It’s that time of year when I start obsessively checking the mountain snow forecast. When I was driving Wilder to school the other morning, I asked him if he knew what these dark, wet and cold mornings mean. Without hesitation, he threw his hands up in the air and yelled, “Snowboarding! And skiing!!”  That’s my boy.

Wilder started at a new school this fall and we’ve been adjusting to an earlier morning schedule (hence the cold, dark mornings). Circle Time starts at 9am and we’ve managed maybe a 50% success rate of actually making it to school before they finish taking attendance. Wilder is now being woken at a certain time by an alarm clock and having the experience of rushing out the door before we might otherwise feel ready in order to be someplace at the moment designated as “on time”. This indoctrination into factory life has been a bit rough but has definitely made for easier bedtimes in the evening.

Actually, I’m not sure if the smoother bedtimes are due to the earlier wake up routine or the excessive amount of running and playing he seems to do at this new place. Or perhaps it’s the mental fatigue of negotiating an entirely new social scene. I’ve been watching Wilder go through the process of choosing and making friends and figuring out all the rules and expectations of his new environment with a mix of pride, fascination and anxiety. He seems happy (or perhaps just unfazed) being one of the youngest kids in a classroom full of hardened 4 year olds. But part of me feels like we’ve thrown him to the wolves and that maybe it is too early for him to be learning some of the childhood lessons I expect he’ll encounter in the anarchistic Wild West of preschool and can’t we just keep him sweet and innocent for a little bit longer?

Strange maternal protectiveness aside, the transition from small, in-home daycare to big, preschool-style facility has been hugely positive. Wilder had a lot of his own anxiety leading up to the move but was hooked after the first day. There are more kids to play with, a huge outdoor playground area, an indoor gym, an awesome male teacher in his classroom, lots of projects and fieldtrips, fewer rules and restrictions, no time-outs, and generally more freedom to be an active, exploring, young person.  

On maybe his third or fourth morning, he started pleading with me to stay home for the day. “I just want to stay home and take a break today. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!” I reminded him that the previous evening when I picked him up, he had wanted to stay at school and not go home. “Oh, yeah,” he said. And then after a pause, “I forget that I like school now.”

Here’s a report from his first day, courtesy Teacher Tom (click to see full size):

For the first time in a long time, Wilder is having a really rough bed-time right now. Matthew and I would like to go to bed ourselves but Wilder’s in full conniption mode and we’re trading off turns putting him back in his room and in bed ever 3 minutes or so. I’m not sure he’s even fully awake anymore but that’s not stopping him from staggering out into the hallway to wail and sob about needing water or being scared or wanting the dog. We’ve been on the escalation path since about 9:30 (it’s now 11:15). He’s going to be one pooped kid in the morning.

The past few months have been equally rough and wonderful. Wilder continues to grow into the most amazing kid ever. Matthew and I are constantly remarking to each other about how grown up and competent he’s becoming. And then there have been a lot of moments like tonight where we witness the emotional toll Wilder takes from all that growing and reaching and pushing. At least that’s my theory. Every growth spurt (physical or developmental) seems to be accompanied by an equivalent jag of bad behavior.

In addition to normally going to bed by himself (a HUGE deal for this hugely attached kid), he’s been sleeping through the night without wetting the bed, dressing himself most mornings, acquiring tons of new vocabulary and phrases, doing mazes and dot-to-dot puzzles, reading numbers and letters, and getting ever faster and more proficient on two wheels.

He’s also been extremely interested in babies and how they are made and when Matthew and I are going to make another one. His best friend is now a big brother and Wilder is extremely jealous even though I’ve explained at length that babies are a big pain in the butt and will steal all the attention. Here’s a conversation from the other night…

Wilder: Mom, when are then… what are those swimmy things called?

Chantrelle: Sperm?

Wilder: When are the sperm going to swim up your vagina and make a baby?

Chantrelle: Well, when daddy and I decide to put them there.

Wilder: Where are they now?

Chantrelle: Inside daddy.

W: Put them there now!

C: No, not yet.

