Welcome

Dear Ilan,

You were born 8 days early. Your brother was born 8 days late and that, along with being consistently told that you measured small made me believe it took me longer than usual to grow a baby. I didn't expect you for another two weeks.

You came three days before the winter solstice, which marks the change of season from fall to winter. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, and was our first full day home with you. It was a beautiful day, unseasonably warm, and we took you on your first walk outside to let the sun shine on your face while you slept.

You are an easy baby. You have long and delicate fingers and toes. You were born sunny side up, which means you were face up instead of face down. Your umbilical cord was unusually long, had two vessels instead of three, and had a true knot in it, which means at some point, when you were very small, your cord made a circle and you swam through it. There are a thousand small details I could mention, things that came up during my pregnancy, and things that were discovered at your birth, that make your life seem like more of a miracle than most. A thousand small things that could have gone wrong but didn't.

I was sick when I went into labor with you. I had a sore throat and bad chest cold, and hadn't been getting much sleep. After delivery my voice was horse and whispery, and within a few hours it was gone entirely. I spent the first 48 hours of your life whispering to you. In the following days my voice was husky and crackly. Did you wonder where your real mother was, the one whose voice you'd heard booming and echoing for months?

You recognized your brother's voice. Your first night home was the second night of Channukah, and we lit the candles and opened presents. Roan got a finger monster, and he played a game where it attacked us. Every time he laughed or spoke you looked around for him, wanting to join the fun. When you are fussing, you often stop if you hear his voice.

Our lives seem so much fuller already, being a family with two boys. I am so happy you are here.

Welcome.

Ilan Clive Lyons, December 19th, 7:59AM, 6lbs, 14oz, 19 inches

Activities

Roan has recently made the transition to swimming without me. Just in time too, because the sight of my Fred in a bathing suit has become pretty alarming.

Our playground days are winding down... soon it will be too cold and snowy.

One day we tried something new - a place called Bounce U, which has two huge rooms full of bounce houses. It was incredible. They have smaller houses for little kids, and really enormous ones for big kids. At first, Roan was content with the small time. And when I saw the long and steep slides, and the fact that on one, you had to climb up an inflatable rock wall, I was sure my son wouldn't be interested.

Wrong.

An attendant helped him climb the rock wall, which is nearly vertical, and even *inverted* in one place, and then he went down the slide by himself. See the skid marks that start right below his legs? Those are there because that's where your body first makes contact with the slide. Before that you are free falling.

Inevitably, Roan dragged me up the rock wall and made me go on the slide with him. And I was afraid. In my adult life, I don't have much opportunity to experience primal fear, but I felt it that day at Bounce U, perched on the edge of that slide, ready to launch myself into the air. That spike of adrenaline - the sudden knowledge that death is real, and possibly imminent. Roan sat in front of me, his eyes sparkling with excitement. I was so glad he was going with me - I gripped him tight. I didn't want to go alone.

Here we are on a slightly more mellow version of the slide, where you climb up using footholds and a rope.

Birth Plan

Last week I had a meeting with my OBGYN to discuss labor. It went like this:

Dr. Amy: How long was your last labor?

Me: 7 hours.

Dr. Amy: Oh. You should come in after your first contraction.

There was no lofty discussion of a birth plan, no questions about whether we could dim the lights in the hospital room, bring music and aromatherapy, employ a "birthing ball." With Roan, we discussed all these things at length, and then I spent about an hour in the hospital before I pushed him out. There wasn't any time for that shit. Even if there had been, I was too overwhelmed by pain to notice the terrible lighting, the lack of soothing smells, and my screams drowned out any music.

I have a hard time believing Fred's labor will be any less terrible. I respond to pain by becoming angry and withdrawn. I hope to have enough self control this time around to reign some of that in. Though the "labor flashbacks" I've been having are not encouraging. They are traumatizing, and leave me feeling profoundly pissed off.

To psyche myself out I've been playing this game, trying to come up with all the things that people do voluntarily that are worse than unmedicated childbirth. Like running a marathon. Or trekking across Antarctica and having to carry one of those unwieldy backpacks. Traffic school. That's all I've come up with so far. And the problem with this game is that with those activities, you can always just quit, or take a break. Childbirth is unstoppable. You have no control. You can't drop out. There are no breaks.

