Family photos: Our Little Mouse

I have a special spot in my heart right now for our middle child, Our Little Mouse. I can't really explain it, and I'd prefer to keep these feelings to myself and our family. But she's just in a sweet phase and we can't get enough of her.

Here are some of the best photos that our friend Melanie took of Mouse. Scroll to the next two posts to see individual blog entries and photos of her brother the Moose and her sister the Goose.

 (Above) This is my favorite one of Mouse of the whole shoot.

By the time that last photo was taken, Mouse just wanted to go home. She was chilly, the wind was annoying her (and her hair), and she had had enough. Unfortunately for us, that's when a lot of our family photos of all 5 of us were taken. You can see on her face in almost every single one of them that she would prefer to be home, drinking hot chocolate, and reading a book instead of being outside.

Still, she was a trooper and we can't get enough of her.

Fall photos: Our Mighty Moose

Our friend Melanie took photos of our family, and of each of our kids individually. We had to wake Moose up from his morning nap that day, so he was unfortunately a little cranky and uncooperative at first. But he soon warmed up to the photo shoot, and we think these photos of him are cute and hysterical.

Some friends have said they see a really strong resemblance between Moose and his dear old dad. To be honest, I don't see it. He looks very much like Becky to me, starting with his bright blue eyes and blond hair. Moose is currently:

• Sitting up all on his own
• Eating a wider variety of mashed foods
• Working on cutting another tooth or two on his lower left side
• Smiling and grinning cheek-to-cheek when he sees his sisters
• Getting a kick out of my cackle-laughing
• Becoming more wary of strangers
• 6 months old, but making many people think he's at least 2 months older

Fall photos: Our Dear Goose

Goose is wearing her new winter jacket that Grandma Mary Ann sent her a few weeks ago. She loves it.

(above) This is my favorite photo of the batch that were just about Goose.

Our friend Melanie took a morning off recently to take new photos of our whole family. We are really pleased with the results! Here is Our Dear Goose, at 4-and-a-half years old. Some other items from her own little world:

• Her best friends are now Eva and Chloe (after her really good friend Ellie moved away).
• She attends pre-school and enjoys telling us what her daily classroom task was.
• Finally, with the installation of her bunk beds in June, she is staying in her bed every night and sleeping through the night 98% of the time. This is a huge improvement.
• She routinely frowns or points out to us when a character in a show or movie we're watching says a bad word or treats someone poorly.
• Loves to be in charge of any and all family situations.
• Loves to ask me and Becky, "So, what are you guys talking about?" when we're trying to have adult conversation with kids around.
• Prefers to stand on a bar in our double stroller when we take all 3 kids out for a walk.
• Is not suffering from her months-long 105-degree Daddy lovesick phase anymore. These days, I'd say her temperature is down to about 100 degrees. I'm thankfully still her favorite sidekick for a lot of things.
• Has started going on Mommy-Daughter dates.
• Is getting almost a little too big and heavy for me to pick her up with ease. I am starting to fear the day when she won't be little enough for me to carry upstairs at bedtime, or into the house from our Blue Bomber.
• Has started a new, deep, joking-around laugh where she cackles and giggles at the same time.

Halloween!

Our family kept a pretty low-key Halloween this year. I had the day off and the weather was really mild for the end of October.

This was the year when the treats (and the terror) of Halloween registered with our oldest, the Goose. Her little sister Mouse was not afraid of anything, and that included reaching into anyone's candy baskets and going back for seconds at people's decorated houses. And the Moose? He was content to be carried along for the ride, staring and dozing. Give it a few years, though!

This year, our family theme was "Old MacDonald." Somehow, we convinced our girls to not go the princesses route, which, as typical little girls, is the answer or solution to any dress-up occasion. Goose was a cute pig, Mouse was a sly little kitty cat, and Moose was a little dog. Grandma Mary Ann sent his costume to us right before Fright Night. It was big on him, and he often couldn't see well enough as the dog's head piece drooped over his face, but Moose still looked so cute.

It was fun for us--and perhaps a test of endurance for him--to watch Moose try to crawl and squirl around the house dressed up in the dog costume. He didn't seem much amused at our own amusement. Just he wait until he's bigger and his two sisters start dressing him up in even more hilarious costumes!

