Songs with stories

Jordan absolutely loves being in the Northwest Boychoir and is learning all kinds of great songs. The other day he was singing "Dem Bones" in the car, and I had fun singing it with him. He didn't know the story, so I told it to him. It's quite a story. The choir is singing it for Halloween, and it is rather ghoulish ("As I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them"). But it's also inspiring, because it's meant to convey that even when it seems like there is no hope at all, there can be life and strength again. I told Jordan how this was an African-American slave song, and that songs like this helped slaves keep their hopes alive in tough times. We agreed that it made the song more interesting to know the story behind it.

As in almost any choir in the western world, winter brings Christmas carols. (There is a Hanukkah song too.) I admit that I sometimes find Christmas carols tiresome, because it's not my holiday and they are so pervasive. Jordan, however, says he has no concern, that he isn't really paying attention to the words anyway, just enjoying the music. He has a good attitude.

Monday night, he asked  me to sing Away in a Manger for our bedtime song. I found that I wasn't comfortable with that.

Me: You know, I don't really feel right singing that song for bedtime. I'd be happy to sing it with you during the day, but not at bedtime. It's because it's a Jesus song.
Jordan: It is?
Me: Yeah, you know, 'the little Lord Jesus alseep in the hay.'
Jordan: Oh, I didn't know that. I don't sing the words, just the solfege.

Well, how about that! He didn't know Away in a Manger was a Jesus song. This, in my opinion, is in the category of cultural information an American child needs to have. And as with Dem Bones, it's enriching to know what you're singing about. Hopefully. So next time we were in the car alone, I told him the baby Jesus story. I told him that Jesus was a real person, a Jewish person actually, and a great teacher with many very good ideas. I said that Jesus is the number one most special person to Christians because they believe he is both a man and God at the same time. I said that honestly I don't really get that. (I hope this is not disrespectful; I think that even among believers it is a mystery.) I went on:

Me: The baby Jesus story starts when a special woman named Mary gets pregnant. You remember how a woman gets pregnant?
Jordan: Yeah. The man does so-and-so. [He said it just like that: so-and-so.]
Me: Right. [This was not the time to grill him on the specifics.] So what was special about this time, in the story, was that this woman got pregnant and no man did so-and-so with her. Just God made her pregnant, with God.
Jordan: Huh.
Me: And she was visiting a city from out of town, and when it was time for the baby to come, she needed somewhere to stay. So she tried to check into a hotel. But the hotel didn't have any rooms available. So they said she could stay in the barn. This was a hotel with a barn. And that's where the baby Jesus was born. So when it says "Away in a Manger," that means in the barn. A manger is a barn. [I remembered later that actually the manger is the feeding trough; I'll have to correct that.]
Jordan: So that's why he was asleep in the hay.
Me: Right.

I decided that was enough for one day.

Rosh Hashanah

Jordan said this was the best Rosh Hashanah ever, and pretty much I agree. We started the fun with a dinner party with friends: Jules and Jess with Ian and Adam, and new friends we met at Camp Kesher, Gregg and Anjali with Moses. The weather was stunningly beautiful; I don't think I've ever experienced such a summery Rosh Hashanah; we could have had a barbecue! But indoors was good too. The kids got along great, the adults got along great, and we had soup from Nana's extraordinary tureen.

Silly that I didn't take any other pictures of the dinner; I guess I was just having too good of a time. The menu included not only the soup (Silky Cauliflower), but also farmer's market apples and honey, pomegranate-molasses brisket, round challah with raisins, green beans, Rosh Hashanah sangria, and apple-honey galette. We dined early so that most of the adults could go to services at 8. Jules volunteered to stay home and put the kids to bed. Ian and Adam slept over. 

In the morning we had challah french toast for breakfast. Then they made a rock band and played baseball. No fights, no mischief, just fun in your underwear.

After an early lunch we got them all dressed up for temple. Adam doesn't care to be photographed, but here are Ian, Jordan, and Aaron ready to go. Don't they look terrific? Jordan requested the tie. If Aaron looks a little off it's because he had a nasty fall right before this... he recovered very well.

I think we all look pretty good!