W: Why not???

C: I’m just not quite ready to have another baby yet.

W: Well, I know! I have a great idea!! When you are quite ready, you can make a little baby and I can share my room with him. He can sleep with me in my room!

C: What if it’s a little girl?

W: Yeah, she can too.

C: Well, you know babies wake up a lot at night. You sure you want a baby in your room that cries all night?

W: I know! If she wakes up at night and cries, I’ll get up and say “shhhhh, it's okay, go back to sleep, baby.” And I’ll rock her for a little bit and then get back in my own bed.

C: That’s really sweet of you, Wilder. Why do you want a baby so bad? Is it because Gavin’s a big brother and you want to be like him?

W: Well, if I had a brother he could play cars with me, or puppet show, or Ninja Turtles or... anything. I like you guys a lot. Mom and dad are best. But I want a friend.

C: Wow, Wilder. You are really good at explaining how you feel! I'm really glad you told me all that so I know why it's important to you.

W: So, can you make that baby now?

Well, maybe not just now. I leave for Burning Man in 2 days, after all. Anyone who’s been keeping up with the photostream this summer knows we’ve been too busy for making babies. Those hoping for more grandkids or whatever better start hoping for a crappy snowboarding season this winter or something else to mess with this parents-of-a-big-kid lifestyle that I'm finding difficult to even think about giving up.

Ah. All seems to finally be quiet on the bedroom front. And its only 11:35pm!

I've started uploading our new photos to Flickr because it easier to manage and organize files and you'll have access to the full size files, rather than the compressed (degraded) fuzzy stuff available on the blogging site.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chantrelle/

You can also order professional prints (and coffee mugs, etc.). I've put a quick link above the older photo albums so you can always find it from here. You can also subscribe to an RSS feed for my photo stream (scroll to the bottom of the page) if you want to be notified when we upload something new.

Wilder and I will be sharing this particular photo stream so I'll try to keep making sets that are Wilder-focused. Or you can search my photo stream for the tag "Wilder Update" and find all the Wilder photos that way.

Wilder learned to ride a bicycle yesterday. After all this time on the rolly bike, it only took him about 10 minutes on a grassy slope to become a proficient pedal-er. Here he is at the park (out past his bedtime) showing off his new skills.

Last year when he learned to ride his rolly bike, we were in the midst of a full blown Harry Potter obsession. We haven’t heard much from Harry lately. He’s been more or less eclipsed by Spider Man and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, last night after we finally extracted Wilder from the park he ran around the house on his broom chasing an imaginary snitch and casting Patronus charms. It’s interesting and oddly appropriate that bike riding and magic are so closely mapped on his brain.

First, apologies for the long delay between updates… The skiing video was a tough act to follow but I feel these photos fit the bill. The letters on top are mine. Wilder copied them below and was understandably quite pleased with himself.

Wilder actually did another 3 ski lessons after that first one and finished out the season with a trip up an actual chair lift and down the Daisy run.  I spent the whole afternoon chasing his lesson around the mountain, trying to catch up with him so I could take photos but always arriving at the lift or the lodge just a few minutes too late to get any action shots.

February, March and now most of April have flown by in a complete blur.  I’ve already had a couple of work gigs this year, plus jury duty, plus the flu. 

I also managed to get out of town on my birthday weekend in February for skiing in Bend. I rode down with friends and so didn’t have any keys with me.  I spilled water all over my cell phone the week before and hadn’t yet gotten it replaced.  And Wilder stayed in Seattle with Matthew so I didn’t have a child to keep track of or any of his accoutrements to haul around.  It was liberating, disorienting and I spent much of the weekend feeling like I had surely misplaced something important.

Matthew has been steadfastly prepping for the MCAT which he takes tomorrow.  He has been juggling about 10 hours of class plus an additional 15 or so hours of homework on top of his regular 40 hour a week job for the past 3 months.  We had our friend Paul over for dinner some while ago and he brought along a friend of his. When this friend asked me what I did, Paul jumped in while I considered how to answer and said, “She picks up the slack.”  Suffice to say, we are all very much looking forward to the end of this particular phase of the application process.

