our year isn't complete without a visit to storm king. this is one of the places that make me love living in new york, even when i hate it. breathtakingly beautiful and so incredibly cool. sculpture in (sculpted) nature. after every visit i leave inspired and awed. and exhausted.. it's big.
they did it. last wednesday both girls got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, posed for pictures and ran to school where they joined their classmates as members of the new york city public school system. eve is a big time kindergartener and ruthie is a big time pre-k-er. things didn't seem to go as smoothly as last year, which i suppose is natural now that there are two. especially when one of them is ruth, who is going through a real phase right now, the kind of phase that i would think was so crazy and entertaining and absolutely endearing (if slightly alarming) were i an observer.. but as her mother, my head explodes about fifteen times a day.. still, even though ruth is awesomely unpredictable and even though it was completely different than last year, this year's first day was a great day.
after our run to school chip took ruth to register and i jogged hand in hand with eve to kindergarten. the room was hot and crowded. eve was a little nervous, but amazing. no nail biting, no tearing up. a tighter grip on my hand and a shoulder pressed into my leg for a moment and she was off.. cautiously and quietly, but she was off. after all, she is in kindergarten now. "did you like how i listened to you right away and didn't scream when ruth drew all over my arm with marker? it's because i'm in kindergarten." "did you see how i didn't throw a fit when ruth pulled my hair even though it hurt super bad? it's because i'm in kindergarten now."
ruthie got into eve's old class, which we were thrilled about. ecstatic about. especially after the months-long battle i've had with the nyc department of ed just to get her into our zoned school. on day two she got pulled out and put into another class. i wasn't happy (enter: break down in the principal's office) but have since gotten over and embraced the change. ruth was sold the second she got to dress up like a "super cool princess" with the new friend that has her exact same shoes.
midnight the night before school rolled around and i couldn't not make them something for this big day. the stripes were pulled out and i sewed into the wee hours of the morning. their response when i presented the shirts? "do i have to? really? i kind of don't want to." eve took pity on me and my blank stare and after some coercion, ruthie did too (although she will never ever wear the tunic with jeans again, only tights because [exaggerated sigh and attempted eyeroll] "this is a dress mom, not a shirt. look!").
and, off they go. one resolved, the other mostly oblivious, both happy and good and ready to take on the world. as long as you don't make ruthie eat pickles or make eve take more than three bites of chicken (even though she's five).
watching those sesame street kids play on their sad playgrounds always puzzled me. as a girl growing up on acres of land in northern california, it just didn't make sense. there had to be some kind of joke that i just wasn't getting, because i didn't believe it.. a couple lousy swings, a handball wall, maybe a sand pit, some sprinklers and a sad set of monkey bars and i was supposed to be convinced that it was real? that anyone would ever do that to a kid; build a playground on blacktop without any kind of grass anywhere? it wasn't real, but if it was, i felt sorry and confused for those kids.
today i watch my children play on those playgrounds. i watch them run on the blacktop and swing on the swings and stomp their feet in frustration at not being able to get the monkey bars right. those kids i pitied are now my own and those sad playgrounds i didn't believe in are theirs. they are theirs and they are amazing. the girls will run and charlie will walk, so slowly and carefully, all over that black rubber matting and asphalt for hours. every season of the year we are there, never noticing or thinking about the missing grass. we run,we draw with chalk, we blow bubbles and swing, slide and chase. but during the summer, while charlie searches for the nearest ball, the girls are concerned with one thing on their lovely little playground; the water. no matter what they are wearing, eve and ruth drench themselves in the geysers that pop up when the weather turns hot. more often than not, on those summer days we spend in brooklyn, the girls walk home, leaving a trail of little puddles behind them.
for those days of sprinkler bliss, a sprinkler suit was made. now that the very last day of our summer vacation is here it seems a little late to be sharing this, something made back in june, but here it is anyway. eve and ruth both balked when i tried to present it as a swim suit. "but it's just a shirt and underwear!" they cried. they were right, and we have used each piece separately as such, but when the two pieces are put together it becomes eve's "sprinkler suit", a term they were both willing to fully embrace (ruth didn't want one for herself unless it had a big hole in the back of it and neither of us were fans of the prototypes i came up with.. next summer). with her sprinkler suit on eve can run and play in the water and dry off in record time and i can watch as she scootches and spins on the ground and throws her little body around without once thinking about how much damage she is doing to her suit or clothes. after all, it is a sprinkler suit, and sprinkler suits are made for summer and all that comes with it on these new york playgrounds we happily call our own.
..
also, this is my favorite sesame street song. ever. there are funnier and cleverer songs, which are awesome, but this was my favorite as a child and is even more so now that the girls request to watch it over and over and charlie rocks along to the beat.
because, seriously, this is ridiculous. this is the picture chip sent me last week while in LA on business. the story goes that he was "on a conference call laying by the pool and kind of fell asleep". (i know, nice job, right?).. when he woke up and made his way inside, he found he had turned a shade of red rarely seen in the natural world.
i lost all sympathy for him years ago, after about the 13th time he "accidentally" got burnt out of his gourd. but i'm putting his current truly sad state to good use (a stiff neck is now topping off the blisters and red, peeling skin); eve and ruth are more sure than ever about the importance of sunscreen. ruth has even taken to educating charlie about it. "it's so so easy and funny to spray it on. but not in your nose. and not just where your shorts are, 'cause then you look like daddy. like a lobster. or a really red crayon."
..
edit: ruthie states she never said daddy looks like a lobster ('cause lobsters are black). she said he looks like a monster or "a blood guy". my mistake.
Friday, September 18, 2009 at 12:22AM