We decided not to go with friends to Beacon Hill, which has--what we've heard--an amazing Halloween display. Instead, we stayed around our neighborhood and visited people we knew, who enjoyed our visit and chuckled at our costumes. We also met some new people in the neighborhood on our 4-5:30 p.m. round.

At dusk, we all came home for dinner and to bundle up before going out again, into another nearby neighborhood. This area was really decked out and a lot of fun. This is where Goose was scared stiff by an older woman who rushed her own front door from inside, dressed as the Grim Reaper.  Complete with a rubber sickle.  And a black scarf wrapped completely around her face.  Truth be told, she freaked me out, too.

Another neighbor stood outside her house, slowly dinging a mallet against a small brass bell.  The ringing was an eerie, constant din against the sound of children laughing and shrieking with momentary fright.  A half-hour into round two, our girls' plastic pumpkins were too heavy for either of them to carry, so I took hold of each (and helped myself a time or two to a Twix or Kit-Kat.  Hey, that was sort of my paycheck, right?!).

When we returned home, Goose repeatedly reminded us to check our candy stash for unwrapped or suspicious candy.  She and her other pre-school friends had, just a week earlier, toured a local police station and were advised to do a candy check on Halloween.

Half a World Away

The above photo captures the zany, in-her-own-world personality of Our Little Mouse. She often does seem like she is Half a World Away, to quote one of my favorite R.E.M. songs. Just hearing this song takes me back to my freshman year of college. Anyhow, there isn't a day that goes by without Becky or me, or both of us, laughing hysterically and being perplexed by the craziness displayed by our 3-year-old daughter.

Exhibits of her zaniness:

•  She is now fully potty-trained. Has been for a few months. But at least once a week, and sometimes more, Mouse will have a pee accident. She will announce, "I have to go potty!" She will then race to the bathroom but side-track herself. Whatever for, you ask? She is on the lookout for props, books, and random household objects to bring into the loo with her.
• Mouse loves talking gibberish at her little brother. She will get up in his face and peel off 30 seconds of slobbery, nonsensical words and sounds, strung together in a symphony of chaos joined with quizzical looks on her face.
• While that might not be so wacky, the fact that Mouse will then continue that line of speech for an hour or so, and with anyone else around her, is to us.
• She will often drop letters off the ends of words. A piece of paper? Pape. A light? Lig. The dining room table? Tab. She used to say "Boosh a juice" and "dilly" all the time. I miss her not saying those Mouse-isms anymore.
• Mouse-isms continue, like "Juba jiba" for yes and "nay noo" for no. I need to record these before they're gone forever.
• Mouse is just weeks away from advancing to Primary and leaving her church Nursery days behind forever. She is 100% totally unconflicted on her feelings about this transition. This morning, when I tried to drop her off, Mouse pulled every stunt in the book--and then pulled almost as many of my body parts--to prevent me from leaving her. Once I saw her little lips quiver, I was cooked. She was my sidekick on my round of errands as our bishop's executive secretary, then parked it in her big sister's Primary class to watch the bigger kids rehearse for upcoming Christmas caroling.
• Sometimes when she gets upset, Mouse will start telling us what's wrong. Then, her voice will go silent and she will mouth the words, while her eyes well up with tears. It's a tender little moment that I love seeing.

I love this little daydreamer. I wish I could get inside her mind for a half-hour to see the world as she sees it, and to really understand her thoughts and emotions. There are times when she is off by herself in a roomful of friends, contentedly reading or playing alone. Other times, she is screaming like a banshee to bigger kids, cajoling them to play whatever she wants to do. I have lately been worried about how much individual time and attention she gets from me, and it's been awesome to connect with Mouse more often.

This is what Mouse has asked Santa Claus for Christmas this year:

• Ice cream
• Swimming goggles
• Ice cream toys (?!)
• Pape (see, there's that shortened word again!)
• More books (she loves to read)
• A movie ticket. This is the Christmas that I'll take Mouse to her first in-cinema show, like I did last year for Goose.

We have a certifiably kooky 3-year-old on our hands at Chez Timbeck5. Hopefully someday, Mouse will want to read about the zany little girl she once was, and all of the laughs she gave us.

 

T-ball Slugger All-Stars

On Saturdays this fall, our friend Staci organized a pick-up t-ball squad with other families in our congregation. It was a lot of fun for Goose, who took a Saturday or two to warm up to the idea, and it was also a good way to reconnect with friends who we used to see each Sunday at church, until our congregation split up.

