Nine

This weekend, three of Evie's fourth-grade girl friends came over for a sleepover party to celebrate Evie's ninth birthday. As Toby wrote, it was heartwarming after so many moves to see Evie enjoying close friends. As I watched Evie and her friends take over the house with their energy and laughter and excitement, I couldn't help but think how nine and ten are such wonderful ages. They switch back and forth seamlessly from tweeny ("Oh my God, did you Selena Gomez's outfit on Wizard's of Waverly Place?" "I know! It was soooooo cute!" "Totally. She has the best clothes.") to child-like ("Hey, do you guys want to climb the tree in our front yard?" "Yes! And let's pretend we're bears." "Okay, I'm the mom bear! You can be the sister bear...") They care deeply for their friends, but they haven't yet hit the stage of cutting down other girls to attempt to boost their own self-esteem (Can we skip that stage?). I also love that Evie is at an age where we can have more adult conversations. Last night, she and Toby discussed the Revolutionary War at dinner. On the way to school this morning, she and I talked about what we like about our favorite books.

Two weeks ago, the fires brought out all of our photo albums and, now that they're out, we've been looking them over. There's Evie with short curly hair heading off to preschool and Evie, gap-toothed, playing the piano. We couldn't believe how young she looked when Noni was born or when we left Frederick. All of these photos do make me nostalgic, but when I think about what a great stage she's in now, it makes watching her grow up a little easier.

Full Circle

This morning, while I take the car to the mechanic, my eight-year-old daughter will be watching the changing of the guards. I had written before about my dad's plan to take Evie to London (nearly twenty-five years to the day from the day his mother took me on the same trip), and on Sunday evening I dropped the two of them off at the airport and they were on their way. I expected that when I watched Evie walking through the sliding glass doors, wearing a backpack full of books, a travel journal, and her stuffed "Bubby" and dragging her suitcase behind her, I would feel both sadness and a moment of anxiety at sending her off overseas. Instead, I found myself simply excited for her. Well, that and maybe a little envious.

I talked to Evie yesterday via Skype and she had slept for nearly the whole flight over, taken a ride on the London Eye, and was heading out for fish'n'chips. My dad emailed me today to let me know that she gone to bed at 8:30 London time last night and was still asleep eleven hours later. Today, their plan was to head to Churchill's bunker, the changing of the guards, and the British Museum.

As one of three kids, Evie rarely gets any one-on-one attention. One day this spring I left Lucy and Noni home with Toby while I walked to get Evie from school. On the half mile walk back from school, Evie turned to me and said, "It's nice to get some alone time together like this." Even fifteen minutes of it was special to her. Clearly we need to make more of an effort to have some time alone with each of the girls. This is why I love that Evie is having a whole week right now with just my dad. He began his email today saying that "Evie is a great traveling buddy!" I love that for this week, she can walk through a museum at her own pace (which, as Christine wrote here, can a much different pace than her little sisters') and have an adult's undivided attention.

I also love that Evie is making memories right now that will last her a lifetime. I still have distinct memories from my own trip twenty-five years ago and a photo album full of pictures of me and my grandmother, in our matching beige trench coats, touring England.

Before they left for their trip, my dad found some pounds he had saved in a pile of money in his drawer. He brought them with him on his trip, but when he presented them at the restaurant, the waiter laughed. "We can't take those. You're going to have to bring them to a bank. They're at least twenty-five years old." And that's when he realized that they had been saved from the trip my grandmother took me on all those years ago.

Evie's Smile

When I complain that I haven't had a very productive day, my mom will respond to me, "Well, the girls grew up a little bit today." And it's true. My job right now is to raise them and every day they get a little bit older... and hopefully I help them to grow a little bit wiser too. In the frenzy of laundry and meals and soccer practices and homework, weeks and sometimes even months can go by where I don't notice that time has passed and the girls are growing up. Then something happens with one of them -- a first word, a lost tooth, a swim across the pool, a new haircut -- and it hits me that the snuggly, toothless and clueless baby that I brought home from the hospital is long gone.

I had a moment like that with Evie today. I picked her up from school early and dropped her off at the orthodontist's. An hour and a half later, Lucy, Noni and I picked up an Evie with a whole new smile. She was still wearing pigtails. Also? She still jumps up and down when she's excited about something and she still believes in the Easter Bunny. And yet...

This is still Evie to me.

Only now, she looks like this!

Evie and Grampa Nid's London Adventure

When I was eleven years old, my grandmother took me to London. We traveled with her friend Jo and her friend's eleven-year-old son, Walker, who at eleven already had his own private jet and surprised me one afternoon, when the two of us wandered through a small countryside town while our grandmothers slept, by pulling out cash and nonchalantly buying a bike to be shipped back to Pennsylvania. I have so many wonderful memories from that trip. We saw Agatha Christie's Mousetrap, Starlight Express and Daisy Pulls it Off; we hit all the tourist hot spots of course (Big Ben, The Tower of London, etc.); I tasted wine for the first time at a Medieval dinner where they reenacted King Henry's fairly horrifying life; I saw people with mohawks and died purple hair; we traveled to Beatrix Potter's home; and I met several relatives who all told me that I had a funny accent.

