end of january stories
January 29, 2009, 9:32 pm
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Last Monday we joined a few friends for pizza at a neighborhood joint that plays loud ‘80s music, and within minutes Huck, Kadin, Jacob and Amelia turned the small space into a dance floor. I’m sorry I didn’t have my camera with me because the sight was ridiculously funny. At one point Amelia grabbed Huck and showed him how to slow dance in an old fashioned way. There was a moment when Huck and Kadin were both on the floor doing something kind of close to breakdancing. If we hadn't had the place to ourselves people would have been kicked. For some never explained reason Huck chanted “JOHN 3:16” over and over again while dancing to “Beat It.” On our way home he said to me, “I was going to say ‘let's get this party started’ (said exactly how it's supposed to be said) but I wasn’t sure it was a party.”
We try to say a family prayer before bed every night, and I say try because it doesn’t always work out. We sure don’t want to force the kid to talk to God, but we like the idea of the three of us having this end-of-the-day ritual. We try to let him have some say in the matter, so picture this from last night: Troy was getting ready to head back to work after a quick dinner break and Huck suggested we say our family prayer before he left. So we all sat crisscross applesauce and Huck said he’d like us each to sing the Lord’s Prayer one at a time with our eyes open. He started. Never have I heard or seen a more cheerful rendition of “our Father who art in Heaven.” I’m really glad none of you were there to witness my turn. Under such pressure I found it difficult to create a catchy tune and the whole thing had me breaking character and stifling giggles, especially when making eye contact with Troy. Thank GOD Aunt Jeni wasn’t there.
Huck’s favorite game these days is to pretend we’re being baked into banana bread together. As we lie together on the couch under a blanket, Huck gives a very detailed narration that goes something like this: Now the baking soda is being added to the bowl, now we’re being stirred, now we’re in the hot oven, now we’re baking, now we’re done, now we’re being eaten, now we’re in the mouth, now we’re in the stomach, now we’re being pooped out, now we’re in the toilet, now we’re in the pipes, now we’re in the river, now a whale is giving us a ride, now we're somehow back in the pipes, and now finally our Albanian super Quasim is getting us out with a plunger.
Embarrassment is part of being a parent, clearly, and here are three anecdotes along those lines. First, a few weeks back Huck and I were waiting for a bus next to a sweet elderly woman who began chatting with him. After a few minutes he stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth, rolled his eyes back and fell off the bench as if dead, leaving me to chuckle awkwardly and help him up, saying things to the horrified woman like, “He’s okay. He’s just pretending. He’s fine!” Second, the other day Huck was playing with some Wikki Stix at a restaurant (which are skinny waxy yarny type things you can make into figures) and loudly told me he was pretending they were umbilical cords. And third of all, as I was tucking him in last night he looked at me with disappointment on his face and said, "I think I'm smelling you. You don't smell good." After a few of my insecure questions he finally answered sadly, "It's your breath."
I leave you with this last little story, speaking of not smelling good. This morning Huck was tooting a lot and finally said, “It wasn’t me.” “Oh yeah?” I asked. “Then who was it?” He answered, “It was my conscience tooting.” I replied, “Your conscience can’t toot,” and he said very pointedly, “Maybe yours can’t but mine can. My conscience is a person that lives inside my head.” And is probably about to be blamed for a whole lot from now on.
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[ 6 comments ] ( 58 views )desperate mamarazzi
January 28, 2009, 11:56 am
Feeling like I work for some horrible magazine that stalks children of celebrities, I took these pictures yesterday through a small smudgy window of the door leading to Huck and Kadin's ballet class. Worth every humiliating moment!;)
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[ 4 comments ] ( 43 views )creations
January 23, 2009, 7:22 pm
Huck's been extra creative these days and I thought I'd share some of his recent work. This is Boley, made with popsicle sticks and masking tape, which Huck buys at our neighborhood hardware store regularly with his own money (from the $7 given to him by grandparents over a year ago). The thing that makes Boley special is that he's anemic, as you may have guessed due to the lines carefully drawn all over his body.;)
Next is Betsy, Huck's friend who appeared one day on his chalkboard and then disappeared very quickly, never to be seen again. I miss her.
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Here's Metal Robot, made one early morning by Huck and (mostly) Daddy. Metal Robot is about three feet tall and made entirely of scrap paper, making me question his name.
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A few months back our friend Mary Virginia sat down with Huck and showed him how to make a paper lantern because she knew how much he loved making paper airplanes. The next morning he gathered some supplies and made one himself exactly the way she did. Here are a couple he made the other day.
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Going along with the visual memory theme, Huck made this balloon dog in about a minute the other night and no one knows how he did it. I'm about to get him a job working children's birthday parties to help with the bills.
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[ 17 comments ] ( 72 views )sledding
January 21, 2009, 12:15 pm
We spent the afternoon on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Brooklyn at our friends John and Shana's place along with Shannon and Michael, some of Huck's all-time favorite people. The snow was coming down beautifully and since they live right across the street from Prospect Park, we got bundled up and headed on over to see about some sledding. Thanks to the generosity of many folks, we got to use actual sleds as opposed to the trash can lids we brought with us. Even in the freezing temperatures and while wearing a soaking wet coat, Huck could not get enough of whizzing down the snowy hills on his fearless daddy's back or in his slightly terrified mommy's lap. Next thing on our to-do list: Buy a Sled. Then Return to Brooklyn!;)
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[ 2 comments ] ( 39 views )staying warm
January 16, 2009, 3:06 pm
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[ 178 comments ] ( 413 views )manly dancer
January 13, 2009, 11:06 am
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Happy New Year, everyone! We here in Huck World have had a very good 2009 thus far, though there have been far less pictures taken than last year. We've returned to our normal schedules and are beginning to notice a few less Christmas trees on the sidewalks. It's freezing cold here, as I'm sure it is where you are, and this means of course lots of time spent indoors. Somehow I'm already tired of all Huck's new toys.
The newest thing in our lives is Huck's dance class on Tuesday afternoons. He was very excited during the weeks leading up to it, but then when we arrived last week and the room became filled with little girls in pink ballet slippers and fancy tutus, all running around and giggling, he suddenly became very nervous and stood near the doorway looking unsure in his sweat pants, t-shirt and bare feet. Thank goodness his best buddy Kadin (happy 3rd birthday!) is also in the class. His teacher Miss Katie told us moms we could watch since it was the first day, so I took a seat, encouraged Huck to join the others, and then enjoyed some of the cutest 45 minutes ever. Huck was a very good student, listening attentively to the teacher, being praised often, and performing a flawless three year old version of a plie. (How I wish I'd had the camera with me, but I guess we were giving the old girl a break after all that exciting Christmas season business.)
In the constant quest to discover what he wants to be when he grows up (currently a tailor on Mondays and a doctor on Saturdays), I think it’s time to make room for ballerina, just like his mommy once was.
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[ 49 comments ] ( 200 views )
downtown artist
January 4, 2009, 8:55 pm
Last week we went to the Children's Museum of the Arts down in SoHo with our friends the Greenes who were visiting for a few days. I'm pretty sure they had Huck in mind when they built this place, for it was nothing but station after messy station of places to sit and make art. He painted so many pictures that I left most of them there to dry. (They were so filled with paint that they're probably STILL wet.) Here he is making a robot ...;)
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But what got me more than anything was when he sat down to draw his self portrait. As you can see, he stared intently at his handsome little face and with an orange pencil drew what he saw. I would recognize that face anywhere.
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[ 91 comments ] ( 435 views )