Each hour-long Saturday game included stretching (which yours truly really needs to incorporate into his lifestyle), hitting, running the bases, and fielding. There were no winners and losers. No one kept score, because there were no teams. Each kid got to hit, run, and field. It was a riot seeing all of the kids really get into it (or not). And miraculously, no one ever got bonked by an errantly thrown or swung baseball bat!

Donning my proud dad hat, I've got to add that Goose has an awesome throwing arm. Seriously. She is accurate both in terms of distance and location. Her catching improved as t-ball went along, and by the end, she was catching the ball the proper way, with her ungloved hand cradling the ball once it landed in her glove. I think Santa just might have a new glove under our tree for her this Christmas.

Goose's throwing and catching are two skills I intend to work on developing more with Goose next spring and summer in our daddy-daughter dates and at other times. She has a knack for it, and having a catch will be a great way to have more one-on-one interaction. It's really cool to see her develop a new and fun skill.

The pictures at the top show our squad, which the kids dubbed the "Slugger All-Stars!"

Grandpa Fred's visit

At the beginning of November, Becky's dad, Grandpa Fred, came to town for the weekend. He is an amazing man. He was in Atlanta for a conference that ended on a Friday, so he hopped a flight to Beantown for the weekend before leaving for another conference on Monday in the Big Apple. It was really meaningful to have uninterrupted Grandpa Fred time for everyone. The whole week before, Goose kept talking about "Grandpa Fred will swing me in the air!" Mouse, whose middle name is Maryann for Grandpa Fred's wife/Becky's mom, kept asking, "Is Grandma Mary Ann coming?"

Holding fort in Goose's Primary classroom. To me, Fred is the best example of a man devoted to his faith and his church. You can just feel how strongly he believes in and relies upon our Savior in his life.    

Grandpa Fred took a turn putting our girls to bed, on Saturday night. He has the golden touch. For me, bedtime routinely takes 45 minutes. Fred someow got our girls to bed in about 75% less time, with no tears or whines or calls for mommy or daddy to rescue them. Unfortunately, he didn't leave his bedtime routine tricks manual in Boston!

We took in a kids' classical music concert at Harvard Business School on the beautiful Saturday morning that Grandpa Fred was in town. Another thing I really appreciate about my father-in-law is that he is up for pretty much any suggestion of activity or game--unless maybe I told him that I wanted to take him to a Democratic candidate's political rally!

It also feels like Fred, Becky, and I can talk about anything, especially over a game of Snorf (Nertz). We had a great weekend-long visit, and just wish we lived closer to him and our western family.

More of The Three

But wait, there's one more!...

Current favorite photo of our terrific trio. I'm grateful that I got to spend the last four-and-a-half days with our kids, almost totally uninterrupted. They mean the world to me, and to Becky. A long time ago, my Dad and I were talking about professions. This was long before kids came on my scene, and years before I met Becky. I was trying to make a decision between living at home for a year; it would save me a ton of money, but I would also face an almost 2-hour commute each way, 5 days a week. My Dad made a precient point that has stuck with me ever since, eleven years later:

"The money may always come later, but you can never get back the time, no matter how much money you have." It felt like a lightbulb went off in my head. So, I am grateful for my Dad's wise words, and for the example he set as a father when I was growing up. His office was a 5-minute walk from our house. On weekends, he would take my sister and me to the office to have the run of the classrooms and copy machines and all of the noxious-smelling markers. To this day, whenever I smell certain markers, it instantly takes me back to 1986 and all of the mischief I got away with in those quiet classrooms on the weekends (like writing jokes on the chalkboard).

Now that I'm a father, I am trying to live up to his example. I am glad for the quality of time I can spend with Becky and our kids. I'm there for every breakfast and every dinner. Though bedtime can be fraught with impatience (from the kids and from me), I'm trying to soak up the bedtime routine as one last daily chance to connect.

It still feels like it is never enough. But over the last few months, I've had a mantra running in my head at times: "Count your blessings for each moment and day together." It sounds trite, but it has helped me gain some needed perspective. It has also helped me feel slightly less regretful when I can't go to a doctor's visit or to a pre-school function. At least I am home with our little brood each night. And hopefully, our kids will look back on their younger years and feel that I spent plenty of time with them, together and individually. 