It's hard for me to have a positive attitude.

My birth plan with Roan involved a lot of props, eloquently rehearsed arguments against any intervention, and a desperate hope for an orgasmic labor, promised to me by the Bradley Method, provided Jay could get those massage techniques just right (he didn't).

My birth plan with Fred is simple: get to the hospital before having the baby.

Roan at 3

Dear Roan,

You love trains and chocolate and books and words that rhyme. You recently went through a clingy phase, but for the most part you are very independent, and will play alone for long stretches, lost in your own world. You are still a good eater, when I can get you to pay attention to food, but many times I have to feed you myself while you check the fire truck's engine or change your cars' tires.

You had, for a month or two, a curious habit of talking out of the side of your mouth that I'm pretty sure you picked up from watching clips of the movie Cars.

When someone does something you don't like, such as push you or take your toy or stand on a train track that only you can see you say, very loudly, "I don't like it, I don't like it!" You don't like to rough house. You like to get up in your friends' faces and make loud train noises, or roar, or whip trucks by people's heads. Sometimes it's hard for me to punish you, because mostly you are very well behaved. When you act like a jerk it's usually because you are strung out and tired and on the verge of tears. You have such a good heart.

You love to be silly and laugh. It's fun to spend time with you. Here are some snapshot moments from this week:

Me and you soaking in our post swim lesson bubble bath, me blowing bubbles all over, you laughing like a maniac, your hair speckled with white foam. You running in tight circles around the kitchen while I play a lively version of Wagon Wheel on the guitar. Me playing with your toes while we make up silly rhymes.

You are very calm and focused. Other moms like their boys to have play dates with you, in hopes that your ability to self entertain for long stretches will rub off. And it works if there are just two of you, most of the time. Insert a third boy and the two of them run around like crazy people while you play alone with play dough or whatever.

I think I was like this as a child, a bit indifferent to what other kids were doing, and to what was going on around me in general. I've never been completely comfortable in big groups, and though I grew up playing team sports I always felt a little awkward with the large scale social interaction that came with it. I want so badly for everything to be effortless for you, especially those things that were hard for me. So I love to see you run wild with your friends, hopped up on communal energy, going along with the group for the sheer joy of being part of something. More often than not you opt out of this kind of group play, and I worry that you've inherited my own awkwardness.

I think as parents we tend to focus on the parts of our children that most strongly reflect or react against our own identities. When I talk to your Daddy about this, he zeroes in on how stubborn you are (you once held a grudge against him for 2 hours, fell asleep for a 2 hour nap, and woke up still mad at him), and how gentle you are. He also talks about how mechanically inclined you seem to be, or at least you are very interested in the way things work. Daddy says you don't get this from him, and then reminds me of a time when we were first dating and he came to my apartment to find that I'd completely dismantled an old TV I'd found on the street.

I wonder, will you ever want all this information? Is it even accurate? Truly there is no such thing as objectivity, especially not for parents.

I write this down because for better or worse, I want you to have a record of who you were. Especially who you were before you become self aware enough to start changing yourself into the person you want to be, or whoever you think you ought to be. This is who we think you are right now, on the cusp of becoming a big brother.

You during the Thanksgiving holiday, when our backyard was full of brilliant yellow leaves.

False Alarm

Dear Fred,

We thought we had it all bagged up. But it turns out, that on further reflection, we just don't like the name Micah as much as we thought. So add it to the growing list of names that were almost yours.

We went back to the drawing board and came up with two very solid contenders. They are neck and neck in the race to be Your Name. With just four weeks left, we are playing for keeps!

I've run both names by Roan, but he is no help. He will not consider any name that is not Fred. "Mommy," he tells me, "the baby's name is Fed. Just Fed." The matter is settled in his mind. He changes the subject and starts talking about trains.

