weekend: Isaac’s party

Posted on May 7, 2013 by robyn

On Saturday we celebrated Isaac’s fifth birthday with our friends. (His real birthday is tomorrow.)

For Andrew’s fifth birthday, I invited his whole class to a park and it marked the beginning of including school friends in birthdays. But…Isaac doesn’t really talk about his classmates…or seem to even know their names (that I can tell…) so family friends it was! And this group is a GREAT group to celebrate birthdays with. :)

We had lunch and cupcakes and made space specks for a little craft project.

And the kids played and played and played. The babies (and some of the adults!) took turns napping on my bed. One group went to the playground for a little while. Everyone seemed to have a really good time!

But now Isaac thinks that his birthday is over and the next one we’re celebrating is Andrew. But, Isaac, we’re not done with you yet kid. More birthday tomorrow, on your *real* birthday. Promise.


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weekend: Autism Speaks Walk

Posted on May 6, 2013 by robyn

This weekend we went to our first Autism related event. I didn’t realize that this was a family first for us, until Dave pointed it out as we were walking in. “How are you? This is a first for us. You ok?” “Oh! I’m totally fine!!” I said. We had done fundraising for Autism Speaks and signed up to attend the 5k they were hosting at Citifield.  I thought it would be really fun! 

But…honestly I was a little on edge. As we were parking, to get our attention and helpfully direct us the right way, the parking attendant yelled “AUTISM!!” at us and pointed to the parking lot. He was just doing his job…and I’m not sure there’d be a better way to handle something like that…but gosh, that rattled me. Then walking in and seeing how HUGE the crowd was and how the word “Autism!” was EVERYWHERE… I felt a little nervous and uneasy. Even the band on the jumbo stage had changed their lyrics to work the word “autism” or “autistic child” into the classics they were performing.

“Actually,” I said to Dave, “this is harder than I thought it would be.”

But, then we found our group.

And I felt more settled.

The crowd was enormous. There was a huge, huge turnout for this.

And the whole time the mood was really fun and positive and Andrew, one of the only kids from his school that showed up, got LOTS of attention from LOTS of people that know and love him.

And…we ran into these guys. Which was a pretty big highlight for Andrew. ;)

Part way through the walk, Andrew started a game of shadow tag…he ran from adult to adult saying “I got your shadow!” and the adults were so playful and joined right in. I keep thinking about Andrew’s little game of Shadow Tag (a game, he told us, that’s very hard play at noon). I love that he feels so comfortable with these people and that they are so good about his silly silliness. I’m just awash with gratitude today.

Especially for these three: his Kindergarten, First Grade and Second Grade teachers. He’s come sooo far…and they are a pretty big reason why.

Isaac probably enjoyed the Autism Speaks 5K the least of all of us. He’s not so good in crowds and has a little bit of a cold that was making him tired and crabby. But he did score an apple and orange from the refreshments table…so that was nice. ;)

And that’s a wrap. Beautiful day, great walk…but EXHAUSTING weekend. Expect another weekend post tomorrow with pics from Isaac’s birthday party! :)


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birthday decorations

Posted on May 3, 2013 by robyn

For part of the party decorations, Isaac painted a set of planets that are now hanging from the dining room ceiling (well…all except for Uranus…which has since fallen…must fix that!). He has a very set-in-stone idea about what color each of the planets are (is Uranus really purple?? Isaac insists that it is.) and he included some important details for some of them. Jupiter is not without its red eye and Mercury has some spotty bumps and he couldn’t rest until I stapled a ring around Saturn.

For each planet he painted two circles, which I stapled back to back. He wrote out labels on cards, which I glued to each corresponding planet.

And there you have it.

We are just about ready for his birthday party. And he is VERY excited. :)


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notes on May First

Posted on May 1, 2013 by robyn

- Isaac has been talking about the start of May since the end of March.

- He’s *really* into calendars right now. He talks about the months of the year and days of the week every day, several times a day. He likes to take my planner (I still use a paper planner! ack!) and sit with it on his lap and turn the pages looking at the months and days all neatly organized into a clever little book.

- He’s assigned each day a color: Monday is red, Tuesday is orange, Wednesday, I was surprised to learn, is pink. I’m guessing that the calendar they use in school has a red Monday card, and an orange Tuesday card, etc. And that’s where this comes from…but he takes it the next level. “Today is an orange day, Mommy and yesterday was a red day!”

- There was a day in March that they didn’t have school that he talks about all the time: March 15th. And now he uses “March 15th” to mean “no school”. When I told him yesterday, that he was going to stay home, he told me that “for Isaac today is March 15th!” meaning…”since I’m not going to school today, it’s just like that day in March when I didn’t go to school!” Then, he went to our family calendar and wrote “no school Isaac” on yesterday’s date.

