Langer Loksh

Lurker Sasha

You should not have left before the ice cream cake!

The Flying Kiss

The bus just pulled away and Summer hadn't turned around to blow me a kiss out the window. For a moment I was crushed. But her little face peeked around and smiled and blew the very important kiss, which I caught and pressed to my check as every morning. Then I sent one back to her.

Only a scare, but that day will come. Second grade looms...

Where's Elvira?

And how much do you love her safe-t orange ear plugs?

Musings Upon Emptying the Dishwasher

Oscar's starting to reach for toys. Better put that on my blog.

Oh, and the burn mark on the guitar, too. There's a tiny burn mark on my guitar from the first campfire of the year, which was Friday night, before Alissa's wedding shower, with Kerry, and Megan, and Greg and Maya and their kids and my kids and Grandma and Pop and Nana and Jim. They tell me it is "character." Better bring my guitar to Maya's tonight so I can play Happy Birthday to Jim and Charlie.

The shower was so nice and Alissa such a gracious and funny bride. Summer won the clothespin game by tricking people into saying "wedding." Her prize was a pot of thyme to plant.

We had another campfire, too, with The Fabulous Zielinskis all the way from Rochester, New York, where I think it's still snowing. Charlie loved having Garrett sleep in his room so much that when they woke up they pulled the shades back down to play "sleepover."

This half eaten peanut butter sandwich? I'm going to throw it out. For some reason I do not like to give peanut butter to the chickens. I am afraid their beaks will get stuck. I will give them this sketchy slice of canteloupe though.

And... the dishwasher is reloaded.

Playground Season

This weather has been such a gift. The kids are tired out at night from pounding the playground and the back yard all day long. Oscar has had his first ride in a baby swing on the playground. He was neutral about it. He's also now facing forward in the Baby Bjorn!

Nananananananana BATMAN

Today we celebrated Charlie's fourth birthday with his friends. We put on capes and masks and played freeze dance to the Batman song. Mostly the boys made mud and then played in it. Here's our birthday boy with his cake.

Tramps Like Us

Here is a video of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Boston on Wednesday night. Bruce took signs from the crowd with song requests. One guy had written on a piece of paper, " I Wanna Be Sedated." Bruce said, "You can't stump the E Street Band!" He worked out a couple of chords and then banged it out. At about 45 seconds, the lights come on and you can see me and my brother Joe:

Look at the guy in the blue dress shirt who is directly to the right of Bruce onscreen. Then look next to him at the Elvira impersonator in the purple V-neck shirt. The one with the bushy black hair and pasty white skin? Clapping robotically? Yes that one. That's me, and my brother is the tall dude standing to my left.

As if we needed further evidence that I have the coolest brother, he came up here from New York City with front row tickets. I was like, 15 feet from Bruce Springsteen. My seventh-grade self would have passed out. Frankly I almost passed out.

They played four songs off Born to Run--Born to Run, Thunder Road, Jungleland, and She's the One--and he also played Spirit in the Night, Badlands, and For You, but sadly I had to step out in the middle of For You because I suddenly remembered that I left the gas grill on and had to call Jeff to make sure he turned it off before he went to bed. But, other than that, AWESOME!

Thank you so much Joe!

Paging Dr. K...

I am really confused about the hearing aid. I feel like I pushed for it and now I don't want it. No expert recommended it to me. However it is my understanding that the thinking on unilateral hearing loss--that it wasn't worth it to aid it--is changing. So I went after it. Now it is annoying. It serves only to make me feel bad that I can't make Charlie wear it. It would take enormous effort to make him wear it and I do think it would be a benefit but at what cost to our relationship? So I thought, I'll get the surgical one that he can't flip off by slipping his plastic Peter Pan dagger between his forehead and the sweatband and flinging it across the room. (Which was hilarious.) And then I thought, I'm already thinking of surgery for both the bulge and the actual outer ear; how much surgery are we going to put this kid through? I plan to call the ear doc, who by the way never replied to me about my genius Q-Tip plan (which was to clean out the extra canal so it didn't get infected--but Dr. J. said not to do that because there could be "weird skin" in there).

But Enough About Me. What Do You Think of My Hair?

Summer has lost a fourth tooth, which puts her ahead of everyone else at her table. Which is apparently a really big deal. She lost it at school--it was bloody and wiggly and her friend Liam advised her to yank it out and she did--so the teacher sent her to the nurse, who gave her a tiny purple plastic treasure box, which she placed under her bed. By some miracle I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and remembered to take the tooth and leave a prize, a tiny footstool with a needlepoint cushion that I bought at the consignment shop forever ago and keep forgetting to give her. We didn't have any interesting money around, other than a Hawaii quarter. Still, the stool was a weird choice. Today at school, Liam sidled up to Summer and said "How much?" and she said "How much what?" and he said "How much did the tooth fairy leave" and she said "Nothing, she left me a green stool." What can I say, it was 4:30 a.m.

Charlie would not wear his hearing aid at school today.

I tried to make my life more exciting by dying my hair "Tropic Burgundy" from a box, and succeeded in making my hair look like some sort of neon animal print. Actually the shade was cool, but the coverage was splotchy. So I went to the salon to have them fix it. We chose a "mahogany" shade; the stylist succeeded in making my hair look like Elvira. I'm talking BLACK. So I went back tonight, and she stripped out the color, and then tried again, and it was still black, so she stripped it out again, and now it's orange. She didn't charge me a thing, but I lost about five hours of my life and, well, my hair is orange.

Yesterday, when it was still Elvira, I went to the playground next to my old house. I saw four moms, one dad, and one babysitter that I know. NONE OF THEM RECOGNIZED ME. I had to tell the story six times. It was kind of hilarious.

One of the moms was Christy, whose daughter Sophia has hearing loss and wears hearing aids in both ears. They too have Dr. W. as a hearing loss consultant. I was surprised to hear that Dr. W. was advocating taking Sophia off all services. This means that Dr. W. is not, in fact, an alarmist. She must actually think Charlie is unintelligible and in need of the BAHA and services etc.

MUST REMEMBER TO CALL SURGEON. AND SEND CHECK IN FOR HIGH SCHOOL REUNION. AND LOOK, WE STILL HAVE 93 MINUTES TO FILE OUR TAXES.

From Darkness into Light. And Oatmeal.

Oscar tried oatmeal cereal today. He liked it. I have a book called Mommy Made in which I inscribed the results of each of Summer's new food tastes. ("Carrots: choking, gagging. Next!") Oscar, you get the blog.

Charlie wore his hearing aid at speech today for the full 45 minutes. When he came out of the room it was all wacky, pushed up the side of his head, but at least he kept it on. Cindy and I shared eyeball rolls over the whole IEP thing. Child is FINE. Does not need therapy or hearing aid. (Or am I in denial? Because I can understand him all the time. But I his mom. Mental note: call the surgeon to ask when he could be implanted. And do taxes. And send the check to Devin for high school reunion. And pay the Amex bill. Could I be more disorganized?)

And now for the most exciting development: Summer can read. It has just clicked in for her. She started our Passover seder by reading the first two lines of our haggadah: "The sun is now hidden, and the full moon is rising. It is time to begin our Seder: our telling of the Passover story in a special way, and in a special order." You can imagine how my chest practically split open like the Red Sea.