Visitors

Earlier this month we had visitors - all the way from Rome! Meet Pamela and her daughter Eva. Pam and I went to college together in Santa Barbara, and shared an apartment in Astoria together. Pam's bedroom in Astoria had a balcony that we nick-named "The Hamptons" and we sat out there and tried to ignore all the stray cats when we wanted to feel decadent and old money and to be able to tell our coworkers that we too had spent the weekend in the The Hamptons.

Astoria in 2003: boasted the largest concentration of Greek people outside of Athens. It was a fairly safe family neighborhood. But one night we came home and someone had obviously tried to to beat down our door. It was late at night and instead of the fixing the locks, our Greek landlord sent her cousins over to sleep on our couch, so we would feel safe.

And now we have children. Here they are, sharing a meal together, while Pam entertains them with a spirited reading of "Little Puppy."

And tail-gating in Thunder McQueen in a parking garage, the day we went to Chuck E. Cheese. That was our most American activity. We also took Pam and Eva on the R train, the Staten Island Ferry, and to Chipotle.

Here we are in Queens, the four of us, and Fred.

One night Francie drove in from Long Island for a slumber party. It was a lot different from our college slumber parties. We put the kids to sleep around 8 and Pam fell asleep on the couch around 10 (which I guess is pretty rock star if you translate to Italian time), and Francie and I barely made it to midnight. Here we are, the morning after the raging slumber party:

Pam, Francie and Elise are my closest college friends, and by the end of this year, we will all have children. It's so fun to see my friends' personalities and quirks reflected in their little ones. Eva is extremely cautious around strangers. She watched me and Roan very closely, and it took a few days for her to warm up to us. But once you are accepted into her comfort zone she doesn't easily forget you. I think that, to a much less obvious degree, this could describe Pam's way of interacting with the world.

By contrast, Roan has a more easy come easy go approach to people. They don't seem to matter as much to him as they do to Eva.

Alas, I can feel this post taking a philosophical turn. Ladies, is it time for an electronic couch session?

Naming

Dear Fred,

Many people have asked, "are you really naming the baby Fred?" And the answer is no, we are not. Fred is your in utero name, just like Squid was your brother's in utero name. We have to call you something while you're in there.

But we are having a very hard time naming you.

Recently Daddy and I went out to dinner, and between the jokes of "Orion Lyons" and "Harry Lyons" I think we may have finally found your name.

We aren't telling anyone what it is. Naming you feels like a delicate operation, and if anyone poo-pooed the name it might send us into a fit of self doubt.

It's happened before.

Here are all the names we thought, at one point, we would name you, but have been rejected:

Quinn

Grey

Clive

Benjamin

Liam

Aidan

Oliver

Phineas (Finn)

Maybe when you are older you will read this, and feel that a great name was almost yours, just slipped through your fingers. Or maybe you will feel that you dodged a chamber full of bullets, that all these names are horrid. Hopefully you will feel that your name suits you, fits comfortably. At various times, I was supposed to be named Kyle or Tamara. These names seem absurd to me. How could my parents have considered anything other than Cameron?

Fred, we are getting very excited to meet you, and give you your real name.

Birthday Wish

Roan had a birthday part at Chai Tots, and his teachers asked me to write something they could sing or read to him, describing Roan at age 1 and 2, and what we wished for him at 3. Here's what I wrote:

"Roan was born on November 4, 2008 - the same day our country elected our first black president. It was a day of hope and change and magic.

At 1, Roan was walking and just learning to run. His favorite foods were banana and blueberry smoothies. He loved to read books over and over and again.

At 2, Roan loved to ride his pushbike. He rode it all over the neighborhood, so fast that Mommy had to run to keep up with him! He was so good at puzzles that we nicknamed him Puzzle Man. His favorite toys were his trains and he loved to build tracks for them.

Now Roan is 3. He still loves trains and puzzles, and love to make silly rhymes. He is a gentle soul, but also very loud and talkative. I hope he continues to deepen the friendships he's formed and learn how good it feels to be kind to others."

Here are some more photos from his school party:

Birthday Bonfire

For Roan's 3rd birthday we had a bonfire in our backyard. I have no love for baking, and roasting marshmellows for s'mores seemed like the best way to get our guests to make their own dessert. I gave everyone fair warning, stating in the invitations that there would be an open flame and we'd be giving beer to the parents and sharp sticks to the kids. Incredibly, everyone still came.