- He’s so excited for May. His birthday is on May 8th and his party is this Saturday and all of these birthday revelries might be driving, or at least influencing, his growing calendar obsession. On Saturday he told me “two more tomorrows, and then it’s May!!”

- I made sure to change over the calendar last night, so it would be up and ready when he got up this morning. And oh man, I am so glad I did. He was SO EXCITED to see the new calendar. So, so excited. He was in mid-sentence about getting some oatmeal when he looked up and there it was. He stopped talking, stared, “look at that, Mommy! look at that!!!” Then he went over to it and spent a long time just taking it in. Never was a month loved more by a little boy than the month of May is loved by Isaac.

I’m wondering if Isaac’s obsession on time is influencing my own musings on time lately. To hear chatter about days and months and the rather gloomy, finite declaration “May 2012 is all done, Mommy” really does give me a steady stream of reminders on the ticking clock. What’s important, is to make each day count…and each day delicious. No time like the present for homemade croissants. Am I right?


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time

Posted on April 30, 2013 by robyn

I’ve been tracking my time lately…trying to figure out where the heck it ends up. Often at the end of the day I have no idea what I did all day…and I find that a little alarming. A whole day? What did I do? I didn’t used to think about this stuff so much. Is this a mid-30′s thing?

So for a couple of days now, I’ve been writing it down. Logging my hours to myself to track it. So at the end of the day when I wonder where the time went, I can see where it went. But…it’s not really helping. I feel frustrated that it takes me an hour to fold and put away laundry. Although it needs to be done, it doesn’t end up feeling like a good, honorable use of an hour. So, instead of feeling settled with how I spent my time, I just wish I had had more time.

Which, I must say, is infinitely better than being bored.

This morning, as I got Andrew off to school and I saw the state of coughing, wheezy Isaac, I decided he needed to stay home. I needed to ignore my time card and only pay half attention to my to-do list. I need to let go of my quest to understand time today, and that’s hard. Ultimately I need to let go of my quest to understand time altogether. I tie up my sense of value too much in what I’ve done, instead of who I am, and I need to shift that all around.

But often what you need to do and how you need to think and the things you need to let go of…are just so hard to change. I don’t attribute intrinsic value to what my kids’ have done today. Isaac’s done a whole lot of not-much…but he’s still infinitely valuable. I know that I should extend myself that same grace, but I can’t seem to help myself. The list of crossed-off items is much more tangible than a list of character traits.

And so I wrestle.

But, if I get to the bottom of this. If I can find peace with who I am and separate that from my list of what I did today…well…that would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Yesterday I made a scrapbook page while helping Isaac finish up some decorations for his birthday party and after organizing a money-management spreadsheet. Sigh. Let it go, Robyn. Let it go.


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weekend

Posted on April 29, 2013 by robyn

It was a full weekend. So full that this post is taking FOREVER for me to put together. :)

We spent Saturday at my Aunt Melodee’s house in Pennsylvania.

The boys all hit each other with sticks in the yard.

Which was very exciting for Aunt Melodee’s little dog, Bailey…who missed lots of her naptimes.

Dave stood nearby taking a relaxed and passive parenting approach. ;)

And then they went “underground” (Andrew’s term for “basement”) to play on the wii for longer than Andrew has ever played wii in his life. Lucky chap!

But…the whole reason we were there was to go through my grandparents’ photos, films and documents and figure out an archival process.

My sister lives in Colorado, and is not able to join us for little get-togethers like this, so my mom made sure to snap lots of pictures with her phone and gave my sister a steady stream of good stuff. :)

And Isaac stayed nearby playing on the iPad and getting tangled in a chair in many interesting ways.

It was a great day!

On Sunday we were back in Brooklyn and went for a walk on the Highline…a former-subway-track-turned-city-park.

After such a full weekend we were all in bed early, sleeping hard last night. :) Hope yours was a good one!


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can’t catch me

Posted on April 26, 2013 by robyn

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been running three days a week since I got my new shoes in January. My goal at first was to get out there three days a week. Now it feels routine…it’s what I do on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I make Isaac’s oatmeal, get him set up at the table, make sure Dave is up and I’m out the door. When I get back, 40 minutes later, they are both gone.

Also, I have the motivating push of capturing an interesting instagram to share. I feel a little bad for my followers that I obsessively post shots of my shoes…but I like to think I’m sharing details of what it’s like to live in Brooklyn and the interesting things I see looking down during a run. It’s become part of the run…documenting it.