My mom has thankfully come into town a couple of times to keep him entertained in the morning while we catch up on sleep and to help dig us out from under a small (or not so small) mountain of laundry.  I guess I only have been picking up so much slack after all.

Wilder has been weathering all this stress and pressure fairly well, all things considered. There’s been some kind of rough behavior, but its hard to tell how much is Wilder being his usual exuberant, challenging self and how much is a reaction to not seeing much of his dad and both of us being stressed out and worn down. I guess we’ll know next week.

I’m uploading 3 new photo albums; one for each month. 

In addition to becoming a proficient downhill skier, you will notice that Wilder has become quite the soux chef. We’ll set him up with a (not very sharp) knife, a cutting board and a head of broccoli and 10 minutes later the stems are in the compost bucket and the rest is ready to cook.  Most evenings he does the majority of veggie chopping for dinner. He also flips a mean French toast.

Miss you all!

I feel like I've fulfilled some important parental duty, right up there with seeing your kid off to college. Wilder had his first ski lesson:

Yesterday morning, Wilder and I headed up to Steven's Pass under sunny blue skies, armed with coffee and hot chocolate and bacon and egg sandwiches on English muffins.  Then he went off to his lesson while I went snowboarding, dropping in every other run to cheer him on, receive compliments from the instructors (“Has he skied before?”), take photos and just generally be stoked about knowing and getting to raise such a cool kid. This is the kind of thing I had in mind when we decided to become parents.

I uploaded photos of the big day along with two other albums, including our Christmas adventures… so enjoy!

We tried for a year to get a rescue dog but found out that the rescue societies won’t give dogs to families with small children and that the pound in Seattle is only a good source of aggressive pit-bulls and other large, “issue” dogs.

So, we’ve cemented our yuppie status (as if it were ever in doubt) by not only paying money for a dog, but by buying a pure-bred animal; a Pembroke Welsh Corgi to be precise - the Queen’s dog.

We brought her home last night and she seems to have settled right into the family.  Wilder is referring to her as his dog (“Mom, my dog wants some food!” “Mom, what’s my dog’s name?”) and is currently tucking her all up on the couch while she tries to nap.  We’re all pretty in love.

As many of you know (or experienced firsthand), we had a large number of family members descend on our household for Thanksgiving weekend.  Matthew dropped his mom at the airport this morning so this evening it will be just us three for the first time in almost a week.  I’m kind of bummed.  Wilder and I are alike in that we thrive on the energy of so many people in the house and have a hard time coming down when the party is finally over.  

During the holiday weekend I was on the receiving end of at least 3 pairs of raised eye-brows and trying-not-to-judge-you questions about whether or not we really let Wilder play with this big glass jar of antique fishing lures we inherited from Matthew’s step-mom. 

The lures are rusted, stinky, probably crawling with tetanus and Wilder is totally obsessed with them.  He calls them “bugs”, has a favorite, wants to know your favorite and loves to take them all out, line them up, and put them back in again. 

It’s funny where we perceive risk in our kids’ lives.  Every day, Wilder drinks out of plastic sippy cups that are leeching off god knows what into his milk and are surely raising his risk of cancer. And yet none of us cringe to see him chugging his hot chocolate the same way we might when he (carefully) handles a jar full of old fishing tackle.

Anyway, here is Wilder singing a bugged-out remix to the tune of Mary Poppins’ “It’s a Jolly Holiday”. We hope your Thanksgiving was equally fun.

Thanksgiving is still a ways off but I’m really feeling the need to take a time out to count our blessings.  So much of the past 3 years has felt stretched thin… complete and utter exhaustion, lack of personal time, too many demands on too few hours in each day.  I’ve said more than once that parenthood and all the rest of our recent life circumstances have been a steady drain on the Noell-Johanson relationship reserves. Honestly, had we not enjoyed an entire decade of building those reserves together, our relationship might not have survived the past couple of winters.