Here's the scene: We strung lights and fired up the pit, and on the far left you can make out Grandpa Lyons, hunched over the s'more ingredients. He was extremely protective of the chocolate, as one pregnant mother complained, and would not allow for extra portions, even for those who were "eating for two." He neatly laid out the graham crackers under the chocolate squares, so when kids approached with their skewered marshmellows burned to a blackened crisp, he quickly assembled their s'mores, confiscated their sharp sticks, and sent them on their way.

Birthday guests sitting around the fire, in various stages of s'more preparation and consumption, or just keeping warm.

Here is Roan roasting a marshmellow. He consumed at least three s'mores that evening - possibly more. In the background you can see Grandma Lyons eating a s'more - her first ever! I only learned this later, and had I known, I would have given her an expertly browned marshmellow, and not one that Grandpa Lyons burned to a crisp for her.

Eventually the kids lost interest in the fire and the s'mores, and started chasing each other around the yard. This is generally what kids do after they eat.

And this is what adults do.

The party was a blast, but hosting so many people is hard on everyone, even Roan. For the first 20 minutes he sat on his Daddy's lap, clutching Gordon and his coal car tight in his fist, miserably watching his friends play with his trains. He got over it, and cheered up considerably when everyone trooped upstairs to eat pizza. By the time Jay lit the fire he was ecstatic.

Since the party we have been slowly opening gifts, one each day or so, so Roan has a chance to play with and appreciate each new thing. Thanks to all our family and friends who made Roan's 3rd birthday feel so special!

Halloween

This year, just like last year, we were trains. Roan was a Thomas-ish train, I was a red caboose, and Jay was Sir Topham Hatt. You probably can't tell, but Jay has a pillow under his coat, in an attempt to look fat. You also cannot tell I am 8 months pregnant, which makes this cardboard red caboose the most flattering thing I own.

Here we are, all the trains, minus Sir Topham Hatt, and plus Eli, who was a chef.

In this photo you can see Roan's small purple felt Halloween candy holder. It wasn't ideal for trick-or-treating, because of the wide top, which caused all of his candy to fall out when he ran. He didn't notice, and when we told him, he said, "I will puff more carefully," but would inevitably break into a run.

This was one reason why we went home with so little candy. Roan's total take was 2 mini twix, 1 snickers, and 2 lousy peppermints. The other reason was that Roan missed the point of trick-or-treating. He would walk up the stoop with his friends, say trick-or-treat just like everyone else, but when someone offered to put candy in his bag he would say, "no thank you, I already have some," and dutifully march back down the stairs.

A Quiet Moment

Dear Roan,

On Saturday we had a rare and beautiful quiet moment. Quiet moments with you are pretty much nonexistent. You are either extremely physically active, very (loudly) focused on some task, or dead asleep. You really don't spend much time loafing around.

It poured rain Saturday morning, the kind of rain where you only have to step outside for half a minute, or run from your apartment to your car, and you're drenched. It was so windy that umbrellas were useless. We drove an hour out to Long Island, to go to a birthday party for Mia and Taj. We'd only been in the car for 15 minutes when the rain turned to ice, and then snow. Snow in October!

After the party, Thunder McQueen had a nice layer of snow / slush. The tops of awnings, roofs, signs, were all white with it. And it kept coming, that wintry mix. By the time we got back to Brooklyn the roads were slush and the tree branches were bowed over with the weight of two inches of snow, bent over the roads in a low lying canopy. It was like driving through a tunnel of trees. It felt magical and it took me a while to realize why I'd never experienced this: it never snows here so early, and when it does snow, the trees are all bare, without the weight of their leaves to bend them low. The next day we would be warned to stay out of parks, away from the trees, whose branches would be snapping off all over the city.