Temple was excellent; Aaron was utterly delighted to be in childcare once his dear friend Emanuel showed up, and the eight-year-olds, who are expected to be in services with the grownups, were absolutely model citizens. In the middle, just as they were getting noticeably bored, they got to go off with the other 3rd-through-8th graders for special activities of their own. All ages got to enjoy themselves in their own way, and as a bonus, the medium-aged children didn't have to hear the story of Abraham almost killing his son. A good arrangement all around.

Instead of the madhouse children's service in the afternoon, which we have pretty much aged out of anyway, we took everyone to ice cream. The only documentation of this I can offer is empty dishes.

From there, we rejoined the Temple crowd at a nearby park for tashlich, a fun ceremony where we symbolically cast off last year's sins by tossing crumbs into a body of water (in this case Lake Washington). It was an incredibly beautiful day and there was a big crowd. We stayed a long time, letting the kids enjoy the weather and each other's company. Jess and I sat on the side and gossiped with other parents and took in the happy scene.

Dinnertime wound around, and we decided to have pizza at Jess and Jules's house. After dinner we picked plums from their tree. These are the ones I got to take home.

We could hardly ask for more from a holiday!

Exterior repairs

Beginnings of new railing next to back door.

 Ted, the contractor.

 Finished railing. Looks good!

Shim the carport where it had twisted free of the carport roof; caulk the big cracks in the post to protect against water entry.

 Molding replacement around the windows where it has rotted.

New shutters. Old shutter, pecked to death by birds, leaning against the house. It wasn't possible to exactly match the existing design, and you know what's funny about that? Turns out many of our shutters are mismatched, and we never noticed. So this is fine.

 New board to replace rotted one on the deck.

 Another new board.

Ted is continuing to work on the windows this afternoon. He'll be back tomorrow to hopefully seal the deck. It rained this morning, though, and if it rains again, we'll have to wait.

Painters are checking their calendar to figure out when they can come to pretty it all up.

Girl friendships and boy friendships

We hung out with friends yesterday whose children are girls. Their 8-year-old was in the process of repairing a friendship that had been on the rocks. She had been exchanging emails with the estranged friend, and the day that we were there, they spent some time on the phone working things out. By the end of the day they had decided to give their friendship another go, but to take it more slowly this time.

I was fascinated. Jordan is the same age, but he doesn't do anything remotely resembling what our friend's daughter was doing. He has friendships that I think matter to him very much, but he has never once talked to a friend on the phone that I know of. He has sent a couple emails (through me), but they were not chatty, more of the "let's have a playdate" or "look at this Lego thing I built" variety. I realize that Jordan is getting no practice having phone conversations. He's not interested. Does this explain why the boys I tried to talk to on the phone in middle school (and high school!) by and large had nothing to say?  Did they have no experience talking on the phone? Was telephone just not a medium of interest for them?

Meanwhile there go the girls, not only having a relationship (on the phone!) but explicitly working on their relationship. Talking about the kind of friendship they have and how they will conduct it. I have just never seen my kids anywhere near such a thing. When my kids have a friend over they start doing some physical task, or talking about the items they've collected, or acting out an imaginary battle or quest. And Jordan's friends are very much all boys. I would venture that Jordan hardly interacts with girls socially at all; he's in class with girls, but he doesn't hang out with them by choice. Yesterday, the only time Jordan interacted with our friends' daughter was when she got out her skateboard.  Is that what would have made sense to the male friends I was trying to cultivate in middle school?

Weekly chalkboard

I have this fantastic chalkboard in the kitchen. It's a decal, so it looks painted but was very easy. It's also removable, but I have zero interest in ever removing it. It's just too good. Every week I write up our family's events.

A week is just the right amount of information. Monthly calendars are so overwhelming I can't write anything on them at all or I choke. The computer one is crucial for long-term planning and for my daily business at work, but it's not accessible to the whole family. This is centrally located and large, so Jordan (and of course Dale) can read what's coming up this week, and Aaron recognizes the pictures. And isn't it fun? I get pretty into the little drawings. Here's a closeup including a sketch of our friends' house.

Here was a super busy week, with daily summer camp field trips (to which you were required to wear your yellow camp shirt), a farm box pickup, an orthodontist appointment, Grandpa flying in, a piano lesson, a Temple barbecue, and a trip to a float home in Vancouver.