I think my grandmother probably had a good time too, except that the first day we arrived her wallet was stolen on the way to see Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. We ended up spending several hours at the police station, which was thrilling to me, but probably not so exciting for her at the time. Then we rented a car that wouldn't turn left and it turned out that my grandmother's friend was a crazy driver, proper steeling wheel or not. A few days into the trip, my grandmother started to develop a nervous tick. I give my grandmother, who has always had a good sense of both humor and adventure, a lot of credit for taking me to London with her. But as for the rest of the grandchildren? They were on their own if they were going to make it to Europe.

Which brings me to my dad who, two years ago decided to relive the tradition by bringing my niece with him to Germany. And, to his credit, this year he is stepping up again to bring Evie to London. She is beyond thrilled. England, of course, is no longer the land of Beatrix Potter. A new Potter has taken over that role and suddenly the London Zoo is not just any old zoo, but the zoo where the snake talked to Harry! And Gloucester Cathedral is not just some old church, but is where Harry learned magic at the Hogwarts School! For Evie, who dove into each Harry Potter book and didn't resurface until she finished, going to see those sights is a dream come true. Of course, she doesn't want to just stop there. As soon as my dad finalized the plans, in true Evie fashion, she went straight to the internet, googled London, and began checking off all the sights she wanted to see. The next day, she returned from school with three books about London and began pouring through them. I'm pretty sure my dad is not going to have to do much planning - Evie has the whole trip mapped out and they're going to be busy.

I have no idea what type of adventures they'll encounter on their trip this June. Hopefully they won't spend any time in the police station or rent a broken car. But I do know that Evie will remember it forever. As to whether or not my dad will still be taking the trips by the time Noni turns eight, time will only tell.

Leapin' Lizards: The brief story of Bindi

As I mentioned before, two weeks ago, Evie got a lizard for her birthday. She had been asking, begging really, for a lizard for at least a month before that, claiming that she wanted one more than anything. She was willing to help pay for it with her allowance. She would clean the cage, feed it, play with it daily. She just really, really wanted one. She needed a lizard. Please, please, pleeeeeaaassse. And so, Bindi the lizard came to live with us.

Then, the next day, Evie decided that she actually didn't want a pet lizard.

To be fair, it was probably partly my fault. I let her hold Bindi on the way home from picking her up. Evie was so excited about her new pet and the lizard actually even looked a little bit sweet lying there on Evie's shirt, so I decided that it sounded like a good idea for her to bond with her on the ride home. It wasn't until we were driving down the highway, with the girls squished together in one seat to make room for the lizard cage, and with the lizard UNDER THE BRAKE that i realized that, um, it was really a bad, bad, bad idea. Evie started screaming, then I started screaming and pretty soon you could no longer hear Michael Jackon singing Beat It for the 50th time that day. After an initial moment of freaking out, I fortunately came to my senses, put on the hazards, pulled the car over and pulled the emergency brake, avoiding the choice between a car crash or squashing Bindi.

While all safely walked away from the Bindi brake incident, Evie's relationship with her was forever altered. After Evie put her in the cage for the rest of the ride home, she decided that she pretty much never wanted to have her out of the cage again. She was scared Bindi would run away. I apologized for my mistake of letting her hold her in the car, explained that escaping in the house wouldn't be such a big deal, and watched as Toby worked with her on feeling comfortable about holding Bindi again. Still, she said she didn't want to play with her out of the cage anymore. And so, as we drove to the pet store to buy more crickets, I started wondering exactly what was the point of having a lizard.

But you know what? Sometimes life just has a way of working itself out. The next day at the gym, I ran into a friend who told me that she was just thinking of us because the night before she'd been looking for bearded dragons on Craig's List. I'm not sure if a thought bubble and lightbulb actually appeared over my head, but suddenly I found myself telling her to wait a few days before buying a lizard. When I told my idea to Evie at home, she became teary, explaining that she really loved Bindi, but then decided on her own that giving her away would be the right choice for everyone.

Today, we brought Bindi to her new home. Her new owner was a lizard last year for Halloween. (Actually a robot lizard, but that's being technical.) He took Bindi out and held her as soon as we brought her over. His mom, who is not squeamish at all about lizards, is taking her to the vet tomorrow for a check up. I can confidently say she is in a better place.

And so, we are back to being a family of two parents, three kids, and a cat. We're less exotic than we were this morning, but I have to say, I kind of like us that way.

Creepy crawly creatures, and it's not even Halloween

Evie at our neighbor's house in LA - with a snail on her nose

When Evie was two years old, she was terrified of bugs. The most innocent looking fly sitting on the slide at the playground would send her into hysterics. I figured that she would grow out of it one day and wasn't too worried about her phobia, but then people in the DC area started talking about the cicadas. Apparently, that spring, from the way people talked about it, millions and billions of cicadas would take over the city. One friend remembered from her childhood that she couldn't even swing a tennis racket without hitting at least one cicada. It occurred to me that if Evie freaked out at a mere fruit fly, a whole city covered in bugs would probably land her in therapy for the rest of her life.