You fell asleep in the car and you woke up groggy and tired. All three of us dried off and got in bed. You laid right on top of me, draped over my belly with your head on my chest. For a long time, maybe 15 minutes, nobody moved or talked. I thought maybe you'd fallen asleep, but you were just relaxing, staring into space. It was some quality family quiet time. We cuddled and watched the snow fall in our yard. Then Fred ruined the moment with some kicking and squirming and I told you how to feel for the baby. Then you said you wanted to "wash" something, which is what you say when you want to watch TV, and you and Daddy got in a fight over whether to "wash" soccer or some dinosaur show with terrible child acting.

As I've gotten older and increasingly pregnant, I've had to recalibrate my idea of a wonderful moment. They all used to involve a lot of action and some degree of chaos. Racing down the hill with you, watching your sneakers kick up puffs of fall leaves, hearing your wild laughter, it's still a damn good moment, but running anywhere at this point, with 30 extra pounds and no clear view of my own feet is unpleasant.

15 minutes of quiet inactive togetherness? Heaven.

Staten Island Ferry

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

October is holiday season for Jews. There are the high holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But then, after those, comes the best holiday of all: Sukkot!

Sukkot is 8 days long. During that time, you build a fort, or sukkah, and you live in it. Amazing! One of the things I've held onto from childhood is an undying love for building forts. When I heard about Sukkot I thought, "finally, here is a holiday that rivals Christmas!"

Of course, most regular Jews don't move into their sukkahs, they just eat some meals in them. And like everything else in Judaism, there are a lot of contradictory rules about how to make one. I decided to keep things cheap and simple and build a PVC pipe sukkah with tarp walls and thin wooden slats for an open roof.

This wasn't my first sukkah. Last year I became totally obsessed with building a sukkah the day before Sukkot, and went on a frantic 6AM trip to Lowe's to buy materials. I bought PVC pipes and a hacksaw, but they didn't have the right joinery. So I improvised with some spare parts I found in plumbing. That ended up being a mistake.

Another mistake: trying to build the sukkah by myself. To be fair, I wasn't totally alone, I had Roan to "help" me. I'd bought buckets and sand to anchor the vertical pipes, only they kept toppling over before I could get the joinery and horizontal pipes attached, because a certain toddler kept shoveling out all the sand. I finally got it up, hung blankets for walls, and was so excited that I called all my friends to come over and celebrate. They did, bless their hearts, and the damn thing collapsed in the first mild breeze, with 4 toddlers inside.

R.I.P. sukkah 2010. You only lived 3 short hours, but you taught me a lot. After two more trips to competing hardware stores I finally ordered the correct joinery online and retired the sukkah materials until 2011.

And now Sukkot has come again! With Jay's help and all the right hardware, we built our fort in less than 2 hours. Then we decorated it with white Christmas lights. I waited a full 24 hours to make sure it was stable before planning a Sukkot party.

5 kids from Roan's preschool came over to celebrate. It was raining so we had to eat inside, but after dinner the rain stopped so the adults sat in the sukkah and kids chased each other around the yard in circles, only coming into the fort when they had an injury. When hosting a party, it is sometimes hard to sit down, have a beer, and truly relax. Yet I did just that in the sukkah, at full dark with the lights blazing and kids running all around, screaming with laughter. It felt like we were in the eye of a storm. I took a moment to bask in my accomplishments: the sukkah was stable, my son was happy, nobody needed anything from the kitchen. I was living the good life.

I didn't take any pictures that night. But here are some shots of the sukkah in daylight, with two of the walls rolled up:

Daddy Race

Texas Trains

Last weekend we flew to San Antonio to visit Grandma and Grandpa Lyons, Auntie Lisha, Uncle Damon, and Cassie. We visited the Texas Transportation Museum, which is primarily devoted to trains.

There are steam engines, diesel trains, and a some assorted stock cars, flat cars, two cabooses, and two coaches that are decked out in 1920s splendor.

I took this picture in an attempt to record the temperature, which was about 95 degrees. On October 1st.

There were also model trains indoors, similar to the kind my father has. I have a theory that was confirmed on our trip to the Texas Transportation Museum. There are two kinds of people who are obsessed with trains: little boys, and old men. Anyone else at a train museum is there on behalf of a little boy or an old man.