But the great thing about putting one foot in front of another when things get rough is that, eventually, you find yourself in a different place than where you started out. And recently, we seem to be finding ourselves in the land of plenty.

The first signal that our household was entering a special place was our little garden plot. Our tomato plants grew to be over my head, bent to the ground and continued from there.  Wilder and I spent weeks picking mixing bowls full of cherry and plum tomatoes from these three productive plants. The zucchini… well, you can look at the picture. And the raspberries are still putting out a ton of fruit.

We’re looking forwards to enjoying an abundance of extra free time and energy because, as many of you already know, we have decided to close Fifth River studio. Our last day is October 31^st.  Eventually, we may look for a smaller location that will allow us to continue teaching in a permanent space but in the meantime we’re going to rent somewhere by the hour and just teach one or two classes a week to those die-hard students who want to keep training. It’s hard to express just how excited I am about this. The school has been making less and less sense since we’ve all had kids and other growing demands on our time. And although there were a lot of things I really enjoyed about running a school, I really don’t like much of what’s entailed in running a small business. In anticipation of our closure, we cancelled all of the kids’ classes this month and have been enjoying having dinner together in the evenings before one of us takes off to teach the later, adult classes.

I think I mentioned in an earlier post that Wilder is back in day care. Instead of doing 3 long days per week, we’ve decided to try out 5 shorter days so that he can maintain more of a routine during the week (routine being something we’re not so good at providing at home). This means during the week, Wilder and I get up together and spend the morning drinking hot chocolate and playing. When I don’t have a contract job going on, I drop him off just as the kids are sitting down to their pre-playground-outing snack at 10:30 and pick him up around 4:30 in the afternoon.

Because I know Wilder will be going to day care, I am much more present and mindful during our morning times together.  I resist the urge to go check my email or go throw in a load of laundry as my normal multitasking habits might cause me to do. I notice the difference this mindfulness makes in my own energy and see that reflected back at me in Wilder’s behavior.

The new schedule also means the shift is less abrupt for Wilder when I am working and that I get some personal time every day when I’m not. 

In September we took a family vacation to Bend (click to see our photos) to meet up with some friends for mountain biking. Thanks to the high desert nanny service, Matthew and I were able to spend two solid afternoons riding through amazing forested trails at the foot of the Three Sisters together.

The day we got back to Seattle, my friend Jen flew in from Chicago and she and I spent 4 whole days backpacking in the North Cascades.  Jen has also been living la Vida Loca lately and this was the first time in quite a few years that she and I have been able to get together for a visit. We covered over 40 miles through some of the last remaining lowland old-growth forests, over spectacular passes and across high, alpine meadows. As you can imagine, this was a deeply restorative trip for me and I felt so lucky to share the experience with such an important friend.

After a pretty slow work year, I just finished out 2 consulting gigs at Microsoft and have signed up for another 5 projects between now and the end of November so I am going to be incredibly busy starting in about a week but then look forward to throwing some money at a few overdue home improvement projects… although I’m sure the neighbors appreciate how our cracked front window is keeping their property taxes down.

Finally, we have an overabundance of blue carpet fuzz floating around our house at the moment. It all started because I found a cheap projector for sale on Craigslist just a couple of blocks up the street and, on a spur of the moment decision, decided to go and buy it. This meant we could finally get the tv out of our living room (which we did - sold on Craigslist in about 90 minutes) and rearrange the couches.  And then all hell broke loose and after schlepping a bunch of furniture to our basement, several trips to Pottery Barn and IKEA and even a paint job, our house is completely reorganized.  Here’s a view through Wilder’s new playroom into the front living room (now alternatively known as the “adult room” or “zen room”).

The theory, which seems to be holding true, is that toys would stay in one room, leaving the other free of clutter and kid-stuff and that, with more space and organization, Wilder would keep his toys picked up. So far so good.

The only thing we don't seem to have an abundance of is new photos of Wilder who continues to blossom into an ever cooler, more interesting and expressive little guy. The few we have I've uploaded into the September folder. We'll try to do better next month!

Love to you all,

Chantrelle and fam