Goose's thankful turkey

Goose's hand-made thankful turkey. Made Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 in her pre-school class.

We love all of the individual thankful feathers. I took a lunch break that day specifically to bring her to pre-school, so I'm thrilled that it made the cut! We also got a big chuckle out of her referring to Moose as "my baby." This is a definite keeper. We also have a family thankful sign that we make each year, listing several things we are especially grateful for.

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Happy 6 months!

Happy six months to Our Mighty Moose! Many friends who see him at church or at a park or over dinner remark, "He's how old?" by which they mean, "No way! He's not even six months old yet? He's a big little guy!" I only hope that he grows up as well as out, as his dear old dad has had a lifelong desire to be at least 3 or 4 inches taller. 
Here are some recent photos of the Mighty One:

And here are some quick hits on what he's up to these days:

• Eating rice cereal, and mashed peas mixed with rice cereal
• Sitting up on his own
• When sitting up, he frequently bends over to reach for something, and it makes it look like he's folding in half at the waist!
• Crawling forward a little bit more steady, and not really going too far.  Maybe he's focusing on sturdiness over distance right now?
• He adores his oldest sister, The Goose. Moose smiles big and wide whenever he sees her, and she knows just how to entertain him.
• Moose's favorite thing to do with me is when I hold him under his armpits and raise him up and down, singing "Boingy, boingy, bing!" [Shameful admission: I got that line from a Dora the Explorer book]. He gets excited and will repeatedly kick his legs at the slightest sign that I'm done with the arm exercises.
• I think he's a little less emotional and prone to crying than our two girls. For example, at least right now, we can leave him safely on the floor in the next room for a half-minute or so and he's fine, even if he notices that we've left. I don't think Goose got to that point until she was 2!
• Sleeping through the night, most nights.
• He's starting to be afraid of strangers.
• Somehow, he strongly dislikes apple sauce.
• He has started sleeping in a Boston Red Sox sleep sack. I hope he brings the team good luck! [Thanks, Cherie!]

Dear Mighty Moose,

How we love you! Your big, wide smile makes us all happier, even when your big sisters daily leave our house looking like a category 3 hurricane swept through, room by room. I fear that the next 6 months will feature such unfortunate big sister skits like dressing you up as a doll, but it will be funny and over [soon enough]. We are so glad for our little girls that they have a little brother, and we feel equally blessed that you have them to look up to.

You have made our little brood more complete. In less than six months, you have won all of our hearts.

Forever. 

Three stars

I look at each of these photos, and I think, "Wow, I'm a lucky man." Anyone who knows my wife Becky would smack me upside the head and say, "It took you that long to realize the obvious?!" But it's true. I like the perspective that blogging--uploading pictures and putting your thoughts out--gives me. It's a chance to step back from the routines of my life so I can chronicle the fun and gray hair-inducing moments of parenthood, and work through my own thoughts, feelings, and concerns as a parent.

Writing and blogging also solidify the fundamentals of being a husband and father: it's hard work, it's constant, it's a source of continuous joy. You hear those sentiments expressed so often, it becomes routine (the very same routine that sometimes interferes with stepping back and counting one's blessings).

Anyhow, I like where we're at as a family. Becky grew up in a large family, and has always wanted a large family herself. Most of her friends came from large families, and there were lots of cousins around. I grew up in a small family. All of my friends had one or two siblings. I just tried to think of anyone I knew growing up who had 3 or more siblings, and for the life of me, no one comes to mind.

Thinking back, my childhood best friends Gerard, Chris, and Charlie all had just one sibling, like me. Wade, Liam, and Brian had two siblings. The girls I liked? One or two siblings, tops. Also, my pool of cousins was tiny compared to Becky's. That was my experience, and everywhere I looked, I saw the same number of kids in most families I knew. It influenced how I viewed my own future parenthood.

So...Becky and I had a fun time discussing how many kids we wanted to have. To be honest, I really loved having two girls, especially where Goose and Mouse are close in age. I might have been fine stopping at two. Becky? She saw two as a decent start, the first bend of a lap or two around the old high school track. But now, having three kids, I am really glad that I changed my tune and that Becky really encouraged us to keep going. To add a third child to our brood was, in some ways, breaking away from the experience I had and the reality of so many friends, both of which had influenced my own thinking.