When it was time to go, Grandpa Lyons bought you this engineer hat:

Pregnancy Photos

Jay and I took a trip to Santa Barbara in August, just the two of us. Well, just the two of us and Fred.

We hung out with one my best friends from college, Elise, who is also pregnant. This will be my last pregnancy, and I'm really trying hard to enjoy it, so we asked her to take some pregnancy photos of us on the pier. Jay was agreeable. At first.

He quickly became overwhelmed with the sheer number of poses. All of them featured my thumb in my pocket, because Elise told me this tactic was sure to make my arm look thin.

As if the issue was my arm.

Jay could not manage one straight face through this classic pregnancy pose of father-to-be cradling baby-to-be. In contrast, I was so devoted to the photo shoot that I managed to keep my thumb planted in my pocket throughout all this nonsense.

Maria Torres took this last photo, before we flew back to New York. I was 5 months pregnant. I thought I was huge. Now I am 7 months pregnant. I want to shake my 5 month pregnant self and scream, "bitch, you don't even know what pregnancy is!"

Pregnancy, as it turns out, is no longer being to wear either of the shirts I wore for these "pregnancy photos," because they are no longer up to the task of covering my belly.

I sense another photo shoot coming on.

Black Steam Engines

I have bad news. The thing you love most in this world, black steam engines... they are obsolete.

No one uses black steam engines anymore. In this country, they had a good 100 plus year run, but were replaced by diesel engines in the 1950s, which are faster and more powerful and easier to fix. In general, the electric motor and internal combustion engine have taken over jobs done by steam engines.

I think you are on the cusp of understanding this terrible fact. The other day we were watching YouTube videos of what else? Black steam engines. National Geographic has this series about black steam engines in India - their history, and how they have been phased out. The videos are full of sad music and artistic shots of steam engines puffing through the fog, goats being herded over the tracks, and village stations marked only by banyan trees and I admit, the first time I saw it I got misty eyed, because it really is tragic that these beautiful engines are destined for the scrap yards, to be forgotten by the world like old discarded toys.

Sooner or later you will realize: The age of steam is over. Even in the small villages of India where women still wash their clothes in the river, children carry bundles of sticks on their backs, and men use oxen to plough things, they have moved on. Is there anywhere left, save the island of Sodor, where steam engines are still the norm? Maybe China, the video tells us, but the tone implies that it's only a matter of time before China too caves to economic realities and leaves their black steam engines behind.

I don't know how to tell you. You constantly ask me train questions. Yesterday we were driving home from New Jersey when a freight train passed us by. "Black steam engine!" you shouted. The road curved away before we saw the end of the train, so you asked, "Mommy, did that train have a red caboose?" and I told you it did. Because all the trains in your stories do, and so they really ought to in real life. But the truth is that computers now do the jobs of cabooses and the men who stood watch in their cupolas, so they too are obsolete.

Sometimes it makes me mad. Why can't someone update our children's stories for the world that we actually live in? Why are we still reading kids entire series of books devoted to farm animals, when most American children will never step foot on a farm? And if they ever do, they are sure to be sorely disappointed.

The other day we were at Fairway, sitting outside eating bagels, contemplating the rusted out trolley cars that have been abandoned there since the 1920s, like we do every week. Someone locked up their bike on the tracks and you asked him to please move it, because the train would go soon. Another little boy came along with his father and sat with us. He was clearly being raised by a pack of realists, because he started telling us that the train was broke, and old, and wouldn't go, because it had crashed. You told him he was wrong, and the train was not broke, and had not crashed. You made train noises and shouted "all aboard!" and told him the train would be leaving soon. The debate raged on, in the insufferable way debates do between preschoolers, neither of you giving any ground, each of you becoming further entrenched in your own point of view.

I was proud of you. For believing in the trolley, and defending it. Just because it hadn't moved in 90 years didn't mean it wouldn't start moving any minute now, or didn't travel the tracks regularly, when no one was watching. I remember reading about a group of philosophers who argued that just because the sun rose every morning, that didn't mean it would rise the following morning. In fact, they believed the opposite: that *because* the sun had risen every previous morning, it was certain that it wouldn't rise the next. These people were proven wrong every single day, yet they still believed. That kind of faith has always impressed me.

