot. Evie and the two older kids all knew how to swim and immediately took to showing off for each other the craziest ways to jump into the pool. Lucy floated in the pool with a life jacket and watched them for the first couple of days. Then she decided that she'd had enough of feeling left out. So one afternoon she jumped into the pool. And started to drown. Toby immediately jumped in, fully clothed, and rescued her. The next day she did the same thing all over again. The image of Lucy's face staring up from the water will never leave me. I have nightmares about it still. I never realized drowning would be so silent, but it was. She didn't splash or make a sound, just looked up with huge eyes, terrified, and started sinking.

When we got back from North Carolina that summer, I decided that Lucy needed to learn how to swim. I signed her up for swim lessons that fall, but understandably she wasn't thrilled at the idea of walking in from the freezing cold into the moderately cold "bubble", or basically tent over Hood College's pool, and learning how to swim while shivering and with her arms covered in goosebumps. I decided that a bad experience might turn her off and put my swimming goals for her on hold for the time being. I wasn't too worried about drowning anyway since the only water she regularly encountered was in the bath tub.

Fast forward to this past summer, a move to southern California, and my drowning fears resurfaced. We live in a city where you can swim outdoors almost year round. Almost all of her friends from school have swimming pools. And that little girl who jumped into the deep end without even knowing how to swim? Well, she's decided that she'd actually rather stay on the side of the pool or attached to a floatie from now on.

One of the first things I did after we moved to L.A. was to sign the girls up for group lessons at the Y. Lucy refused to go in. After deciding that the number of kids might be intimidating her, I signed her up for private swimming lessons. She refused those at first as well, but then bargained that she'd go if Evie took lessons too. So, to Evie's delight, she spends twenty minutes every Wednesday with an instructor in the pool. In eight weeks, Evie has learned how to dive, swim the butterfly, do flip turns, somersault backwards and forwards, and collect all of the rings underwater without coming up for breath. Lucy, on the other hand, is improving at a slower rate. As in only the instructor and I can tell there's been any improvement at all.

I'm seven years into this whole parenting thing and I feel pretty confident overall. But every once and a while a situation comes up where I question my own approach. I have tried bribes ("any toy you want if you can swim to me"), threats ("no more playdates if you don't try to swim"), sheer frustration ("Lucy, come ON, just TRY it") and I've even contemplated just a good old fashioned toss off the side to see if she could make it. I've finally settled on encouragement. When I say encouragement, I mean both to Lucy and myself. After two months of lessons, Lucy has gone from refusing to get in the water at first to now pushing from the wall to me, if I am close enough that she can reach out her hand and grab my arm without even moving from the wall. I am encouraging her each time with applause for even the tiniest of efforts. I am also whispering words of encouragement to myself. My normal dialogue? "You're doing a good job parenting. This is the right approach! Be patient. It'll happen!" I try to remind myself that she is not refusing to swim out of obstinance but out of fear, and that helps a bit with the whole patience part of it on my end.

In most situations, I would give both of us a break and decide that she's just not ready and try again another month, another year. Lucy doesn't want to bike? That's fine for now. Not ready to play in a soccer game? She was probably too young anyway. But swiming is a must. I can't give up on her and I can't let her give up either. I suppose learning to swim could serve as a metaphor for all things in life since the only thing that is holding her back is the fear that is keeping her from trying. I'm trying my best to help her get to the point where she's confident enough to give it her best shot. I don't care if she can ever swim the butterfly or the backstroke. I just want her to be able to swim to the side of the pool if she falls in. Though Ill admit that what I'd really love is for her to jump into the pool fearlessly once again - only this time to resurface from her jump and swim to the other side.

Remembering

"The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones..."
- Billy Collins

When Lucy was three, Evie was learning about silent vowels in school. She had overheard us talking about them and one day she lay down on the floor and twisted around in a way that looked nothing like an "E" and announced to me, "Look, I'm an E!" I looked skeptical and told her I didn't quite see it. "Well mommy," she said patiently, "That's because I'm a silent E."