Now? I can't picture life without Our Mighty Moose. I can't imagine not having Goose be a little mommy, or Mouse finally not being the youngest, or Becky going through pregnancy again, or having a son. I am sincerely glad we now have three kids. It took some doing on my part to basically say, "Look, forget about your own upbringing and all of the friends' small families that you knew. So what if everyone you knew, at an impressionable time of your life, had small families, just like you? That was then, and it's over." It isn't as much of a transition as going from 1 to 2 was. Becky might feel differently, but that's how I feel. Our girls are a little bit more independent in a lot of ways, which frees up a hand or arm when one is needed to tot or feed or change or scurry after an infant is needed.

It's awesome to see how each of our kids is different. Why does Mouse have my brown hair and brown eyes, but our Goose and Moose don't? Most days, I'm struck by how similiar our first and our third kids look, and have looked, at similiar stages of infant- and toddler-hood. It's all an interesting, challenging day- to-day lifestyle, and it's fun to document some of its moments on our blog.

And yeah, it's even better to have a third little one along for the ride now.

Grist Milling it, round 2

Our trip to Sudbury's Grist Mill wasn't complete without also hitting two nearby sites: the Little Schoolhouse and the Mary and Martha Church. There's a nice, huge green lawn separating those two sites, and an old country road shaded with beautiful, full trees between those sites and the Grist Mill itself. We were all by ourselves at the Little Schoolhouse and the church.

This little red schoolhouse is reportedly the inspiration (or the actual setting, depending on what you believe) for the children's poem "Mary Had a Little Lamb." We stepped inside this centuries-old, frigid one-room schoolhouse and--digital camera and clothing aside--felt like we had stepped back in time. Perhaps not to 1798 (the year it was built), but perhaps to the early 20th century.

Single-pane windows, an old working black stove to heat the place, and weathered, black-and-white photos and faded color drawings greeted us. Our girls eagerly took the chalk and the cracked blackboard tablets to doodle on.

In my mind, I can still hear the pine needles crunch under my daughters' little, quick-moving feet.

"The Redstone School, 1798. School District No. 2, Sterling, Mass." 1798? That is ancient history in the United States! I couldn't believe it was that old.

The schoolhouse preceeded almost every U.S. president and more than 75% of all U.S. states. 

It was a cool feeling to, you know, actually let your kids shout their heads off without fear of intruding on other tourists' enjoyment. I personally loved hearing our girls' squeals of laughter echo across the green expanse, breaking over the sound of rustling leaves and cars passing in the distance.

After the schoolhouse, we bypassed the Mary and Martha Church to see the Grist Mill itself. On our slow meander back to our Blue Bomber, we decided to chill out on the lawn. Moose unloading in his diaper and needing to nurse, coupled with two slowly-tiring little girls, compelled us to park it for a while.

I was really intrigued by all of the angles, curvature, and shapes on the chapel's front exterior. The deep blue sky overhead also made a terrific contrast to the sparkling white.

I read this marker placed among the red bricks on the chapel's front entryway. The sign reads "On this spot Mrs. Henry Ford Turned the First Sod For This Chapel. Aug. 30th 1939." Yes, that Henry Ford.

I also marvelled at how her feat was done two days before World War II broke out, thousands of miles across ocean and land. As I stood there, with our little girls and Becky and Moose hooting in the background, I wondered what people at this very same spot thought about the world on this day in 1939. They had no idea how drastically the world would change, beginning two days later. I felt grateful to live in a world that has undergone so much dramatic political change in the ensuing seventy years that our children will hopefully never know a war on such a destructive scale as the one that broke out a few days after Mrs. Ford came to Sudbury, Massachusetts. There is a yawning, long way to go on some things, but today's world is in many important ways a better place than the world of August 1939.

I was grateful to hear my children laugh, and to see a beautiful red, white, and blue flag fly, and to drive home without being questioned about where I was going, or where I had been. I was grateful for the serenity of this setting, for contemplation, and for the realization of how good we have it.

A beautiful white church, a big green field, sturdy trees of different varieties, and a stone wall that has stood for decades. There is no place like New England!

A big part of me wanted to go home, put on a recording of Robert Frost, throw a pot of soup on the stove, and slowly read through my latest Yankee magazine. But then, my kids would complain that I'm even more old and crusty than I already am!

And, I'm done trying to sound like Bill Bryson. Until next time...