Also, you held your own in a debate with a kid that had to be at least four.

So I shelved my plans to write a children's book called, "Really Useful Engines: Trains that Actually Move Stuff in the Year 2000." Because you've got the rest of your life to grow up and get disillusioned. To realize that the world is run on mechanisms infinitely more complex than steam engines, and full of gray areas and endlessly qualified answers. There's no rush. Let's stay here as long as we can.

Catalina

Roan,

On a Thursday morning, August 18th, we set sail for Catalina Island on the vessel Macs'. Technically speaking, we motored the whole way over, with the main sail up for stability, because there's never any wind in the morning. It was a fast crossing, only 3 and a half hours, because my Dad duck taped the throttle to the bottom of the cock pit.

This was your, Zachary, and Jay's first trip to Catalina. It's a special place for our family - when I was a girl we spent our summers sailing back and forth across the channel. In my teens I always invited way too many friends, so that we squeezed 9 girls onto a 29 foot sailboat and my father had to sleep up on deck. On one memorable trip my father traded all our food for an enormous sword fish. You can probably guess that most teenaged girls do not respond well to their Special K being replaced by a huge stinking fish.

My dad grew up on a boat, so he spent a lot of time in Catalina as a boy. My grandparents used to make the crossing in the middle of the night, so that my Dad and his brothers and sisters would wake up to the boat rocking in its anchorage, the beach and the hills just a short swim away. My parents did that for my sister and I, and it really is magical to fall asleep to hum of the motor and wake up at first light to see the island rocking just outside your cabin, to climb up into the fog, leave footprints on the dew damp deck, to brush your teeth and spit over the hull and see the fish swarm in water so clear you can see straight to the bottom. My dad wanted to do this for you and Zachary, but nobody else was willing to leave at midnight.

The plan was to spend one night in Emerald Bay and and next at the Isthmus, where they have modern facilities like toilets, showers, an ice cream stand and a bar. But there was a mooring reservation snafu, so we spent all our time in Emerald. I didn't mind. It's my favorite place. The water is clear, the beaches have pebbles instead of sand, and there's this feeling I get, leftover from childhood, of possibility, that the world is big and there is so much to be explored. In all honesty though, I did very little "exploring" - this was the most sedentary Catalina trip I have ever made. I spent a lot of time just laying at the waters edge, letting the waves cool my legs. It felt wonderful to let the water slowly take all my weight.

You had a lot of fun. Grandpa took you for rides in baby boat and Daddy took you kayaking. We played on the beach and threw rocks in the water and did a little rock climbing. Daddy and Uncle Clint fished. We cooked dinner on the boat and you loved running around the decks sticking your head in the portholes and calling "Bee-o-weep!" which is a word you made up and love to say. We ended each day with a mug of hot chocolate and you and Daddy slept together in a quarter berth. Daddy was so tired the first night that he fell asleep before you did.

Let it be known that taking your family to Catalina is a lot of work. Sailing is a lot of work. Not that I personally did much work, but I watched other people do it and it looked intense. And, keeping your child from falling off a boat is also a lot of work. I'm proud to say that I took a more active role on that front.

Being a parent I've realized that so many things that were special to me as a child were a pain in the ass for my parents. Sailing across the channel in the middle of the night. Driving to Utah in the middle of the night. Taking two young children skiing. A truly horrendous number of soccer games. Being a parent takes some serious stamina. When you were a newborn, I thought of mothering as a blood sport. Now I think of it as more of an endurance sport.

Maybe in a few years, when you and Zachary and Fred are all sleeping through the night, we'll put that midnight crossing to another vote, and Popi won't be the only one with his hand in the air.

Aunty Nub

Dear Roan,


The McClures are really big on nicknames. At one point, Erica had a rap name: E-money. Which then got shortened to Money, and then to Money Grub, because she had this habit of grubbing up any spare change left lying around. And then, of course, it was shortened to Grub.

Grub really stuck. In many ways, it is perfect for my sister. She is infamous for grubbing all the shrimp out of jambalaya, or grubbing all the M&Ms out of the trail mix - a classic Grub Move. I encouraged you to call her Aunty Grub.