So, first my goal was just to get out the door, with my sneakers on. Then my goal was to get an interesting instagram each time. Then I worked on distance. I worked up to three miles for each run. It’s a distance I’ve been consistent with since late January (except last Friday when a mile in, I was so heavy hearted about Boston, I stopped running and walked home). Now, I’m working on speed.

I’m NOT a fast runner. I get passed all the time by ALL kinds of people. But little by little I’ve been trying to run faster. I was running at a 12 minute mile pace. Then I noticed I started running a little faster and my times were closer to 11 minute miles. Now my goal is to get down to 10…and today was pretty good! I felt light and fast and was feeling the music and went almost four miles at about 10:25 per mile. awww yeah!

I signed up for a run this summer with my friend Tara. A Color Run! I’m so excited both about the run AND the AMAZING instragrams that’ll come from it. ;)

This morning’s run was sponsored by a slice of blueberry bread. No, not the healthiest food to use for fuel, but I need something on my stomach before I head out and this is quick and delicious and worked out just fine. :)


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keeping a diary

Posted on April 25, 2013 by robyn

I’m trying to keep a diary now. This morning was day one. I bought a nice, soft, pink notebook with just-the-right-size lines and a ribbony bookmark, for this diary project.

I keep hearing about diaries. The idea of diaries seem to be in the air right now. I read other blog entries of diary-keepers talking about the benefits of committing to their diaries. I just listened to a Fresh Air interview with David Sedaris on his diary-keeping and he makes it sound like a really worthwhile practice. But I’m feeling skeptical.

I’m at a crossroads right now. A beginning-the-next-phase crossroads as I figure out the ‘work’ question. And my thoughts feel anxious and jumbled and confusing. I’m hoping a diary will help sort them all out. Give me time to just think and be. Think about what I want and where I want to go and be intentional about whatever next steps are ahead.

I’ve considered starting a diary for a few weeks, but I kept putting it off thinking that I have the time the kids are in school to think and be. But I never use that time for that. That time seems to be getting shorter and shorter as I tackle new projects and keep up things around my home the way I like to. For some reason I’ve marked school-time with certain things I *have* to do…and sitting around reflecting never made the cut. So this morning, I sat with my coffee in the dark before anyone else was up, and I began. I was hopeful that the diary would give me clarity, courage, help me sort out my thoughts, claim my path…but it seemed like my diary entry was just a rambling of neurotic worry. Sigh. So…is that helping? getting it out? giving air to worry? or is that just feeding my already active neurotic tendencies? I can’t really tell yet. But I’m curious if there is something to this.

Do you keep a diary?

My scrapbooking practices are changing too. This one I started, left to sit for a few days, and then finished up yesterday. I enjoyed approaching it in parts like that. A little here, a little there. It was a nice change. :)


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invites

Posted on April 24, 2013 by robyn

I have been tinkering more and more with photoshop lately. I took a photoshop class a few years ago…and although I didn’t think I got much from it at the time (I left the class still scared of photoshop!), I can see now that a lot of the class content actually stuck!

For these invites, I started by scanning a picture that Isaac drew of the planets. I opened a new document and dropped in this photo of Isaac…which did NOT have all of that white space in it. I put Isaac in the corner and used the paint bucket tool to fill in the rest of the space the same color as the wall behind him. Then I sponged the line around Isaac smoothing out the background so it’s hard to tell where the original photo stops and where the color fill begins.

Still with me? ;)

Then I opened the file with the planets he drew. I used a “magnetic lasso” to select each planet one by one, copied them and dropped them into the white space. I moved them around to fill the space nicely.

Then I added text and voila! It took me about an hour. And I only needed three…and mailed them to people that already knew when and where the party is and most of them already said they were coming. But…it was fun! And I learned a lot! And I love that stuff!! sooo….. it doesn’t have to make sense, right? ;)

Then, when Isaac got home from school, he was VERY excited about the invitations. He made a few earths to include for each family.

And he wrote their names on the back.

But…the person he wants most at the party? the person he keeps asking me if he will be there? the first invitation that Isaac gave out? was for Andrew. “Andrew coming to the outer space party?” “I’m not sure. Andrew, are you going to be able to make it?” “YES! I’m coming!” ha! Love it.


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Earth Day

Posted on April 23, 2013 by robyn

Yesterday was Earth Day…and although it’s not really holiday we celebrate too much (though I would like to someday…maybe tree planting? gardening? something!), I did make cookies. Why? you ask. Well, I made earth cookies when Andrew was in preschool loving the outer space unit…and Earth Day and the outer space unit lines up so nicely…I decided to do it for Isaac too.

My cookie making has come so far! Looking back at the Earth Cookies I made for Andrew really shows me my cookie progress. ;)

Hope you had a lovely Earth Day!


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