My eternal flame is about to burn out

I am old. Seriously. How do I know? No, it' s not the fact that I'm turning the big 3-5 next month. (Appropriate birthday gifts include this, this and this.) Nor is it the strange, bow-legged waddle I have to do to protect my poor, aching back when I get out of the bed three times a night to pee. It's much, much worse.

Last week TheBoy had a summer camp assembly to show off all the exciting things he's learned in his fancy-schmancy immersion school. (Thanks, grandparents!)
To kick things off, the slighty scary Kinderdance teacher brought all the kids up on stage and announced that they were going to show off their moves to a few "oldies but goodies."

Then the music started, and it was this.

Here's what my brain did: Holy smokes, that's not old! It came out when I was in middle school, after all.

Pause. Do the math.

Good God, I am ancient.

It didn't help things, of course, that handy dandy iPod shuffle chose the exact same song as I reached the only difficult point of the bike ride to work. Pant, pant, remember my lost youth, pant, pant.

Raindrops on roses, etc.

At 8 months, these are a few of TheGirl's favorite things:



1. Lefty
2. Big Brother
3. Righty
4. Binky
5. Mommy
6. Wooden spoon
7. Ima
8. Cheerios
9. Big Brother's dirty socks
10. Baseball on TV

Well, he is feeble-minded

Sorry we haven't written in a while. First there was the stomach flu that knocked everyone in the house out. Then Harry Potter came out. (Say nothing! We're only three chapters in.) Then Judybat and I were both incapacitated by that ugly tremor in the force.

Which led me to wonder: Do you think maybe Bush is just under the Imperious Curse? It does tend to work better on the weak-minded, right? So maybe this whole, 'We're winning the war, everything is great, they love us in Iraq,' thing is just the result of the Dark Lord pulling the strings?

I think I'd feel better if that were the case.

I know I'm mixing my geek terms here, but I'd really like some Jedi mind-control powers right now. I'd use them only for good, of course. I'd convice Judybat, for example, not to notice the large pile of clothes I'm collecting on the chair in our bedroom. (The good: They just upset her, and she doesn't need anymore stress in her life.) I'd help TheGirl go back to sleep when she wakes up at 2 a.m. I'd make TheBoy wipe his rear end a little more thoroughly after he goes #2.

And, of course, I'd get my bosses to pony up one of these.

Let the Wookie win

The "Star Wars" argument went like this:

Judybat: He's too young to understand it.
Me: There will be robots and spaceships and stuff blowing up. What's to understand?

Score one for me!

Let's make one thing clear: This movie blew his little boy mind. In a good way. Yes, he asked a lot of questions, but they were the questions of a child who wanted to make sure he did not miss one single thing and was paying rapt attention. He also narrated. Whenever the stormtroopers appeared, he would kick his legs and ball up his fists and announce, "There are the bad guys! There are the bad guys!"

I had been waiting for this experience since before I had kids, which suggests just what a big honking geek I am and what a big honking geek my poor son will probably turn out to be. It did not disappoint. I'm having to resist the urge to go get him "Empire Strikes Back" -- the best of the series by a long shot -- right now. We're waiting on "Return of the Jedi," because I want him to be old enough to realize that the Ewoks are annoying, not cute.

The wonderful thing about these movies is that you notice something new every viewing. For example, this time around, I noticed that Chewie has a porn star mustache.

May the force be with us

How old is old enough to see Star Wars? I was 9 years old when the movie first came out. I remember my parents taking me to see it - I had just come home from summer camp, so they had seen it already and tried to prepare me by telling me what it was about. It didn't sound that interesting to hear them talk about it, but of course it was the coolest thing EVER. I think the first thing I said when the movie was over was, "When can we see it again?"

The Boy has been asking us when can he see it. I'm not even sure how he knows about Star Wars, but he does, and he thinks he's old enough to see it. So does Anna. I do not.

I have been overruled, of course, and tonight we gathered in our air-conditioned upstairs viewing room to watch it. It's a good thing I've seen it at least seven times already, because it was hard to pay attention, what with The Boy asking questions every 30 seconds.

Here's what it sounded like: "Is he a bad guy? Who's that? Is that a good guy? Who's that? Where's the princess? Who's that? Is he a bad guy? Where are the bad guys? Is he a good guy? Where is the princess? Is that Obi Wan? Is he a bad guy? Are they bad guys? Is that a good guy?

The good part was that all his chatter distracted me somewhat from all the completely unnecessary adulterations a digital-happy George Lucas has imposed upon us.

Is he the bad guy?

Living the dream

The time: 6:05 a.m.

The place: The big bed.

The scene: Judybat and I are sleeping soundly. Suddenly, the quiet is broken by the pad-pad-pad of Boy-feet. He climbs up and collapses between us. As soon as he's settled, there's a rustling from the other room. TheGirl, who has woken just once and very briefly since 9:30 p.m., is doing her pre-awakening squirm. I bring her into bed and commence with the a.m. feeding. When she finishes, I close my eyes for just a moment, hoping to get back to sleep on the sliver of mattress my family has left me. Instead, the sound of baby giggles wakes me up. TheBoy is making goo-goo faces at his sister. She is stroking his hair and grinning from ear to ear.

I think I'm going to start weaning myself from the Zoloft.

The Boys of summer

Here is The Boy hanging out in the back yard with his best buddy as they dig into their summer reading:




This is what summer looks like to me, the summer of my youth. I remember playing with the kids in the neighborhood - nothing planned, nothing organized - we'd just go outside and find each other and engage in some unstructured activity, as frivolous as it was fantastic. I didn't think that kind of experience existed anymore, but every day I bike home through the neighborhood past pick-up basketball games on the street, chalk-drawn hop scotch boards on the sidewalks, naked babies running through sprinklers. It's a crazy-beautiful, Norman-Rockwell-painting kind of a place, drawn to include families with two mommies.