Except you kept saying it wrong. You kept saying something that sounded more like Aunty Nub.

The Grub did not like this. She is a dancer, choreographer, and pilates instructor. She runs at least 4 miles a day pushing a jogging stroller. She is in excellent shape, with long slender limbs and a flat stomach. She does not take kindly to being addressed as anything resembling a Nub.

The combination of your sweet voice saying Aunty Nub and my sister's outrage was just too funny. I couldn't stop laughing. There was one evening, driving home from the beach, a 20 minute drive, where you said it over and over again and I couldn't stop cracking up. You were delighted. You had found the one thing to say that made everybody laugh! Well, everyone except Aunty Nub.

"What?" she'd say, when she could get a word in, "would you want to be called Aunty Nub?"

The Aunty Nub outbursts went on for the entire two weeks we were in California. You'd forget about it for a day, but then would say, "can I please have a banana, Aunty Nub?" and we would all fall over laughing, or Uncle Clint would remind you and it'd be half an hour of you screaming, "Aunty Nub!" while the rest of us giggled uncontrollably.

The Grub got so mad at Uncle Clint for egging you on that she got you to call him Aunty Clint. This was funny, but nowhere near as hilarious as Aunty Nub.

Even now, weeks later, just thinking "Aunty Nub" makes me laugh out loud.

Here's your Aunty Nub, Aunty Clint, and Baby Zach.

Thanks to Maria Torres for the photos, August 2011, California

Boys Club

In early August we spent two weeks in California, with my sister and her family, staying with my parents in the house where I grew up. When my sister and I were young, my Dad bought an electric train. It didn't make much of an impression on us.

Roan is obsessed with it. Every time we Skype he wants to see it. He talks to my father about it constantly, and asks him to send photos if it. To prepare for our stay my dad set it up in his bedroom, on the carpet so if Roan dropped it or knocked it down it wouldn't break (which happened the last time we were in town and Roan dropped it on the hardwood floor). There is a black steam engine with a light and a funnel that puffs steam, a coal car, a box car, a flat car, and a red caboose. It's a delicate operation - all the tracks have to be connected just so, the many wheels of each car angled just right, and the wires clipped in to their outlets, and then, maybe, the thing will turn on.

Roan spent the majority of our vacation in my parents' bedroom, playing with the train, while my dad assisted. It was an exclusive club and no one else was welcome, especially not pesky mothers trying to enforce such banalities as the brushing of teeth, the changing of diapers, or the eating of lunch. Zachary, Roan's 9-month-old cousin, desperately wanted in. He wasn't allowed. But after some nagging from my sister and some prolonged screaming from Zachary he was finally admitted, as long as he didn't touch the train. After some negotiations, he was content to sit with a backpack full of tools and rummage through them while Roan played engineer. Every time the train got derailed, or overheated, or a car was uncoupled, or Zach broke through defenses to uproot a section of track or have his meaty fist run over, my dad was there to put things right.

They literally spent hours in there, uninterrupted, my father and his two grandsons, and a finicky, 30-year-old electric train. The air in Boys Club felt dry and staticky, and after a few days a strange smell pervaded the room, overpowering even my mother's prodigious scented lotion collection. It smelled as if something had just been electrocuted.

When my dad had to work Boys Club was closed and we went to the beach. It was great to get to know Zachary and see my sister as a mom. It was especially great to see Roan develop affection for his little cousin, and get used to sharing time and occasionally have his stuff destroyed. Frequently heard phrases were: "mine, baby Zach, mine!" and "no baby Zach, you're too little," or "no baby Zach, that's too hot." But he did a decent job of sharing. Here he is at a street fair, feeding baby Zach some of his ice cream:



Another angle, where you can see April and Roscoe in the background:



And he graciously shared Roscoe's red wagon with Zach:



And some smoothie:


I regret that I don't have any photos of Boys Club. But perhaps that would violate the spirit of Boys Club, a place where boys can escape the distractions of daily life and funnel all their energy into a singular pursuit.

Tools for Zachary. Trains for Roan