Expressing our personalities

Noah: Mommy, there's a wishing well.

Sam: That's not a wishing well. It's just a plain well for getting water. Right, Mommy?

Mommy (trying to disarm the conflict, maintain egos and stay the hell out of the middle): What would you wish for if it were a wishing well?

Sam: A bubble gum ice cream cone with rainbow sprinkles.

Mommy silences a retching feeling.

Noah: Just Gramma.

Aidan: A star.

Well, now what?!

Since they are no longer toddlers and they are all officially over three feet tall, my blog name is obsolete!

It is still a very kid-centric blog and at the moment my creative juices are bone-dry.

suggestions?

Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

Our eighth anniversary was last Tuesday. Due to an overindulgent trip to Bermuda waiting in the wings and the general chaos surrounding getting Sammy through is last week of school and transporting the kids to Gramma's for the weekend, we had a bottle of wine at home and exchanged no presents...or so I thought. Scott gave me a fun necklace from a jewelry artisan in Chester, CT. She has a funky style that I've always loved.

Important side fact to the story, the boys have been digging up little plastic beads from the sand box for the past several months. They call them "magic beads".


I put on my new necklace the other day and Noah fondled it lovingly and said, "Zou have magic beads on zey nacklace". If only Dina Varano knew!

What do you know?

I went to a Wells College, an outstanding, all women's institution, which laid the very foundation of my adult life. At its inception, Henry Wells and Ezra Cornell tossed back a few and Henry was kind enough to start a school to educate the future wives of Ezra's boys. The relationship between Wells and Cornell has withstood the test of time and many many changes.

Cornell has taken a well-known path and Wells has stayed small and until 2 years ago firmly single sex. Given its size there were come limitations. Course offerings being one of them. Back to Henry & Ezra, we were able to take the commuter van (which had many other more colorful names) down to Cornell to take classes that were not offered at Wells. Junior year, my first college friend, roommate and future maid of honor embarked on the trek twice a week to experience life on a big campus. I took Psychology of Communications. I learned that in the land of the big U, they don't like to talk in class, they can get exam copies from frat brothers, they only speak to suck up to their profs. I did also learn a fair amount about ironically enough, the psychology of communications. Among the things that stand out are the tenets of Socratic persuasion and the theory of gestalt, or that states very loosely (apologies to Prof. Awa for the bastardization to follow) the brain has self-organizing principles that structure how our perceptions are processed. It is the factor that allows us to see various images based on our experiences. Do you see two faces close together or one goblet? There is much, much more to the theory, but here's the point.

This is stuff I haven't thought about in a very long time. We were driving down the street the other day and couldn't figure out what in the hell Sam was talking about when he said, "there's another one, Mommy. One of those big piles of cocoa."

We were passing a garden shop and it was an enormous mound of mulch. But why would he know that?!

Since everybody who is anybody is posting pix of beautiful, perfect, precious Miles, I'm going to not follow the crowd and publish a happy birthday wish to Ken.

He's on the left and just turned 35. This is a throw back photo from when we all used to rent a house on Cape Cod in our early 20s and pat ourselves on the back for our very adult lifestyles. We would then proceed to drink ourselves silly gin & tonics while singing Dave Matthews tunes (or whatever Ken could play on his guitar) until the neighbors threatened to call the police.

Congratulations sweetie, you really are a big kid now!!! But if you bring your guitar down to Mystic, we can put that statement to test.