The next week was significantly less crammed, but still, this is what summer was like! Whee!

This week, meanwhile, has some exciting events, and then a peaceful blackness on the weekend. Maybe something will fill in.

I got the idea from one of my favorite blogs, but I think I've taken her awesome concept a step further.

First day of school

Oh my goodness, the whole summer has gone by and I am still hoping to post about our various fun events – Ashland, Fort Casey, Vancouver, Camp Kesher – but I will just jump right in. The first day of school was yesterday and it went pretty smoothly. Aaron has the same kindergarten teacher that Jordan had, the wonderful Mrs. Murphy, and Jordan had a great time showing Aaron around the room on back-to-school night. It's a great room, full of aquariums and cactus gardens and carnivorous plant bogs.

Now that I look at the picture, Jordan seems to be showing Aaron how to pet the fish. Jordan was in fine form; he read Aaron a book, and spoke to the other kindergarten parents about Mrs. Murphy being a wonderful teacher.

I asked Aaron if he wanted to try out his seat, and he looked at me like the last thing he would want to in this fun room is sit down, but he complied for the duration of a photo.

I think if we could all say the following two things with conviction the world would be a pretty good place:

That was all from back-to-school night. Here they are on the first day. I like the sweet poses, they like the fierce ones.

At school, Aaron lined up in the lunch room with all the other kindergarteners, looking quite at home.

Jordan was outside with the third-graders, and went back to being fierce.

In the middle of the first day I got a call from the school nurse about Aaron. He had whacked his head on a metal bar, and they have to call home for any blow to the head. He was fine and went back to class. He reported having been upset because he thought the nurse was going to fill his head (maybe with water), when in fact she only said she wanted to feel his head. I think it's more likely that he was upset because the playground monitors told him he needed to chill out. In any case, both boys reported a good first day, and it seems like they are settling in very well.

Orthodontia

Jordan needs orthodontic work. This is not the least bit surprising; both Dale and I had braces and various other devices. Jordan's issues may be exacerbated by thumbsucking or may be just hereditary. Like I did, he has a very high, narrow palate, which is messing with how his top teeth line up with the bottom teeth. In my case the bottom teeth bent inwards to meet the top teeth. In his case, there is a crossbite: some of his back top teeth sit inside his back bottom teeth, instead of outside. This will not do.

We (now) have a terrific pediatric dentist, who recommended an orthodontist, who we saw for the first time this morning. We were impressed! The orthodontist was informative, convincing, a good communicator, and worked well with Jordan. Jordan seemed to enjoy the experience. He was not only very chatty about camp and birthdays and such, but was also completely honest and very articulate about his thumbsucking, not evasive at all. (He told me later that he thinks it's wrong to lie to a doctor. I agree with this.) The office is very organized and efficient, and it's conveniently located, which is helpful because we're going to be there a lot. Jordan likes the movies that play in the waiting room.

Jordan will need a palate expander. I had one of these. Back then they called it a palate "splitter," ouch. Thank god they appear to have improved the thing quite a lot in the past, um, thirty years. The concept is the same: the device sits below the roof of your mouth, and every day you turn a little key to make the device a bit wider, which gradually widens the palate. Mine involved a plastic plate like a retainer, but well below the roof of your mouth, so that it was hard to talk and eat, and food got stuck above it like you can't believe. It was miserable. Now it's just a wire and small screw thingy across the roof of your mouth. It still takes a few days to get used to, but it's significantly less horrible. Jordan will have that in for about six months. This may address the thumbsucking too (because there's a device in the way) or it may not. After the palate expander, he will have a device called a "crib," which is also on the roof of the mouth, and is built to get in the way of thumbsucking. After that, braces on just the front teeth, and after that, retainers. This will all take about 18 months and will line everything up very well. Most often, the adult teeth come in on the tracks established by the baby teeth, so there is a good chance that the corrections needed on his adult teeth will be minor. This is part of the rationale for starting orthodontic work now, rather than waiting until middle school: It's much easier and more stable to correct the shape of the palate now, while the bones are malleable.

I am oddly cheerful about the whole enterprise. It needs doing, we have a good orthodontist, and thank goodness we can afford it. But also it feels like a rite of passage. I must be a grown up, to have a kid that needs braces.