On a drive down to visit my sister in Asheville, I explained this issue to my mom and told her that I had to do something about it and there wasn't a lot of time. We decided to write a book to help Evie understand the cicadas and, from that conversation, Cecily Cicada was born. I don't know if it was actually the book, or maybe just the months that we spent talking about the book and getting more and more excited about the cicadas ourselves, but somehow that spring Evie's fear of bugs disappeared. More than that, she became a little bit obsessed. We suddenly had to stop at every tree trunk to count the ants and soon were buying books to help us identify different beatles and butterflies.

What started as an interest in bugs has morphed into an interest in all things natural science. She has been alternately interested in bugs (mostly snails in Los Angeles), birds, dinosaurs and marine life in the last six years. Most recently, after seeing a pet lizard at her friend Desomond's house, she has taken up an interest in lizards.

I love that my daughter is interested in science, but I should give a little bit of information about myself here. See, as a mother of three daughters, I want to show them that women can do anything. Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails shouldn't be limited to boys of course - the notion that women are more squeamish is old fashioned. The other women in my family demonstrate this well. My sister had a virtual aquarium of fish tanks in her room growing up and was in charge of feeding the animals worms and crickets at her high school zoo. My mom used to fling daddy longlegs from the house as she painted and even caught the giant wood spiders that would show up in our sink in glasses to bring them outside. (I always made note of the glass she used and refused to use that glass ever again, no matter how many washings.) But as for me, if I see a spider in our sink? I do one of two things: yell for Toby or pay Evie a dollar to get it out. The thing is, 2009 or not, I am squeamish and I don't like creepy crawly things. And that includes lizards.

So anyway, when Evie's interest in lizards developed into a desire for a pet, I was uncomfortable with the idea at first, but then I figured I was safe. I decided that I would entertain her interest, even bring her around for a little research, but all along I could play the good cop. It didn't matter that the idea of a lizard gives me the creeps - I could be the mom who would offer to get Evie a lizard because Toby would definitely be the dad who said no. All of which brings me to our dinner conversation last night:

Evie: So, it's almost my birthday. Can we talk about the lizard?
Me: Well, I'd just like to put out there that I'm neutral on the lizard. No opinion from me.
Toby: What do you know about it?
Me: Well, we did a little bit of research and we found one on Craig's list for $100 with the cage. She mostly will eat vegetables, but we'll have to buy some crickets. She needs to stay warm. She will want to come out for exercise every once and a while.
(Big smile, lean back in the chair, here it comes, Toby saying she can't have one...)
Toby: And you'd really take care of it? Would you pay for the food with your allowance?
(Um, wait, what?!)
Evie: Yes, yes, yes.
Toby: Would you do extra chores to help pay for the crickets and the vitamins?
Evie: Yes
(No! No!)
Toby: OK, you can have the lizard. Lucy, how was school today?

Later, I talked to Toby about his thoughts on the lizard. He explained that, while he has no interest in a lizard, he was so impressed with Evie's dedication towards getting one and her sincerity at promising to work for it that he felt it was probably a good idea for her to have one. This made me fall in love all over again because how cute is a dad who is willing to buy an ugly lizard for his daughter just because he knows how important it is for her? And Evie waking up this morning and singing, "I'm getting a beardie! I'm getting a beardie!" also softened me a little more to the idea.

So the bottom line is, I guess we'll be introducing Bindi (named after Steve Irwin's daughter) the lizard to our house this week. I'm still adjusting to the idea, but I am proud of Evie for being the kind of lizard-loving girl that I never was and probably never will be.

As for the rest of the family, Lucy started off by saying that she didn't want the lizard anywhere near her, but then announced this morning that she would donate all of her allowance to feeding the lizard as well. And Noni? When I told her Evie was getting a lizard, she looked at me and said, "Then I get a zebra and a hippo."

Evie's poem

Memories of Maryland are swirling around my head,
I keep them like a treasure box.
I remember climbing a high in tree with my friends
and up there in the tree I felt safe.
-poem by Evie

When I read about Evie feeling "safe" in a tree with her friends, I couldn't help but thinking back to the day she and Jasper and Susannah climbed up the tree by the rec center in Frederick. It's a tall pine tree and I stood under it with Jasper and Susannah's moms talking about how we need to just let them climb and how kids need more freedom from their parents these days. Suddenly an object that looked just like Jasper's coat came flying through the air and landed with a loud "thud" on the ground. All three moms suffered a collective heart attack before realizing that Jasper had just thrown down his backpack.

Despite our interpretation of the tree being potentially unsafe, Evie must have felt comforted being up there with her friends, secluded from the world. I think she also felt safe because she was so connected with nature, clinging to the branches of a pine tree. It's a good reminder to me both to allow her to take risks (such as climbing across the tree house, over the roof and down the orange tree to get to our neighbor's house) and also to spend more time in nature. Toby recently wrote in his blog about how our whole family benefits from nature and Evie's poem speaks to that as well.

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.