I love that story because it is quintessential Lucy, but the only reason I remember it is that today I looked through my old Yahoo blog, a blog where I occasionally jotted down a story or two about the girls just for the purpose of remembering them. It's funny how many stories we have like that about our kids - stories that we can't imagine forgetting, but that are soon replaced in our brains by something entirely mundane like a grocery list. There are so many things I swear I'll remember even as time goes by - the way they say certain words, the expressions that they make - but often they blend together with other memories so that can't remember which girl did what. My friend Natasha sent me the Billy Collins poem I quoted above today and it inspired me to write down a couple things that the girls have done recently that I want to remember before they head off to that fishing village in my brain.

I want to remember how Noni says "no" for yes. I'm wondering if this will ever change, since it completely works for her. Toby, Lucy, Evie and I all know that if she responds to "Do you want a banana?" with a "no" in a slightly Canadian accent, she means yes. If she shakes her head or yells, "NO!", she actually means it.

At 17 months, she's also at that stage where she can say a lot of words, but most of them are indecipherable to people outside her family. "S" is generally pronounced as a "D" such as "dower" and "doap". Her favorite song is "happy birthday" (Yes, now I can actually say I know her favorite song! See October's blog entry: "Noni, part time model") and she regularly sings it to anyone. She doesn't quite have the words down, it's more about the tune. It's also nothing a million babies haven't done before - Mozart was probably playing "happy birthday" on the piano by the time he was her age - but we still find it so brilliant and cute that we make her sing it over and over again.

Another thing we make her repeat over and over again is her animal noises. The girls love going through the list with her and get frustrated when Noni tires of it before they do. They'll sit next to her in the back of the car asking over and over, "C'mon Noni, what's an owl say? An owl? I know you know it. An owl?" Speaking of animal noises, the other day I found her sitting on top of our poor tortured cat yelling, "Neigh, cat, neigh!"

Probably what Noni says most of all though is, "Wa Dada?" ("Where's dada?"). She started this one night at dinner when Toby wasn't home yet.
Noni: "Wa Dada?"
Evie, Lucy or I: "At work."
Noni: "Oooooh."
She did this so many times that it started to be funny. Eventually we just laughed when she asked. Now she will ask it again and again just to get a laugh.

With Lucy, I want to remember her skipping down the road when we went camping in Malibu the other weekend. She skipped and ran on ahead of us until she came to a fork in the road. At that point, she turned around and yelled back to us, "Which way do I go?!"
"Right!" Toby yelled back.
She paused a minute. And then, "Which way is right?!"

I also want to remember the way Lucy can be overly candid without even realizing it. The other day, I convinced her to talk to her grandmother on the phone for her birthday. Usually she is reluctant to get on the phone, but once she started talking, she chatted on and on for about half an hour. Then suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, she asked, "Gram, how much longer do I have to keep talking?" Fortunately her grandmother found this hilarious. Again, I just love how it was so typically Lucy.

As for Evie, she's entered a new stage where she's not as likely to say something that is funny because it is such a different, purely child-like interpretation of the world, but she is young enough (and hopefully always will be) to have kept that same level of enthusiasm for life. When I think of her at this age, I'll remember her dancing the pata-pata for Nid and Tiggy at Tiggy's house, spending hours creating something (anything - a cardboard house for a Littlest Petshop, thank you letters for the Troll at Peek's house, or, as I write this, a complicated snack made from graham crackers, peanut butter, raisins, Cheerios, sugar and cinnamon), playing an imaginary game with friends in the tree house or pulling up her knee socks as high as they can go and urging me to hurry up because we might be late for school.

There are a few things that I will gladly release to that fishing village part of my brain - the hours of constant cleaning (see snack mentioned above), the nights of not sleeping, the frustration that comes with tantrums and talking back. But for all the good stuff, I'm glad that I have this blog to help me remember the things that are too important to forget.